"Half of learning is learning. The other half of learning is unlearning. " CamMi Pham is a Community Manager by day, a blogger by night, and an unlearner all the time. Life is too short. Think Different.

How to Find Almost Anyone’s Email Address

Yesterday my British brother from another mother, Mathew Hanley of Tek-T asked me to help him search for someone’s email. I thought it would be a good idea to write a blog post about how to find email addresses.  It is one of the very useful skills that school often forget to teach us. If there is a Stalking 101 class, I would sign up right away. Sadly school is not always a good investment if what you want is knowledge.

“There were no sex classes. No friendship classes. No classes on how to navigate a bureaucracy, build an organization, raise money, create a database, buy a house, love a child, spot a scam, talk someone out of suicide, or figure out what was important to me. Not knowing how to do these things is what messes people up in life, not whether they know algebra or can analyze literature.” ~ William Upski Wimsatt

Finding someone’s contact information is a basic relationship building skill, everyone should know how to become more successful. If you want to steal someone’s knowledge, you need to talk to them first. Twitter is an amazing place but email is still the king especially if you want to talk to the older generation. I am very lucky to picked up few tricks over the years. They are very useful especially for people who work in PR, marketing and sale. Continue reading

Why I Stopped Helping People And You Should Too

My mother always tells me never give advice or help anyone unless they ask you. When I was younger, I thought she was a cold and mean person, however as I get older, I realize she is right. My mother is one of the kindest people in my life.

Society always tells you that you need to help people ( I did too). They tell you that you should help people unconditionally and when people least expect it. None of those are wrong. A lot of the time random acts of kindness can change a person’s life. But they forgot to tell you the other half of the lesson and it can be very dangerous if you don’t know it.

If you are a regular reader of blog you might know that I am a big fan of the yin-yang concept.  Not everything is bad. Not everything is good. There are always some of the good that is in the bad, and some of bad  that is in the good. The same rule applies to this case. yin yang It is not always a bad idea to help people just as, it is not always a good idea to help people. I am sure you have enough people telling you to be a good person and help people. We will look at the situations when we need to stop helping people. Continue reading

25 Essential Free Tools Every Blogger Needs

 

Blogging is a lot more than just writing.  There are researching, editing, promoting and networking. If anyone told you blogging is easy, that person is not a blogger.  Because I am not the expert in the industry, I always look for new tools that will  make my blog better.

Expertise is the enemy of innovation.

~ Stephen Shapiro

I am going to show you what is in my blogging toolbox. All these tools are free. I know most blogger don’t make a penny from their blogs. It is possible to put together a  good blog with low or no budget. That is the beauty of the Internet. Also every single tool in this list are online. I have a desktop, a laptop, a netbook and an iPhone. I prefer to have everything in a cloud. Continue reading

Why I Never Attend a Conference For Content

In the next few days I will attend  Women in Biz Network Conference  and The Art of Leadership. It costs a lot of  money to go to a conference.I usually get sponsored whenever I go to one, but I  still invest a lot of time. If you follow my blog, you might know I believe nothing is for free. My time is very valuable and I prefer to spend it wisely. This is why,

I don’t attend a conference for content.

I know it does not make sense to most of you. But from my experience, I learned that most of the time I get no value from attending conference just for the content.

Continue reading

A Day in the Life Of A Social Media Influencer

You don’t have to be a “person of influence” to be influential. In fact, the most influential people in my life are probably not even aware of the things they’ve taught me.
~Scott Adams

With the rise of Klout, a company that measures influences on social networks  which I usually refer as the Social Media Clown, online influencers become the hottest celebrities of the digital age.You have seen these influencers sitting front row at fashion week next to Anna Wintour or walking the red carpet at a movie premiere with George Clooney. Have you ever wondered what they do on daily basis? Continue reading

Why College Is A Bad Investment

All my life, I have loved studying but I do not like school. When I was a kid, unlike other kids, I would save all my money to buy books not candy or toys. When I was in middle school, I used to buy books at wholesale price, read and resell them to my classmates at retail price. I enjoyed gaining knowledge and money at the same time. I do not like to memorize anything because I have Google. The more I spend time at school, the more I hate it.  I feel like I am wasting time because I learn much more from life than any teacher.

Why do I need college, if I have Google? Continue reading

Don’t Just Build Relationships, Nurture Them

I have tried to write this post the last few months, but I each time I write tears roll out my eyes. It is about a lesson that I learned the hard way.

A year ago when I just joined Twitter, I was very lucky to have many Twitter Elites as my mentors, and @imadnaffa was one of them. I felt really special because he had around 40,000 followers at that time. It was a big deal for a newbie who only had 40 followers. We would exchange DMs everyday and Skype once in a while. I still remember he was always too busy to go out for lunch and I would tease him with my yummy food. Imad was a hard working man with a great heart. Whoever says Twitter friends are not real are wrong. He was a big brother, a father, a teacher to me. We were looking forward to meet each other in real life at TEDxCanton. It was the good old days before I became Miss Popular. Continue reading