Are You Working Below Your Pay Grade?

Entrepreneurs wear so many of the hats in their business that many of the tasks they carry out are at a level way below the real value of their time. Are you working below your pay grade by not handing off menial tasks that should be done by others?

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TIPS provided by Time Management expert Stephen Davies. You can see more TIPS and articles on his website www.timemanagementedge.com and his Facebook page It’s TIME to Manage

I enjoyed Sharif Iman’s Shine. I found his music reflects a lot of different musical genre mixed into one.  You can tell he was influenced by some of the great musicians of our time from country to rock and roll.

Sharif has an amazing voice that is soothing and cool. His fun rhythm and beat along with his poetic songs makes you want to bop your head as you listen to his songs.

His songs are uplifting and all have inspirational messages that are truly motivating and uplifting. There are 13 songs on this CD.

Feel Me is the first song on the album and a great way to start.  It begins with an electric sound that goes into a steady rock beat adding some jazz-fusion into the mix.

The next song, Let It Go, starts off with a guitar and piano interlude before Sharif comes in with his strong words.  The song is about letting go of the pain and misery that you once may have had. He sings, “walk away from everything that brings you down and don’t look back.”   All too often we hold negative feelings inside and Sharif is telling his listeners to let them go and lead a positive life.

Shine, the title of his album and third song on the CD, is also uplifting.  The song is about how Sharif has worked long and hard to shine and that he knows that one day he will shine all over the world. The tune is so catchy that by the end of it, I was singing along with the chorus.

The weakest song on the album is Release Me.  Although it was just as poetic as the other songs, I didn’t like the beat or the melody.

Sharif goes country on Tennessee, where he finger picks his guitar and then comes in with a banjo. I liked this song because of the harmonies. It just felt fun to hear.

On one of the songs, Love You ‘Till, violins, horns, piano make up the composition. It has a smooth jazzy feel to it. It’s a sentimental song that really shows off Sharif’s strong vocals.

Three of the songs on the album are places, including New York, Tennessee and Santa Monica. Most of the songs are about love; I thought the titles could have been a little more creative and compelling.

One song that I felt was the strongest rock/pop song was That Girl. All I wanted to do was dance.

Wake Up is a strong song to end the album. It doesn’t have a strong beat like the rest of the album but it projects a strong message, which is reflected in the entire album.  He wants his listeners to wake up from the daze that they are in and focus on the “now.”

I enjoyed this album. I particularly liked the first three songs. All his songs rhyme, had inspirational messages and a strong steady beat.  What else do you want in an album?

Article first published as Music Review: Sharif Iman – Shine on Blogcritics.

I have a material connection because I received a sample of a product for consideration in preparing to write this content.
I am not expected to return this item after my review period.

When I first tried Starbucks coffee, I hated it.  I’ve been a Dunkin’ Donuts fan for as long as I can remember. I’m one of those people that like a mild tasting, light coffee.

Since it seems that Starbucks is on practically every corner in New York and Dunkin’ Donuts isn’t, I had to figure out how to drink Starbucks to my liking. So, I started to order the mildest coffee they had, added skim milk and two splendas (sugar just isn’t sweet enough for Starbucks) and you know what? I started to get used to it.  Now, I can drink it. I don’t love it, but when I feel I need a cup of coffee, I run into Starbucks and get one.

Fast forward a few years and now, I’m sitting in a hotel room in Seattle, the coffee capital of the world, reflecting on that first day when I tried Starbucks coffee.  You can’t get away from coffee here, it’s everywhere.  If it’s not Starbucks, it’s Seattle’s Best or Tulley’s.  There are others too but the most prominent ones are Starbucks and Seattle’s Best, which by the way is a subsidiary of Starbucks.

You can even smell the coffee here. It’s rich, strong and bitter smelling.

I was anxious to try Seattle’s Best since I already knew that Starbucks coffee is very strong and bitter.  I found that Seattle’s Best is just as strong and bitter.  As a matter of fact, I couldn’t find one cup of coffee in Seattle that wasn’t strong and bitter.

As I wondered aimlessly through the streets of downtown, all I kept thinking was I love Seattle but where’s the Dunkin’s Donuts?

I travel a lot.  I have some good experiences with airlines and some very bad experiences.  Today, I had a bad experience and I’ll tell you why.

I got on a flight to Seattle from JFK Airport.  It was a direct flight on Delta #DL1743. I was sitting in row 31.  I usually like to be in the front of the plane but when I booked the reservation, this was the only row available.

I was last to board the plane and had my carry on luggage taken away and put underneath the plane, which bothered me because there wasn’t enough room in the overhead. (Since the airlines started charging people for their luggage, everyone seems to have scaled back and have carry on luggage.)

Now, typically I wouldn’t be last on the plane.  I always arrive at the airport with plenty of time to spare so that I can at least get a water bottle and some food for the flight. But, since the security line was exceptionally long, it took what felt like forever to get through to the gate and I was unable to purchase anything.

On the plane, I quickly took my seat. It was boiling hot.  I tried to turn on the air units above the seat but that didn’t work. Suddenly an announcer came on the overhead:

“We’re sorry but there is no air conditioning on this plane because the auxiliary motor was broken. It needs to be fixed and will be about a 20 minute delay,” the pilot said.

The twenty minutes became an hour with no air and lots of cranky passengers. I fell asleep.  When I woke up, the flight attendant handed me a menu to purchase food.  I was glad that there was something to buy because I was starving.

I turned on the call button to alert the flight attendant that I wanted to order something as soon as possible.  But, no one came around until the beverage cart came.

“I’m so sorry but there is no food left on the plane,” the flight attendant said. “Here are some biscotti’s and pretzels.”

“But this is a 5 1/2 hour flight,” I said. “You have nothing? I can’t even purchase anything from first class?”

“Sorry, no,” she said.

I started to think about it. Why wouldn’t the airlines ask you when you check in if you want food so that there is enough on the plane?

And why didn’t they stock up on food while we were at the gate?

Lastly, why are the lines so long in security?  With so many people unemployed, can’t they hire more people to get the lines moving faster?

I’m all for running a cost effective and efficient operation but when customer service is no longer a priority, there’s a big problem.

While the corporate executives are eating their lunch, I’m sure there are some big ideas out there which can keep the airlines profitable while still providing customer service.

Do you have any ideas?

Having a social media strategy in place is more important today than ever before because most businesses have a presence on social networking sites.

More than 550 million members worldwide have a Facebook page and Twitter usage is estimated around 720 tweets per second in June 2010. And these are just two social networking sites. Growth is enormous on most of the other sites as well. Therefore, you just can’t ignore these numbers anymore.

With February around the corner, it is time to get focused on your social media strategy fro 2011. To help you get on your way to preparing a plan of action, here are some tips for the year:

Do your homework – know where your community is and research ways in which to reach them best. Do you find that your customers are using Facebook? Twitter? LinkedIn? Indenti.ca? Bebo? Are they on a niche social networking site?

Make sure you converse with your community – Don’t just sell. No one wants to be sold to. Make sure you also provide interactive content. Sometimes a comment like, “How’s your day going?” will bring in enormous response from your community, and you can then turn around and start building stronger relationships and ties within that community.

Include geo-location sites - If you have a retail business or a brick-and-mortar business in your community, you may consider jumping on the geo-location bandwagon. Examples of geo-location sites include Foursquare, Gowalla, Facebook Places, and others. Oftentimes, vendors will offer a free cup of coffee or a gift to their patrons who are using these sites. For instance with Foursquare, when you become the “mayor” of a particular place, you can even get “free stuff” on an ongoing basis.

Don’t forget Bloggers – In addition to your “legacy” media program, don’t forget to target online publications and bloggers. Bloggers are quite influential these days and can make or break your product or service.

Video is important – The next big thing is video. Make sure you have a YouTube or Google Video channel. And make sure it is a strong representation of your brand.

Cross promote everything – If you promote a blog or a news article, don’t forget to push it out to your entire community through an aggregator like ping.fm, hellotxt.com or hootsuite.com.

Be sure to monitor everything – Set up a Google Alert to start. After you dive in, make sure you retain a more comprehensive search tool to make sure you don’t lose anything that was said or written about you on the web.