18 January 2014

TMI Blog or Social Purging?

18 January 2014

I was inspired to write this blog for many different reasons; the main one being that with the way the world economy is changing on every level it is clear that trust is at the core of the majority of the growth and development taking place on both a social and a corporate level. People don’t really trust large organizations because somewhere along the way they forgot that no matter how large an organization becomes; it is still built on the backs of individuals and today with social media being everywhere, everyone is a whistle blower whether they mean to be or not. So before you decide to try to get away with that “Think we should do this because no one is watching?” Just look what happened to Mit Romney during that 50K per plate private dinner speech.

Zain Verjee, a news anchor at CNN said my face is flawless. Not a blemish. Not a mark. The landscape from my neck down is chaos. I have spent more than a decade of my professional career on international television, my face visible to millions each day. Yet I have spent a lifetime hiding. I have fish-like scales. There are tiny red islands floating on the surface of my skin. They combine to create continents with jagged surfaces. They turn black and start to smell. There is blood and puss. TMI (Too much information)?

Back in 1996, when I started working on the street (Bay Street in Financial District though not my first choice of career moves but since my folks screwed up my Ivy League plans it wasn’t a terrible start). This was my first introduction to the old boys club and if they didn’t like you, you were not invited back. These guys don’t need you to make them money (well before 2008 anyway, way before that they made plenty) they wanted to be entertained, to feel something. Just think large financial institutions which are solely driven by money. The one thing that I did learn from working on the street was that if your job every day is to wake up and your only goal for that day is to see how much money you can make, somewhere along the line your moral compass will get really screwed up.

I meet my current business partner Dee back in 1997, when she was working as an accountant she was self-assured, confident and extremely bright yet she was not fast tracking it or happy at this point. I was disillusioned by what I thought was a dream career and Dee was being undermined at her start. I suggested we start our own company, she said doing what? My response was not sure yet. Fast forward to 2003 and we started Diet Groupies which was way before eating healthy was even an issue. Checkout the site at www.dietgroupies.com, we almost end up on the street (literally) trying to get that company going. Had we gotten Diet Groupies off the ground we would probably be trying to fix the world with Bill Gates today.

When we were trying to build our website for www.dietgroupies.com, websites were anywhere from 25K to 40K yup!!! There were some barriers to entry to this type of business model, back then you needed tech people and trainers as well as staff… let’s just say we bit off a little more that we could chew. A few years later we decided to start Nexonta Technologies Inc. because I noticed a gap between what programmers said and how that would affect most company’s bottom line. We wanted to make tech understandable and affordable for small to medium sized businesses which we do very well.

I think http://blog.snapchat.com is the next big thing when it comes to social media. I love reading their blog. I find their unapologetic writing style refreshing but it also makes me think part evil genius and part social savant so you know brilliant innovations will come from these guys. And, they sign off there blogs: Love!!! Who does that!!! Very cool!!!

With the selfie leading the way in social media (I started the selfie!!! Just ask Diddy!!) it is clear that transparency is job number one for businesses and individuals today cause if you lie about something, well, we can just google it and you are busted and guess what there goes all your credibility then all you are left with is street cred and unless you can rap like JayZ that won’t help you in the new economy. The internet (which is full of people least we forget) would rather a huge terrible truth than a tiny wincy white lie.

Nexonta Technologies Inc.