Marlon Parker is the founder of a ground breaking NGO in Cape Town, RLabs. He deserves to Nobel Peace Prize for the work he is doing in the Cape Flats using technology for social change. At the very least he should win a TED Prize for his contribution to community change through technology. After his talk at the 27Dinner in Port Elizabeth back in 2008, I became a big supporter of his organisation RLabs. And so every time I would speak to the parents of the affluent independent schools, I encourage them to donate, contribute or support this work on reconstructing communities.
As recent events in Japan, the Middle East, and Haiti have shown, Twitter offers a unique platform to connect individuals and influence change in ways that were unthinkable only a short time ago.
Twitter for Good is a ground breaking book that contains the most effective tactics for tapping into the power of Twitter as a real-time information network. Claire DÍaz-Ortiz, Twitter’s head of corporate social innovation and philanthropy, shares the same strategies she offers to organizations around the world. In her time at Twitter, DÍaz-Ortiz has worked with such forward-thinking organizations as Nike, Pepsi, the United Nations, the American Red Cross, charity:water, Room to Read, Partners in Health, the Skoll Foundation, National Wildlife Federation, Kiva, and many, many more.
Filled with dynamic, global examples, Twitter for Good shows how the world’s top organizations use the power of Twitter to make a difference. Through DÍaz-Ortiz’s T.W.E.E.T. model, which she developed to teach organizations how to excel on Twitter, she lays out the exact framework she teaches around the world.
Step by step, DÍaz-Ortiz walks you through a proven process, showing you:
Why your organization needs a dedicated Twitter strategy
The 5-step process that delivers results
Best practices for using Twitter to catapult your organization’s mission
With more than 200 million users world wide, Twitter has established itself as a dynamic force, one that every business and nonprofit organization must understand how to use effectively.
The is a scary book. Not in the sense of a thriller or horror but in the facts presented by the author. Jon Rappoport has a way of weaving together stories and threads to make a difficult topic like genetic engineer easier to understand. In this book he takes a critical look at the origins of genetic engineering, the food and health business globally, as well as the depopulation agenda. The connecting thread leads back to the ownership of all life by major corporations. Governments have certainly become the lapdogs of corporations.
After reading this book it’s clear to that the system is rigged. What system is this? The food supply, the drug and healthcare industry. And What I mean here is that since the introduction of GATT through the World Trade Organisation, countries are no longer sovereign. And therefore the citizen or individual has to work even harder to maintain freedom. Consumer behaviour must be predictable and regular. If this is not the case, big business cannot run smoothly.
Some of the funniest parts in the book are the imagined conversations between for example the mystery CEO and the IMF. There are more of these gems of imagination. Parts of this book also reads like 1984 or Brave New World. This book is filled with reference, after reference. After checking some of them I resigned myself to the respect I gained from listening to the Jon Rappoport Show. Maybe the biggest lesson in this book is that nothing happens by accident. Everything that is taking place today has been planned for a long, long time. And we merely living through the results of decisions made a long time ago. Even through this book makes a strong case for the depopulation agenda, I still revel in the fact that the world population will reach 7 billion around October 2011.
This week my friend Reuel Leach, who first published this report on Cellular Costs in South Africa, reviews a book sent me a while ago. We both are avid users of technology and enjoy helping people get more from real life, and technology second.
Joanne has addressed one of the almost incurable diseases of our time: addiction to technology, the very thing we thought would make life easier and save us time has become a major burden and is affecting our mental and physical health. Joanne explains how the mind works and explains that multi tasking is maybe not as good as we think it to be. She also explains how this cyber overload is affecting our relationships long term. I believe we should all create a code of ethics or rules for ourselves and she gives us useful guidelines to do so to help create a more balanced individual and family. We need to educate both children and adults on this subject. In fact this should be a subject that should be included in the curriculums at school. I highly recommend this book. Its short, concise and made for those who find themselves very busy and have little or no time to read. After all, time is the most valuable asset we have. Every second we waste of our lives is wasted forever.
I am sometimes asked, “Why do so few people make it to the top of their network marketing system?”
The truth is, the top of the network marketing system is open to everyone-unlike traditional corporate systems, which allow only one person to reach the top of the company. The reason most people do not reach the top is simply because they quit too soon. So why would someone quit short of the top?
Most people join only to make money. If they don’t make money in the first few months or years, they become discouraged and quit (and then often bad-mouth the industry!). Others quit and go looking for a company with a better compensation plan. But joining to make a few quick dollars is not the reason to get into the business.
The Two Essential Reasons to Join a Network Marketing Business
Reason number one is to help yourself. Reason number two is to help others. If you join for only one of these two reasons, then the system will not work for you.
Reason number one, means that you come to the business primarily to change quadrants-to change from the E (Employee) or the S (Self-employed) quadrant to the B (Business owner) or I (Investor) quadrant.
This change is normally very difficult for most people-because of money. The true E or S quadrant person will not work unless it is for money. This is also what causes people to not reach the top of the network marketing system: they want money more than they want to change quadrants.
A B quadrant or I quadrant person will also work for money, but in a different way. The B quadrant person works to build or create an asset-in this case, a business system. The I quadrant person invests in the asset or the system.
The beauty of most network marketing systems is that you do not really make much money unless you help others leave the E and S quadrants and succeed in the B and I quadrants. If you focus on helping others make this shift, then you will be successful in the business.
As a B or an I, sometimes you don’t get paid for years; this, a true E quadrant or S quadrant person will not do. It’s not part of their core values. Risk and delayed gratification disturb them emotionally.
Delayed Gratification and Emotional Intelligence
One of the beauties of network marketing is that it focuses on developing your emotional intelligence as well as your business skills.
Emotional intelligence is an entirely different matter from academic intelligence. In general, someone with high emotional intelligence will often do better than someone with high academic intelligence but low emotional intelligence. That explains, in part, why some people do well in school but not so well in the real world.
The ability to delay gratification is a sign of higher emotional intelligence. In a recent study of emotional intelligence, it was found that people who could delay gratification often led more successful lives than those who could not.
This is why the educational system inherent in a good network marketing opportunity is so important. It’s the emotional education or emotional intelligence aspect of their programs that I find so valuable for people.
Many people write me and tell me they loved my book, Rich Dad, Poor Dad, but I fear that many of them don’t get the most important point of the book: Lesson #1, “The rich don’t work for money.”
Once I have built or bought an asset, that asset works hard to make money for me. But I will not work for money-I will work only to build or buy assets. Those assets make me richer and richer, while I work less and less. That is what the rich do. The poor and middle class work hard for money, and then buy liabilities instead of investing in assets.
What Kind of Asset is a Network Marketing Business?
Remember, there are two reasons required to be successful in network marketing: to help yourself, and to help others. Reason number one means helping yourself get to the B side of the quadrant. What about reason number two
The beauty of most network marketing systems is that you don’t really make much money unless you help others leave the E and S
quadrants and succeed in the B and I quadrants. If you focus on helping others make this shift, then you will be successful in the business
If you only want to teach yourself to be a B quadrant and I quadrant person, then a true network marketing system won’t work for you. You may as well go to a traditional business school, which focuses only on your becoming a B quadrant person.
The beauty of a network marketing business is that your goal is to create assets, which are other B’s working under you-and their job is to create other B’s working under them. In traditional business, the focus is for the B to have only E’s and S’s working for them.
The type of business I was taught to build is a business with me at the top and E’s and S’s at the base. I really don’t have room at the top for many other B’s, which is why in my businesses, I strongly recommend that all my employees look into network marketing as their own part-time businesses.
The traditional corporate system really is a pyramid, because there are a few B’s and I’s near the top, and more E’s and S’s at the base. A network marketing system is a reverse pyramid: its primary focus is to bring up more and more B’s to the top.
One type of pyramid, the traditional type, has its base on the ground; the other type has its base in the air. It’s a pyramid that pulls you up instead of pushing you down. A network marketing business gives everyone access to what used to be the domain only of the rich.
Now what qualifies a comedian to write a relationship book you may ask? Well it’s really so easy to get published these days. You can be a former playboy model and suddenly become a writer of books on autism as Jenny McCarthy (helped by Oprah) proved. Seems like in this consumer society we’ll buy just about anything thrown at us. This is even more true when that person is Oprah Winfrey. Apparently Steve Harvey was featured on the show and this of course helped increase the sales of this book dramatically, irrespective of whether it is any good or not.
My problem with this book is that in many ways it is putting men down from time to time. Harvey encourages women to withhold sex to punish men in different chapters. Well I don’t know any man who would like to be punished in this way. Surely the mature thing to do is be direct and open about whatever is wrong in a relationship. Men are not from Mars and women are not from Venus, we are both from the planet earth. And as such we have more in common than we have different.
The book starts off with a section “The Mind-Set of a Man” and this is probably the best section of the book because it’s tells women exactly what’s important to men. I really think he nailed it when he described the drives of men as searching for a purpose and finding a path to realising that purpose. David Deida’s The Way of the Superior Man is the bible in this department and Harvey just points in that direction – remember, this is a book for women, not men! Another good analogy he captures is the way men see love differently from women. The Three P’s of Love – Profess, Provide and Protect are pretty accurate in a generalised sense. The idea that men need support, loyalty and the cookie (i.e. sex) is perhaps an oversimplification of the male needs. Harvey omits important considerations like male-bonding, father-son relationships, and so forth. After all this is what men need from women only.
The next section is aptly titled, “Why Men Do What They Do” and begins to unravel the foundation built in the previous section. Yes, it’s true that men first thing about sex before wanting a relationship. This is one of the most obvious facts and you don’t need to be an expert on evolutionary psychology to figure this out. Perhaps there are to many mamma’s boy in the world, but guess what there’s also too many single mother’s in the world. And teenage pregnancy is easily at an all time high in the history of the world – no seriously who’s to blame for this? Everyone – both men and women. Movements like Feminism has gone caused society to go from one extreme to another in the last 50 years. So it’s no coincidence we have what we have. Harvey’s ideas on cheating are sound and books like The Mating Mind and Sperm Wars go into much more depth for the curious at heart.
So what comes next? A section called “The Playbook” which is with everything from mature advice to childish games like the 90-day rule. Here’s where I really believe Harvey does not tell women what they are letting themselves in for when they begin playing these mind games. Harvey concludes almost grandly that men are trading money – cash – in exchange for female companionship. Well if I never…this is starting to sound like a really sophisticated guide to 21st century prostitution. Here’s how women pay men according to Harvey by hugging, kissing, women getting dressed up, going out with men, and lets not forget, sending explicit emails. Now you wonder why the porn business has exploded since the rise of the Internet? Maybe men are just sick and tired of these games. Women are supposedly objectified by media like Playboy and other magazines. So how come women play into this trap – this very game which modern day relationships and social dynamics between men and women are supposed to be without.
Much better books include: Why Men Love Bitches, The Secret Psychology of How We Fall In Love and How To Make Every Man Want You. This book is mostly likely aimed at divorced women or single mothers with all the talk of baby-momma’s and introducing children to men you’re dating. I’m not sure what sections co-author Denise Millner, wrote so it’s hard to say what was Steve’s ideas and hers. Its more likely she was the ghost writer of the book based on conversation with Mr Harvey.
The title of this book is so delicious I didn’t bother coming up with a different title for this blog post. I’ve know Donna McCallum for some time now and we’ve both been to each other’s workshops. This was actually one of the best lines for me at her book launch party because the reaction I got from the other guests were awe and surprise. Who is this guy who Donna went to for advice After all she’s the fairy godmother, and she makes your dreams come true. Well at one point I felt that describing myself as a blogger or trainer of bloggers will spoil the social interaction. After how many bloggers are nerds or geeks with no social skills? Plenty.
So who is the Fairy Godmother? Well Donna McCallum is a former advertising guru turned human potential guru. Maybe that’s taking it too far. However, Donna has an excellent grasp of the principles behind movies like The Secret and the works of people like Dr John Demartini and his mentor Dr Wayne Dyer. She makes the idea of manifesting your dream fun and exciting. And she has very practical strategies by which this is achieved.
Some time ago I was invited to attend her Dream Mapping workshop with a view of me writing a review on this as I had done so for Dr Demartini’s Speed Reading and Breakthrough Experience workshops. Anyway I never got around to writing that review. However, the success of the Fairy Godmother’s book launch is the simply the best book launch I have ever attended. The location was the amazing Zenatude restaurant / conference centre in Rivonia. And the team of people who were hosting the event and supporting Donna was simply outstanding. You could feel her personal magical fairy dust was sprinkled all around the venue. The people were all friendly and inspired by their experiences with Donna, or their friends who dragged them along to meet Donna.
Sean Stephenson first came to my attention on the David DeAngelo Cocky Comedy DVD Series. He made a big impression on how I look at my own dis-abilities. Compared to Sean Stephenson I have absolutely no excuses. However, what he discusses in his new book is the mental blocks we create throughout our lives and how to overcome them. What makes this book different? I don’t know yet because it’s on my to-read list. What I do know is Sean Stephenson has an exceptional story to tell from his life. And besides being an inspiration I know him to be a very practical person.
The Jehovah’s Witness organisation, also know as the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, has become known as a very secluded and insular organisation. It is one of the more controversial denominations of the Christian religion. From my earliest days in Uitenhage I have been aware of their existence. And for the most part they came across as a group of people who were sincerely spreading their information brochures to clarify their teachings. Its only in the last few years that it has come closer to home because a cousin of mine converted to this religion and married into a Jehovah’s Witness family.
What I admire most about him till today is that not once has he tried to convert me, or has he insisted on me attending any services. I have been with him once or twice to the Kingdom Hall and noted some differences in how the religious ceremonies take place compared to my own experiences in the Dutch Reformed Church and some other Evangelical churches. At the same time my own mother became a reborn Christian in about 1988 when my sister was born, and when I entered high school. She is a staunch advocate against the Witness organisation and all other belief systems like Islam, Hinduism, etc. This stance is something that is difficult for me to reconcile. I have always preferred to find the things we have in common with those from different cultures or belief systems because after all we are all human beings, and we are all created in the image of God.
So it’s no surprise to find out the book has been adapted into a film by the name of Slumdog Millionaire. The title character’s name has been changed and the story possible shorted for dramatic effect.
From Danny Boyle, director of Trainspotting and 28 Days Later, comes the story of Jamal Malik, an 18 year-old orphan from the slums of Mumbai, who is about to experience the biggest day of his life. With the whole nation watching, he is just one question away from winning a staggering 20 million rupees on India’s “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?”
Everyone in business has heard of the SOHO – Small Office Home Office. Now make way for the NOHO – Small Office No Office.
The concept is introduced in a new book released today, “The Mobile Office”, by pioneering technology writer Arthur Goldstuck. The book is sub-titled “The essential small business guide to office technology”, and goes beyond the technology to explain how the modern office for both the small business and the travelling executive has changed more radically in the past ten years than in the previous hundred years.
“It’s not just the Internet, not merely the plunging prices of laptop computers, not only the arrival of cellphone banking and mobile e-mail,” says Goldstuck, who heads up the World Wide Worx technology market research organisation.
“It’s about an entire ecosystem that is beginning to support the business person out of the office. Only five years ago, anyone wanting to be untethered from the physical office but remain productive and in touch, faced almost insurmountable obstacles. Now a happy conspiracy of telecommunications providers, device manufacturers, hospitality establishments, and travel services have made it an everyday reality.”
Despite this, however, the practical aspects of abandoning the office while maintaining an office – the key to NOHO – remain complex and confusing for the average person who wants or needs this approach but has no idea where to start or how to choose from the bewildering array of options.
“For example,” says Goldstuck, “one of my favourite and most useful gadgets is a small, portable charger that fits in the palm of the hand and holds just enough power to recharge my cellphone once. It doesn’t seem like much, yet has rescued me countless times while out of the office. And whenever someone sees me using it, they want to know where they can get one – they just didn’t realise it was an option.”
The book guides users through choosing the right computer, deciding what accessories go with it, choosing the most appropriate software, how cellphone banking works with each of the major banks, and a detailed unravelling of Internet connectivity options for business users ranging from solo players to executives. It also delves into the price structure of all the major connectivity options.
World Wide Worx’s annual Mobility research project, which inspired the book, was sponsored by FNB, but the book takes a neutral approach to cellphone banking, apart from one FNB initiative that no other bank yet offers: Cellphone Banking for Businesses with Dual Authorisation.
Goldstuck says that FNB has shown its commitment to research on Cellphone Banking through its sponsorship of the Mobility Research.
FNB Mobile and Transaction Solutions CEO, Len Pienaar, says FNB has been sponsoring the Mobility research project for the past three years and are proud to be the only financial institution to support this initiative.
“The growth of mobile commerce in SA will change the face of business. Business as we know it will continue to evolve with the developments in mobile technology; Cellphone Banking for Businesses will help revolutionise the way business interact with the bank, saving the customer money and adding convenience to their business. Businesses will operate in a seamless fashion where deals and processes can be made in an instant,” concludes Pienaar.
“Ultimately The Mobile Office is a decision-making tool,” says Goldstuck. “It is aimed at helping mobile business people decide what they need, when they need it, how much they will pay for it, and generally taking control of their mobile lives.”
The book is published by Double Storey and is an easy read at 88 pages. It will be available in all good bookstores at a cost of around R80.
Marlon Parker is the founder of a ground breaking NGO in Cape Town, RLabs. He deserves to Nobel Peace Prize for the work he is doing in the Cape Flats using technology for social change. At the very least he should win a TED Prize for his contribution to community change through technology. After his talk at the 27Dinner in Port Elizabeth back in 2008, I became a big supporter of his organisation RLabs. And so every time I would speak to the parents of the affluent independent schools, I encourage them to donate, contribute or support this work on reconstructing communities.
This week my friend Reuel Leach, who first published this report on 
After all she’s the fairy godmother, and she makes your dreams come true. Well at one point I felt that describing myself as a blogger or trainer of bloggers will spoil the social interaction. After how many bloggers are nerds or geeks with no social skills? Plenty.
Sean Stephenson first came to my attention on 
