The Rule of Three. First, I found and noted the success of @ShitMyDadSays, the now-famous Twitter account of young Justin Halpert, who writes about s$#% his dad Samuel, 73, says. Second, I copied hitchhiked on Nick Bate’s idea of How To Think Like a… series, with some added fun. Third, this morning, I see that San Diego’s banks have been ripped off by the…drumroll, Geezer Bandit, an elderly gent in his 70’s. Voila—THIS is how we get our ideas for blog posts.

How To Think Like a Geezer Bandit by GL Hoffman

1. GET OFF MY LAWN! ohsorry, GIVE ME YOUR MONEY.

2. I figure jail will be better than that “Miracle Mile Retirement Home” my fricking kids are pushing

3. This oxygen tank is not as bad as my ‘roids. Good God.

4. I’ve been watching Daytime TV with Hilda. I just found my balls again.

5. Have you SEEN Hilda?

6. Look, the banks took money from the guvment, who took it from my pension, just taking what’s mine.

7. Madoff!

8. Hurry with the money! Hilda’s fricking I’VE FALLEN AND I CAN’T GET UP thing is buzzing in my pocket here.

9. Gosh darnit. They just don’t rob banks like they used to! When I was a boy, we didn’t use any of those sissy stockings on our heads! Real men show their faces. Like me. And I’ve worn a nice hat too. It’s my Volvo driving hat but I wear it for formal bank robberies too. contributed by @GayleHoward, an Australian blogger friend.

10.First of all, no one can take down this old fart? Serious?

Are you a ‘rogue?’  Tell me why.

For more information on what it means to be a rogue jump over to the piece on US News and World Report, by clicking here.

Ed. Note. This is a takeoff of Nicholas Bate’s How To Think Like series on his blog here. I asked Nick if I could use his idea and he graciously agreed. This could be a meme so feel free to come up with your own series of HOW TO THINK LIKE posts, just link to Nick and me, if you would be so kind. Here are a few of Nick’s.

How To Think Like a Pro Twitterer

1. Me

2. Me

3. Me

4. RT especially if really about Me

5. Me, ask for RT

6. Me

7. Join my affiliate group so all of us can talk about me

How To Think Like a Poet

by GLH –special for Alice Shapiro Poetry blog here

1.  Not too obvious
2.  Why am I thinking limericks?
3.  Oh, look at the way that ant is moving.
4.  What rhymes with Shania Twain?
5.  Mom, Dad I did another one!!
6.  Just for me.
7.  You want to publish?
8.  Really? Really?

How to Think Like a Kansan

by GLH

1. Flat

2. Flat.

3. Flat.

4. Straight.

5. There’s the tree.

6. Flat.

7. There’s the lake.

8. Dorothy

How to think like a Californian:

by Conrad Hake, his blog is Here.

1. Nice day!

2. Wow, we’re out of money.

3. Wow, we’re out of water.

4. Wow, they had to shut down the Salmon fishing.

5. Wow, the legislature couldn’t legislate their way out of a wet paper bag!

6. Wow, we’re out of money.

7. Jeez, this sushi tastes good.

8. Good wine.

9. Nice day!

How to Think Like an Unemployable Loser

by Karla Porter, her blog is here.

1. I’ll collect until the checks almost run out.
2. I’ll photocopy my resume and send it everywhere.
3. Cover letters are old fashioned.
4. I’ll just look on Internet Job Boards.
5. Before we get started, how much does it pay?
6. I need to leave an hour early on Tuesdays I’m on the dart league
7. Hello unemployment office… I need to file for an extension.

How to Think Like Samuel Halpern (the dad behind @shitmydadsays)

by GLH

1. My feet

2. My back

3. Fuck you

4. No, really.

5. I worked for this?

6. Let me tell what I think

7. Just shut the fuck up

How to Think like a Deer Hunter in Michigan (while in the blind)

by Erin Kennedy, Executive Resume

1. Any minute now. I’m ready.

2. Any minute now. Wait… did I just hear something? Freeze.

3. Any minute now.

4. Hmmm. Hmmm. Mmm. (humming Hawaii 5-0 sound track in head)

5. “Hey, lemme borrow them nail clippers.”

6. Any minute now.

7. “Yes, honey (whispering). Deer everywhere. Shhh. Will call you later.”

8. Any minute now.

9. Will just rest my eyes for a second.

How to think like a Kansas Citian in Winter

by Jacqui Barrett-Poindexter, MRW, Careertrend.net

1. Where did summer go? #*%$@.
2. Those frickin’ leaves are everywhere – call Billy to rake’m up.
3. We’re not waitin’ any longer to move to Florida.
4. I hate winter. brown, brown, gray, frigid, sleet, gray, brown.
5. I’m so S.A.D.D..
6. Bookin’ a flight to Key West..
7. Yeah – Key West in February
8. Honey, let’s sell off everything and move to FL.
9. Yeah – we have a plan; we’re movin’ to FL; NO MORE Kansas City Winters.

How to think like a dog

by Dawn Bugni, of The Write Solution

1. I’m on the couch. Think they’ll notice?

2. Time for a nap.

3. What was that? Bark, bark, chase, bark.

4. Time for a nap.

5. Is that a stick? Please throw it. Please. Please. Please. You threw it. You go get it.

6. Nap time.

7. Lick. Lick. Lick … because I can.

8. Did you say biscuit?

9. Ahhhhhh. Nap in the sunshine.

How to think like an impaired (from chronic illness that waxes and wanes unpredictably) employee who wants to keep the job:

Rosalind Joffe, @workswithillness and ChronicIllness

1. I can get this done but I only if we can push the deadline — from 11:00pm tonight (requiring me to work a 15 hour day) to 5:00pm tomorrow.

2. Thanks for asking how I’m feeling today. Happy I had yesterday not an issue today.

3. You think you’re helping by not promoting me, but you’re not. My evaluations,”excellent to superior”, mean I’m a good candidate for promotion. I’m not worried – and neither are my mother or my doctor Why are you?

4. I like my job but some days my body/mind/spirit aren’t in agreement. When I feel like crap, I hate dealing with my stupid boss and demanding co-workers.Yup.

5.Working, with chronic illness, is really, really hard. But the alternative is worse.

Ed. Note. What’s it’s like to be a FILL IN THE BLANK? Every job seeker wants to know, what it is like to be an architect, surgeon, or Starbucks barrista. So, for me, the father-like advice giver, it was easy to get caught up in Nicholas Bate’s on going feature of HOW TO THINK LIKE found on his blog here.

I hope you can add your own, based on your own career or from your own observations. I will be adding some along the way, too.

Enjoy.

By Nicholas Bate

How To Think Like: The Serious Start-Up

How To Think Like: The Wannabee Start-Up.

Ed. Note: I wrote this for US NEWS this past week but would like to re run it here, too. BTW, FastCompany contacted me because they were interested in it, as well, but wanted “more details.” I think it stands alone, for now.
I am a serial entrepreneur. I start companies. So far in my career, a couple of homeruns, a double or two, maybe a single. Never a strikeout. Flyout maybe.

Anyway. For the past THREE years, a colleague and I have been working on a new idea/company, nights and weekends. We have spent cash and time (’incubating’ and ’sweat equity’ are the terms now in vogue).

This could a new business in the publishing space, but in a niche market now in the hundreds of millions, over $10 billion, according to some experts in the industry. Seriously.

The potential is so great that we thought instead of doing a raw startup, we would approach media companies with a very compelling offer. They can have the business for a very modest amount of cash plus an on-going royalty on sales. This is very different from the ‘normal’ way of starting a business, but I thought these times might have created a new attitude in larger businesses.

So, we started contacting publishers and their persons in charge of “New Business Development.” No wonder job creation is down if the people in charge of new business development are so careful as to be completely paralyzed, to NOT EVEN want to see what our ‘thing’ is all about.

One local publisher is especially noteworthy. He had been quoted in the press as having said, “I am less concerned with the competitors than in finding new pathways to the future.” Perfect. New pathways to the future—that Be us.

I have emailed him. Called. Tried to get on his calendar for 15 minutes. He won’t even give me the courtesy of a call back.

Back up at 40,000 feet now, it is interesting to see how the larger the company, the more rooted they are to the past. There are simply too many institutional barriers to overcome to bring in a new idea, even if the idea is potentially huge. Talk is cheap and easy, as the ‘new pathways to the future” comment shows.

Meanwhile, unemployment is at 10.2% and people who have never actually created a job are talking about the new industries of the future.

Further note: This is a very common complaint amongst all entrepreneurs, this is not new. Used to it. And, we almost always find a way in. Stay tuned.

Ed. Note: News Flash. Seriously. This happened. Really. Way. To. Go. Justin.

Justin is on the right, and his dad, Samuel, is on the left.

By Nellie Andreeva for The Live Feed

Twitter sensation Shit My Dad Says is headed to television.

CBS has picked up a comedy project based on the Twitter account, which has enlisted more than 700,000 followers since launching in August and has made its creator, Justin Halpern, an Internet star.

“Will & Grace” creators David Kohan and Max Mutchnick are on board to executive produce and supervise the writing for the multicamera family comedy, which Halpern will co-pen with Patrick Schumacker. Halpern and Schumacker will also co-exec produce the Warner Bros. TV-produced project, which has received a script commitment.

The comedy’s title will change if it gets on the air.

Halpern, 29, had moved back in with his parents in San Diego, and on Aug. 3 he launched “Shit My Dad Says,” a Twitter feed featuring colorful — often profane — comments and pearls of wisdom made by his 73-year-old father during their daily conversations.

Without you and your efforts, millions of American cats and dogs would be just a bit sicker today. So, well done all of you vets out there. I am not sure why you get a specific day, but what the hay, everyone should have their own day shouldn’t they? Next up, Tee-Tee Days. Get your mind out of the gutter, TeeTee is for all those Tree Trimmers out there who risk life and limb. They need a day, too.

Oh.

Sorry, Veterans. You are special, but not just this one day. Every frickin day.

Side note. For those of you too young to remember, in a few days, on November 19, we will not celebrate Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. If you have not read it lately, I’d recommend you read it over once again. Brilliant. As you read it, remember that over 57,000…Fifty-Seven thousand Union and Confederate soldiers…died in that one battle, over three days. (52,000 Americans died in the entire VietNam War)

Since many will not click or jump to the Gettsburg Address link, here it is in its entirety. If you can’t thank a veteran today personally…and chances are good you work with one….at least read this speech.

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Ed. Note. Sure, these are not new.  Maybe. Consider it a reminder, then.
1.    Use bigger fonts.  Not ginormous ones, just slightly bigger.
2.    Use black fonts.  We can’t read orange, or faint fonts either.  Just you wait.
3.    We all have ADD.  Just remember that.
4.    We all have ADD. Just remember that!!
5.    On your order page, or checkout page, have a number to call when we have trouble. “Confused, something wrong? Call now:555-555-5555.” Here’s the deal, if this results in way too many calls for you to handle, doesn’t it say something about your order form, etc?
6.    Make it REALLY obvious how to get in touch with you.  Don’t hide your contact information with small type on some nav bar.  And please list your address and phone number, and anything else you think I might like to know about you.
7.    We spend, like, 10 seconds on your first screen when we get there. Do I understand what it is you do?
8.    Don’t trick me.  Ever.  Don’t give me something for free, then ask for my credit card, you know, for security or some other bullshit reason.
9.    Please don’t make me sign in again.  I don’t know the stats here, but trust me…this is a big time, clickaway issue.
10.    We are impatient.  Way.  We hate movie lines, long power points and commercials.  Fast loading is important. Instant is even better.

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