Tours Travel

Welcome Puerto Rico Part 4: An appointment with the police in Ponce

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I’m always afraid to photograph people, those you don’t know and in open streets. Because it was a lesson learned the hard way.

Ponce is a relatively young vibrant city in the south. We would have loved to spend a night there, but the hotels were a bit expensive (same/little more than San Juan); so we stayed in Rincón and drove through Ponce to get to Guanica. For a while on a hot and muggy afternoon, we played tourists in downtown Ponce; it got uninteresting pretty quickly. We asked in Spanish about the other things to do and a family that was feeding chips to the pigeons in the courtyard of Lady Guadalope’s church (duh!) suggested a trip to the boardwalk.

The Ponce boardwalk is something of a community gathering place for the whole city and we bought some very Caribbean rum and pineapple pumpkin before lazing around. Before I knew it, I was playing with a bunch of kids running and catching each other and I started capturing some cute playful expressions on my camera. We inadvertently started to walk away and had barely crossed 200 feet, when we were stopped by a gruff ‘permissio’ (excuse me) behind us. A policeman, accompanied by a man who was peeping at the DSLR hanging from my neck, proceeded to question us in the purest Spanish. He was starting to worry me a little. The police are never good news; and it is never better if you are in a foreign country. After several failed communication attempts, he made us wait and went to find an English speaking official. They came back with a young policewoman who asked me if she had taken any pictures of this guy’s daughter. It became easy to understand what the point of discussion was. I calmly accepted; she demanded that i delete everything i complied with. They didn’t release us until the angry father did a thorough check of my entire memory card to make sure there were no heads other than ‘P’ and me. Then the matter was resolved and I rushed to refill my pina-colada with relief!

A father’s concern about shoes is understandable: he could turn his daughter’s image into ridiculous content and make money off the internet! But, as a citizen of a free country in a public place, it’s a bit ridiculous to be asked to do what I did. Leave your loved ones at home if you are so picky. Even after googling photography laws in public places, I can’t seem to decide which is better, ethically and professionally. Is it a good idea to voluntarily show your subjects the photographs you have taken to see if they are appreciated or frowned upon? Or just inform everyone in your frame before raising the camera to your eyes and getting bland shots?

But I ramble…

Two more places, Rincón, Adjuntas, deserve to be discussed before concluding the Caribbean side. The surf town of Rincón is just that and some yoga on the beach at 6am that you have to be prepared for. Rincon Inn offers good hostel facilities and a friendly group of longtime travelers whose days are rarely different: surf before it gets too hot in the morning and watch the sun go down with a few cold beers in the evening.

Right in the middle of the mountains of the Cordillera Central is Adjuntas. I had no valid reason for choosing it for an overnight stop; some tense hours of driving on twisty single lane roads to get here. We checked into our sweltering hotel room and decided to have dinner and stay out as much as possible. To our dismay, the word “bohemian” could not have described any other place better; We were truly foreigners in this foreign land! After enduring a few stares from the locals on the highway and central park, we retired to our satin-lined beds in our hotel. A local cafe where we had breakfast the next day, Panaderia Sancho, made up for some of our woes. The heartiest of Puerto Rican baked goods and a hot chocolate for the last morning on this always sunny island!

Technology

The number one tool to optimize Twitter for business use

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As a social media consultant, it’s imperative to stay on top of the latest and greatest Twitter tools emerging on the market. Using tools to create efficiencies is the name of the game when building a great list of quality Twitter followers.

There has been a lot of buzz recently about autofollow and unfollow tools that allow you to build a large list of targeted followers and remove people who don’t follow you back. These can be tremendous time savers; however, which tool you choose largely depends on your Twitter strategy, as there are generally two schools of thought.

The first school of thought on using Twitter for commercial purposes suggests that you should build a large list of random followers and focus solely on the numbers. This involves following everyone on a given list, regardless of their profile, tweet history, etc. which means you’ll naturally pick up a lot of spammers along the way. While the thought of this may make you cringe, there is a method to the madness, as you’ll read below.

The second school of thought on using Twitter for commercial purposes states that it is best to select followers using specific criteria. For example, if you market a product to software developers, you would do a keyword search for all mentions of the term “software developer.” I would also do a search for Twitter profiles where the term “software developer” appears. The idea is that you will create a very specific group of followers who are most likely to become customers.

There are benefits to both strategies. What I have found to work well for my clients is to employ the first strategy to generate large numbers initially. This helps you get a quick start right from the start and also contributes to getting more visibility from quality people as your number increases. And once you’ve gained some traction and have a decent number of followers, you can start using a more targeted approach to curating your followers.

All things being equal when using Twitter for business, would you be more inclined to follow someone with 500 followers in your niche or someone with 5000 followers? Naturally, the profile with 5,000 followers gains an advantage because 5,000 other people have chosen to follow them, which suggests that their Twitter posts are of higher quality and more relevant. This is not necessarily true in all cases, but the large number of followers creates this perception and thus leads to gaining more followers.

Business

What to do when you have multiple business ideas

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“Do the job you love.” This message, once reserved for graduation speeches and fortune cookies, is now a common theme in today’s professional landscape. So what do you do when you “love” several things?

In all my years as a professional career coach, I’ve noticed that the ‘follow your passion and the money will come’ perspective is met with feast or famine. Either a person has no idea what his passion is, or his cup (and notebook of business ideas) overflows. If you’re in the latter camp, the abundance of possibilities can be as overwhelming and debilitating as feeling like you have nowhere to go. Below are key questions to ask yourself to help you select the best of your business ideas:

Did someone ask for this? The fastest way to make your new business profitable is to give people what they want, not what they want. your they think they want, but what they are asking for. A common mistake entrepreneurs make is that we get locked into creating the “perfect” product or service to bring to market. Then we resurface and display our business to the crowd like a scene from The Lion King and instead of roaring applause we hear crickets. Nobody wants it because nobody asked for it. The sooner you can determine who your ideal customer is and what their exact need is, a need that they are aware of, the sooner you can create the solution to their specific problem.

Can I commit to this? Starting a business is like the beginning of a romance. It’s all starry eyes and butterflies at first. But when the euphoria wears off, what you’re left with is commitment, and commitment takes work. Depending on the industry, it can take years before a business is profitable. It is important to ask yourself if you are committed to investing your time, energy, and resources to carry out this work for at least the next five years. Especially in the early days, your business can be like a newborn child: constant demands at the most inconvenient times with no reward or recognition.

Are these my people? In the new work dynamic, there is no longer a separation of ‘us’ and ‘them’. We are now operating within tribes, groups of people gathered around a similar cause and vision. As you consider your many business ideas, think about the clients and colleagues associated with this business. Do you want to spend time- a lot of time– with these people? One of the main advantages of starting your own business is that you can decide who your people are, who you will serve, and with whom you will be in constant dialogue. Business is ultimately one person interacting with another. Your ability to determine who you want to sit across the table is a good guide in making your selection.

Whether you have one company or a hundred in front of you, mastering the ability to run your own business gives you true financial security. Choose the path that suits you instead of jumping into another job, and you’ll set yourself up for success every time.