The CEO of Google has suggested that once you leave college, you may want to change your name to distance yourself from all the dumb things you did as a younger person and can't erase from the Internet. Of course if you change your name, you won't be associated with any of the positive things you did either. I'm not sure we are going to see a bunch of people changing their names, but I do know that a lot of people are dealing with an online PR problem. If you haven't searched Google for your own name, you really should. Ask yourself, "if a prospective employer, date, graduate school, business partner or life insurance underwriter saw these results would it help or hurt my … [Read more...] about Your Online Footprint
Archives for June 2016
Killing off Success to Prepare for the Future
The McDonalds in my town is going to close down for several months. During that time, they are going to tear down the current restaurant and build a new one. The man who owns the McDonalds has another one in a nearby town and he did something similar there a few years ago. Still, it seems like quite a leap of faith to shut down your successful business and the cash flow for a few months in order to be able to serve more customers in the future. When the iPod Mini was at the peak of its popularity, Apple stopped making it and instead switched to the flash-based iPod Nano. On one hand, it didn't make sense. They had a successful product that had increasing demand, but they stopped making it … [Read more...] about Killing off Success to Prepare for the Future
Productivity-Draining Commute
This weekend I was talking to a couple who had moved to Kansas City about a year ago. They had just decided to move back to the small town where we live. I asked what they thought about living in the "big city" and while they liked most of it, they said the commute time was simply too great. They had moved to Kansas City to be closer to their jobs, but the husband still spent 1.5 hours and often a bit longer each way just getting to and from work. He wasn't necessarily traveling very far, but with traffic, he was spending 3+ hours a day on the road. While his commute time was definitely above average, it isn't too unusual. In 2006, Midas had a contest to find the person with the longest … [Read more...] about Productivity-Draining Commute