The entrepreneur’s guide to a good divorce settlement

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Here’s what happens in every meeting I have with investors: They ask about my divorce.

Many people ask about my divorce. Usually it’s because the person cares about me. But with the investors, there is no pretense. They just want to know if Nino is going to get a large percentage of my stock in the settlement. The risk to them is that at some point, Nino would have so much stock in my company that it wouldn’t be worth my time to continue doing the company. The investors want to make sure they don’t get involved in a situation like this. Read more

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Five things that are about to stop sucking at work

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I used to write about my brother Erik a lot. I wrote about how I retooled his resume to make his dead-end job at Blockbuster into the perfect collection of achievements. Then I let him guest post while he was getting ready to quit the investment banking job he was sick of. Read more

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Job hunt tip: The mentor matters more than the company

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I noticed in the New York Times Book Review last week, there was a nice review of Jim Krusoe’s new book, Girl Factory. I was happy to see that, because Jim Krusoe was my first—and most influential—writing teacher. Read more

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Three bad career questions people ask me all the time

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I’d like to tell you that there are no bad questions. But you know what? That’s not true. So here are the ways people ask me questions that drive me nuts:

1. You ask me a career question for your wife.
The first problem with you walking around in the world telling people you need help for your wife/girlfriend is why can she not ask for herself? I can only imagine that she does not see her problem the same way you do. And in that case you should butt out. Or, maybe she does not want to ask for help. And in that case you should butt out, too, because who are you to tell her she needs help when she doesn’t want it and then go get it for her anyway? Read more

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Figure out how much you should be paid (and three cheers for transparent salaries)

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Do you know the salary of every employee at your company? I think you should.

I mean, who is being protected by secret salaries? Certainly not the employee—the more transparent salaries are, the more accurately an employee can assess his or her value to a company. Read more

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Gen X are the revolutionaries (and the NYT coverage of shared care stinks)

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How ironic that right after I post about dangers of Mommy Porn, the New York Times exacerbates this problem to include men. Take a look at the insipid photo that illustrates the article about shared care by Lisa Belkin. Read more

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Stop blaming your Blackberry for your lack of self-discipline

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Are you thinking your Blackberry use is out of control and you need to turn it off? Forget it. The problem is not the Blackberry, it’s you.

The Blackberry actually gives you the freedom to effectively mix your personal life and work life so that they don’t have to compete with each other. Read more

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How I started taming my workaholic tendencies

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After my first visit to the farm, I quickly invited myself back. “I’m coming there without my kids,” I told him.

When I got there, he made me hamburger that was shaped a little too much like how it might have looked in the cow’s body, and then he asked me what I wanted. Read more

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How to sell anything to anyone

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People are always asking me what our business model is for Brazen Careerist. Now that we have a network of 150 great bloggers, we are focusing on companies. A lot of companies come to us asking for access to the bloggers. Not surprisingly, companies want to recruit from the bloggers and their friends. But we think what the bloggers want is good conversation. Read more

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How to identify someone who is giving you bad advice

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The worst career advice I ever gave was to my brother’s college roommate, Robert Buckley. He was one year out of college when he asked me if he should quit healthcare consulting to become an actor.

I said, No, that’s the dumbest idea I ever heard. Read more

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