Today I came across an interesting article that supports my side of a recent conversation I had with a female friend [click the link to see the article]-> blogs.ajc.com. I’m pretty sure you have heard the saying “Happy wife, happy marriage”… but what about the husband’s happiness??? Well according to the article referenced above you ladies need to be more concerned with your husband’s happiness…LoL Apparently there was a study performed ( by Kristina Dzara at Southern Illinois University) which states the following: (continue reading…)

Whether you are male,female,black, native american, asian, young, or old we all have issues as a result of of categories we fall into.  Since we can only experience the issues related to the categories we are a part of  we often develop tunnel vision and start to believe that our issues are the most important issues.  And we are 100% correct, our issues are the most important issues… to us.  But on a large scale nobody else really cares about your issues until you give them a reason to, or unless they happen to observe you being a victim to some injustice based upon your category.

We should not ignore our issues if we expect things to change, but two things we can’t do are; let the issue(s) consume us to the point that we are immobilized, and we can’t let the views of other people (especially those outside the category we are a part of) become our own definition of ourselves.  Every person we encounter on our journey through life forms some sort of impression or opinion of us.  People often have a particular motive associated with the image they have developed of each of us.  I argue that we can not (continue reading…)

Since the election of our first Negro/African American/Black/Brotha/Nigga/Nigger President the phrase post racial society has been tossed around.  Its bologna. Racism is live and well.  The issue of the day is this advertisement by Nivea which depicts a man of  African descent throwing away mask of an afro wearing, facial hair having black man for a clean shaven “civilized man”.

This ad is just the latest of a series of monthly, if not weekly examples of how racism is still bubbling up in every corner of society.  Last week it was the so called expert blaming the societal ills of the city of London on “black male culture.”  Oh let us not forget the movie “The Help”, which was written by a white woman.  Many say that the movie was a white washed version of the reality of black house servants in the mid 1900′s in America.  The week before that is was the use of the word “nigga” by white female rapper V-Nasty (who?) and all of the black male producers and rappers (also a few white celebrities) who came to her rescue, attempting to give her a “pass” to use the word freely because she was reportedly raised in a primarily black neighborhood(as if that means she can’t be racist, although I am not saying she is racist, I don’t know enough of her to make that claim ).  The week before that we had riots in London started by the alleged wrongful killing of a black man by the police.  I will stop there, as  this post might never end if I continue.  The point of it all is that racism is not something that no longer exists simply because we may chose to ignore it. We don’t have many social movements or rallies against racism anymore, and people who accuse others of racism are quickly ostracized as “pulling the race card” simply because the non-minority may not see or understand the way race factors into that particular event.  The term most appropriate is “white privilege.”  You may very well not be overtly or consciously racist, hell you may not be racist at all, but the fact that you don’t acknowledge or understand how the racism of the government and your ancestors has given you a huge leg up on minorities is a major cause of what many call racist actions or thoughts today.  If your great grandfather owned a business 100 years ago and that set the foundation for your family to be upper middle class and it allowed you to attend a particular University you may not realize that you are benefiting from a privilege.  In most of the country 100 years ago a black man (continue reading…)

Below are a few lessons I have learned during my journey through life to date… I just thought I’d take a moment to share.

1. Figure out what works, improve on it… Repeat

2. Figure out what doesn’t work and decide to stop doing those things or decide to fix the problem(s)… Repeat.

3. Learn from the mistakes of others…Don’t believe anyone who says that you can’t learn from someone who has never “done it” or has never “been there”.  The smartest people avoid pitfalls by observing others, the not so smart people want to learn everything from personal experience.

4.  Help everybody you can…especially if (continue reading…)

Why do you have a job? That is the question I posed to people I was having dinner with recently.

Both of the people I dined with were young graduate degree holders.  Both of them expressed disappointment with their current employment situation.  So I wondered why they were not taking advantage of their education and the current economic/political climate to start some venture of their own, even if it does not mean immediately quitting their day jobs.  Well at least one of the people at the table reminded me of the classic response, which is fear.  I wonder though, what are most people afraid of?  Afraid of failure?  Afraid of hard work?  Afraid of the unknown?  There could be a dozen things one could be afraid of, but I don’t understand the fear when you have nothing to lose.  Starting a business does not mean large expenditures or quitting your current job with no reliable income.  The only thing there is to sacrifice is your “free time” (if you are not happy with your position in life and successful, by your own definition of the word…you really should not have any “free time”)and a couple hundred dollars in filing fees.  Since I started my own company (continue reading…)

I have been on a number of dates with a variety of women. I have noticed that there are a few things that any woman, no matter how intelligent, beautiful, or sexy can do that will completely remove her from the list of contenders. One of the biggest turn offs for many men is a woman who focuses on what she doesn’t want or what she doesn’t do. There is a difference in being open and being unreasonable. Telling a man the list of things you are not willing to do is not attractive. If you don’t cook, don’t clean, don’t do laundry, don’t perform oral sex, or don’t do dishes that’s all fine and dandy, but I am almost certain that you would get much farther if you simply kept all of that to yourself. If you are communicating effectively there will be ample time to communicate your desires and your dislikes through a thing called conversation. There will also be plenty of time to observe the actions of the person you are dating, these observations will either tell you all you need to know, or provide the trigger for the necessary focused questions. There is rarely ever a reason to announce what one will or won’t do, the saying “actions speak louder than words” is the truth. In other words; don’t talk about it, be about it.

When I hear a woman run down the list of what she is not willing to do only a couple things come to mind. Thought #1 (continue reading…)

I must be a genius or people think I am a bit slow, because there are too many people who think that they can pull a fast one on me for some reason.  The way I see it people who try to pull one over on others or tell lies have to believe in their mind that they are smarter than the person they are trying to take advantage of.  I have to take a quote from the late rap artist Pimp C “Aye man I just look like this man, know what I’m talkin’ bout. I ain’t get this far bein’ no square man.“  I most certainly did not get this far by being no square mane.   I stay sharp.

I used to find pleasure in crushing those who attempted to take advantage of me, but at this point I have crushed so many people that it is no longer entertaining and frankly its getting old.  When will people learn to listen when I tell them that I respect honesty no matter if I like the news they bring. Just tell the whole truth the first time and we can work out the details (continue reading…)

A couple of weeks ago I was having dinner with an old friend when the subject of role models came up.  She was speaking about how Michelle Obama was her role model.  This was coming from a professional, educated woman and it made me think about who my role model in life is, or was.  I quickly realized that I never have had a role model.  I have never wanted to be anybody else, I have never wanted to be like anyone else, no one has ever inspired me to do anything or importance.  Until recently I had never understood the whole argument about why young people need to see people like themselves in certain positions in order to feel as if they can also reach a certain level of success.   At no point in my life have I ever thought that (continue reading…)

Over the course of the last year or three social media web sites and services have taken over like only a few things do every decade or so.  I have noticed two types of people that use social media sites the first are those who feel that social media sites are all fun & games and don’t take them very seriously, the other type are those who understand the value/threat of social media sites and treat them with the respect they deserve.

Those of us who realize the value of social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook, and the relative newcomer FourSquare; know that these sites are a treasure trove of free information about our own companies, the industries we are a part of, and our customers/potential customers/former customers.  Never before have (continue reading…)

FastCompany has a project under way to show the amount of influence we have as individuals online.  I am quite interested to see how much influence I have relative to the other few thousand participants.  So I need you to follow this link fcinf.com/v/bkbr then re-Tweet this link, re-Post this link to all of your social media sites, post this link to Facebook and any other method that you can think of to legally spread my influence around the net I would appreciate it.  I wish there were (continue reading…)