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Call me a Twi-hard, Fanpire, Cullenist, Team Jacob and Team Edward member, Twerd or Twi-maniac.  I’m all of the above and more.  That’s right.  And I’m 40 years old.  And I’m not afraid to admit it.  The 40 part and the Twilight part.

Truth be told, I was first introduced to the book series by my daughter’s friend.  Her mom (a good friend of mine) decided to read the first Twilight book to make sure it was appropriate for her then 11 year old daughter who was insistent upon reading it.  Soon after my friend began, she dropped off the face of this earth (and landed in the middle of Forks, Washington!) as she obsessively finished each of the four books in the Twilight series: Twilight, New Moon, Eclipse and Breaking Dawn.  She whipped through them all in about a week.  Seriously.  I barely saw her.  And when I did have contact with her, it was quick and brief communications mostly centered on how fabulous the books were and questioning why exactly it was that I wasn’t reading them yet.  Well, aside from the fact that I considered the novels written for an age group two decades younger than me, I also have never been keen on the whole fantasy or vampire genres  But, I couldn’t deny her persistence, so I decided to give them a go.  After the first page, I too, never looked back - or ahead for that matter.  I seemed to be walking and reading at the same time - bringing the books everywhere with me so that I could read in whatever few free moments I had – wherever I had them.

Oh yeah, and not only did my friend and I devour the books but so did my friend’s daughter as well as mine.  And then, it became a three generation bonding Twilight-a-holic frenzy as my mom read and loved the books too. What a concept!  Hard to believe that in today’s day and age of being “plugged in”, a mother, daughter and grandmother can all be excited about, discuss and most importantly, connect and bond over a book!  But, that’s exactly what happened.

Yes, all the chaos and hoopla over the books, movies and the actors involved is a bit over the top.  And certainly, the rescued woman who is protected, loved and swept off her feet by the man (or men in this case) that is seemingly not right for her is not an original storyline.  And it’ a shame that so many men, as a result of the Twilight series, have inferiority complexes because they can’t shape-shift into wolves or be ultra-protectors who live forever.  But all that said, my tickets for the 5pm showing of Eclipse are already bought.  It’s opening day and I know I’ll be in the center of the “fandemonium”.  But, what can I say?  I’m hooked – no glamouring required.

There’s been a lot of buzz lately on the direct sales industry as a haven for those seeking employment in these trying economic times. Makes sense. Be it full or part-time, the direct sales industry is unique in that it is always hiring. There is also unlimited upside earning potential and little or no chance of being downsized. But, like any job, the key to success is doing something you enjoy. So, the tricky part is figuring out which direct sales company is the best fit. Of course most of this is based on what the company is selling. If you don’t believe in the product, everything else doesn’t really matter. To me, the best way to determine if you are a good representative candidate is to ask yourself, “Would I want to buy that product if someone else was showing it to me?” If the answer is yes then that is a company worth looking into. You want to feel like you have found something worth sharing, not just selling.

Of course there are other factors to consider when choosing which direct sales company is the right one for you – initial investment, personal sales volume minimums, e-commerce options, compensation plan specifics, corporate mission/culture/personality and market saturation. Established “big name” direct sales companies equate to tradition, history, evolved policy, procedure and hopefully security. So, the more representatives a company has signed, the better off you are, right? Maybe.

Companies with hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of independent sales representatives like Tupperware, Avon, Mary Kay and Pampered Chef are very well known and they make a great product, but…their markets are becoming increasingly saturated. It might be difficult to book parties, obtain referrals or generate significant sales because interested customers may already have a rep they purchase from or are already familiar with these products and services. I want to be clear in that I do not in any way want to give the impression that it is fruitless to investigate joining companies like Avon and Tupperware. I am suggesting however that there may be greater opportunity and potential for impact with a newer organization.

I realize I’m not the most objective observer on this topic given that I am CEO and co-founder of a relatively new direct sales company that sells merchandise no one else in the industry offers. I also realize that as a young business that is still in a soft launch phase, LikeWear doesn’t have much history or experience to draw from. We haven’t instituted our multi-level compensation plan and we’re selling something new that most consumers are not familiar with. But, largely due to that originality, we’ve attracted the attention of Tootsie Roll Industries, General Mills and Honda with whom we currently have licensing deals. And we continue to get noticed by other companies interested in promoting their brands in the fun, innovative and timely way that LikeWear offers. I mean who better to market their brands than moms with kids?

With so many women looking in and being directed towards the direct selling industry nowadays, we hope to continue to attract women looking to be founding members of an inventive company offering a unique career opportunity in an industry being heralded as the right place to be. So if you are considering direct sales as a career option, I suggest you ask yourself, “Do you want to be one of many… or the first of many?”

Call it six degrees of separation, a social experiment, the new millenium’s gift to advertisers or my favorite description (coined by my husband): “jewish geography on crack”. If you’ve been living under a rock then you may not know that I’m talking about Facebook - or FB if you’re cool and in the know.

In case you have been under a rock, Facebook is a popular, free-access social networking website that allows users to join networks organized by city, workplace, school, and region to connect and interact with other people. People can also add friends, send them messages and update their personal profiles to notify friends about themselves. It was founded by a guy named Mark Zuckerberg while he was a student at Harvard University. Originally membership was limited to Harvard students but was expanded to other colleges in the Boston area, the Ivy League and Stanford. It has been opened up to now include anyone aged 13 and over. The website (incredibly) has more than 150 million active users worldwide.

I think the history of the site is pretty interesting. I know most people don’t really care how FB got here, all they know is that they can’t imagine their lives without it! In November I attended my 20 year high school reunion. Many of my fellow graduates described the activity on Facebook in the months leading up to the event as the “pre-party”. I wasn’t sure if already having connected as “friends” via the site and having an opportunity to read up on profiles, work activity, marital status, pictures of kids etc. would steal the thunder of the point of the reunion – catching up. In my opinion, that did not prove to be the case. In fact, I think it gave most people (not everyone is on FB after all) a loose familiarity that made it easier to strike up the kind of quick small talk – much like speed dating - that occurs at reunions.

Of course, some of the daily minutiae that people broadcast (”I am watching my daughter poop on the potty for the first time”) can be bit annoying and the pictures and video that others dig up and post (ya know, ones with the 80’s hair, eyeliner and prachute pants or the stupid drunken ones from prom weekend) can be embarrassing and even border on an invasion of privacy. No one minds when they are “tagged” in a photo that they look fabulous in, but the ones that catch you in bad light, with 6 chins or your mouth open while chewing, make you want to morph into one of those people who are living under a rock.

Overall, Facebook is what you make of it. I know some people that are truly addicted. They’ve even added the FB application to their phones so they don’t miss any status updates or friend requests. Others (myself included) find FB a very useful tool for bringing awareness to their business or philanthropic cause. And still others get and stay involved for the voyeuristic thrill of it all. Human beings have a natural desire to feel connected to and involved with one another. Facebook is just a modern day way to accomplish that. I would even go so far to say that it could singlehandedly have a long term sociological effect on the way people communicate and essentially “stay in touch”. I mean, where else can you satisfy a basic human need while seeing if your old college boyfriend who dumped you is fat, balding and friendless?

I’m new to electronic organization. I’ve always been a pen and paper kind of girl. I never had a PDA or a Trio. I never even kept a contact list in my cell phone. What was the point when I had a school directory and address book on me at all times? I played around with a Palm Pilot for a while but while I was using it I was the most disorganized I’ve ever been in my life. Seriously! It was double work because I never fully committed to it. I would keep my handwritten calendar and then transcribe new entries into the Palm – and not always immediately. And, since this era was pre-LikeWear it wasn’t even as if my computer was on 24/7 (hard to imagine now) so syncing and backing it all up always seemed like a chore. As a result, my Palm was never completely accurate or up to date – and as a result, neither was I.

About 2 years ago, I got a Blackberry. It forever changed my email life. But at that time, I still (to the incredulous, head-scratching, eye rolling wonder of my super-tech husband) didn’t use it for my calendar or phonebook. I didn’t see anything wrong with keeping my life organized in my Month-At-A-Glance – thank you very much! But, as LikeWear and my 3 children evolved and grew, my commitments, plans, meetings and activities, all became too much for my brain, and those small calendar boxes of only 6 lines per day, to handle. It was time for a change. That change had a name… Microsoft Outlook.

Very quickly I felt like I had acquired a personal assistant. Recorded birthdays now repeat every year without me rewriting them annually after waiting to purchase the new year’s paper calendar. Events can be color-coded to stand out or have special emphasis. And talk about bells and whistles – important meetings or events cause my computer and Blackberry to buzz, chime, beep (and practically reach through the monitor to slap me silly) each time it has to remind me to do something.

All that said, mine is still not a perfectly organized world. You see, very quickly I not only learned the joys and highs of Outlook but also its inherent weakness. You see, it is only as good as the information that you put in. Today I missed my daughter’s indoor soccer game. I had the game down for 3pm. My computer chimed at 2:30pm reminding me I needed to leave at that time in order to arrive the required 15 minutes before game time. The only problem was, the game had been changed to 1pm (apparently via an email sent out earlier in the week) and this new information had never been updated in my calendar. Ugh! And then last year there was the pre-camp get together for my son a few weeks before he left to go to sleepaway camp for the first summer. My daughter goes to a different camp and they too had a meet-and-greet the week after his. I reversed the 2 start times and we showed up at my son’s event just as it was ending. Definitely not a moment on my “mom highlight reel”.

So I guess no matter how high tech or sophisticated society gets, we can never fully escape the original governing principles of computers 101 that were taught 20+ years ago… GIGO – garbage in, garbage out. I definitely need to be more careful in the data entry department. And I recognize that mistakes are bound to happen. I just hope the next time I google GIGO, a picture of Lisa Gold doesn’t show up.