I had a friend who runs an small business tell me the other day something pretty sobering. He’s been trying to adopt more of the social mindset in work, and after months of being ‘helpful’, both on Twitter, and then extending that into offline meetups, his wife relayed the harsh truth back to him that all this social effort had made him more tired, made him more distracted, and hurt their profits, not increased them.

I work about 14 – 18 hours every day, including Sundays, no exaggeration. I spend about the equivalent of one of those days meeting up with people, an hour per appointment. Some of these are people from Church, but most are people who meet me on Twitter and want to say hi, as well as local business people. Having raised £100,000 for the local economy through Like Minds, I care about my city, and spending time with people is part of the investment that I’m making to boast our city’s standing as a hub of Social Media in the UK. Continue reading →