Social Business

While the excuse to get out of the office and stretch our legs is greatly appreciated I can’t always take the time for a sit-down lunch. As anyone else working for a small business knows, there is always another project, and sometimes those projects are accomplished over lunch. So I’ve started to recreate some of our favorites with slight personal preference improvements.

Growing up my dislike of peas actually helped me find my creative side, as I came up with various ways to trick my parents into thinking I was actually eating them. There was the old napkin in the lap trick where I meticulously dropped peas in my lap – one at a time. Then there was the other napkin trick – placing the napkin over the peas on my plate and acting like I ate them. And of course there was the Mashed Potato Mirage, where I’d mash the peas and mix them into the potatoes, after eating enough of the potatoes to get a pass on eating the rest.

It’s not that I can’t make other meals. I can. I’ve been known to make some mean desserts and even some dinner-type foods or something on the barbecue. But what I really do is make breakfast. And my favorite breakfast to make is … pancakes.

Lesson: Trust your customer! 98% are honest and why run the 98% through the gauntlet to catch the 2%, especially when there is only a $2 eggplant at risk.

Consider the effect of pulling the big data collected by companies like Klout into a social CRM solution, which combines that data with existing, contextual data about the customer based on purchase history, third-party demographic information, social contacts, etc. Now imagine the impact influence marketing campaigns can have when you understand the nature of the customer’s situation, where they are in the purchase life cycle and who the people most likely to influence them at that stage are.

My dad was the barbeque maestro. He made the most amazing hamburgers. I couldn’t understand why his burgers were so much better than mine. Maybe it was his technique. He taught me the cross-hatch method, where he gave the burgers a quarter turn, creating a cross hatch pattern with the charred marks. Nope that wasn’t it. Then one day I discovered the secret.

Fudge for breakfast had to be one of the most forbidden of pleasures. At 6:30 on a Sunday morning, there was no chance that anybody would catch me. I could put on my mother’s shoes, find a suitably untouched cigarette butt, grab some fudge, and pretend to party. I feel very fond of that girl as I watch her trying to act like a grownup.

LEADING THOUGHTS It seems everywhere you go you hear about the effect that Social Media will have on all of our lives. I thought I’d take a few moments to share what the words Social, Social Business, Social Media and