The other night I was lying in bed trying to fall asleep when all of a sudden I thought about a pair of shoes I ordered from Nordstrom’s.  The store didn’t have my size and ordered a size 6 from a Nordstrom‘s in New Jersey.  I gave my credit card and that was that.  I was wondering if they were ever shipped out.

I went on the Nordstroms.com web site and found that I could have a live chat with a customer service representative.  Since it was 2 am in the morning, I didn’t really think anyone would answer but to my surprise, a customer service representative came on the line:

Kim J: Hello, Hilary Topper, welcome to Nordstrom!
Kim J: I am more than happy to assist you, Hilary.
Hilary Topper: i ordered a pair of shoes in Nordstrom’s in Roosevelt field
Hilary Topper: and they were supposed to be shipped from another store
Hilary Topper: but i still have not received
Hilary Topper: and wanted to see the status
Hilary Topper: hello?
Kim J: Yes, I am still here. I apologize for the wait. I was searching our system to see if I could pull up any information with this activity.
Hilary Topper: ok
Hilary Topper: i have the receipt
Kim J: That’s great! Could you provide the four digit Transaction number, as well as the four digit Register number?
I did…
Kim J: Thank you for that information, Hilary. It will take one moment for me to enter this into our system.
Kim J: Thank you for your patience. I did find this transaction! It states, on the UPS website, that you should receive your package tomorrow, January 25th by the end of the UPS delivery day.
Hilary Topper: ok great
Hilary Topper: thank you
Kim J: Is there anything else that I may assist you with this evening?
Hilary Topper: no, have a nice evening

Not only do I love the shoes that Nordstrom’s sells but I was very impressed with the customer service offered by Nordstrom’s staff.  Why can’t all department stores offer this type of customer service?

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Why do colleges and universities give their students unrealistic expectations?

The other day, my daughter called me from college.  She is majoring in Public Relations and was reading about salaries in her text book.

“The book says that a person out of college will make between $25K – $50K during their first year,” she said.  “After 10 years in the field, PR professionals make $150K.”

We both laughed.  “I interview so many people,” I told her, “and they all think they will be millionaires within a year…. It’s ridiculous! I really don’t know why schools do this.  It’s so unrealistic!”

That afternoon I went out to lunch with my Vice Presidents.  I told them about the conversation I had with my daughter and how the salaries actually appeared in her textbook.

“When I first started here 9 years ago,”  said Kristie Galvani.  “I was expecting $50,000 a year without experience because that’s what our school told us we would be making!”

“I agree,” said Lori Alexy.  “When I was searching through my papers the other day, I found my first paycheck.  It was such a small amount.”

So why do you think colleges and universities do this to their students?  Is it that they want more students to major in a particular subject so they mark up the salaries to entice more students?  I would love to hear your response.

Every day, I meet the most amazing people on Facebook, Twitter, and other social networking sites.  The other day, I met Mick Michael Du Russel.  He started to IM me on Facebook and tell me something about a fund raiser that he was doing.  I told him to call me at work.  He did and proceeded to tell me a story about his parents.

“Before my parents got married and by the way, my father lived in the Bronx and my Mother lived in Canada, my father got a woman pregnant and never knew,” he said. “About 15 years ago, this was after my father passed away, I got a call from Walter.  It turns out that Walter was my long lost half-brother. He was dying and lived in Pennsylvania.  He had ALS or Lou Gehrig’s Disease. My two older brothers and my twin sister and I met him in NYC. He looked more like my dad then anyone else.  We all got along so great.  That was the first and only time I ever saw my brother.  ALS took away my chances to have a relationship with the brother I never knew.”

In response, Mick will be hosting a concert on April 25 at the Nutty Irishman in Farmingdale from 3 pm – 11 pm.  Tickets will be $20 and will go directly to the Columbia University ALS Gift Fund toward research on finding a cure for ALS.

He told me that there will be cover bands as well as celebrities at the event.  “And we have amazing raffle prizes too,” he said.

This is his third year organizing an event of this caliber.  The first year he raised $1,500 for the fund and the second year he raised $2400.  “It goes up every year and this year I’m really trying to max out the Nutty Irishman.  WBAB radio is supporting the effort and will help me promote the event.  If I get 400 people, we can raise $8000 toward a cure for Lou Gehrig’s disease.”

Mick Du Russel is a graphic artist for Natural Organics.  He also owns a cleaning business called “Advantage Cleaning Service” and writes about entertainment in SpotonLI.com.  He also said he’s currently working on his first book.

It really makes me feel good when I hear about good people doing good things!

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Two thousand and nine was one of the worst financial years in our history since the Great Depression.  Many people lost their jobs, lost their life savings in the stock market and some people even lost their homes.

David Bach’s new book, “Start Over, Finish Rich – 10 Steps to Get You Back on Track in 2010,” offers some help and guidance.

He begins the book with a story about a woman he meets on the street who read one of his books.  She recognized him from the cover and started to tell him how she was able to get herself in an amazing position after reading one of his books.  “But now,” she said, “it’s for nothing.”  Her savings dwindled with the recession and she was barely making it.

David Bach’s advice, “don’t give up!”  If you do nothing he writes, it will be the worst mistake ever.

The book delves into the mindset of the average consumer and encourages him/her to take control of his/her finances and start over.  Through 10 detailed steps, Bach helps consumers regain their finances and offers tips and strategies on how to reorganize for 2010.

I found the book quite readable and offered some valuable information.  Some of the tips offered in the book that I found helpful include:

“FinishRich File System”– Here you take a filing cabinet or a box and make files for all of your personal financial information, including:

• Tax Returns
• Retirement Accounts
• Social Security Statements (I always thought to throw these out!)
• Investment Accounts
• Savings and Checking Accounts
• Household Accounts
• Credit Card Debt
• DOLP (Dead on the Last Payment) Account (download the form from www.finishrich.com/DOLP)
• Credit ScoresOther Liabilities
• Insurance
• Family Will or Trust
• Children’s Accounts
• “Latte Factor®” – This is where you keep track of how much you spend on non-essential items like when you go to Starbucks to buy coffee or if you buy magazines off the stand in the street.

Next he talks about how to cut your credit card debt.  I know this is an issue for a lot of people and I thought his idea of paying the minimum on all the cards and then an extra payment on one card to try to eliminate debt was quite clever.

Rebuilding Your Emergency Fund was also an important chapter.  It’s amazing how things happen when they are least likely to happen and this chapter tries to enforce that we all try to save a little each month by taking automatic payments out.

The Real Estate chapter was interesting because prices are relatively low now and the thought of purchasing something with the mindset of it going down is hard to handle.  However, Bach suggests that this is the perfect time to invest and buy because prices are low and he says real estate always turns around and goes up.

The College Fund section was important too.  He suggests the 529 savings plan, which allows you to put away up to $300,000.  He suggested that both parents open an account for the children and the grandparents can open one for the children as well.

In Chapter 10, he talks about 25 ways to save money, like:

• Getting rid of your land line and only having a cell phone
• Cutting down on the Cable TV packageso
• Shop around for home and car insurance
• Carpool to work
• Bring lunch to work and save $2250 a year
• Lastly, he suggests stopping buying lotto tickets – Bach says that American’s spend “57 billion” on lotto tickets and if each person stopped, they could save $500 a year!

The end of the book tied in with the beginning of the book with a story.  This time the story was about David Bach’s divorce and personal finances.  It really captured the attention of the reader and made me walk away from the book feeling empowered.

One axiom I have in networking with people is to try to add value (to the people I network with – not me) 99% of the time. This builds a “goodwill” account and gets the stuff I send read. It also helps to build a following.

One principle in networking is to “gently” stay in touch with people. What I mean by this, is being respectful of their time and mind space.

This is combined with having many people in my network. Of course I would prefer to meet with everyone in my network in person every month but time just does not permit that.  Social Media is one way I have solved this limited time to personally interact while at the same time staying in touch and being personal with people.

I have found the easiest thing for me to send is a link to an article that might be of interest.  Sometimes I link to an article I wrote but many times, I am just sending people to an article I think might add value to them.  I know that email is an “interrupting medium” so I chose to only send them by Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and post them to a Tumblr page and to a section on my blog. That way if people “chose” to look, they would see them.

Of course being a time management guy, I largely automated the process by using Ping.fm to post to all sources at the same time and using Hootsuite to send them at preset times. So right now I have my updates set to go out for the next 90 days and even without me logging in, they go out.

Once I started to send out updates, people said “Jim likes interesting articles” so would send me links to articles so that all I needed to do was to cut and paste.

There are still many people (perhaps 90+%) who do not send updates – especially on Linkedin, so updates do get read.  I know because people respond to them.

Updates and Social Media, combined with using time saving tools like Ping.fm and Hootsuite (both free) are the way I “personally” keep in touch.

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Jim Estill can be reached at jimestill@gmail.com or visit his web site at www.jimestill.com.