Seasonal Paradise

Visiting New York City Internet Dating Stars ♥ #Vlog 8

MarkBrooks.TV Vlog Episode 8 :: I spent this week in New York City visiting a few Internet dating company founders. I love New York.

Next week I'm in Miami to keynote at the main Internet Dating Conference of the year. So I thought I'd pop into New York to visit a few dating company owners and executives before heading to the Miami conference.

I had ten meetings while here, including with the Founder of OKCupid. Sam Yagan sold OKCupid to Match and became the CEO of Match. He then successfully negotiated the acquisition of PlentyofFish. I worked for PlentyofFish for a 6 year period thru 2013 and introduced Markus and Sam when they first met at the Internet Dating Conference. The owner of PlentyofFish, Markus Frind, received $575 million from Match based on Sam's negotiation. Sam was kind enough to give me a reference to get onto the Executive MSc course in behavioral science at London School of Economics. A very nice, and very much appreciated gesture. I'm thrilled to have completed the course. It was while studying that I discovered Casey Neistat and got curiously hooked on his vlogs which acted as brain relief from my Masters dissertation.

I visited the CEO of Hinge, which is distinguished from Tinder because they removed the swipe function to get people to think a bit more about their matches. Hinge is for more meaningful relationships. I'm interviewing the CEO, Justin McLeod, at the Internet Dating Conference so wanted to get a handle on where I should take the interview. I like their office. The wooden floor and open plan felt like a coffee shop to me, and the success walls at dating companies are always fun to see.

I checked out the offices of Ivy.com. Beri Meric co-founded it. They started out a few years ago with IvyDate and pivoted away from dating and managed to acquire the Ivy.com domain. I met up with Beri to get the low-down on where they're headed. Ivy is not just for ivy leaguers, I should note. It's a social university with bases in seven cities now. Its a social hub for thoughtful people who want to learn and share and have fun together. Love it. Its $1k to join and $40 a month. They're growing gangbusters.

I discovered a cool little cafe that serves Stumptown Coffee. Its inside a Brooks Brothers store!? Then I went to one of my favorite fast food places. Chop't does salads like no other. Awesome, and its a show. They pull a huge double knife chopper and annihilate the salad, then throw it into a bowl and load it up with dressing and in my case, some chicken. Perfect. I wish they had one of these in Malta. I'd be there several times a week. I should reverse engineer some of their recipes for home.

Maria at Agape Match has the best view of any dating or matchmaking office I've been to yet. Eharmony's office view over L.A. comes in 2nd now. But Maria's office is on the 59th floor of the Empire State Building! Fantastic view! She gave me an overview of what being a matchmaker means to her, and what she does on a daily basis.

Then on Sunday I left the big apple for Miami Beach. Alas, my Airbnb apartment was sitting right on top of some emergency roadworks, so I went for a late night run along the boardwalk. We used to live in Florida. The air is so good here. I miss it.

Inbox Zero In Gmail In 3, Ok, Maybe 4 Steps ♥ #Vlog 7

MarkBrooks.TV Vlog Episode 7 :: I'm happiest when I'm at inbox zero. I was happy this week. Here's some hacks to help you nail inbox zero in gmail.

We're in total information overload these days. Every day we get a deluge of important email to pull our attention. Couple that with all the email subscriptions with killer content pulling at our attention even further...and it's all just too much. I prefer to drink my morning coffee while being at or close to inbox zero.

I've experimented with many email systems, and tools, and hacks to come up with a few ground rules which really, really help me get to and stay at inbox zero. I'd like to share them with you. I hope they help.

Firstly, its frustrating to attempt to go through email when there's not enough time. So, why bother. Its better to know you have a clear half hour, and then attack email with full attention. The golden rule is OHIO. Only Handle It Once. The only way you can OHIO is if you have the time to pay each email proper attention to be able to make the decision to either bin it, answer it, or if you really don't have time to answer it, boomerang it. I'll explain what I mean by 'boomerang' in a moment. ...and how about all the people you emailed that didn't respond? Its annoying to let stuff fall through the cracks.

Second tip... Use Boomerang App for gmail. (there's also an option for Outlook). This solves the two problems I just mentioned. If you don't have time to answer a particular email you can use Boomerang to send an email off and come back to you in hours, or days, or months. Its up to you. The other way I use Boomerang is, what I think is the real killer-app, I use it to have bulletproof follow-up. I'll set up most of the emails that I send out to come back into my email box, or rather, be boomeranged back into my inbox, if that person doesn't respond to that email within a set period of time. Great! I wish there were more options for tools that could do this, but it seems Boomerang is the best option within Gmail. Please comment if you know of any more.

Third tip. If you set up your inbox the way I showed in this video, you'll have your 'Important and Unread' email to focus on first. Then, once you've cleared through that, click on the 'Unread' email drop-down to see your less important and unread email. Then click on the numbers of emails i.e. 1-100 emails, on the right hand side. You'll then click the tick box up top to tick all the emails. Then unclick the ones you want to actually read, and mass delete the rest.

Hopefully this makes some sense. Please let me know your tips for getting to inbox zero. Perhaps we can raise our collective game by sharing in the comments here. Thanks. ;-)

New Year's Resolutions ♥ #Vlog 6

MarkBrooks.TV Vlog Episode 6 :: It's time for New Year Testimonials.  

In 2017 I'll be focusing on the Internet dating industry 100%, getting fit, and spending more time with mi familia. I've been thinking about starting another consultancy, but I find it tough to focus on anything other than Internet dating. Perhaps I'm comfort zoning, but I just know and love the Internet dating industry. There's a lot of room for growth for the industry, and it fires me up to know the work my team does, really effects so many people's lives in quite a profound way.

We had a guest over this week. Marta is Irena's cousin. She's just started university studying biotechnology. We're proud of her. She's doing very well. She comes over from time to time to visit us, and take a break. Always welcome, and she cooks up a storm. Nice!

I ask Vicki, Sasha and Mads why girls like flowers. Hoping for some innocent insight. Instead, Madeleine starts speaking a strange language. Some form of Maltese+English+Czech+alien. I'm not quite sure what she said, but it was something cute and inspiring. I'll have to ask her again in a few months when her English is further along.

Again, Happy New Year to you. I hope you like the vlog. Daily's took too much time in the end, so I'm sticking with weekly vlogging. Its fun, without taking too much time. I plan on uploading each week on Sunday's for 6pm New York time.

I Was Quoted in New York Times :-) and Flowers ♥ Weekly Vlog Episode 5

MarkBrooks.TV Vlog Episode 5 ::

5.1 :: I’m switching to daily video blogging now. Here’s the first episode of my daily. Just one minute long. I was quoted in New York Times last week on the Internet dating business. Please let me know your thoughts on the video. I hope you like it. (All my vlogs are at www.MarkBrooks.TV)

5.2 :: The press like to call me on occasion, to comment about the Internet dating business. Its a tough business to be in these days as ad costs are up, and its more competitive than ever, and we've had to transition to mobile and put prices down. Conversions are down. Things have changed a lot over the last few years, but my consultancy (CourtlandBrooks.com) is as strong as ever, miraculously. We must be doing something right.

5.3 :: How far should you run? I prefer to run short distances as fast as I can. It saves time, and really, the biggest health gains are between doing nothing, and doing something. So how far do I run? See the video. Its enough to do the job. Fresh air, stretch the legs and lungs, and catch a change of scenery. Its not necessary to run 10-20 miles. For most people, that's just not going to happen anyway. So, moderation is the key, IMHO. Actually, the term is Minimum Effective Dose. This refers to drugs usually, but it works equally well with food and exercise. You be the judge. After the run, I try and score a client, and then party it up with our good friends.

5.4 :: I love my walks with Madeleine. Occasionally we bump into a friendly dog. This particular dog was quite memorable. A lion dog? So, I've gone to a daily video blog. This whole vlogging thing is an experiment. I'm not comfortable with video, but I'd like to be. I do like capturing and sharing memories and thoughts from my day for you, and my family. I'm enjoying the process. I hope some of this is interesting to you and I hope to make it more thought-provoking. Or maybe the point of watching is to momentarily remove you from what you were thinking about? A brain break, to break up your day. For one minute a day. I'm going to try to keep it to one minute a day to respect your time. You certainly don't have much time for watching vlogs, I know. But “who has time? Who has time? But then if we never take time, how can we have time?” - The Merovingian in The Matrix Reloaded

5.5 :: Madeleine buys flowers for mommy. I don't get her enough flowers. Definitely something I need to change in 2017. Madeleine and I encountered a flower truck as we were walking home from her pre-school. She chose the color of the flowers we bought. “Pink. Mommy likes pink.” The flower truck is normally there on Saturdays but because of New Years eve coming up, decided to come on Friday. Perfect. Normally we would not have seen him there.

Madeleine was quite thrilled to buy flowers. She liked the smell. She liked carrying them, but grew tired after walking with them for a while. We took a scenic break to watch the boats, and continued our journey back home.

We live in Malta. The old name for Malta was Melita. This is actually Maltese for 'honey.' So we live in the land of honey, apparently. It is quite lovely here. So the soundtrack seemed appropriate on a couple of counts. Hope you like the video. Please share it, if you enjoyed it.