More people and companies declare bankruptcy in January than in any other month, and certainly this year will be no exception. Many more people will not technically declare bankruptcy, but they will feel financially battered.
There is hope, though. There are tricks to being in a financial hole. I know because I've been there. In fact, you could say I fell off a financial cliff.
My stampede toward that cliff began when I got funding for an Internet company and cashed out of that company in the span of about five months. I started another company, and feeling like I was the most brilliant businessperson on earth, I invested my own money. I got a round of funding and paid myself (and my friends) extremely well.
Then the Internet bubble exploded, and my company was one at the epicenter. The first thing I did was tried to protect the people at my company. I gave as much notice as possible, so they could save money, and I helped everyone update their resumes as a last, hopeful act.
Then I was on my own. No more cushy, jet-set salary. No more juicy stack of stock options. I lost the pile of money I made, and I was lucky to get away with a portion of my savings intact.
I spent a lot of time getting out of financial commitments: the personal assistant, the BMW, the trips to Europe. And no more investing in friends' companies.
But financial ruin is like death, and I spent a good amount of time in the denial stage. So I didn't cut all the obvious expenses right away. It was gradual. As in, I gradually ruined myself even more, and then I cut down my expenses to a sustainable level.
I spent a lot of time with lawyers, which was a stupid idea because they did nothing for me except listen to me bitch about bankruptcy law. One lawyer could see that, more than legal advice, I needed life advice. He said, “Almost all business owners fail once or twice. The people who make it big are the people who can bounce back and do something new.”
But I was not in a position to be a good listener. I was thinking about if he would charge me for the time he was giving unsolicited advice.
I spent a lot of time with friends — eating cheap sandwiches. Some of my friends dumped me when my company went bankrupt. Okay, they weren't really my friends if they dumped me for that, but still, I felt embarrassed and isolated. My remaining friends were sympathetic for a while, but soon they said, “Okay, it's over. You failed. But you can start something new.”
This is when the lawyer's advice came back to me — suddenly sounding like it was worth $200 an hour. I thought a lot about what sort of life I wanted to lead. How much money I really needed. And it turned out that I didn't need as much as I had thought. So I cut down my expenses drastically while I thought about what I really wanted to do.
I took swing-dancing lessons. I danced every night for a year while I thought about what to do next. Friends would call and I'd say, “Sorry, I can't talk. The band goes on in a half-hour.” My friends thought I was crazy, but you need to do something a little crazy in order to gain distance from your failure. If you go right back to the life you were leading, it's hard to find perspective.
When I went back to corporate life, I tried a few things at once: I accepted a job in a new industry, I investigated starting a new company, and I did freelance writing. As it turns out, the freelance writing is what was best for my next step. But this is a step I would never have taken if my company had not gone belly-up.
The saying that failure breeds opportunity is true. First you have to sulk. Then you have to explore. But you will find something that excites you, and you will try again. And maybe you will fall off a financial cliff again in your life. But the next time, you'll be an expert.
Here's a way to kill your career: Have a messy office.
Here are things that people with messy offices say: My work gets done; I know where everything is; People are too concerned about appearances.
All these things could be true. But here is what is also true: If your desk is a mess you look like you're totally out of control.
The FBI has known for decades that you can judge someone by their workspace, which is why the FBI has special investigators who visit the offices of criminals. The FBI doesn't publish their data on this type of investigation, but the University of Texas does. And a study conducted there found that people with messy offices are less efficient, less organized and less imaginative then people with clean desks.
Some of you who are stubborn (and delusional) are saying, “So what? That's not me.” But even if you are definitely sure that you are as efficient in your messy office as your neighbor is in her clean office, your co-workers don't see it that way. The study also found that people perceived messy workers to be inefficient, unimaginative workers.
A messy desk undermines your career in subtle ways. If you are the owner of the company, you give the impression that you cannot handle your position and the company is in trouble. If you are in middle management, when someone is giving away a plumb assignment, she does not think of you because you give the impression that it will go into a pile and never come out. Even if you get every project done well, the perception will be that you don't.
Still not convinced? Would you ever go to work in striped pants and a striped shirt? Why not? You could still do your job. But people would not perceive that you could still do your job, because appearances are powerful, and someone who dresses in a goofy, unconventional way does not inspire confidence. Appearances matter, and the desk in your office is as important as the clothes on your back.
Managers, take note: This study goes both ways. So if you are thinking of promoting someone, you are probably making the wrong decision if the person's desk is a mess. Either they are in over their head, or they do not care, but either way, they will not instill confidence in the people below them. In most cases, messy desker should be passed up for someone who is neat.
Take a tip from GE, a company known for developing outstanding managers throughout its ranks. GE requires everyone to have a sparkling clean desk each night when they go home. This makes sense — GE attempts to make everyone a potential manager by preventing people from undermining themselves.
Some of you might call this rule draconian. I can hear you now, “A messy desk is an expression of who I am.” This is probably true. I believe that a messy desk is a reflection of what is in someone's head. But you need a clear head in order to be creative and efficient in ways that make your work a reflection of your best self.
So take some time this month to clean up your office and create an organized system for maintaining cleanliness. If GE refuses to keep messy desks in its ranks, then you should, too. Start with your own, and then take a look at the people who report to you.
It's salary review season. Most managers conduct performance reviews at the beginning of the year, and most performance reviews entail some sort of salary review. Don't get your hopes up for a raise though. In this economy, many companies have a salary freeze, and no one's coming out of the cold any time soon.
By all means, prepare rationales as to why you should receive a raise. But in the likely event that your boss cannot budge, suggest ways that your boss can reward you for your good performance without giving you a raise.
On the company balance sheet, a raise is very expensive. It's a fixed, recurring cost, and the additional benefits and taxes make the raise even more costly for your company. Your suggestions should be one-time expenses, which are easier to justify to the holder of purse strings. Better yet, suggest something that is free to the company.
1. More vacation days. Go for the gold: ask for three extra weeks and bargain down from there. Take a long break now, while the economy is sluggish and opportunities are scarce.
2. Flex time. You could work one day from home. Or, if you are like 80% of office workers, and you know you'll get nothing done from home, ask your boss if you can work four long days and have one day off. This is a good time to hone your work/life balance.
3.Training. Be creative with this request. Recognize one of your weaknesses and find a top-tier class to deal with it – Try public speaking (TAI Resources is great — and thousands of dollars a day), or leadership. (Tony Robbins is $10K plus airfare to some chi-chi island.)
4. Another salary review in June. This promise is free to your boss, and an easy way to get you off his back right now. Get the promise in writing, but realize that a promise for a review is still not a promise for a raise.
5. A laptop to take home. This is a good request to make if you have a crappy computer at home. Tell your boss you will work from home and this will help her justify the expense to the keeper of the purse strings. (Do not actually do any work from home, though. After all, you didn't get a raise. Instead start that pet project — see #8)
6. Stock options. Stock was a joke in the “?90s because it was so overvalued. But today it's not likely that you work at a company where the stock is overvalued (if you do — fight hard for a raise!) So ask for some stock now, before accounting rules change and stock grants cost your company money on the balance sheet.
7. A plumb project. Look around the company for a project coming up that will make big impact on the company's bottom line. Ask your boss if you can manage that project. It won't get you a raise now, but it'll set you up for a big one down the line.
8. A pet project. If there's no big project you can ask for, what about conjuring up your own project? Figure out what skills you need to add to your resume and create a project that will get you those skills.
When you are negotiating with your boss for a substitute for a raise, the thing to remember is that recessions don't last forever. So instead of focusing on salary now, use this time to put yourself in a good position for when the economy improves. The raise will come a little later, but you will be in line for a bigger one.
Even though it's not cool to complain about your job in a recession, people do. And one of the most common complaints I hear is that the job “isn't creative enough.” But most of the lack of creativity people pin on their jobs really comes from inside themselves.
Creative thinkers approach whatever they do – painting, sculpture or business — with innovative ideas. Are you really as creative as you say you are? Here's a quick checklist: creative people have high standards, inherent intensity, and an obsession with coming up with something new. If you are a creative person who complains about being stifled in the business world, unleash your creativity on business problems, and you are likely to be happier in your job and promoted more often.
Business building is inherently creative, and people who get to the top are people who consistently think of creative solutions for business problems. Think of your favorite strategy games — they all involve creative thinking. Business is just like those games; if you approach a problem in a different way from your competitors, you are more likely to pull ahead. Think about Bill Gates — he realized that he could take other peoples' products and market the products more creatively than the original producer. Or how about David Neeleman at Jet Blue? He approached customer satisfaction differently than all the other airlines, and surprise: People want leather seats more than they want bad airline food.
But don't forget to be practical in your creative thinking. If you don't want to be practical, you should be a visual artist. But let me tell you something — you get paid a hell of a lot more for creativity in the business world than you do in the art world. The good thing is that the two are very closely linked.
The current exhibit at the Plus Ultra gallery in New York is a great example of this link. The economy is bad, and the art world is hit hard because when there's recession you focus on your mortgage not your art dealer. So this gallery is showing works by the Jani Leinonen. He has developed his own business model for the art world: Pay per view. Each painting is covered with a specially treated frosted glass. You put your money in the vending machine slot next to the painting and then the frost dissipates and you see the art.
If Leinonen were in corporate America, his boss would praise him for using technology to develop a new business model for a stale market. Think of yourself as an artist at the office; notice that each business problem begs for creativity. And be happy that you have health benefits and vacation days, which you wouldn't if you showed your solutions in galleries instead of conference rooms.
Some people will say, “My boss doesn't want any creativity.” Before you say that, consider that maybe what your boss doesn't like is outlandish, shoot-from-the-hip suggestions for difficult problems — or worse yet, risky solutions to unimportant problems. But maybe it is true, that your boss does not appreciate creativity. It's probably because he is scared of risk and change. And that fear is the first problem you must solve with your new, creative approach to your job.
You can make sure next year is a good year for your career by taking charge of the areas you can control. Here are ten things you should plan to do in 2007 to help you meet your goals.
1. Make a ten-year plan
Then break it down. What ten things need to happen for your ten-year plan? Do the first thing this year. The ten-year plan takes more than ten minutes to make. It might even require a few sessions with a career coach. But if you don't form a path for the next ten years, you will go exactly where you plan to go: nowhere.
2. Find a mentor
You can get to the top a lot faster if someone is helping you. Lucky for you, people love to help, as long as you take their advice. So find a mentor. Explain your goals, and ask her for advice on how to get there. Take her out to lunch at nice restaurants — it's a tax deduction. (Doh! A boss is not a mentor. A boss is the person your mentor helps you to impress.)
3. Get seven hours of sleep a night
Studies show that sleep deprivation has the same effect on your brain as alcohol. If you're getting four hours of sleep a night you are no better than an alcoholic at work. Your thinking is slow, your patience is low, and your co-workers know you have no control over your life. A good manager can manage everything well. Start with yourself.
4. Hire someone you'd never hang out with
Diversity is a proven factor in corporate success. If you want your team to stand out in terms of productivity, you need to hire a diverse team. Diversity isn't five guys from five different fraternities. Diversity is hiring someone who scares you because she sees things so differently than you do and she will challenge you.
5. Take a public speaking lesson
You might say, “I don't have to give speeches.”
Beware of Thanksgiving. It is the holiday of disaster. It is the only national holiday when everyone in the whole country gets in a car or plane at the same time. It is the only national holiday where family members meet from far away places and do not placate each other with presents. And it is the only holiday that makes people a wreck at the workplace.
All other work holidays are a treat because order starts to disintegrate a little before the holiday, providing a sort of bonus holiday. For example, when July 4th is on a Wednesday, forget Monday and Tuesday. Those are beach days. And you can't expect United States workers to show up the week before Labor Day when all of Europe got the whole month off.
But Thanksgiving, that's something else. Unless you are in customer service, your job takes a hiatus between Thanksgiving and Christmas. This is not an official hiatus — everyone shows up for work as if they care. In fact, some people do care, but not enough people care about work during the time to accomplish anything. This makes for a completely frantic three days before Thanksgiving. The real cause of Thanksgiving disaster is a short fuse from a long week.
You can solve a lot of problems by not bringing work stress to the turkey table. This is not something you can will. You must take action. Do yoga, get a massage, read a book. Thanksgiving is vacation time; use Wednesday night to create a break between work time and vacation time. Thanksgiving is short, so if you are a person who takes four days to unwind you will miss the whole thing. Which is lame, because when you have to answer, “Why do I work?” surely part of the answer is so that you can enjoy your family and friends. So here you are. This is it. If you can't calm down from the stress of your job in order to enjoy this workweek break, then what is the point of working?
As an overworked worker contributing the Thanksgiving improvement plan, the only thing you have to do well at Thanksgiving is contribute to good dinner table conversation. Fortunately, you have practiced being a good listener at work. You can't talk over your boss without getting fired, so somewhere, somehow, you have trained yourself to not interrupt people. Use that skill at the dinner table. Surprise your little brother by letting him finish a sentence. He might be so touched that he'll say something nice about you. Besides, if you don't practice good listening in all aspects of your life then you're likely to be lazy about it at work, too.
And one more thing about conversation – Don't ask the unemployed people at the table how their job-hunt is. Because here's the answer: it sucks. If you have to talk jobs, don't make suggestions on how to get one. Really, the unemployed person has tried everything. And even if he hasn't tried everything, he doesn't want to have to talk about it at Thanksgiving, in front of aunts and uncles who lived through the depression and are like, “Why can't you just be a tailor?”
So do your best, but don't despair when things go poorly. Everyone needs a good “My Thanksgiving was so bad that” story to tell at work on Monday. After all, that’s the day work stops and the month-long conversation-at-the-cooler begins.
My friend Liz just got an offer to be director of a groundbreaking, high profile, psychology program. It's a lucrative, five-year contract. Liz is 35 and single and has tons of time to devote to her career. But she's not sure if she wants to take this offer because what she really wants is children.
Like many women in this age group, Liz spent her 20's and early 30's building her career. She has lots of experience meeting men she can manage and very little experience meeting a man she can date. (Conversation we had when the last guy stopped talking to her at dinner: Me, “Dump him.” Liz, “But you said talk isn't constant when you've been together a while.” Me, “Three weeks is not a while.”)
Her current job would be great if she had a guy lined up for kids because she could work part time, which would allow her to stay on her career path and spend a lot of time at home. But alas, there is no guy lined up. Her current job is good for online dating, too, because she can work from almost anywhere so she can conduct a broad search across county lines, (and because she can peruse Match.com from her office unnoticed.)
But Liz is antsy to have a child and even with the Internet, dating is not a fast process. So she is thinking of taking things into her own hands. She has contemplated telling a boyfriend that she is using birth control when she is not, and getting pregnant that way. But she can't get past the conversation she'd have with her teenage kid:
“Mom, why didn't my dad stick around?”
“Because I tricked him into having a kid.”
Liz has two, non-boyfriend options: buying sperm from a bank or buying a baby from Asia. Both options cost about $30,000, which is a good argument for taking the new, high paying job. The ongoing cost of childcare – which, for a single mom in her neighborhood, would be about $400 a week — is another good reason to have a high paying job. Her current job would not provide enough income to fund this baby venture.
But once she's the director of the program, she couldn't work part time, she couldn't move, and she probably couldn't even find the time to date. So for Liz, this job decision is loaded. It's the decision between holding onto the dream of a spouse and kids and a part-time job, or giving up the dream for more practical measures and going the child route alone.
Liz calls me every day to discuss her life, which has become somewhat like a horse race. She tells me that this month's boyfriend might be in love. “He took me to his parent's house for dinner.” She thinks it'll be a really good sign if he takes allergy pills so he can sleep over in her cat-infested bed. “Then marriage is a real possibility.” Last week, she got herself another month to make the decision about the directorship. “By then, maybe I'll know.” But she sighs a deep sigh, and we both know that when it comes to giving up a career for a family (or vice versa) really you never know.
Usually, politics is off-limits when chatting at work. But Election Day is different. Tuesday it's okay to say, “Did you vote?” And it's a good question to ask. It's not a lightening rod like, “Do you support late-term abortion?” but you can learn a lot about your co-workers by whether or not they vote, even if you don't know how they vote.
One of my earliest memories is of my mom taking me into the voting booth with her. (I have never actually seen parents do this in other places — maybe it's a special treat for us rural Illinois kids.) She made voting seem like a very important treat, and I remember being shocked as a teenager to discover that there were nonvoters in my neighborhood.
Now I understand that there are three steps to the process of voting: Convince yourself that your vote matters, figure out who to vote for, and make time to vote. The first two steps, you'll have to do on your own, but I can help with the third. For those of you thinking that you can't take time out of your workday to vote, I've got news for you: You will look better at work if you vote, so you may as well take the time off.
The best people to work with are the people who vote, even if they vote for politicians you hate. People who vote think what they do matters, and they feel the power to effect change: two key attributes of someone who will take charge in business. Also, people who vote are thoughtful. They have 1. taken the time to decide that voting is an important aspect of democracy and they want to participate and 2. done their homework to figure out which levers to pull. Voters are people who take responsibility for themselves and the greater good.
It is not a coincidence that voters make better co-workers, because companies depend on many of the ideas that democracies depend on. For example, both believe strongly in the concept that each person matters, but both will continue even if each individual does not participate whole-heartedly. Both thrive on the idea that individuals can effect change and that people are responsible for their own fate.
I have voted in four states, and in each state, I received an “I voted” sticker when I left the polling place. I love wearing the sticker to work because on Election Day, voters form a club. These people know that even if they did not vote the same way, on some level, they have shared values because they made the decision to vote. There have been people at the office whom I despised, but when I saw them wearing that sticker, I thought, “Okay. Maybe he's not that bad.”
So for those of you who are having trouble making time in your busy work schedule to vote, remember that voting actually makes you more respected in the workplace. People make time for what's important to them. If you have decided that voting is important, but you do not make time to vote, you look like you are out of control at work — unable to manage your time. You make the world a better place by telling people that voting is so important that you have to leave work early to get to the polls before they close. And if you're a manager, you can't force your employees to vote, but you can close the office a few hours early. And I recommend that. Because good voters make good employees.
If you want a big-time, hotshot career, you have to know how to talk to the press. You might think, “Who cares? No one ever calls me.” But one day, in your climb to the top, the press will call. Maybe your name will be in a press release. Maybe your company's PR director will field a question only you can answer. And if you are useless on the phone the first time, you will not get a second try.
That's because a reporter just wants to get her story written and she is calling on you to help. If you do not give good quotes, if you do not give intelligent, on-topic input, the reporter will decide you are a waste of time and she will avoid you. If you are very helpful, she will call you again for related topics. If you're really good, other reporters will see your name in print, and they will call, too.
Now that I'm the press, I realize all the stupid things I did when I was the public, trying to get my company in the news. Here are things I wish I had known:
Talk in sound bites. The LA Times is not going to run a four-paragraph quotation from you. The newspaper will run one or two sentences if you're lucky. So say something short and snappy – intelligent and informative with a hint of cleverness is most likely to get you quoted. Funny is good. Then a reporter with a dry, boring topic, can sound witty just by quoting you.
Be fast. If you get a message from a reporter, call back immediately. She probably needs to get the story written that day. But even if she's not on a tight deadline, she has called many people who might get to her before you and make you redundant. Also, if she knows you call back quickly, she's likely to call again, when she's in a pinch.
Spell your name and reiterate your title. You will be misquoted, and you will have little recourse because frankly, that's how the press works. But you can control whether your name looks right in print. And make sure your company name is spelled correctly, too, so that your boss doesn't think you care more about your career than your company.
Be newsworthy. You want the press to be your PR machine, but the press wants you to have a story. So if you want to plug something while you're on the phone, make it sound like news. Every time I talk to my dad's friend Sarah, she has another idea about how I could write about her in my column. She has told me about her company, her ads, and her products. But when it comes to Sarah, the only thing that's newsworthy is how annoying she is.
In contrast to Sarah, I worked for a guy who built his career on talking to the press. I didn't know this about him until we were at the airport, ready to get on the plane, and someone from the Wall Street Journal called him with questions about our government sales. He talked to her while everyone else boarded. He talked to her while we heard the last calls for standby passengers. After the plane took off, he told me, in his impeccable sound-bite form, “It's cheaper to buy a new plane ticket than to buy space for yourself in the Wall Street Journal.”
My husband and I always thought he'd be the stay-at-home parent, so I am shocked that I am the one changing diapers all day.
When we were dating, I was making a solid, six-figure salary in the software industry. I had already founded two companies and cashed out of one. He was a video artist and traveled to festivals all over the world showing arcane art on activist topics. He planned off-beat things to do on our dates; I would pay for them.
I was rising so fast in my corporate career that a business magazine paid me to write about my ascent. I ended up making as much money writing as my husband made at his day job. People asked me if I resented having two jobs and subsidizing my husband's career as an artist. Actually, I didn't mind at all; I loved to work, and he agreed to stay home when we had kids. I thought I was one of the lucky women who could blast through the glass ceiling and have kids because I had a husband who would take care of our home life.
We planned to get pregnant at a time when I would not disrupt my career, but in September 2001, our designated family start-date, both my husband and I got laid off. I got pregnant anyway. As my belly grew, I continued my freelance writing career while he volunteered in non-profits, and we lead a bohemian life with corporate savings. But by the seventh month, I missed the structured, team-oriented atmosphere of work. I was editing my resume the morning I went into labor.
When the baby arrived, I planned to get a full-time, office job right away, but after only a few weeks of sleepless nights, my husband got a job offer. He wasn't even looking, really,— he was doing things like soothing diaper rash and assembling the breast pump. But one of the people he met through volunteering got him an interview at a top-notch human rights organization. The job offer was for his dream job, so we decided he should try it.
Now I would be home with the baby, alone. For those of you who haven't had a baby, let's just say that going to an office is about a thousand times easier than dealing with a newborn. With a newborn there is no schedule, no break, and no performance review to let you know if you're screwing up. So naturally, I wanted to be the one with the job. I tried to be happy for my husband. I tried not to hope that he would hate his job and quit.
During my first week as a stay-at-home mom, I couldn't sleep, I couldn't write and I couldn't figure out how any adult can stay home all day with a baby who can't talk. So I hired a babysitter for a few days a week and I went to an office to write and look for a full-time job. But I never got around to the job hunt because I missed the baby while I was away — I missed his smile and the way he stares at his hands like he's not sure if they're his.
People often describe their family life in terms of earning power: The spouse who has the higher earning power is the one who works. This is logical, but it doesn't always work out that way.