Who Should Win the BET 2009 Hip Hop Awards Best Hip Hop Collabo?
The 2009 BET Hip Hop Awards show will rock Atlanta, GA this upcoming weekend, October 9-11. The city will be on fire and is a boom to the Atlanta economy. See my story on the Gerard Spinks Atlanta Examiner site. Everyday we’re going to do a poll for each category and let the audience choose.
[polldaddy poll="2084196"]
Gerard Spinks is the CEO of Spinks Industries; a web content production and online extreme marketing firm in Atlanta, GA.
The Insider Twitter reports are in and as I keep saying 24% of all Tweets come from bots and not humans. The “Inside Twitter” report was generated by Sysomos. Many of the most active users are actually automated. The great people at Mashable found that 32% of all tweets made by the most active Twitter [...]
The Insider Twitter reports are in and as I keep saying 24% of all Tweets come from bots and not humans. The “Inside Twitter” report was generated by Sysomos. Many of the most active users are actually automated. The great people at Mashable found that 32% of all tweets made by the most active Twitter users were generated by machine bots that posted more than 150 tweets/day.
I never check my followers due to all the spam bots and in fact, I did a petition a month ago to @ev to ask him to start controlling the rise of the Twitter bots. I get followers who follow 800 people and are followed by 12 with 2 tweets! What?! Twitter bot. I don’t even know the purpose of these bots anymore but they exist and they are alive and well.
We need Google Wave to be on our website and when visitors browse our website, jump on Google Wave and ask questions about our services or our products to increase customer interaction.
Google Wave software in the browser is touting itself as the next cool application to replace email. Yes, email is outdated and was developed 40 years ago. Yes, I’m way tired of over 70% of my email messages are marketing and spam messages. I would like to just close my email box and only use Google Wave to communicate. But this, just like other Social Media applications, is just for being social and talking to people about your wedding and when are you going to Chicago.
Google Wave
What business people want, like me, is a way to make business connections and build true customers via social networks. I love being able to connect to past friends via Facebook. I love being able to tell people that my dog pee’d on the floor this morning on Twitter and I love blasting people with my latest music via bulletins on Myspace but the question for all of us entrepreneurs is “Does it make me money?”
Business people do not have time for the next social media explosion if it’s just about discussing how to make a cake. Twitter is fading for me because the lack of intrinsic value to my business. When using Twitter to promote, the follower needle barely moves. When using it to discuss nonsense, my follower meter explodes especially if I’m talking about porn or being gay or something ignorant like that. The Twitter spam bots have it on lock and as soon as they see the key word, they follow me immediately. Who cares? Like my business needs a bunch of robots watching what I do!
I hope Google Wave lives up to it’s promise of increasing collaboration. I hope that collaboration leads to business growth for the small to medium sized business. What the business entrepreneur needs is a way to find people with like business interests to introduce and pitch their product to legitimately. We need Google Wave to be able to chat with real potential customers and increase the conversation so that they understand our business value and why they can use us.
We need Google Wave to be on our website and when visitors browse our website, jump on Google Wave and ask questions about our services or our products to increase customer interaction. We do not need it to discuss the children’s grades and if we are going to the skating rink on Friday night. This is old and boring. I have my darn phone for that.
My friend Mike Pechina, an Olympic Judo Champion from San Bruno, California, always says “Repetition is the Mother of All Greatness”. Become the best is not an overnight thing. Becoming the best whatever you choose in your life has everything to do with constant action and effort.
My friend Mike Pechina, an Olympic Judo Champion from San Bruno, California, always says “Repetition is the Mother of All Greatness”. Become the best is not an overnight thing. Becoming the best whatever you choose in your life has everything to do with constant action and effort. No one person has a lock on being the best. Mary J. Blige may be the best R&B singer. P. Diddy may be the best urban clothing designer. Why? How? Why is Lil Wayne the best rapper alive? How did they do it? How did they get there?
Judo Champion Mike Pechina
There is no secret to being the best. There is no magic wand. I knew Puffy when he had a black and white business card with a little baby boy on it. I met him at the Gavin Convention and he was just starting out. He just kept going at it. This is your key to becoming the best you. Find out your passion and then just stay at it until it starts to pay. The key is doing it until you start to see financial results. Unless you’re not in it for money. But, if you’re in it to make money, keep after it every single day.
Do not wait until some magical condition or some magical moment to start being the best you. I heard someone say that they were waiting until all things were perfect and until things started popping off to get going. This is ignorant. There is no thing to wait for. Websites are free now on WordPress. You don’t need a ton of money to get cracking. You need passion, energy, commitment, and work effort to become the best.
Aim high and shoot straight and keep doing your thing every single day. Even do it 7 times per day if you can. The key in being the best lies within you. Only you will determine how high and how far you can go. And remember, you can be down and behind in the count and still hit the ball out of the park.
being broke is a mind set. Instead of believing that you’re broke, you should instead believe that you have a cash flow situation. Cash flow situations can be improved.
My friend Dan and I used to always say that being broke is a mind set. Instead of believing that you’re broke, you should instead believe that you have a cash flow situation. Cash flow situations can be improved. Being broke cannot be improved because it’s a mental condition. So, how do you go from having a cash flow situation to improving it?
Being Broke is No Joke
There is no real easy answer for this especially in this economy. I believe it’s a combination of things that help you to bounce back in poor cash flow situations. The first thing that you must do is believe that you can rebuild or build to improve your cash flow. The second thing that you can do is acquire new skills that help you improve cash flow but keeps money in your pocket. In other words, don’t believe the commercials that come on TV saying that you can make tons of money medical coding.
Before you run to enroll in specialty trade schools, use the job boards like Monster and Career Builder to determine if those types of jobs exist in your city and see how many years experience they require you to have. If the medical coding school is saying that there’s tons of jobs in the city you live in but you go to Monster and see ZERO medical coding jobs, you should not go to the trade school for this. You might be wasting your time.
I do recommend learning technical things like html coding, advanced html and XML coding, and tools like Oracle or Microsoft SQL Server. I don’t think everyone should become a programmer and all of that stuff but all the people that I know that make a ton of money in software taught themselves. They did NOT go get a certification. Neither did I. I learned Oracle and SQL Server by downloading the software on my computer and using the online lessons to set up scenarios to teach myself. This keeps me with job skills even in a down economy.
You have to look at this cash flow situation from a macro level and not a micro level. In other words, this is a broad brush and is happening all over so your plan needs to be strategic and not based upon you having to turn around money tomorrow. Yes, you probably need cash tomorrow, but look at the long term and make your decisions based upon that. The biggest key to changing your cash flow situation truly lies in what you know. Most jobs will be some sort of technical job in the next 10-20 years. You must be online, understand basic html, and hopefully start to understand XML in some capacity.
If that’s too much, learn Microsoft Excel and become a master at Excel. I know corporations who use Excel to build full fledge applications. Again, you don’t have to become an engineer, just have to know something technical on the computer. Hit me if you need ideas.
I used to date (well sort of) this sistah in Atlanta with Lupus. I met her at Starbucks in the city. We were both writing books and would break out the laptops and write all day at Starbucks. She was tall, beautiful, chocolate, and very sexy. I used to sit right next to her and we actually didn’t speak much.
First of all, very few cats in the urban community even know this Beatles song. I know I’m going to get the onesies and twosies who say they are avid Beatles fans but for the MOST part, people do not know what and who wrote and sang this song. The biggest news is that the lady that the Beatles wrote this song about died of Lupus. What is Lupus? I called 5 people today and no one could give me a definitive answer.
Beautiful Black Woman
I used to date (well sort of) this sistah in Atlanta with Lupus. I met her at Starbucks in the city. We were both writing books and would break out the laptops and write all day at Starbucks. She was tall, beautiful, chocolate, and very sexy. I used to sit right next to her and we actually didn’t speak much. She was WAY into her laptop and writing and since I was there for that purpose too, I would just say hi, set up the Apple Powerbook, and go order a fat free Hazelnut mocha. I don’t drink these anymore since it’s like eating a Big Mac and Fries and horrible for the diet.
Anyway, Ms. Mysterious was beautiful. Perfect skin. Perfect teeth. Perfect body. I was secretly in love with Ms. Mysterious but I couldn’t let her know. We would be at Starbucks from 7 a.m. to around 1 p.m. every single day for about two weeks until one day I said “Hey, would you like to go get some lunch down the street?” Ms. Mysterious agreed and I was excited. I told her we would go to Zocalo’s down on 10th and grab a giant margarita and some awesome lunch. As we walked in the Starbucks parking lot to my car she said she wanted to drop her laptop off in her truck. I said “cool, no worries”.
As we walk to her truck, I see she has a handicap sticker in the truck and so I joke with her and say “that’s just like some folks to get a handicap sticker just so that they can park upfront at Starbucks or the grocery store.” She giggles, throws her laptop in her truck, covers it up so no one would be tempted to break her windows out and grab the laptop, and we jump in my car. Ms. Mysterious loved to dress. Was always dressed gorgeous and always looking beautiful. I never saw a day when she was dressed “frumpy” or in some sweats. She literally looked like she was on the cover of Essence Magazine or a Dark and Lovely Hair Care Product display. Bangin!
As we pull into the parking lot, park, and order our margarita’s, I have to ask her why in the world does an educated, beautiful, strong black woman have a handicap parking placard in her truck. She looks at me dead in the eye and says she has Lupus. I was floored and asked her if she was serious. She said yes and showed me the proof. Turns out that Lupus is an autoimmune disease in the body where the body can’t tell the difference between harmful substances and healthy substances. The body starts to eat itself and starts to eat muscle and erode tissue. When attacks come, it can be extremely painful and make you not want to move at all. Lupus can be deadly for African Americans. It affects nine times as many women as men.
The key to staying alive and protecting ya neck as a black kid is to know when to fight and know when to run. The key is knowing when to run and not letting pride and ego overcome you. Kids will never put down weapons in the ‘hood.
When I was growing up in a rough neighborhood in Peoria, Illinois, the one thing we learned is to never go around a beefing crowd. The murder of the youngster Derrion Albert is very unfortunate. The one thing about crowds is that they get very hyped unnecessarily. I watched the video on Huffington Post, which I’ve decided to not post here, and he got cold clocked by someone who was literally standing right next to him.
Derrion Albert Killers caught on film
In a crowd, you can’t tell your friends from your enemies. And sometimes you have frienemies around you in a hostile crowd. This is a sad state of affairs to see a young black child die in such a senseless manner. But my mother was right. Keep your kid away from the ‘hood if you want your kid to stay alive. The ‘hood is nothing but negativity and people wildin’ out. I pray for Derrion Alberts family in this difficult time but word to black youth: stay away from the crowd and when a fight breaks out, down run into the tornado; run away from it.
I know this is difficult especially when you see your friends caught up in the tornado but these crowds always get onlookers who you don’t know. In Oakland, I saw a huge riot one day near Castlemont High School. The crowd had built up a frenzy and you couldn’t tell which side which kids were on. I decided to NOT jump into the crowd and help because I couldn’t tell friend from foe. I encourage all black kids to stay out of the fray. When the crowd becomes an angry mob, head in the other direction even if you believe it’s braver to head into the storm.
The key to staying alive and protecting ya neck as a black kid is to know when to fight and know when to run. The key is knowing when to run and not letting pride and ego overcome you. Kids will never put down weapons in the ‘hood. It’s too dangerous and most people believe they need to protect themselves. So, I stayed alive by knowing how to stay away from the ‘hood and stay away from senseless mobs. Prayers to the Derrion Albert family and friends who have to deal with this.
If your child is in middle school or high school start preparing them right now for college. If they are in a public school which is not a college preparatory school, try to get them in a school that has college prep classes.
The future of African American or young black youth depends upon us parents now. I hear lots of people in 2009 say that “hey, my moms never focused on college for me so I don’t know anything about it for my kid.” Interesting. It’s 2009. No more excuses. Leave the excuses to someone else. It’s time to get serious about your child’s education and take a super aggressive and active role in your child’s studies in elementary school and high school.
Black College Students graduating
You can no longer take the passive role and let your kid tell you what they are studying while you are so busy handling life that you don’t have time to sit and read or study with them. You must be active in their studies and be concerned about what they’re doing at school. I’m not just talking about yelling at the top of your lungs when they come home with a poor grade. This is not constructive and helps no one get ahead and do better. Just because you yell doesn’t make someone rush off to school the next day with a boat load of confidence with Algebra or Geometry.
Black parents must become hyper-active with school right now! Not tomorrow. Not two years from now because your son is in 4th grade and you have time. The time is now. You must enforce habits now that they can take on with them in college. Just getting them out of high school is so 1970′s. That’s crazy to have a goal of just helping your kid get through high school. If you can’t see the bigger picture of your life, come to my blog and read the post titled “Murder of the Middle Class”. You will quickly see that your kid does not stand a chance if they do not have real raw skills and a real education.
And, I’ll go there….your kid should not just go to college and get a BA or hit up a junior college and get an AA. Those two degrees that end with an A are nearly worthless in this economy. I know people with a BA who are bank tellers and who work at grocery stores. No disrespect to my teller and Publix friends at all but what was the degree for?
Prepare a list for your child that includes: Pre-SAT test locations, Pre-ACT test locations. The SAT and ACT are tests designed to let colleges know how well your kid can study and learn so that colleges will accept your child and put them in the right programs. Do not let your kid tell you when and where the exams are and then let them skate out of taking the tests because you had no active involvement in it anyway because you can’t relate. That’s unacceptable.
If your child is in middle school or high school start preparing them right now for college. If they are in a public school which is not a college preparatory school, try to get them in a school that has college prep classes. Again, you must take a leading role now or do not complain in ten years when they are coming to live with you because they simply cannot get a real job making good money.
Gerard Spinks is the CEO of Spinks Industries; a web content producer and marketing company in Atlanta, GA.
Kimbo Slice is a total and complete sham and should retire from any MMA fights. He should think of another way to raise and feed his six kids.
Whenever I used to watch this ghetto street fighter named Kimbo Slice fight in back alleys on the Internet via Youtube, I would always question the ability of his opponent. I watched him fight a police officer who had ground game and as soon as the fight went to the ground, they stopped the fight and brought it to Kimbo’s strength of standing up trading blow to blow.
Supposed MMA fighter Kimbo Slice
Any real fighter would tell you that to cater to a fighter’s strength only is not real fighting. Yes Kimbo Slice is a tough dude. Yes, he can beat the average cat in the club that’s rushing the talent he is hired to protect. Yes, he can beat the crap out of the dude in the backyard in Miami. But, to sell us on the fact that he could really fight was a joke.
I don’t think anyone in any real fight circles ever thought he could fight. His image was tough and gruesome on Youtube when he became a street phenom. Now, Dana White is painting this dude as a family man with six kids to support at home. This is a joke and Kimbo Slice is a joke to any real Mixed Martial Arts fighter or fan. I don’t want to see someone get knocked out in 14 seconds by another dude with pink hair like Kimbo Slice did.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5ZxpbtcC8A]
I have watched MMA since my good friend Adisa Banjoko hipped me to it with the Gracie brothers way back in the early 1990s. We would watch this at my home in East Oakland and at Adisa’s home in San Bruno like religion. We were glued to the screen and would have friends over to watch these fights not because of the blood and gore but because we were impressed with Royce Gracie and his whole entire family and Gracie Jiu Jitsu.
We are devout MMA fans because of skill and talent not because someone can beat the crap out of someone in the streets. We are fans of Willy Cahill in San Bruno, California because Mr. Cahill is the best in the world and trains the best fighters in the world. Kimbo Slice is a total and complete sham and should retire from any MMA fights. He should think of another way to raise and feed his six kids.
They sent her a due diligence sheet that outlined what she needed in order for them to invest. She also received an official term sheet from Barclay’s Bank in London with their seal on it saying that she was approved for $950,000.
In this day and age, anyone can hide behind a computer and pretend to be the Executive of the Year dishing out Executive Orders like they are President Obama. I recently interviewed a woman from Boston, Massachusetts who lost her entire life savings to an Internet Crime Syndicate from Nigeria. Before you cast stones and say how careless this poor lady was, listen to her story and how she got sucked into one of the greatest Internet crime stories in history.
Beware Internet Crimes and Scandals promising Riches and Wealth
Maude and her husband James had worked all their lives. They were savers and regularly saved 20% of their income since they were in their 20′s. After 40 years of work, they had a nice little nest egg saved up for retirement and planned on moving to Florida to retire and leave the cold Boston winters behind. They deserved it. They lived a simple life. Had two kids who are grown now and saved over $250,000 in cash.
They knew they wanted their money to grow and while James was still working for the final year and a half at his job, Maude decided to attempt to try to grow their nest egg into something more sizable that they could live off off for at least 20 more years, God willing. Maude decided to use a venture capital networking site via the Internet that she figured she trusted due to their reputation or what she thought was a good reputation.
She put out her executive summary and was surprised when an investor reached out to her saying he was with a UK investment firm and loved her business plan. He said he wanted to invest. She was excited and really wanted to put her money into good use and start making passive income and building more wealth with her hard earned savings.
The UK firm sent her a term sheet within a week after they reviewed her business plan and did their due diligence. They sent her a due diligence sheet that outlined what she needed in order for them to invest. She also received an official term sheet from Barclay’s Bank in London with their seal on it saying that she was approved for $950,000. The UK Investment firm made arrangement to fly to Boston, Massachusetts to meet up with her and close the deal.
She told her husband James and he was excited too. She wanted to surprise him and hold off on telling him until all documents were proven official. She sent the term sheet, offer letter, and due diligence sheets to her lawyer of 30 years and he blessed the documents coming from Barclay’s Bank as legitimate and official. The UK firm scheduled the day they were supposed to meet in Boston.
The day of their meet up, the UK Investment firm called and said they could not make it and that she needed to wire $5,000 to London so that they could finish the financing. At this point, she was so excited about the money that she wired it to them without hesitation as they gave her an escrow company to wire it to. (to be continued)
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