Book tour: Cleveland, Monday May 7, 6:30pm at Artefino

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Hello everyone in Cleveland. I’ll be there Monday night, and after years of writing columns and blogging, I’m really excited to meet people face-to-face.

I’ll be at Artefino at 6:30, with no particular agenda except to get to know you. If there is a small crowd, we can have coffee and chat. If there’s a large crowd, I’ll speak about something — maybe the book, maybe my plane flight, who knows…

The book isn’t out yet. So I won’t be selling it there. You could say this is sort of a pre-book tour stop on the book tour. I look forward to seeing you!

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Five ways to make career change easier

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Most of us will change careers at least three times in our lives. And most of us will be nervous at one point or another in the process.

Invariably, you’re giving up the known to pursue the unknown. So, even if you hate your current career, it’s still scary to give it up.

Five Steps to a New Life

I have a lot of experience in this arena. I’ve changed careers a lot, going from professional beach volleyball player to software marketer to entrepreneur to freelance writer. While I was doing that, my husband changed careers three times in five years.

Each change was different and difficult in its own way for both of us. But I’ve learned some tricks along the way to make career changes easier.

Here are five ideas to consider in your own career change:

1. Test things out before you make the leap.

You don’t need to quit your current job to get started in a new career. Give yourself a chance to test things out. Try it on vacation or on the weekend. Try an internship — there’s no rule that says an intern has to be 19 years old.

It’s very hard to predict what you’ll like. Once you admit this and really try things out, you’re much more likely to be accurate about what you’re well-suited to do next.

The most effective way to make the very serious move of changing careers is to try out that career in a not-so-serious way. I’ve done this in the past, and I once discovered that I didn’t end up liking the new career. This tactic can save you a lot of large missteps.

2. Talk about your change in a way that will make it happen.

When people ask you what you do — or, even better, what you want to do — you need an effective answer. Tell people what you’re aiming to do and why it makes sense. This little speech is what will allow people to help you make that career change.

Laura Allen, co-founder of 15 Second Pitch, helps people figure out what to say when they want to make a career change. The key to answering the question “what do you do” is knowing yourself and knowing why you want to change. Once you know that, the pitch will come more easily.

3. Keep your significant other in the loop.

A career change is so emotionally and financially profound that it’s practically a joint decision if you’re living with a significant other. I learned this the hard way, when my husband changed careers.

As a career advisor, I had a lot of opinions about what he should be doing, but I didn’t want to step on his toes so I tried to leave him alone to make the decisions himself. But I started getting nervous about the instability his choices might create.

There’s a definite balance you need to strike between wanting to support your partner in chasing his or her career dreams, and wanting to maintain sanity in the relationship while the chase is on. Keeping your partner in the loop, not just about what you’re doing but also what you’re thinking, can go a long way toward creating a team feeling.

4. Make the change before you go nuts.

Most people hold out in a career until it’s clear that it’s not for them. All change is hard. We like to be stimulated and interested, but most of us don’t like constant change. It’s too stressful, so we find ways to avoid it.

The problem is that if you put off change for too long you compromise your ability to orchestrate it. I spent a lot of my career with the bad habit of letting myself bottom out before I made a big change, so take it from me — the change is much harder to manage when you’re operating from a place of desperation and exhaustion.

5. Downplay financial issues.

I write a lot about how you don’t need a lot of money to be happy. In fact, research shows that you only need $40,000 to be happy, and that the rest of the money you earn has little impact on your happiness.

But Tim Ferriss takes this one step further. In his book, “The 4-Hour Workweek,” he starts with the idea that time and flexibility are worth more in life than money. So when you think about if you can afford to make the change, think in terms of your net gain in time and flexibility rather than in money.

Anticipating the Risk

Career change is always risky. But if you have a good understanding of why you’re leaving your current career and choosing the new one, the clarity can give you the strength to endure instability and uncertainty.

At some point, your self-awareness will make the career change your only viable alternative. Then it’ll seem like a relatively low-risk move.

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Send: 4 words that sound nice when spoken, but not in email

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By Will Schwalbe — Some of the most polite things people say can take on a totally different character when you write them in an email or in an IM or text message. Here are some examples.

1. Please
We are taught from an early age to say “please” when we ask for things. “Can I have some milk” doesn’t, in most houses, get milk to the requester. It has to be, “Please, can I have some milk.” (In the home of an English teacher, it would need to be, “Please, may I have some milk,” but that’s another matter).

So we are conditioned to believe that “please” is a polite word. And it can be, when it’s said politely. But it’s also often used in a preemptory, scolding, or sarcastic tone. “Please remember” usually has the implication of, “You’ve been told this before. Why can’t you remember? Is it so hard?” The same goes for “Please make sure to….” or “Please don’t forget…” or, basically, the word “please” with any command other than something obviously and overwhelmingly positive like “be my guest” or “help yourself” or “stay as long as you like.”

Curiously, in the very informal research my co-author David Shipley and I conducted, we found that the abbreviation “pls” doesn’t carry this scolding tone. But, as with all abbreviations, it’s clearly more appropriate for casual communication.

2. Okay and fine
These usually sound upbeat in speech but deflating in print. We live in a culture of hyperbole, and both words have suffered from it. In email, “great” equals “fine” and “good” equals “okay.” So it’s a good idea to make the substitution if you don’t want to disappoint. This is especially true when the words appear alone. If you write someone a long and detailed proposal and get back one word, and that word is “fine” or “okay,” it appears to be anything but. And who can forget the immortal phrase “Fine, ferget it,” from the Travolta/Winger classic Urban Cowboy? The exasperated way it was said is exactly how it looks on a screen.

3. Thank you
The problem with “thank you” comes not when you use it after someone has done something for you, but when you use it before the person has done the thing. When you thank someone in advance, it’s really a command disguised as premature gratitude. So, “Thank you for bringing the donuts to the meeting” is nice if the meeting has occurred and the donuts were brought. But it’s galling to be thanked if the meeting is yet to take place, and really infuriating if the meeting has taken place and you were supposed to bring the donuts and forgot. Then it’s pure sarcasm.

Will Schwalbe is the co-author with David Shipley of Send: The Essential Guide to Email for Office and Home.

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Figure out what you really want by writing letters to yourself

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People often tell me that I should answer more questions from readers. I do actually answer a lot of questions, but I don’t put them in a Q&A format. People say they like the Q&A format. But I don’t believe people like it as much as they say they do.

I confess, however, to really liking Dan Savage’s Q&A column. But I think he makes up his own questions. Which makes me feel free to do a Q&A column where I make up all the questions myself.

Question #1

Dear Penelope,
What should I do to look more like a leader?

Signed,
Penelope's old boss

Dear Sir,
Stop biting your nails! Remember that Monday team meeting when you tried to get us excited about sales goals? When we asked about looming layoffs, you started biting your nails in between the it'll-be-okay sentences. I remember you putting your fingers in your mouth, trying to get one more millimeter. Bloody tips. I knew I was going to be laid off.

You are a nice guy, and so smart, but you seem to have no knowledge of how you come across to other people. Biting nails does not convey self-confidence. And no one wants to be lead by a nail-biter. People who bite their nails at work amaze me: Do you think biting nails is any more appropriate than pulling out hair at work? It is psychologically the same thing: compulsive, nervous, unrestrained.

Do people keep up this habit when they are feeling great about themselves? No. In other words, leaders don't do this stuff (and if so, never in public). You think nail biting is small, innocuous. But really, you kill your credibility. And you did it way before the layoffs, mister.

Question #2

Dear Penelope,
How did you do so well in business when you got an F in my chemistry class?

Signed,
Penelope's high school chemistry teacher

Dr. Mr. X
First of all, you were so incredibly good looking that you must believe that I really did want to get to class. I just couldn't fit it into my schedule. I had a free period before chemistry and all my friends had a free period during chemistry. I was compelled to think of those two periods as a double-header block of time to hang out.

And thank you for trying to give me a D, really. Your efforts were valiant, especially when you gave me the smartest guy in the class for a lab partner.

Fortunately, study after study shows that kids who do poorly in school can do very well in the real world. The things that really matter in the real world are not chemistry lab tests (unless you want to be a chemist.) The things that matter are perseverance, passion and risk-taking – all attributes that, quite frankly, I exhibited as I ditched chemistry class.

Question #3

Dear Penelope,
You are so talented and insightful, but I am just a little more talented and insightful. So I'd like to mentor you. Can you please send your phone number to me so I can start investing my time and energy in you immediately?

Signed,
Your Fairy Godmother

Hold it. Why does no one send this mail? Getting a mentor is hard, even for Penelope, who constantly writes about how important it is to get a mentor and is always on the prowl. This shows why the Q&A exercise is a good one for everyone: If you write enough letters you'll discover what you’d most like to receive in the mail.

And you will realize that it will never arrive. But before you can reach any goal in this world, you have to know that you want it. So take the first step, and write yourself letters until one strikes you as especially important. And that will help you to focus on what you really want right now.

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Forget about the wage gap. What about the Web 2.0 gap?

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There is a media feeding frenzy over the last study released from the American Association of University Women Educational Foundation about the wage gap: All hands on deck! Women don’t make as much as men do! There is a lot of hoop-la about this study, which says that the wage gap happens immediately upon entry after graduation. Here is the Associated Press article that got picked up everywhere.

I have written before about how the reason women don’t make as much as men is that when women have kids, they are more distracted by them than men are. Even if men and women have the same experience and are in the same job, and they both have kids, the woman will probably earn less. So the wage gap comes when women have kids.

But this is not shocking because most parents will tell you that in the case of all things being equal, the woman will be the one who interviews the nanny, not the man. The small things add up and it’s not far fetched to say that on balance, women who work in an office spend more time taking care of kids than men who work in an office. So, the wage gap is not going to change until this changes. (Men, here is a secret about women: In front of you, your wife says you are an equal parent. On girls’ night out, it’s a different story.)

The person who did interviews about the study is Catherine Hill. I like her a lot. She has spent a lot of time on the phone with me letting me argue with her about her research.

So this time, it turns out that the pay gap between genders in business is dramatically smaller than other professions, like science professors, and the mean of the gap is skewed. In fact, the pay gap between genders in business is so small that Hill says the gap is “statistically not significant.” Yet no one is reporting this.

I also asked her why a pay gap matters. I told her I think it only matters if women are not as happy as men at work. Hill says this is very hard to study–workplace happiness. So she studies wage gap instead. I would argue, though, that it’s an irrelevant topic. If we don’t know the harm in a gap, then we can’t decide what to do about it. And I think it would be tough to argue right now that women are not as happy as men are at work.

So if they are equally happy then maybe the issue of pay gap puts too much emphasis on money and not enough on happiness. Tim Ferriss is the author of a book that has catapulted to the top ranks of Amazon: The Four-Hour Work Week. One of the most interesting ideas of this book is that money is not a primary goal. Rather, quality of life is the end goal, and the yard stick for measuring your success. And quality of life is not about money earned but how you bring time and mobility into your life. Ferriss lays great groundwork for a discussion of why the wage gap doesn’t matter. I suggest we take Ferriss’ cue and concern ourselves not with the wage gap between genders, but the time gap.

Or, here’s another idea. Instead of worrying about the wage gap let’s worry about the Web 2.0 gap. The second round of the Internet revolution is being run largely by men. In fact, as tech companies need less and less marketing, the usual spots for women in tech companies are disappearing. And as the barrier to entry gets lower and lower, and founders get younger and younger, the hours people put in to start a company verge on 100% of waking time, something that women seem to be just plain not interested in doing.

I am not sure what should be done about the Web 2.0 gap. I have a feeling that it ends up getting more and more male centric–just like video games. For example, most blogs are aimed at technical types. Something we might be able to overcome. Yet the most prominent blog ranking site, Technorati, ranks blogs based on how many people link to them. So a blog catering to people who don’t blog themselves would be ranked lower in the blogosphere. The subtle burying of women’s voices online.

I’m not sure if it’s a big deal or not. But I am definitely sure the time gap and the Web 2.0 gap are having more impact on the business opportunities women see than that statistically irrelevant pay gap is. It’s just that the mainstream media is accustomed to writing about pay gap, and not about who is playing poker with the founders of Digg and who is playing Xbox with the founders of Reddit.

But look, if you want to make sure you’re getting your fair share, don’t be afraid to negotiate salary, sure. But before that, get clear on what you want in your life and your career. Don’t get derailed by letting someone else frame your issues for you.

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Twentysomething: Constantly laying groundwork for the next career move

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By Ryan Healy — A question I have been thinking about for months is, what is more beneficial to a young person’s career; putting in the extra time to do great work for a company that undervalues them, or finding a hobby that will positively contribute to the career they hope to have in the long run?

For me, the answer is the latter. Until I find the perfect career that I yearn for, I will keep searching for areas that interest me outside of work. Searching requires time and effort outside of work, but my career is my personal responsibility, so I refuse to rely solely on a company to develop the skills necessary to become successful in the business world.

When I first started out in the corporate world I listened to all of the typical corporate advice. I networked within my company as much as I could. I tried my best to do amazing work to prove myself to my managers. I stayed around the office until my superiors went home. I did everything in my power to get noticed within the company. And of course, I sucked up to every bigwig I happened to meet.

Wow was I wrong. Listening to this advice and doing all of these things probably are really good for my career — if I want to go to the corner office. But working 20 years to make it to the corner office is the last thing on my mind right now, and statistics show that I probably won’t even stick around long enough to make it the corner cubicle.

So I’ve decided to work hard and participate in some of the office politics. But I’m going to devote a large portion of my time to a new hobby that will probably be more valuable to my career in the long run– blogging.

Most of my friends don’t love their jobs and aren’t sure what they want to do. Of course, many of them just go through the motions at work and relish in their “play time,” which is completely respectable; but some of my most motivated friends are trying to find their next hobby that could spark a great career.

My girlfriend Niki really wants to help children with disabilities. So she wrote some emails and made some calls to local learning centers. Two days later she had leads on multiple volunteer opportunities. Niki found a new hobby that allows her to test the waters in her new field of interest and potential career.

My friend and blog partner Ryan Paugh is teaching himself about web design and plans to take a class to improve his skills. Ryan knows that working hard and networking at his current writing job can be somewhat beneficial to his career. But his new web interest will probably do more for his career in the long run.

One of my friends spends his free time writing screen plays for a potential future in the movie business. Another friend is so bored with work that he decided to take advantage of downtime at work and he’s learning Spanish.

Investing all of your energy into a corporate job is extremely limiting. If I love my current line of work and want to climb the corporate ladder all the way to the top, then making the right contacts, waiting around the office for my supervisor to leave and sucking up to the bigwigs might be the best career move. But my current work probably isn’t what I will do for the rest of my life, and anyway there is always a risk of being fired. So I will do good work, network a little, and put the rest of my energy into a hobby that just might take me where I really want to go.

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Book tour dates: Cleveland 5/7 and Atlanta 6/4

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My book tour will include a lot more cities than this. But these are my test cities, to see how much interest there is coming from the blog.

I’m going to do a sort of get-together thing (not sure what) in both of these cities. If you are interested in joining me in Cleveland or Atlanta, can you please send a quick email to penelope@penelopetrunk.com to let me know?

Also, if you have a great idea about what I should set up in either of these cities, please tell me that, too.

Thanks. I’m really looking forward to meeting people face to face.

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Interview tips, from media consultants. And results, from me.

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As part of my book promotion tour, my publisher sent me to media training with Clarity Media Group. I thought the media trainer would talk with me about being on television — how to sit, where to put my hands, what to wear. Instead, he focused on how to not be a loose cannon.

I know this about myself — that I have a sub-standard edit button. It is not uncommon that our biggest strength is also our biggest weakness. In my case, I’m good at saying what I really think, but in some situations I need to be better at saying the second thing that comes to mind instead of the first.

A good example of this problem is my sex analogies. I don’t know why, but sex seems like an appropriate analogy for almost every point I’ve wanted to make, ever. My editor at Business 2.0 told me early on that I need to stop writing references to sex in my column, and when I didn’t, he just deleted them without asking me.

Five years later, when I had not gotten much better about it, Marci Alboher, a woman I trust, told me I should stop talking about sex because I risk offending people. Actually, she specified a sex act. Which I reference a lot, but need to stop referencing, and will not say here to prove that I am not too old a dog to learn new tricks.

So, anyway, the media trainer spent a lot of time teaching me how to edit myself better as I’m talking out loud.

Luckily, most of his advice was about preparing beforehand. Knowing what answer you’re going to give way before you have to field a question. This is very similar to advice I have given about getting a job, so you should pay attention whether you are being interviewed by the press or by a potential employer. Here’s a quote from the material my media trainer gave me.

“Don’t try to prepare for every possible question that could arise. Determine the 6-8 topics that are likely to come up during your interview and then:

a. Hone a key message for each topic.

b. Identify anecdotes you can tell that illustrate each message.

c. Prepare specific examples or compelling data to prove your point.

d. Think of clever analogies if appropriate.

Think of these interviews as the equivalent of a good movie trailer, in which your quest is to independently drive to the very best scenes, anecdotes and newsworthy revelations in the book.”

Here’s an example of me putting all that training into action: Peter Clayton interviewed me for Total Picture Radio. He is a total pro. I am not quite there. You will notice that after all that training, I still made a reference to sex.

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Employee loyalty isn’t gone, it’s just different

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Today, people in their 20s change jobs every two years. This frustrates employers, who say, “Why should I hire someone who is going to leave? I need someone who is loyal.”

At the same time, employees look at the work they are given and say, “How can I spend my days doing work that doesn’t mean anything to me?”

Ironically, the way to make your work more meaningful is to be more loyal. This doesn’t mean you can’t quit in three months. It means that you have to be loyal while you are there. And in this way, the idea of workplace loyalty is changing: Loyalty is not dead, but you have to ask yourself, what are you loyal to?

It’s a great job market for young people today. Among college graduates the unemployment rate is less than 2 percent. The problem is finding meaningful work. But this task doesn’t need to be as hard as people make it.

You don’t need to be saving lives. You need to work at a place that contributes to your core needs, in a way that gives you the opportunity to express passions in significant ways.

One of the most common ways of finding meaning at work is through personal development. “Loyalty as a function of time is a dated idea,” says Jaerid Rossi, process engineer at Specialty Minerals of Canaan, Conn. “Work is only appealing if there’s constant learning.”

But loyalty is a layered concept, and for many this includes the power of a company’s brand.

“Organizations are not a source of security but they are a source of identity,” says Bill Taylor, cofounder of the magazine Fast Company and coauthor of the book, Mavericks at Work: Why the Most Original Minds in Business Win.

So find a company that you want to attach your identity to.

In this way, you are searching for a company that deserves your loyalty. Its brand will be in line with your own values and the image you have of yourself. For example, Steve Rubel runs the blog Micro Persuasion, but he is also an employee at Edelman, a public relations agency that has an image of being forward thinking about technology. Edelman adds a nice element to Rubel’s identity so it makes sense that Rubel would be loyal.

“Edelman’s success online reaffirms in peoples’ minds that I’m with a company whose values I share,” he says.

Loyalty doesn’t always satisfy image-building, though. For instance you can be loyal to a cause, such as the examples cited by Taylor: “People at ING Direct really feel like they are bringing some sense of sanity to an increasingly insane consumer finance culture. In Mavericks at Work, people are loyal to what they want to do in the world. For example, most people at Netflix are true movie fanatics and they believe popular entertainment is better in America because of Netflix.”

If you want to help homeless kids, you can work at many different types of organizations that fight homelessness, and while you might not feel huge dedication to a particular organization, your enthusiasm to the cause will keep you loyal to the work. You can carry your loyalty from company to company.

Taylor explains that “People can [also] be loyal to a cause or to a technology. For example, they think Ajax is the greatest software in the world. They can also be loyal to colleagues and team.”

The common thread in all this loyalty, though, is being part of something bigger than yourself. You cannot give up everything for your company, but being loyal to nothing is equally disconcerting.

“People are their best when they have obligations not only to themselves, but to other people as well. People do their best work when they identify themselves as part of a team or a project.”

Rossi echoes this sensibility: “For me, the services a company provides must somehow be beneficial to the employees and the community around it. I need to understand what the company’s goals are and I need to share that vision.”

What can employers do to attract new loyalists? Find a mission that they believe in. If they don’t believe in it, they’ll never be able to convince other people. And remember that people can feel affiliated to an organization without having to work 70 hours a week.

In fact, some of the most loyal employees are those whose company arranged working situations to accommodate very strong loyalties such as family or athletic endeavors. Even a company that has little mission to speak of can gain extreme loyalty from employees by easing the employee’s individual mission. Among Microsoft loyalists, for example, are those who rely on its outstanding insurance coverage for children with autism.

So figure out your needs and passions, and cast a wide net for the company that could fill them. You’d be surprised at the number of companies that can make you feel like work is meaningful. Similarly, employers will be surprised at the intense loyalty there is to be had from this generation of job hoppers.

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Coachology: How to get a book deal

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The good news about getting a contract for a nonfiction book is that you don’t have to write the book to sell it. You just have to write the proposal. The bad news is that often authors spend four or five months figuring out what the proposal is.

Where agents earn their commission is helping the author to understand what they should be writing a book about. Last week, my agent, Susan Rabiner, laid out seven tips for writing a better proposal. And this week’s Coachology will be 90 minutes of free help from her to get your proposal into shape. Or, if your initial idea doesn’t work, she’ll help you to come up with something else.

For those of you who think 90 minutes is too long, I just got a contract for my second book — to be published in 2008 — and I spent the last five months writing proposals until I got it right. I’d say that I spent about 900 minutes on the phone with Susan, but after 90 minutes you will at least know what you need to work on.

If you’re interested in working with Susan, please send a three-sentence summary of your proposal (include the idea and your qualifications to write it) by the end of the day on April 29.

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