Esther Wojcicki wrote her book, How to Raise Successful People, so she could take credit for her daughters’ success: “I raised two CEOs and a doctor. These are my secrets to parenting successful children.” Here are Esther’s five stunningly obvious secrets: trust, respect, independence, collaboration, and kindness. Read more
The last time I wrote a post with this title, I wrote that women need a stay-at-home husband. And clearly, I was wrong, because later research showed that women who are breadwinners with stay-at-home husbands are headed for divorce.
When I was looking at apartments I didn’t notice the incredibly noisy construction right outside our windows. I attribute this oversight to the same phenomena that happens in the video where you count basketball passes – if you have never seen the video stop everything and go watch it. Read more
I arrive in San Francisco and it takes me fifteen minutes in Melissa’s apartment for her to start crying about that she is not married. “I don’t want to have kids alone. I’m not doing that,” she says. Read more
My brother was getting his Ph.D in chemistry last week, and my mom and dad and my two brothers and I went to the dissertation defense. I would like to tell you what my brother talked about but I have no idea. Seriously. The topic was alcohol dehydrogenase.
I remember from the chemistry class I failed in high school that -ase is a suffix that means something. I just can’t remember what. And let me tell you, listening to my brother talk about whatever he was talking about cleared up nothing in the suffix department. Or in any other department.
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This webinar will show you how to use a blog to meet your goals. It includes five days of of video sessions and email-based course materials. You can purchase this workshop for anytime, on-demand access. The cost is $195.
The webinar people ask for most often is one about how to blog. So, here it is! By the end of the course, whatever your goals are for yourself or your company, you will know how to leverage a blog to meet them. I’ve been blogging for ten years and I have received hundreds of awards for my blog. I’ve also made about $300K a year from my blog for a long time, and that revenue is almost never from banner ads. I’ll show you creative ways to make money from blogging and creative ways to think about goals for your career that go far beyond how much money you make.
Here’s an outline of what we’ll cover: Read more
I think I am finally going to have a reality TV show. I have had maybe ten production companies tell me they want to do some kind of TV show with me. And all ten have backed out at various stages of making the show. So I have learned that dealing with TV people is like dealing with rich bankers who can buy any woman they want. I know it will probably be a one-night stand when they realize that I am weirder in person than on my blog.
Do you know how I know that I’m weirder in person than on my blog? Because I ask people. I ask people all the time about how they perceive me and what they expect and if I meet expectations. You might think it sounds insecure, but it doesn’t. Because most people are scared to ask so direct a question. They are scared of the answer. I have found, though, that the more I know about how other people perceive me, the more self-confident I feel about who I am. Because I know who I am.
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Sheryl Sandberg, the woman who runs Facebook, has said that the most important career choice you’ll make is who you marry.
I have to agree with this statement. Here’s why:
If you marry someone with a big career and you want to have a big career you have to find that rare mate who can treat you as an equal, even when your career needs to come first. These are very tough marriages to hold together because there is a constant, never-ending re-balancing of priorities and power between spouses.
If you marry a breadwinner who expects their career to come first, then things will probably only work if you can support that. Even if you have a career of your own. This is the easiest marriage to hold together (if any marriage can be called easy) as long as the man is the breadwinner.
If you marry someone who is terrible at earning money, or someone who is good at earning money but doesn’t want to, then you will have to take responsibility for earning the money.
In each of these cases, your career decisions are largely determined by who you choose as your mate.
If the idea of being in a long-term, committed relationship makes you sick, you should stop reading now, and click over to Beatrice de Guigne’s stunning parody of wedding photography, featuring Barbie and Ken. If you still hold out hope for marriage, here are my five favorite ways to get a spouse: Read more
It is harder to know who you are than it is to be who you are. Everyone says, “The important thing is to be yourself!” I say that when I give them career advice. People like you better when you are being authentic. Gay people do better in their careers when they are out of the closet. Women do better at work if they are feminine at work instead of trying to be like the guys.
But there is very little advice on HOW to be yourself.
1. Don't be boring.
On the way to our board meeting today, it was me, and Ryan Paugh, and Ryan Healy, in a car, running late. Ryan Healy told me not to write about him on the blog anymore, but I think only because I used to write about him like he was my little brother or something. At this point, Ryan Healy is COO of the company, so I think I can write about him because really, how can I undermine him when I'm agreeing to report to him?
So I'm riding in the car with Ryan and Ryan and I finished my needlepoint and I didn't have anything left to occupy my hands during the board meeting. I know that as a board member, and the majority shareholder in the company, I'm supposed to be enthralled at these meetings, but honestly I find them largely very slow and repetitive. (I know I am not the only one who feels this way because another board member went to the bathroom and when he came back and found out that we waited for him, he was disappointed.)
Anyway, I was in the car with them and I was panicking that I didn't have anything to do in the board meeting except listen to the board meeting. Then I said, “I think I'll pop a Xanax.”
And no one said anything. Ryan and Ryan are largely bored with my antics. Read more
I am going to be a better person at self-promotion because I don't brag enough. Ryan Paugh, who was basically my intern when I met him, and now he’s almost my boss and definitely my social-skills mentor, tells me that I am popular because I’m interesting but that I suck at self-promotion. (He uses, as an example, the day I promoted an event on my blog a few hours after it actually happened.)
I do not tell Ryan to shut up because he has taught me a ton about myself since the day I started working with him. And in fact, he makes me feel qualified to tell you how you can fire up your career by paying close attention to the people with the least work experience.
1. Recognize interns are gatekeepers to the good stuff.
When it was time to promote my second book, I went to Keith Ferrazzi, author of one of my favorite career advice books. I needed a quotation from Keith that said something like, “I am The Great Keith Ferazzi and I can tell you for sure that your career will be crap and you will die drowning in the blood of a rabid coyote if you do not buy Penelope Trunk's book.”
Just so you don't get confused, I'm going to start calling my first book my first book and my second book my second book. At this point, I have written enough about oral sex and family atrocities that you will not be shocked to hear that my first book is really a memoir that my publisher – out of the University of Colorado — decided was too disturbing to be sold as a memoir, so it was published as a novel. Read more