the hurricane inside my brain

I never knew selling socks could be so stressful — or, what kind of economic system is this, anyway?

I’m in the mall today with my daughter Shannon, and we’re shopping for socks. They need to be red, and high – just over her knee – it’s Halloween after all, and she needs to be the perfect Snow White. She’s detailed her costume out down to the height of the sock.

We strike out in three stores, but finally find a shoe store where the salesguy sees us looking at the socks and comes a-running. “Can I help you find exactly what you’re looking for?” Shannon explains her sock needs, and he hustles us over to a different section, flips furiously through the rack, darts in the back room. Comes back with a pair that he talks about passionately but honestly. “These are boys socks. And…I’m sorry, they have a white stripe. But they are mostly red and because they are boys socks they should up to just the height you want them to.”

Shannon says they’ll do. She darts off to her next favorite store, “Forever 21” and I make the purchase.

“Phew” says the sales guy. I notice the flat black earlobe-stretching earring in his ears. “I made my sock quota.”

“You made your sock quota?”

“Yeah. I had just about given up. What were the chances someone would walk in the store 20 minutes before closing and buy a pair of socks? You made my quota. And my day. Thank you.”

“Wow” I said. “I am SO glad I made your day.”

I tell Shannon the story and she looks at me seriously. “What happens if he didn’t make his quota, mom?” I tell her I didn’t ask.

We skip into one last store to get a pair of leggings, which she gleefully finds unattended. We go to pay, and the woman behind the counter says casually, “Oh, and if you’re looking for socks to go with those, it’s buy one pair half off on the rack behind you.”

I drop my wallet in astonishment. “Don’t tell me YOU have a sock quota?”

She nods grimly. “Yeah. And even worse.” She leans over the counter conspiritorally. “I have an insole quota.”

An insole quota. Man, I feel for her. And this time I know what question to ask. “So what happens if you don’t make your quota?”

She shakes her head and sighs. “Not good. First you don’t get promoted. If it happens a few times, they demote you. And it doesn’t take long before they actually fire you. Happens all the time.”

Wow. How sad is that. An economic system based on punishing people if they don’t sell customers stuff they probably don’t want. That’s got to change. No wonder I hate malls so much. It can’t be sustainable. It can’t be fun. And, yeah, this I never knew. Selling socks –one of the most stressful jobs ever.

I am nine-years old, and my friends have decided to hold an intervention on my behalf.

“Lisa, we need to talk to you.”

They are all there – my bff’s (even though we didn’t use acronyms to describe relationships back then.). But these were my blood sisters, pinky promise, cross-my-heart-and swear to god we’ll be friends for life friends.

I look up. I am seated cross-legged on a yellow shag rug. They are standing above me. This can’t be good.

“Here’s the thing. We all know you like to talk about stuff that is really important, but…”

(pause)

“I mean, you know how you always like to talk about the abortion issues and stuff like that?”

I nod.

“Well, sometimes we just like to play with our Barbie’s.”

And that was it. Just like that, I pretty much stopped talking. I had already been rather socially inept, and now, in one sentence, my friends confirmed all of my worst fears: “People don’t want to hear what you have to say.” And “There’s a time and a place to talk about the important stuff. But it’s not here, not now.” And, even worse, “Barbie is where it’s at. Just worry about being sexually attractive and shut your mouth, will you? That’s all you need.”

***

Flash forward…many years. I am talking to one of my current bff’s, Amy. We are discussing the fact that Social Media brings out the best in you, the things you always wanted to do.  It allows you to experiment. To make mistakes. To be creative. To help people. To talk about stuff people don’t always talk about. Here. Now. Anytime. From anywhere in the world.

And that’s what I do. I don’t always talk about the abortion issue, but sometimes — when it’s important — I do indeed talk about it. And I sure talk about everything else under the sun. I talk about trends in technology, and what the future has in store. And that funny dance we do around sexual relationships. And politics and the world economy. I tell people about the things I say to my kids, because sometimes those discussions are helpful to other people with kids. Sometimes I create art just ‘cuz I like to create art. And sometimes I even lol and mean it.

Some days I still worry that everything I say is “wrong”. Some days people still tell me to shut up, or make it clear that what I have to say isn’t all that important. But much to my surprise, the world doesn’t end when that happens. And talking about things that I believe are important sure trumps not talking.

photo courtesy another dear friend who never tells me to shut up: Audrey Huffenreuter

Hello, Hello,

I’ve started sending out a weekly email of social media tips to those people who have asked me for advice in the past. It started as tips for my friends at the newly launched The Good Men Project magazine.

The tips are somewhat random, mostly for those just starting out in social media, but these happen to be my favorite insights from being immersed in it these past two years.

1) Try this: Use Facebook to slowly expand out from your core friends, and Twitter to meet hundreds of complete strangers. Want to turn strangers into friends? (Whenever I tweet this, it immediately gets Retweeted around the world).

How friends are born: stranger > follow > @ > dm > FB > email > phone > friend

2) Twitter sucks until you have 100 people following you.

3) The best way to get a lot of followers on Twitter is to follow a lot of people. Look for people who are saying interesting things, are following people you know, like or admire. To start, follow 100 more people than are following you. Use the list function to organize as needed.

4) 10,000 is the magic number (10,000 followers or friends or subscribers or whatever) at which you go from having a social network to having your own personal media channel. What does that mean? When you reach that number, suddenly you are noticed — by influencers, journalists, investors, other media channels, advertisers. Not everyone wants that, of course. If you want a social network just to socialize with people you know, do that. But if you’re looking to build a platform that gives you a wider reach, 10,000 is a good goal.

5) Be helpful. Chris Brogan (who is my personal social media hero) says:
“Helpful is a secret, powerful club, and the way into it is by thinking first about what the other person needs, not what you want, not what you want to give, not what you think is best….Be mindful when you’re helpful. Think first and then deliver what you can for the other person or people. The results are astounding and different.”

The results are astounding and different. This is one you’ve got to try to believe.

6) Use bit.ly (or any other URL shortener) to shorten long links on Twitter. Have trouble writing in 140 characters? There is elegance in brevity.

7) In Social Media, I generally use the 1/3 rule of thumb. 1/3 is links to well-researched content that I think would be helpful to those in my network. 1/3 is conversations, helpfulness and promotion of other people’s stuff. And 1/3 is my own person insights (that quest to be ever helpful) or content (blogs, photos, stories, poems, art) I myself have created.

Figure out your own formula. That’s what works for me.

Blog Commenting is the key to the universe. Ok, a tad of an overstatement.  But it’s pretty f&%ing amazing if you do it well. You can a) get known by influencers b) help other people, by shedding your own particular insight on the topic at hand. c) become more insightful and more articulate in the process.

You know you’re dong it well when people start commenting on your comments.

9) Social Media helps you to become clearer in your communications. @copyblogger Brian Clark says: Want to be clear in your writing? Clarity comes from deeply caring if people truly understand.

10) Finally: my “Social Media Map of the World.” This is my own, personal way that I use social media. The networks I’m in, the relative importance to me, the types of content I put out in them.

And if you are looking to use Social Media to actually make money (since, last I checked, we live in an economic society), look on page three. When I track the places where all of my sales, projects, jobs, work has come from, it’s always at the place where the networks overlap. And the beauty of it is, there’s no hard sell involved. At that intersection, you’ll find that other people talk about YOU – how helpful your are, or how creative, or how smart, or how thoughtful, or what a great writer – whatever you DO really really well – it will always get noticed at the place where the networks collide.

Lisa Hickey has recently helped launch The Good Men Project Magazine.

photo: orphan jones on Flickr

When I worked in advertising, my desk was always in disarray. And as aghast as I was about my own clear lack of organization, I’d be equally aghast when I went to an account persons office and saw their neat-as-a-pin desks. How could anyone work that way? Where is everything? Aren’t you *working?* I would wonder.

And then one day I read an article that told me the reason why my desk was messy.

It’s because, as a creative person, I’m constantly looking for two unrelated things to combine.

After all, most creative ideas are not 100% new, but are just ways of taking what’s already out there and combining stuff in new ways. But in order to do that “creatively”, you have to break sets. Combine things that are unexpected, because they are not ordinarily grouped together. It used to be putting a new ending on an old cliché. Then it was combining two unrelated images in Photoshop. Not too long ago, it was someone who forgot that a camera and a phone were two completely different objects.

A messy desk keeps the solution to ‘problem A’ right next to the solution to ‘problem B’. It doesn’t file things away into a drawer labeled “the way it’s always been done.”

The internet is the biggest, messiest desk there is. I like to use that to my advantage.

Do you?

I started blogging, tweeting and using other social networking/sharing/media sites not too long ago. The experience changed my life, in amazingly powerful ways, a comment that is still met with a great deal of skepticism almost everywhere I go.

But “Social Media” (a phrase that doesn’t even do what it’s really about justice, as most people equate the words “social media” with “getting on Facebook”) has given me the chance to meet brilliant, thoughtful people from all over the world, and talk to them as equals about things that are important to both of us. It’s helped me get involved in projects I never could have dreamed of on my own: producing a book and a movie, getting a cameo role in a movie; having crazy, impassioned conversations about the future of publishing, sexism, war, pornography; gave me a chance to help start not just one but three online publications; taught me how to shoot, edit and produce a hundred small videos; gotten me over my last final fears of technology. But most of all, I discovered the power in helping other people.

So why wouldn’t I want to blog about social media, if it brought about such profound and wonderful changes?

Because that would be like having a blog about email.

What I’d like to do here is to give you insights into the way technology is colliding with human interactions and communication, insights that will cause you to say “wow, I never saw the world that way.” And, at its best, will let you see the actions you can take next to create the profound changes I think we all can make.

I’m sure that sometimes I’ll slip up and talk about social media, because it still is such a passion of mine. But, on the whole, this blog is not a social media blog.

What is it instead?

It’s a “how the way we interact with each other affects the places we go together” blog.

It’s a “let’s think about creative ways to solve problems and then go out and solve them” blog.

It’s a “what if you didn’t think about technology and communication and marketing and friendship and business and art and change as separate things, but ONE thing” blog.

It’s a “where the heck is this all going to lead us 5, 10, 20, 100 years from now?” blog.

It’s a “wow, this is cool and here’s how it might translate into a business model” blog.

It’s a “Think. Do.” blog.

As always, comments are adored, opposing views are welcome, feedback is thoughtfully considered, and spammers are not tolerated.

You can do lots of stuff when you’re thinking of how to create content. Whether it’s for an individual blog or website, or a company one, or a facebook page, or what have you.

You can give people information. You can explain how to do something. You can report on news. You can share other peoples content. And, in fact, I recommend doing all of those things, and doing those with a high degree of journalistic integrity. Be factual, be logical, be true.

But art – art is your own unique view of the world. With art, truth is how you, and you alone, define it.

That’s why.

photo: foxtongue

Whenever I am writing something – email, blog post, proposal, tweet, love letter – I almost always do three drafts.

In the first draft, I try to make it logical.

The second draft I try to make it interesting.

The third draft I try to make it short.

Note: even in my longer writing pieces, I always use the third draft to make each individual thought as short as possible.

Hope this helps.

photo: jessicafm on Flickr

When cars were first invented, they didn’t have blinkers. It was only after the fact that people studying the effect that cars had on society said “hey, it looks like people keep crashing every time the person in front of them turns. Too bad we can’t figure out a way for the cars to signal their intention before they turn so that people can stop in time.”
And then they solved the problem.

What they didn’t say was: “what idiot invented the car and didn’t realize you’d crash every time you got out there and made a turn” or “the general public is too stupid to drive cars, they are never going to work” or “cars don’t work, it’s fine when there’s only a few people on the road but they are just not scalable.”

Yet that’s what I see people do when it comes to technology, or social media, or networking platforms. They blame the creators or they blame the people using them or they figure stuff will never be scalable.

Until someone else comes along and solves the problem.

Which just got me thinking that some day I would like to be the type of person that invents the blinker.

photo: eleanorhartwick

We are defined by what we share.

There’s a lot of talk these days about people being “curators”. Brand curators, journalistic curators, and, as I like to say, curators of the world.  We come across all this stuff in our day-to-day life, stuff we find helpful or interesting or entertaining and we share it with our friends. When I tell people who don’t know about Social Media that Social Media has changed my life they look at me like I’m a little insane (which is ok, ‘cuz that’s part of my brand.)  But the reason it’s changed my life so much is because I have learned to share. I give away everything I can – every idea, every bit of business advice, everything I learn, everything I find interesting. I’ve come to find that it’s what I’ve always wanted to do. I just didn’t know how.

Here I share with you Damien Basile’s Tumbler Account, which he shares with the world.