Social Media a 21 Step Program for Entrepreneurs

A review of Crush It! Why Now Is the Time to Cash in on Your Passion

For those looking to launch a business or increase brand visibility a good primer for using Social Media as an effective business tool is Gary Vay ner Chuk’s Crust It! Why Now Is The Time To Cash in on Your Passion. The internet has crushed traditional forms of media particularly the print and rapidly encroaching on turf occupied by the film and electronic media. Social media, Facebook, Twitter, LinkIn and Flickr are ever present in our lives and the challenge of today’s entrepreneur is harnessing the power found in this new frontier called the Internet. Vay ner Chuk outlines a plan of action using his own story.

The braggadocios Vay ner Chuk’s success isn’t so much his story as it is that of a first generation American building on the success of his immigrant father. The elder came to the U.S. when the author was only three taking a job as liquor store clerk parlaying it into his own self-made Spirits retail fortune. Van ner Chuk gives proper credit to what he calls your DNA. He believes he inherited that entrepreneurial wherewithal from his father. But unlike this author many of us are not the heir apparent of such good fortune.

The author’s premise is learning to navigate the digital waters of social media to build a business and promote a personal brand based around what you love most, and you will only be limited by how far you want to sail. He lives by three rules: love your family, work super hard, and live your passion. Publishers Weekly criticized the book as nothing new, and I have no argument there but found value in his building instructions. It’s a 21 step-by-step program for achieving a greater internet presence and building your brand. It is the same program I have followed long before I heard of this author. So indeed there is nothing new, but helpful to the neophyte in laying out a tried and true structured plan of action.  He details in 21 steps from where to launch your voyage and how to sail to business success.

It’s now a given, social media has evened the playing field, destroying the “gate-keepers” who had previously dictated the distribution of content. Applying a social media strategy can help turn you turn your business into money.

Has Jose Baez acted in the client’s best interest?

Jose Baez’s defense of Casey Anthony has not been in the client’s best interest, the Bar’s legal standard under the Code of Professional Responsibility.  Baez’s representation has been more self serving, and as one blogger commented Mr. Baez is as criminally minded and as simple as his client. The law requires that an advisor act solely in the best interest of the client, even if that interest is in conflict with the advisor’s financial interest. Casey Anthony is a pathological liar, and if the defense team were smart, they could/would encourage her to confess and hope for a little leniency. What we have seen in recent weeks are desperate attempts to muddy the waters with trial by ambush tactics, allegations relating to paternity tests, incest, and an implausible drowning. Jose Baez is not only trying his case, but the court’s and the public’s patience as well, hence Saturday’s in court session.

As reported by ABC News Baez was admitted to the bar with a checkered past and has since risen from unknown local attorney with no death penalty experience to national prominence in a high stakes life or death trial. Admitted to practice in 2005, he was denied admission to the bar for eight years. According to the Supreme Court of Florida he was denied admission because of his failure to pay child support to his ex-wife and secure life and health insurance for his teenage daughter. It states that he had previously declared bankruptcy, written bad checks and defaulted on student loans, the court said.

Casey Anthony was declared indigent after Jose Baez revealed he had blown over $250,000 received on Casey Anthony’s behalf – $200K of which was paid by the “American Broadcasting Company” as “licensing fees” for Casey Anthony’s “pictures.”

The Florida Supreme Court said his financial mishaps coupled with failure to pay child support “show a lack of respect for the rights of others and a total lack of respect for the legal system, which is absolutely inconsistent with the character and fitness qualities required of those seeking to be afforded the highest position of trust and confidence recognized by our system of law.”  A lack of respect continues in the recent desperate red herring defense strategies and behavior likely to draw contempt citations at the trials end.  Baez’s conduct from the very beginning has been highly suspect and not in the client’s best interest.

Sleepless Nights: The Drew Smith Series

Washington, DC (May 3, 2011) — Sleepless Nights, the first released of the four volume Drew Smith Series, is loosely based on DC’s infamous 2003 Colonel Brooks Tavern murders. The protagonist in Norwood Holland’s new novel is like no other before.

An African American attorney managing a successful solo practice finds himself enmeshed in complicated relationships and complicated cases. A stark difference from other fictional detectives Drew Smith is a distinctly new type, professional, single, urbane, a good looking playa charming the ladies, clients and Judges alike all in the pursuit of justice.

Drew Smith takes on shady clients solving cases fraught with danger and romantic intrigue. The legal wizard, while frolicking with an exotic dancer succumbs to a midlife crisis. Haunted by nightmares foreshadowing an awakening reveals an empty life prodding Smith to find solace in the arms of therapist Zoe Settles.

Life gets more complicated when the attorney is pressed into service solving a vicious robbery that leaves three dead and the city enraged. Drew Smith and his devoted sidekick Julio Mejia work to free his young client on the trail of a crazed gunman responsible for a growing body count. In the end, the gunman and the dancer combine forces to bring Smith down. When death comes knocking Drew Smith faces the fight of his life.

A break out novel, Sleepless Nights abounds with despicable and lovable characters plus all the universal elements: love, sex, jealously, betrayal, murder and revenge. It has a narrative depth that sets it apart from the current flood of Urban Fiction. The author conveys a dark hard-boiled view of the underside, sprinkled with sex and violence, elements that make the contemporary genre popular among the teen and 20 something as well as the mature readers looking for a well written hardboiled yarn with compelling characters.

Author Norwood Holland is a lawyer and freelance writer. He blogs at www.EditorialIndependence.com. For more information about the book, visit www.SleeplessNightsNovel.com.

ABOUT THE BOOK:
Sleepless Nights
The Drew Smith Series
By Norwood Holland
293 pages
ISBN 978-0-983-16560-6
Available on Amazon, including Kindle and Nook
Windmill Books Ltd.

The Other Sister by Cheri Paris Edwards

The Other Sister

The author’s second novel The Other Sister neatly fits into the popular Urban Christian Fiction genre.  It’s the prodigal son recast as the daughter returning home with a lot of baggage stuffed with dirty laundry.  Sanita Jefferson, a preacher’s daughter left her midwest home to get an education in California but somehow sidetracked to Hollywood dreaming of stardom as a video vixen.  There she engaged in sinful conduct falling under the spell of a different kind of preacher man.  The family has its own drama when the prodigal child returns.  Unlike the biblical father James Jefferson withholds his forgiveness.  The older sister Carla copes with professional challenges and an unrequited love when the object of her affection sets eyes on Sanita.  The major and minor cast of characters are all clearly drawn including a lecherous deacon, the busy body church lady and loyal non-judgmental friends.  Sanita’s journey is a spiritual homecoming offering lessons in forgiveness, redemption, and a return to faith.

The story is told from the Third Person Omniscient point of view and what more appropriate technique for a story of faith.  Most editors and agents frown upon this writing method viewed as distracting and confusing jumping from one character’s mind to another.  Cheri Paris Edward appears to be adept in mastering the technique.  As one blogger explains:  “This style is often frowned upon, and comes under fire from many writing style authorities. Nine times out of ten at least, it’s a liability to the book. But there are a few stories that must use this style and come out better for it. Since these stories are few and far between, writers are encouraged to use careful judgment, and avoid omniscient viewpoint unless it would add something extraordinary.”

Like a soap opera, once you get into the drama and characters there’s a desire to follow till the end.  Full of conflict and surprising turns chocked with saccharin melodrama The Other Sister is an extraordinary book.

Wench by Dolen Perkins-Valdez

Dolen Perkins-Valdez’s novel Wench provides a glimpse into the life of a slave woman favored by her Master.  It depicts the complicated consequences of bearing his children and coping with the precarious possibility of falling out of favor.  It’s an unsettling tableau of 1850 Southern slave practices particularly American white slave masters vacationing without their wives rather preferring their slave concubines.  The protagonist Lizzie labors under a complicated burden torn between loving and despising her master.

The setting is the resort Tawawa House near Xenia Ohio, and where now stands Wilberforce University.  The story opens during the summer 1852.  The plot focuses on the relationship of Tennessee planter Nathan Drayle and his slave concubine Lizzie.  Other subplots delve in the lives of five other slaves particularly the women and their masters.  Plans to escape to freedom are hatched with assistance and extinguished by betrayals.

Reading Wench one cannot help but wonder:  What kind of man would lay with a woman at night then tie her up like a dog on a grounded spike the next morning as did Lizzie’s master?  Slave women were forced to comply with sexual advances by their masters on a regular basis. Consequences of resistance often came in the form of physical beatings; thus, an enormous number of slaves became concubines for these men.

Most often the masters were already bound in matrimony, which caused tension and hatred between the slave and the mistress of the house. Many “mulatto” or racially mixed children also resulted from these relations.   The “status of the child” followed that of his or her mother, the child of a white man would not be freed based upon patriarchal genealogy.  Born into slavery these children also became a sore reminder for the mistress of her husbands’ infidelity.  Undeniably those slave masters are the ancestral forbears of a great many White and African Americans.

Publisher:  Harper Collins (Amistad); New York Fiction: ISBN:  978006170647  Date:  2010, 290 pages

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