Social media makes it very easy to meet people. Networking can be very valuable to entrepreneurs. Unfortunately, the term “friend” is overused and the meaning of “friends” has become diluted.

For people who want a successful career, surrounding yourself with people with similar maturity and experience levels is crucial for success. The people who are serious about obtaining the quality of life they have goals for do this naturally. The people closest to them have similar goals and interests that bond them.

Social media makes it easy to become friends with people who will distract your attention to almost guarantee you will not reach your goals. If you are a parent, it’s like your child hanging around the “wrong” group of kids….can you relate to that?

Success is a beautiful thing but sometimes, it comes before the person receiving the success is ready to handle it. That is what happened, in my opinion, to Daniel Brusilovsky. Allegedly Daniel, a 17-year-old technology writer, tried to receive a Macbook Air as compensation in exchange for writing an article for TechCrunch. When the owners of TechCrunch found out what happened, they investigated, found the tip correct, fired Daniel and removed all of his content from the site.

Everyone makes mistakes, some bigger than others. How does one recover?

Do people who make more pay more for goods and services? Of course they do. In some situations, this works and is the only way for companies to sustain themselves. Online companies usually do not have this excuse. Rarely do online companies have overhead that need to be increased based on income and rarely does the company owner have the knowledge of how much the consumer makes to accurately determine if their audience receives higher incomes. Scaling prices based on income can backfire if not handled properly.