Tonight, Monday 29 January at 7pm I will be interviewed on Radio 2000 (99.7FM) by Allon Raiz with my friend Brian Carl Brown discussing LinkedIn and Social Networking for Entrepreneurs. This is just one of many recent interviews I’ve done in the month of January. So the year is getting off to rockin’ start. This a must for entrepreneurs, small business owners, sales and marketing, event managers, recruitment consultants; and all those who’s job it is to create new partnerships and build relationships quickly as well as people who would like to improve their referability.

Other recent interviews include:
3 January: RSG discussing Online Dating / SMS Flirting (Afrikaans 19 January: Cape Talk / KFM news segment discussing Online, SMS, Corporate Dating
20 January: Al Ansaar Radio (Durban) discussing Online Safety on Mobile Phones, Chat Rooms and MXit.

Coming up: Online dating feature in March edition of Cosmopolitan magazine. And Identity Theft feature in April edition.

More breaking news: I’ve been invited to write a regular column on Biz-Community, the largest portal for advertising, media, marketing news in South Africa. My friend Mike Stopforth, a Web 2.0 blogger is already a regular contributor to BizCommunity.

Checkout the details of my Social Networking Success Workshop here.

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Master these Five Areas and You will Achieve Overall Success in Your Life:

1. Language: become an expert speaking your language. If you don’t you make a bad impression on people who area really sharp. In the key moments, it matters.

2. Communication: language is a type of communication, but its bigger then that. In life you have to work with other people, and that requires communication. Learn body language, persuasion, influence.

3. Sales: when you become good at sales, you learn it not sales techniques. Its about understanding where the other person is at and getting them what they need. The best sales people ask really good questions, qualify prospects quickly, build trust very fast, and offer the prospect what they need. Bad sales people don’t do that, they sell features and benefits and get lots of objections.

4. Marketing: marketing and sales is similar and different. It allows you to take sales and replicate it. Specifically direct response marketing

5. Public Speaking: take a public speaking course, or join toastmasters. Social rejection triggers the same part of the brain, the same part that physical pain is connected to. Poked in the eye gives same displeasure as being socially rejected. In front of a group is rejection times 100 or 1000.

This is some solid advice from the David DeAngelo Mastery program.

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This is from my friend Mike Stopforth, Web 2.0 guru…I’ve already reserved my seat:

I’m hosting another instalment of the infamous Geek Dinner movement, now branded “27“, on the 27th January at 5pm in the Studio at Primi Piatti, Rosebank. The last one was an enormous success, and we’d like to keep the tradition going.

Yours in geek,

Mike

PS.  If you can’t make this one, 27 will be held monthly, on the 27th of each month - duh - alternating between CT and Jozi.  Next Jozi one is therefore 27th March. 

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Every now and then I do a quick interview on KayaFM on the breakfast show with Pat and Ed. This was the today’s topic: Can we speak on how to stop be prevent a man becoming a sponsor for a for a girls night out. Many men when they are on the prowl ask to buy a girl a drink and end up buying her and her friends drinks for the whole evening.
Here’s my advice to guys:

1. never run a tab
2. set a limit for drinks for evening
3. never offer to buy for a girl AND her friends
4. walk away, go to bathroom, on way back buy your own drink
5. walk up to women with drinks (holding your own drink)
6. pay 1st round when invited a woman out on a date

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I’ve done several interviews over December and into January and have not had time to mention them here. I was on RSG about a week ago discussing online dating, speed dating and sms dating. The pro’s and con’s of all these and took some calls from the Afrikaans listeners. The presenter asked for my details and I gave it out over the air and took a number of phone calls from people in all sorts of small towns around South Africa. In most cases I recommended they try Lovemail which is run by Junkmail. This is a SMS/Web hybrid dating service. And its only R1.50 per message which you buy in bundles. Its more sophisticated then most SMS dating services and also Junkmail is an established brand which is not going to disappear any time soon.

What’s been really funny for me to see is how clueless most people still are about using cellphones or the Internet to engage with people. We still have a steep learning curve in South Africa to get to a stage where we will take these phenomenon for granted.

On another note you can read an excellent article where I was interviewed in on Moneyweb here.

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I’ve just broken through the 500 connections on LinkedIn and wanted to share a great new article by Guy Kawasaki, someone I have great respect for, discussing this amazingly useful website. Guy Kawasaki was the Chief Evangelist at Apple Computer for a long time and came from the Jewellery industry. You must read his excellent blog post: Ten Ways To Use LinkedIn.

And next to that I highly, highly recommend you watch (download) this 40 minute video where Guy delivers one of the most brilliant presentation based on his book, The Art of the Start.

If you are want to have a real impact when using LinkedIn I also highly recommend this free ebook: How To Double Your Income In Six Months Using LinkedIn

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Today is my first post for the new year. So happy new year to all my readers. This is going to be a real cracker as my public speaking career is taking off and the media interviews keep coming in. Just this morning I did an interview on RSG, the national Afrikaans radio station here in South Africa, all about online dating, speed dating and sms dating. What I didn’t get to say was that I personally do not use any of these anymore, and only keep track for research purposes. I am aggressively using my social network to expand the potential women I am exposing myself to.

Anyway the Mail & Guardian featured a shockingly sad article about the state of American and even British men today. This article quotes a few of these men who are now seeking brides in Thailand. Now the first thing they mention is how demanding the American and British women have become. And how feminism has made a very negative impact on how modern Western women behave. The biggest problem I see is the disproportionately high expectations expectations by women toward men. The exaggerated indoctrination that modern women can have the same success as men in their careers and also have the perfect relationship with a man. This kind of expectation leads to ongoing disappointment by women.

And also you have men growing up with much fewer strong male role models. More and more are growing up without any father figure. The mothers rip into the fathers and blame them for everything. The sons dislike their fathers and does everything possible to please mommy. You end up with the common, nice guy syndrome or wussy behavior I see all the time. Men who just cannot stand their ground, set any boundaries, and behave like the confident men that women desire.

I’d be very keen to get your perspective on this story: Thai brides on the Internet.

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Review of Men Are Clams, Woman Are Crowbars by Dr David Clarke, Ph.D.

When I picked up this book I wanted to learn more about these differences between men and women that I find fascinating in a never ending sort of way. And the analogy works well in the book explaining how men and women communicate and deal with stress in their relationships. What I did not expect was the typical “holier than though” attitude so typical of conservative Christian writers. And this spoils a book with some good practical advice. Overall this book must be aimed at a very small market of people and because of the bias of the author may be unappealing to everyone else. The last thing you want in a self-help book is a preaching tone.

As Dr John Demartini says, the moment you become infatuated with a person or subject yourself to an authority figure e.g. The Pope or Jesus Christ you import their values onto your own and this becomes a miserable failure.

The other disappointing thing about this book is that it almost exclusively focussed on couples in a marriage. And I don’t know if this Christian psychologist, as David Clarke, calls himself, lives in the real world. Expecting people to stay married, forever and ever. Dynamics in the world has changed, so there are a lot more unmarried people then ever before. People who could be married, but don’t for very valid and practical reasons. I also agree with the views of the radical American talk radio DJ, Tom Leykis, there is no benefit for a man, as it stands legally getting married. If you are curious just do a search for “Leykis 101” and you will get an education in manhood you may have missed out on.

This book is written mostly for women, and offers very little help for men. And I suppose that’s always been the target market of the author. Even as a man, I really do not appreciate his tone, talking down, toward men. So this author is what they call pussy whipped.

• You can purchase Men are Clams, Women are Crowbars from Take2

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