While you may not care what information Facebook has about you, you should. People don’t think hard when it comes to passwords. Your password can get stolen with the information you leave on your page. How many people use the name of a pet, a birthday, or something personal to them? You give thieves a head start on stealing your identity and more. Here are some things to do to take precautions against that.

* What is your birthdate?
* What is your zip code?
* What city did you meet your husband or wife?

Here are some other things to do to protect yourself.

* Restrict access to your profile to “Friends Only.” You can access this option in “Privacy Settings” under the “Account” tab.
* Also in privacy settings, choose the option that prevents search engines from finding your profile.
* Do not post the year you were born or indications of your exact age. Also never post your birthplace.
* Don’t post your children’s names anywhere on your page, including captions.
* Don’t post the street you grew up on, your first school, or any favorite teachers’ names.
* Avoid posting other favorites, like movies or artists.
* Never post your address or phone number, and consider keeping your e-mail private.
* Don’t post details of upcoming trips – it may not help someone break into your profile, but it will give advance notice you’ll be away from your home.
* Avoid clicking on third-party links that may be malicious programs disguised as a game or quiz.

Back in the early 90’s, before radio stations went digital, they were still analog (as opposed to sending smoke signals).  I had thousands of pieces of audio, and no real easy way to get access to it.  I hired a programmer from MTV to come in and put all of my audio in a database.  I bought a laptop to keep in the studio, so we could type in a keyword and find audio we needed in seconds.  I don’t know of anyone else that did that back then, and it cost me some money.  However,  it added value to my show, my career, my bonus, and so I considered it a good investment.  Over the years, I have spent a fair amount of money on all kinds of products, courses, and equipment that I thought would help me improve, do my job better, and make more money.  Just because the company wouldn’t do that for me didn’t mean I couldn’t get it done.  You need to look at yourself as self-employed.  Whatever you do,  you need to think of yourself as a product.  Regardless of what you do for a living, if you improve your product (you), you improve your chances of career advancement and more income.

About a year ago, I was recuperating from an injury. My doctor was concerned about leg swelling, so I needed to have custom fitted compression stockings.  The woman measuring me had the exclusive contract with the facility where I was treated, as well as several other facilities. While measuring me, she complained about not having a laptop to input my information.  The company she worked for was set up where she could log in from anywhere, put in all the information, and the stockings could start being processed. However, the company did not provide laptops. So she would have to go home every night and type in all the information. We could argue how cheap the company was, but that is not the point. For $400 she could buy a cheap laptop, type in the measurements on the spot, and since almost every facility had wireless internet, the order could be sent before I could get my shoes on. As a side note, she screwed up my order, and I never got my stockings.  Sale and commission lost.  A $400 investment would save her hours of work. Her aggravation with her company caused her to not see the bigger picture, that she was did not value her time.  We figured she could buy five hours of her time back every week, for a one time payment of $400. Let’s say she had two weeks vacation, and the laptop would last for two years.  That is 100 weeks at 5 hours a week. She could buy 500 hours back for $400.  She would have paid $1.25 for her time.  I don’t know about you, but my time is worth more than that.  I would take that play every day.

I encourage you to invest money in your own career.  If you don’t think you are worth it, how will any one else?  I have met very few working people that are perfectly happy with their salary, and their job.  The quickest way to be seen as valuable is by being efficient, and willing to do the little things others aren’t.  And don’t be shy about letting your boss, or your customers, know what you are doing to stay on top of your game, and ahead of everyone else.  That being said, I understand the people above you have to be bright enough to pick up on your efforts.  Let’s be honest, some bosses are dip shits.  But in this economy, it never hurts to be the person getting it done.

Every year, pick four things you really want to learn, or get to know much more about.  Then immerse yourself for the next three months of learning that skill. Then move on to the next, while continuing to improve on the skill you just learned.  In one year, you will be at least proficient in four new skills, in two years eight, you get the math. Look back over the last several years of your life. Time is moving regardless of what we do.  Five years ago was not that long ago for most of us.  Twenty additional skills could have had major influence on your life.  I can give a vague example now.  I am in talks about doing a project that may happen down the road, maybe not.  However, in the course of the conversation, a skillset of which I am knowledgeable came up in the conversation.  The people I was speaking with had a different, more promising project that involved someone that knew and could explain this particular skill.  They had no idea I knew anything about this subject matter, and quickly began to express interest in moving the project to the front burner with my involvement. I would have had no shot at being involved if it was not for me spending months learning about this. This skill has nothing to do with how I have made my living, but it could very well in the future.

I have learned about many things over the years, internet marketing, how to build multiple sources of income, speed reading, trading futures, options, and stocks, and others.  Personally, I like to learn from people who have done what I want to do, and do it successfully.  So I have sought out successful people in the fields I want to learn, and learn from them.  You may want to learn how to build a website, become a gourmet chef,  or speak a foreign language. The knowledge is out there.  You just have to go get it.  Not only will learning new things keep you young and curious, you never know how it will change your life.

I was already planning to blog about this. It seems even more poignant now with the possible heath issues of Steve Jobs, co-founder and CEO of Apple.  He gave an amazing speech to the 2005 Stanford University graduates. It has been re-published many times. You can find it on my website at this link http://www.rockyallen.com/rockys-favorites/ Take a few minutes and read it, it is well worth it.

I urge you to implement this plan in your life.  Take a pottery class, learn how to cook gourmet food, learn how to re-finish old furniture, write software, or write poetry.  There are hundreds of adult education classes. I beg you to never give up the quest for knowledge.  The worst thing that can happen to you is….you get smarter.

How to save money:

Shop for clothing at thrift shops (especially for young kids). Look for gently worn or even new clothes for 1/10 the price of new (or less).

Pay your bills online. It’s protected and you can save with stamps.

Put your kids on the school bus rather than driving them to school.

Slipcover or reupholster older furniture for a quick update rather than buying expensive new furniture.

Refinish furniture and/or decorate with new paint. Use older and broken furniture to make a unique piece.

Take your lunch to work every day! Make your meals in bulk and then freeze them in smaller containers to save even more money.

Buy a bread maker to make your own bread. This is much cheaper than $2.00 a loaf, and tastes terrific!

Shop for dented canned goods and outdated toiletries at salvage grocery stores.

Read magazine subscriptions at the library or buy them at the thrift shop for .25 to .50 after someone else has read them.

Stop drinking expensive sodas and make Kool-Aid or decaffeinated iced tea, instead.

Cancel expensive telephone options like call waiting. Consider using an internet based phone company, but make sure you are comfortable with how the 9-1-1 service works. It is different than a traditional landline phone service, and in an emergency, it may be more difficult for them to find exactly the address from where you are calling

There are many more ideas to come on how to save money, but this will get you started.

Have you ever wondered why a person you thought you hit it off with finds excuses to not meet you for lunch, stops taking your calls, or answering your emails?  It is obviously possible that they have poor etiquette, they are busy, or they aren’t the people you thought they were.  It is also possible that they did not like you as much as you liked them.  It could be a simple reason.  It could be something you do or say that you have done so often it has never occurred to you that it may be off-putting.

When I have the opportunity, I always like to ask questions when I talk to people.  It is amazing what you can find out by asking. People may not tell you about what they like or don’t like about you, but you can find out alot by asking them about people they have met recently.  I like to find out what attracted them to this person (as a friend or collegue) and find out what they didn’t like about certain people.  I have found it to be very telling, and a good tool for self improvement.  Often, people don’t enjoy a persons company when  the problem is no more complex than they do something irritating that could easily be corrected.  Simply put, people are often self absorbed, and either can’t, or don’t want to  put themselves in the position of the people with whom they are speaking. I will give you a simple example.  Over the holidays, I was visiting my parents.  I am a person that pretty much lives in golf shirts and shorts.  My mother, who still thinks I am her baby, told me to put some socks on.  I said mom, I am not cold.  She says, how can you not be cold?  I said, I don’t know, I’m not cold. She said, well, I’m cold, I have socks on, you need to put socks on.  Don’t get me wrong. I love my mother dearly.  No one could ask for better parents than I have been blessed to have.  But in this case, it really hit home for me.  We often come at people from our own point of view, and because we experience something, we often expect them to experience, or have experienced what we have.  We overlook their feelings, and perspective, and we lose, sometimes for good, the chance to connect with that person.  Obviously, that is not the case with my mother.  She is a sweet, wonderful person, and by the count of how often her phone rang during our visit, she is blessed with a lot of friends. However, I would imagine, if she came across as a person who knew what was best for everyone, she would wear on people pretty quickly.  We have all been around that person who tells you to taste this, or try that, even though you have never liked that particular thing.  And you hear from them, sure, but you have never tried this. People, please!!!  It doesn’t matter, we don’t want your opinion.  I don’t like asparagus, it could be dipped in chocolate, or wrapped in cheese pizza, and I would hate it.  But I have been told by people, you would like MY asparagus.  Anything is possible, but I am not interested.  And that is the key.  When you start trying to tell people what they should do, or what they should like, instead of asking, you lose them, and maybe forever.

When you don’t give people what they want, but give them what you think they should want, it is a safe bet you will not make more friends, sales, followers, and money. It is a simple thing to correct, but it may not be easy.  Strive to make changes for the better, and you will improve your life, and those around you.  Happy New Year!!

One thing you should do is be a people collector.  By that, don’t just meet someone, shake their hand, and move on.  Find out about them.  Get their contact info, and follow up.  Granted, there are people you meet that you realize that you just don’t like.  Make sure you distinguish that from people with which you have nothing in common.  You never know when that kid that interns for you ends up starting a company like Twitter.  Or that socially awkward lawyer you met at your spouses company holiday party becomes a senator.  Everybody wants to be their friend when they get to those positions, but you knew them and helped them when they were “nobody’s”.  What if the intern needed a lawyer for his startup, and you hooked him up with his lawyer now senator?  Your status rises with theirs.  It can never hurt your career when you collect people, and then introduce them to each other.  Be the middleman, and do it just because you know two people that could benefit by knowing each other.  Do it for no other reason than to be a good person, and help people out.  First, it is just a good thing to do to help people out.  Secondly, you just never know how it is going to benefit you.  But if you are positioned as the person that knows everybody, when the time comes that you need a favor, and it will, you will have people falling all over themselves to help you.  You should have multiple sources of income, I believe forever; but a huge Rolodex, or Outlook database, or whatever you use to keep your contacts straight, is a very important tool to have in your arsenal.

For career and financial survival,  work on multiple sources of income, and become a collector of people.  There is more information to come, including things that need to be on your watch list.

As much as it pains me to say this, the days of doing a good job to move up the ladder are all but over.  The jobs wanted posts are littered with good, hard-working men and women who are the victims of a bad economy, bad management, and I am going to say it, weasel’s.  If you don’t have the same relationship with the decision maker that the kiss ass up the hall has, you are possibly a Friday away from being Fredo’d.  Unless they lack the stomach to do it to your face, then you can be a vacation away from getting smoked. Years ago, I worked with a legendary disc jockey who would NEVER take a vacation.  He was scared they would realize they didn’t need him, and he’d get fired.  That was over twenty years ago. Sadly, he was right, but just ahead of the curve.  He was smart, he did have multiple sources of income, and almost all of them were legit, but that’s another story for another day.

There have always been office politics, and I feel confident in saying there always will be.  Doing a good job, and sometimes even the best job, is not enough to insure you will get a promotion, or keep your job during a layoff.  I cannot break a confidence, but I know for a fact this happened.  At a company in the midwest recently, they were forced to layoff some people in a technology field.  The worst, most inept person was not fired, but a far superior person was let go.  The boss explained it to a bewildered staff this way. “Person A is often late, and not nearly as skilled as person B.  He is going to have a real tough time finding a job. It shouldn’t be as hard for person B.” How would you like to go home to your family and explain that.  Sorry we may lose our house, but it is comforting to know the people I worked like a dog for realized how good a job I did.  I have heard a lot, and seen a lot, and I have to admit, that was a new one on me.

Expect the unexpected.  Things that defy logic will happen, and happen at an accelerated rate in this environment.  If you do not set yourself up with multiple sources of income, you could be in serious financial trouble on any given Friday, or while you are on vacation.

I first learned about multiple sources of income when I was a kid.  A friend of Bobby, had a dad who worked for a gun manufacturer, but he also owned a couple of strip malls.  Little did I know the 7-11 I used to frequent was located in one of Bobby’s dads buildings.  That was when I started thinking about how cool it would be to own something and have people give me their money to use what I owned.  it didn’t take me long to figure out that it also protected his dad in case he was ever a victim of a layoff, or got fired.  It is widely reported that Jay Leno has almost always had two jobs.  When he was a kid, he worked as a mechanic, and at McDonald’s.  He used one paycheck to live on, the other he put in the bank. To this day, he still flies out several nights a week to do stand up, and then flies right back to meet his writers to work on the next days Tonight Show.  He claims to have never spent any of his Tonight Show earnings, which at around $30 million a years gives him a very soft cushion to fall back on.  That is the extreme of multiple streams of income.

Brenda Lee Johnson, Kyra Sedgwick’s character in The Closer, was up for Chief of Police.  Among the people we saw as her competition, it was clear she should be the runaway favorite to get the job.  A new character was introduced in that episode, and he ended up getting the job, right after she pulled something off that should have sealed the deal for her. But it didn’t.  Which brings me to two points, one of which will be discussed in my next post.  Her boss, Chief Pope, and Brenda, now may both be looking for a job.  Chief Pope, because often in these situations, when you are a finalist for a job like that, or a CEO type job, if you don’t get it they want you out.  They figure you will be disgruntled, and disruptive, and Brenda, because she may not want to work for this person.  While this could have happened, they didn’t seem prepared for this outcome.  Often in our jobs things happen that we are not prepared to see happen.  With multiple sources of income, we can cushion the blow of suddenly finding ourselves on the outside looking in.

While radio goes through the difficult times of both cutting costs, trying to increase revenue in the traditional manner, and become a part of the radio digital monetization move, some things get overlooked.  As I mentioned in an earlier post, in my opinion, it is very important to try to learn from people who have been doing what you are trying to do.  Everyone is in business to make money.  There are times it may be wise to get out of your comfort zone and seek out people that can help you, and see if maybe you might be missing something.  That is the reason I have spent over two years learning internet marketing and social media, and now coach people on how to profit from internet monetization.  There are a lot of ways for radio to make money in the digital space.  It is a business unto itself.  Everyone in the industry knows what radio is trying to do.  That is one reason many radio products and services providers are trying to find ways to get radio companies to buy their new product or service that will be the “latest” great thing in radio digital monetization.

In my conversations with radio management, I am surprised at the price structure for things like banner ads “above the fold” on page one of their website.  They have a price they like to get, but they will take a much lower price for a week if they can’t sell that space.  Let’s say you are in a good sized market, and you can get $500 for the banner for the week.  Almost every GM I talked with would be happy with that.  Here is the number that almost nobody in radio knows, and they are blown away every time I tell them.  For the average, not great, but just average internet marketer, the metric is $1 per month income per email address.  That is the average. If you have 20,000 names on your email list, you should be making a minimum of $20,000 a month off of your list.  For a decent, or even pretty good internet marketer, that number is substantially higher.  It can go as high as $8 or more per month per email address, depending on their niche. When they hear that number, every GM I have talked to has asked, “How do I do that?” It doesn’t take a genius to see they are missing the boat.  I know internet marketers with over 500,000 email addresses.  If you know how to do it right, you can do some great things for your audience, and tighten the bond with them.  There is one big difference between internet markets and radio.  Internet marketers have to go out and market like crazy to build their list.  And they have to create content to try to get people to “follow them.” Radio has a giant advantage, and we don’t use it at all. We already have “followers”, and all we do is create content.  Internet marketers would love to have what we have.  Believe me; they would use it to make a fortune, and their “list” would go from fans, to rabid fans. You cannot just send out an email blast and expect to make money, or build a relationship. However, if you know how to use email marketing properly, you can do some great things for your audience, and your radio station. In addition, you will tighten the bond with them.

This is where almost everyone comes up short in radio digital monetization.  When you start to see the possibilities of what you can do, and how you can do it, you can begin to separate yourself from your competition.  You start to understand why it is important to capture email addresses, and it doesn’t matter where those people live.  The key is to add value to your audience. You have to do it in a way that enhances your listener’s lives.  When you have the ability to email your audience, and communicate with them in a way you just can’t do over the air, you have another revenue stream, and you stand out from the pack.

If you want to know how to do this, and make more money for your company, leave a comment.  It will remain anonymous, as you can tell from the articles.  Thank you.