This post is about how to give soaps to a charity can end poverty. Its that time of year to reflect, to make choices and to make decisions! As I look back on the previous year, I want to thank the people who were there for me– who helped me in my journey’s to be smarter, think faster and be a better person — to be all I can be as a person, a colleague and a friend! Part of what I am looking at in 2012 is to help end poverty, homelessness and skid row. How about you?

Short Note to Say THANK U!

Happy New Year to you all! Thanks for being part of my life and this, wonderful journey!

Thanks also for being an inspiration by just being you! Here’s to www.changelives.org and www.invisiblepeople.tv for giving back, for helping America and Los Angeles and everywhere (http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_18736424) aid in the job search and end the situation with skid row!

How are you giving back this year in 2012? One way I decided to give back- its a small start… is to collect all the soaps I don’t use from the hundreds of miles I traveled speaking and give them to my local Chrysalis Center -www.changelives.org- they put people back to work!

And here’s to a year of making the world a better place!

Here’s where I’ve been:

Oh the Places You Will Go! Dr. Suess Couldn't Have Been More Right! Speaking Badges From Around the World!

Here’s where I am going…  donating time and energy to the Chrysalis Center… It’s a small thing, but as I travel the world, I want to help to change it by being my “best” me, but also by remembering those who are in the process of making their life all it can be and remembering that they need help… and remembering to give back!

Soap, Shampoo, Lotions... Helping to Clean Up America's Jobless Situation!

Thanks to all the hotels I stayed at for their soaps and lotions! They are going to a great cause!

I want to remember and acknowledge the great work that people like Mark Horvath @hardlynormal are doing via www.invisiblepeople.tv He is using social media to make a difference in people’s lives! http://invisiblepeople.tv/

Be all you can be and make a new years resolution that will be remembered and have an impact!
@drnatalie Learn. Share. Grow!

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More information at Chrysalis:

Mission: Chrysalis is a nonprofit organization dedicated to creating a pathway to self-sufficiency for homeless and low-income individuals by providing the resources and support needed to find and retain employment.

History: In 1984, at 22 years old, John Dillon arrived in Los Angeles to work on Skid Row, assisting the area’s homeless population. What he saw was an emerging crisis and an urgent need to help the homeless. He founded Chrysalis as a food and clothing distribution center, serving men and women living on the streets of Los Angeles’ Skid Row.

As the agency grew, it became clear that long-term solutions were needed in order to eradicate poverty and homelessness. Chrysalis developed an effective and nationally recognized program to help homeless and low-income individuals become job ready so that they may find and retain employment.

Learn about our first 25 years of fighting poverty & homelessness through our digital timeline. Click here to view the PDF.

Philosophy: Chrysalis’ philosophy is that a steady job is the single most important step in a person’s transition out of poverty and onto a pathway to long-term self-sufficiency. Offering a hand up, rather than a hand out, Chrysalis empowers its clients to complete a self-directed job search.

Transitional Jobs Program: Since 1991, Chrysalis Enterprises has provided transitional jobs for our clients with the greatest barriers to employment. By providing valuable work experience, Chrysalis Enterprises helps clients gain the necessary skills needed to re-enter the job market. In 2010 alone, Chrysalis Enterprises created over 218,000 hours of employment and generated $2.5 million in wages.

Centers: Chrysalis operates three centers that are located where homelessness and poverty are most pervasive: on Skid Row in Downtown Los Angeles, Santa Monica, and in the Pacoima area of the San Fernando Valley.

**********************************************

More Information About Invisible People http://invisiblepeople.tv/blog/about/

Mark Horvath Interviewing a Homeless Person In Chicago at Sobcon Conference 2011

A Story from Mark:

“I once heard a story about a homeless man on Hollywood Blvd who really thought he was invisible. But one day a kid handed the man a Christian pamphlet. The homeless guy was shocked and amazed, “what! You can see me? How can you see me? I’m invisible!”

It isn’t hard to comprehend this man’s slow spiral into invisibility. Once on the street, people started to walk past him, ignoring him as if he didn’t exist… much like they do a piece of trash on the sidewalk. It’s not that people are bad, but if we make eye contact, or engage in conversation, then we have to admit they exist and that we might have a basic human need to care. But it’s so much easier to simply close our eyes and shield our hearts to their existence.

I not only feel their pain, I truly know their pain. I lived their pain. You’d never know it now but I was a homeless person. Fourteen years ago, I lived on Hollywood Blvd. But today, I find myself looking away, ignoring the faces, avoiding their eyes — and I’m ashamed when I realize I’m doing it. But I really can feel their pain, and it is almost unbearable, but it’s just under the surface of my professional exterior.

For years I’ve used the lens of a television camera to tell the stories of homelessness and the organizations trying to help. That was part of my job. The reports were produced well and told a story, but the stories you see on this site are much different. These are the real people, telling their own, very real stories… unedited, uncensored and raw.

The purpose of this vlog is to make the invisible visible. I hope these people and their stories connect with you and don’t let go. I hope their conversations with me will start a conversation in your circle of friends.

After you get to know someone by watching their story, please pause for a few moments and write your thoughts in the comments section, or maybe email them to a friend and link back to this vlog. By keeping this dialog open we can help a forgotten people.

The invisible guy didn’t intend to become homeless. I didn’t plan on living on the street. Everyone on the streets has their own story, some made bad decisions, others were victims, but none of them deserve what they have been left with, and it is a reflection of our own society that we just leave them there. Please always remember, the homeless people.”

Here’s to GMC for donating a Truck To Mark’s cause as part of Sobcon 2011- Via Liz Strauss’s amazing leadership for her small business conference, Sobcon!! And to Murphy Gas for donating gas to power the Truck! Yeah to Liz, Marla Schulman, Connie at GMC and all the people at GMC and Sobcon who made this possible!

Liz Strauss Paying tribute to InvisiblePeople.tv and Mark Horvath's Work to End Homelessness

Mark Horvath and the Dontation from GMC for his Mission to Help The Homeless at Sobcon 2011

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• Americans hungry during the holidays (rt.com)
• Broken and Shared: Food, Dignity, and the Poor on Los Angeles’ Skid Row Book Review (sisterrose.wordpress.com)
• 1 in 2 Americans have fallen into poverty (iflizwerequeen.com)
• Meals, toys given to homeless at LA Mission (abclocal.go.com)
• Serving those in need on Christmas Day (abclocal.go.com)
• Another Face of the U.s. Recession: Homeless Children (maboulette.wordpress.com)
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• The Chrysalis Of Fear (manoahswife.wordpress.com)
• United Way of Greater Los Angeles Hosts 5th Annual HomeWalk (prnewswire.com)
• From homelessness to an executive suite (thegrio.com)
• Rosa Acosta Feeds The Homeless On L.A.’s Skid Row (bossip.com)
• For the New Year: Journey to a Short Story (darsba.wordpress.com)
• Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes That Are So Great People Repeat Them Over And Over (tyrannyoftradition.com)
• A Journey to Remember (marcotimone.wordpress.com)

If you have been to a lot of conferences and seminars in social media, you might be having the same feeling I am. The content is the same old, same old! I think since we are in a new phase of social media implementation, phase 3 of the social media adoption curve, that people want something more than cheer leading and WOOT WOOT social media. That’s part of why I got interested in what Simon Mainwaring is doing in Feb in 2012.

Today’s marketplace is ruthless – the economy is tough and social technology is changing faster than ever – but it’s also an unprecedented opportunity to MASSIVELY SCALE YOUR BRAND, PROFIT and POSITIVE IMPACT ahead of your competitors.

The We First Social Branding Seminar is different because you walk out with a practical and actionable SOCIAL BRANDING BLUEPRINT, specific to your business, that’s built on the best practices, case studies and bottom lines benefits of the world’s smartest marketers.

Here’s more details:

Related articles

• What Corporate America must learn from #OccupyWallStreet to succeed in 2012 (Simon Mainwaring’s blog)
• Intro to Research Methods: Collecting Data Through Social Media (business2community.com)
• How Social Media Can Save Your Business, the Economy and Capitalism (multivu.com)
• Stagger Your Social Media Updates (business2community.com)
• 3 Social Media Mistakes to Avoid (business2community.com)
• What Marketers Don’t Get About Social Media Audiences (cmo.com)
• The American Entrepreneur featuring Buddy Hobart – Aug 30,2011 (blogtalkradio.com)
• 9 Social Media Trends to Keep Your Eye on in 2012 (business2community.com)
• 2012 Social Media Predictions: 5 Must-Reads (firebellymarketing.com)
• Margie Clayman’s 100 Favorite Blog Posts of 2011 (business2community.com)
• FEATURED VIDEO: Social Media and Your Exit Strategy (business2community.com)
• 2012 Forecast: 7 New Trends In Social Media (business2community.com)
• Social Media Return On Investment: A Case Study (business2community.com)
• 12 B2B Marketing Predictions for 2012 (business2community.com)

What’s the definition of insanity? Some say…. doing the same thing and expecting different results!

What I love about Simon Mainwaring’s new book, “We First” is that he is suggests that we not only think different, but act and therefore will feel different. In the model of behavior change, that would mean we need to “be” — “do” and then “have.”

Simon’s book is the perfect book to set the groundwork and mindset for the “be” — and also for the other parts of “be, do, have,” but in particular for creating a new conscious awareness of behaviors and treatment of people and customers and business.

The book is about how brands and consumers can use social media to build a better world. The We First community is made up of the individual people who want to make a better world by using social technologies. To quote Simon, “Social media is easily mistaken as an end in itself rather than THE tool to connect emotionally around shared values through powerful storytelling.” What we have learned from Joseph Campbell and Carl Jung is that storytelling is a very powerful tool for learning, growth and transformation. And social media is a way to do that with millions online!

If you want to learn more about the We First movement… you can check out the video…

Here’s the details on what the “We First” stands for…
We First Manifesto
“We First” is a way of looking at the world. It asserts that we now live in an intimately connected, mutually dependent, global community. It recognizes that selfish Me First thinking hurts business, people we care about, millions of strangers and the planet. It embraces the seismic impact of digital and social technology that is transforming our professional and personal lives. It accepts the challenge of millions of consumers who want brands to be a force for change in return for their loyalty, goodwill and purchases.

It believes that this unprecedented collision of global needs and personal wants, of human emotion and social technology, of powerful brands and newly empowered consumers has the potential to transform our world.

That brands that recognize that their best interests are served by helping others. The We First Community provides them with the most effective strategies, creativity and technology to build their brand communities, profits and positive impact. By working at the intersection of social technology and social change we can all achieve our highest business goals and build a better world.

Ten Core Beliefs of We First

* An inter-dependent, global community requires an expanded definition of self-interest.
* The future of profit is purpose.
* Technology is teaching us to be human again.
* Consumers want a better world, not just better widgets.
* Brands must become architects of community.
* Brands must become day traders in social emotion.
* The evolution of revolution is contribution.
* We cannot separate living and giving if we hope to build a better world.
* Life’s necessities must generate the necessities for life.
* Prosperity is not the wealth of a few but the well-being of many.

This is amazing and I’m thrilled to be able to call Simon my friend. He is a TRUE thought leader!

@drnatalie Learn. Share. Grow.

Tony Hsieh announced in the Samsung Blogger Lounge at SXSW that they will be launching a new company based on the book Delivering Happiness. The new CEO will be Jenn Lim. The idea came about from traveling the country in the happiness business for the book tour. I interviewed Jenn about the new company, her role and what we can except:

I’m sure that this will be successful. Tony got that customer service was the difference to make a business go from zero to a billion dollars in ten years when most businesses were still relegating that to the last thing they care about.  Here at SXSW there is a bus you can hop on — drinks and fun!!! and of course…. happiness…

Here’s Jenn’s Twitter handle: @jennlim Give her a shout out on Twitter and congratulate her! She’s gonna rock and roll this one!

http://www.deliveringhappiness.com  and www.deliveringhappinessbus.com

More about Tony:

In 1999, at the age of 24, Tony Hsieh (pronounced Shay) sold LinkExchange, the company he co-founded, to Microsoft for $265 million. He then joined Zappos.com as an advisor and investor, and eventually became CEO, where he helped Zappos.com grow from almost no sales to over $1 billion in gross merchandise sales annually, while simultaneously making Fortune magazine’s annual “Best Companies to Work For” list. In November 2009, Zappos.com was acquired by Amazon.com in a deal valued at $1.2 billion on the day of closing.

Are you a “T” executive? I was recently speaking with my friend John Shiple and he told me I was a “T” executive. Someone who had vast cross-functional knowledge, but also deep subject matter expertise. I didn’t know that it had a name. Pretty cool.

Part of that has come from an innate knowingness of when people work together things work out better.

Having worked as a management consultant in CRM (Marketing, Sales and Service) meant that I had to work with three different departments that didn’t normally work with each other or even want to work with each other. It meant that I was faced with trying to creating cross-functional capabilities in organizations where there had not been any.

Some people think of me as a  Customer Service expert because of one of my most recent positions. But even in that position I worked directly with CMO’s, with PR Directors, with Product Managers and Brand Managers– I didn’t just cover Customer Service, I also covered CRM. And CRM means Marketing…. It’s interesting how you get put in a box… I’ve done everything from small PR initiatives… like just write a press release to designing the whole media buy… i.e., TV and radio spots…

What I can tell you is that while some companies realized the need for it, and some even realized their ROI would be higher, the ability for individuals to work outside their own functional capabilities is slow to none. And that’s part of why I was thrilled when Marsha Collier, in her new book, The Ultimate Online Customer Service Guide, asked to interview me for the first chapter.

The Ultimate Online Customer Service Guide by Marsha Collier

What Marsha and I discussed in the interview and what is in the first chapter is what companies are facing and need solutions to regarding cross-functional capabilities.

There are millions and billions of dollars being wasted because of the lack of interdepartmental collaboration. It should be a crime when they don’t collaborate.

Not to mention the facturing of the brands equity in the social sphere when the separately interact with the customer. Below is an excerpt from the first chapter of Marsha’s book; if you want the whole chapter, you can get it here: http://media.wiley.com/product_data/excerpt/06/04706377/0470637706-152.pdf

The interview excerpt: “With your online presence, you are in the position to regularly interact with customers. You have the opportunity to see what works and what doesn’t. Knowledge gleaned from outside your inner sanctum will enable you to address key questions, such as whether your product or service offering is right for the market and up to date with current trends. This helps you motivate employees to deliver the level of service required and to identify what, if any, are opportunities for your company’s growth. Interestingly, that has been the main focus of former Forrester analyst, Dr. Natalie Petouhoff (@DrNatalie on Twitter). At Forrester, she covered not only customer service and customer relationship management (CRM), but by observing the new juncture of social media and those disciplines, she wrote the world’s first social media return on investment (ROI) model.

Natalie, now the chief social media and digital communication strategist at Weber Shandwick, is one of the truly brilliant folks in her field; her work is legendary at businesses whose budgets we can only imagine.

Her groundbreaking ideas in this arena can help to center our thoughts on exactly how this is all going to work for our own businesses. When I asked Dr. Natalie about my theory about customer service becoming the new marketing, and about how small business has an innate advantage today, here’s what she shared with me:

People asked me why I went from addressing customer service and its professionals to a public relations and marketing firm. What I found was that companies are fracturing their brands. This started to happen even before social PR and marketing departments were crafting amazing brand promises. But because the way those departments have been organized, they don’t interact with customers after the brand promise has been delivered. So who does have to deliver on the brand promise? Customer service. And because customer service has been largely trapped into the category of a cost center, it rarely is able, during those customer interactions, to deliver on the brand promise, or even have enough respect within the organization to have others accept the idea [that] they have to change products or services to better meet customers’ wants and needs.

This dynamic—the lack of interdepartmental interaction— has been happening since companies left the mom-and-pop model. Along comes social media, and what are consumers using it for? Among the many uses—to keep in touch with friends and family, find a lost love, shop—they are realizing they can broadcast to millions their disdain about how companies are not meeting their brand promise. As a management consultant back in the days of the top management consulting companies, (the “Big 6,” including Accenture, Price Waterhouse, Coopers & Lybrand, Ersnt & Young), as PricewaterhouseCoopers consultant, we were taught that more than anything, managing customer expectations was the key to success. And that lesson learned can be applied here today in business. That is the reason I joined a PR and marketing firm. I wanted to help companies manage their customers’ expectations. After many years in the corporate world, I realized the chasm in corporations needed to be healed. That chasm?

Interdepartmental disconnect and dysfunction. If I were to really help the business world make this huge change, I myself had to be the change.

I saw that PR and marketing had mastery over delivering a brand’s promise. And that their worth was based on the ability to help customers become aware, and to consider purchasing products and services from their company. Once sales “closed the deal,” customer service’s role was to help, answer questions, and solve problems.

The disconnect was that PR and marketing professionals were not always delivering a brand promise that customer service could consistently provide. And, note, none of this was the fault of PR, marketers, or customer service. It was an artifact of how companies organize themselves into groups of specialties; and rarely do they have leadership that has the intuition that continuing to interact as disparate silos not only is not in the best interest of any of those departments, [but that] it will actually be the downfall of companies, which will go out of business if they don’t “get it.”

Of the companies that do sense some of this, many of them may not know how to break down the silos in the politically charged situations they work in. And even in the best situations, they certainly would not be compensated for interdepartmental collaboration. What social media is doing for companies is essentially this: It is a source of real-time feedback.

That feedback is filled with information, if you are listening, that can be used to change your products and service to meet your customers’ needs. Imagine how much easier it would be to market and sell a product [that] your customers said they wanted. Imagine if you are listening to your customers and you are using [what they’re saying] for product innovation. Imagine if your competitor is not. Imagine the market advantage you’d have. And imagine if you used customer service as your differentiator. Why would your customers go anywhere else?

PR has now become customer service. Customer service in now PR. The question you have to ask yourself is, “How are you going to be managing the expectations of your customers, and how will all your departments deliver on your brand’s promise?” No customers, no business. Period.”

To get the whole chapter, click here: http://media.wiley.com/product_data/excerpt/06/04706377/0470637706-152.pdf

To order the book, click here: http://theultimateonlinecustomerserviceguide.blogspot.com/

Thank you Marsha! For addressing a much needed discussion and for writing a wonderful book!

Learn. Share. Grow. @drnatalie

First I want to thank everyone who has been nudging me to write. Second, I want to thank Charlene Li, for writing Open Leadership. If you haven’t read it yet, here’s the link.

Open Leadership By Charlene Li

In Charlene’s Introduction she talks about the hiring of Wendy Harman in 2006 at the Red Cross as the organization’s first social media manager. She was hired because people were saying not so nice things about the Red Cross‘s response to Katrina and she was supposed to “make it stop.”

A manager might have done that. Managers manage tasks. They are given a job and they figure out how to get “that” task done. Leaders on the other hand, do something different. Leaders create followership. They create energy. They create opportunity where there wasn’t one before. In Charlene’s book, she quotes Wendy who said to her boss, “We have a huge opportunity here. There are people who want to help the Red Cross and who are online every day.”

Instead of just making the bad chatter stop, Wendy saw a huge opportunity to engage the large number of people who were saying very positive things about the Red Cross and who wanted to be involved and provide help with disaster relief. As a leader, Wendy knew that the best way to make her point was to show vs tell, and she created a 4″ binder full of examples of the benefits of social media that she circulated around the organization. And Wendy gathered the most relevant mentions from an average 400 comments everyday and sent them via email to the top leadership. And she went on to accomplish many outstanding things at the American Red Cross. The point is that Wendy is quite a leader.

Wendy Harman: Social Media Manager at The American Red Cross

We knew that then and we knew that most recently with the “beer” tweet. A Red Cross employee accidentally sent a tweet out about beer from the Red Cross Twitter account, rather than from her personal account. Something like… “Ryan found two more 4 bottle packs of Dogfish Head‘s Midas Touch beer…. when we drink we do it right #gettngslizzerd.”

What Would You Have Done? If you are a CEO or a CIO or a CTO  or a CMO and you are reading this… What action would you have taken? Here’s where the true test of leadership shows  whether you have a real understanding of social media or not. Wendy Harman responded in the most direct, authentic, genuine and human way a person could. She responded with humor. Wendy said, “We’ve deleted the rogue tweet but rest assured the Red Cross is sober and we’ve confiscated the keys.“

And guess what the reaction was? If you have been following the story you already know the answer.  Because of Wendy’s ability to handle this situation, the incident has inspired a slew of Web donations. Not only that, but both the brewer (@dogfish) and the social media tool (@Hootsuite) the Red Cross employee was using when she sent the rogue tweet –both also jumped in to drive donors to the charity.

The Red Cross blog read, “While we’re a 130-year-old humanitarian organization, we’re also made of up human beings. Thanks for not only “getting” that but for turning our faux pas into something good.“

What’s the message for leaders? Wendy could have pretended there was a machine malfunction. No one would have believed it. But she could have. She could have laid blame on her employee and admonished her. Made her wrong. She could have fired her. But she didn’t. She could have sent out a press release, all scrubbed and polished, with a lot of words, but not saying much, but she didn’t.

Instead Wendy was direct, authentic and genuine. She just tweeted the truth. That we are real people. That real people do real things. And we work long hours and we deal with a lot here and please forgive us when we sometimes do those real human things in public.  How can you not forgive that? We’ve all done that, been there — been human.

My point of view? There’s something different happening in business and government today. It’s not the same old, same old. It requires something different of each and every one of us. Some of us may not be ready for this. Some may not think its really happening. Some may rejoice that it’s finally here.

A Must Read: Cluetrain Manifesto

What is happening is that the voice, the voice of real, live human beings is finally being heard. In the words of the Cluetrain Manifesto, “Most corporations or governments only know how to talk in the soothing, humorless monotone of the mission statement, marketing brochure, and your-call-is-important-to-us busy signal. Same old tone, same old lies… Learning to speak in a human voice is not some trick, nor will corporations or institutions convince us they are human — with lip service about “listening to customers or citizens.” They will only sound human when they empower real human beings to speak on their behalf.”

Want to learn first hand how the American Red Cross does it? You can do that on Tuesday, Feb 22, 2011 at UCLA GravitySummit.com  That’s a conference co-created and lead by @BeverlyMacy.

And you’ll also find more details on the Red Cross and the Haiti mobile donations in Beverly Macy’s book, The Power of Real-Time Social Media Marketing… over $35M dollars were donated!!

Power of Real-Time Social Media Marketing by @BeverlyMacy

Here’s the link to the conference. Come on down.

What are you waiting for? A rogue tweet? www.gravitysummit2011.eventbrite.com

Here’s a shout out to Beverly, Wendy and Charlene who, as leaders, have given us shining examples of direct, authentic and genuine communication at its best. Thank you ladies! YOU ROCK!

Learn. Share. Grow. @drnatalie

And thanks to the coverage and insights on other sites:

AOL

MyFoxBoston.com

Mashable