My own summer started last week when a couple of good buddies – Jim and Otis – visited me at my beach house for some golf and catching up. We had a great time
We golfed two days – of course me and Otis played much better than Jimmy.
And we spent some quality time on the back deck, sipping fine wine, listening to tunes and pontificating about the demise of the United States and all of the crap going on in Washington.
Then late the second night, after a dinner party at the Bay Club and quite few cocktails, Otis blurts out the line that felt like a dagger going through my heart: “I actually voted for Obama”
I screamed: “What, are you insane, how could you vote for that anti-business communist?”
My Friend Otis
Anyway, I settle down and ask him what he was thinking and what he said shocked me. Otis said that he wanted a president who would restore the reputation of the United States around the world.
Well, then I really went bonkers.
I screamed: “that’s a left wing fabrication – how can you be so stupid?
Then I told him — all of the old soviet countries loved Bush.
In Germany they tossed lefty Gerhard Schroeder and elected conservative Merkel.
In France they tossed lefty Jacque Chirac and elected another conservative Sarkosy.
In Canada they tossed out the lefty Paul Martin and elected strong conservative Stephen Harper.
Even the certified lunatic running Italy – Silvio Berlusco is actually a conservative who liked Bush a hell of a lot more than Obama.
I challenged him — “who’s left that didn’t like Bush?”
Otis thought for a minute, but didn’t have an answer.
So I told him…
There’ s the Al Qaeda panderer in Spain – who got elected after terrorists blew up the subway the day before the election – they like Obama because he’s an appeaser just like him.
Then there’s Kim Jung Ill – the little doctor evil running North Korea.
Oh yeah – the nutjob Ahmadinejad.
And all those totalitarian dictatorships that make up two thirds of the UN – they didn’t like Bush.
But every nation that counts either loved Bush or has recently replace their left wing leader with one who’s more closely aligned with the positions of George Bush that those of Barack Obama.
Then just before Mrs Horne threw a pillow at my head and told me to stop yelling, I said: “Otis – where do you get you news.”
He said: “CNN – that’s all I watch.”
Well, there you have it – of course he thinks the rest of the world hates us – he’s getting his news from a TV network who wants him to think that way – even if the facts prove otherwise.
This whole story about the world losing respect for the US is simply left wing media crap.
If it were true, then the elections in France, Germany, and Canada – just to name 3 – would have gone differently.
The next day, when we were sober and calmer, we talked and Otis admitted that he really didn’t vote rationally – he was have a fair amount of tumult in his life and simply voted democrat across the board as a form of protest.
You know, I understand that.
That’s pretty much what I did in 1976 when I voted for Jimmy Carter after Nixon disgraced the office.
But it’s still a bad idea.
I said to Otis – “voting for Obama because you were angry with the way things were going in your career was like you having a bad day at work and going home and beating your wife.”
One doesn’t have anything to do with the other.
Then we walked through all of Otis’s career and life goals for the next 5-10 years and they all depended on a healthy private sector economy.
Then I showed him where Obama’s policies were going to inhibit private sector growth in the next 5-10 years.
Then finally, I named some democrats who were doing the right thing and fighting Obama’s massive debt and government expansion and I named a few weak kneed Republicans who were selling him down the river to feather their own nests.
I have no idea how Otis will vote in 2010, but I think I got him thinking.
And I hope I get you thinking when I lay out the same kind of logic week in and week out on the Career Mechanic.
And that’s all I ask. Do your homework and connect the dots between your career wellbeing and the programs your candidates want to implement – understand if each candidate will help or hurt your career. Then vote rationally – nothing good ever came out of a protest vote. Vote for the candidate who says he or she will do what you want done – specifically.
This week on The Career Mechanic – Fun in the Sun
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Finally, summer is here! The bleak economic winter is still out there, but at least for now, we can take a time out and enjoy life. Join us this week as we lighten things up a little to celebrate the official kick off for summer. Dave will be joined by Ernie Zelinski, who wrote the books “Career Success Without A Real Job” and “101 Reasons To Love A Recession” and Jonathan Fields who wrote the book “Career Renegade: How To Make A Great Living Doing The Things You Love.”
The year was 1981 and I was working for Data Terminal Systems (DTS). One of the best things about DTS was the annual dealer conference.
DTS sold cash registers through a network of dealers and every year we’d hold a huge meeting, more of a convention, almost a party, and invite about 800 dealer employees. We’d pitch new products, take big orders, and do a lot of heavy drinking.
The Opryland Hotel
The 1981 conference was held in the Opryland Hotel in Nashville Tennessee. My big thing that year was to run an internal meeting to roll out our new software licensing policy – I know, it sounds boring – but it was important to me.
Not so much because of the topic, but more because of the audience.
I was meeting with DTS’s top sales managers and I knew they had no interest in learning squat about software licensing procedures. I was also pretty sure that most of them thought of me as a “Home Office Puke.” And there were several of them lying in the bushes waiting for me to ask them to do something stupid so they could jump down my throat and show off for the audience by goring easy prey from the home office.
Anyway, I worked my butt off for 2 hours and escape with no major wounds. It was day one of the dealer conference and my job was pretty much done for the week.
This meant that all I had to do was to seek out the best parties and ENJOY NASHVILLE.
One of the features of the Opryland hotel is this huge atrium that really looks like an indoor town park and buried deep down inside the atrium is a little bar called the Jack Daniels Tasting Room.
The Jack Daniels Tasting Room
Since it was the first night of the conference, there weren’t a lot of private parties going on, so I ended up down in the Jack Daniels Tasting Room for the evening with a couple of buddies. Needless to say, the taste of that southern elixir and the relief I was feeling after having pretty much nailed my big meeting – led to a bit of Jack Daniels over indulgence.
Anyway, I’ll spare you the details, but suffice to say that I arrived at the Sunday morning breakfast buffet about 5 minutes before they shut it down and started setting up for lunch. I’m sucking down 3 or 4 buttermilk biscuits with red eye gravy when I feel a little tug on my suit tail… I turn and see a sheepish looking John Shea.
John reported to me and he was the second keynote speaker of the morning in front of all 800 dealers and their employees – John had a huge speech to give.
So John says to me: “I can’t talk – I have laryngitis.”
My first reaction was to laugh – I’d never heard of someone coming down with Laryngitis outside of sit coms like The Lucy Ball show.
Then my hangover subsided long enough for it to hit me like a ton of bricks
JOHN IS TELLING ME THIS BECAUSE HE WANTS TO GET OUT OF GIVING THE BIG SPEECH AND STICK ME WITH IT INSTEAD!
And guess what? I was right.
But wait – it gets worse!
It was a one hour speech, and it was all about the nitty gritty details of the competition in the cash register business – a topic I knew nothing about.
Fortunately, John had done a pretty good job of writing out his speech, but I only had about 70 minutes before show time. So I ran back to my room and just started reading the speech out loud. It wasn’t enough time to any more than just highlight the sentences that made no sense to me or had names I couldn’t pronounce.
I dashed to the stage just in time for my introduction.
If you’ve ever spoken to a large crowd – you know 500 to a 1,000, for the first time, you know how unsettling it can be. You have super bright lights in your face. You can’t hear anything but your own voice. And you can’t see anyone in the audience – not even the people sitting in the first row.
It is a complete sensory deprivation experience — except for one thing – you can feel every one of the 1600 eyeballs starting at you through the dark.
Anyway, I took the podium and told a joke about John Shea, Lucy Ball and last minute laryngitis. I dragged myself through the one hour speech and escaped without having a nervous breakdown on stage.
Given the venue and my raging hangover – I’d have to say it was a stellar success – but if you were in the audience, maybe you thought otherwise.
The bottom line for me was that I learned that I could give a speech under the worst possible conditions that day.
I learned about the sensory deprivation that comes with speaking in large venues.
And I most importantly, I learned that Jack Daniels and business events do not go together.
This Week on The Career Mechanic – Stamping Out Dysfunctional Behavior
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Is the world really in flames? Unemployment mounts, state cutbacks are “off the charts,” and now we have riots in Iran. Yes, there is plenty of dysfunctional behavior to go around, but here’s the thing about dysfunctional behavior is that it may show up at the national level, but it begins with the behavior of individuals like me and you. This week join Dave and his guests: Emmy award winner and member of the broadcast hall of fame – Connie Dieken and Pat Lencioni author of numerous books including “The Five Dysfunctions of a Team,” as they discuss this never-ending curse of corporate life.
My father – Clyde Horne — died just over 4 years ago. It was painful enough losing him without having it happen a few weeks before Father’s Day. You know, you already have plans to visit him and a gift and then suddenly you just have a big hole in your heart!
Anyway, this week I thought that I’d pay him a little tribute by sharing three great career lessons I learned from him.
Clyde Horne
As I’ve mentioned in the past, my father grew up as a poor immigrant during the great depression. He never thought about his career – his teenage priority was earning small change to help feed the family. But he did end up creating an incredible rags to riches career – rising to the ranks of Vice President in a number of companies My father had a very unusual leadership style.
I think it was best summed up by the words of one of his friends at his retirement roast — they said:
“The best thing in the world was to be Clyde’s friend – and the worst thing on earth was to be his enemy.”
The first time I saw this was when I was in second grade. An older kid down the street – “Bobby,” had gotten a couple of friends to beat me up on the school bus – probably because of my stupid haircut.
Anyway, my father came home from work and I told him. He called “Bob” – Bobby’s father, and told him he needed to talk to him. So Bob and Bobby came over to my house and the next thing I know, we’re all standing behind the garage. I remember it all so clearly. My dad was doing everything he could to stay calm, but I could see his blood vessels starting to bulge.
Then old Bob says “come on Clyde – take it easy, it’s just boys being boys.”
And with that, my father grabbed him by the throat and lifted him up off his feet and said:
“If your boy ever touches my son again, I’m going to kick the crap out of him and then I’m going to come after you.”
Then he turned told me to come with him and we left them both standing in the back yard.
Now, that was a little extreme – very cool, but a little extreme.
But over the years, I met dozens of people who told me stories about my dad going to bat for them – and that was the first lesson of leadership I learned from my father:
Fight for your people like they were family.
The second lesson I learned was to love the underdog. I don’t know if it was his own humble upbringing, or something else, but my father had a huge heart for the underdog.
In the early 70’s I was a pretty wild kid and I hung around with a bunch of other wild kids. Not bad, but just wild – the kind of kids no one wants to hire.
My father was vice president at a good sized local company called General Radio and he knew a few of my friends. He liked them and he felt bad that they couldn’t find work.
So, he started hiring all of my underdog friends at General Radio. He didn’t just hire a few, he hired all of them – probably 15 or 20 kids. It was a great thing to do and it really made me proud to be the son of such a good hearted man – and all of my loser friends learned a lesson and became better men because of it.
Love The Underdog – They’ll Never Forget It
The final lesson I learned from my father was “to get off the stage while the audience is still applauding”
What he meant was that you should wait until you’ve completed a major accomplishment in your career before you look for a new job – which is counterintuitive, but great advice.
But 4 years ago I saw him demonstrate this principle in a manner I could never have imagined in my wildest dreams.
My father was suffering from lung cancer. He fought the good fight for almost 18 months, but on the night of June 5th 2005, he fell down and my mother couldn’t help him up. She called the ambulance they took him to Emerson Hospital in Concord Massachusetts.
The next day my mother started calling everyone in the family to tell us that the end was near, so we all headed to Emerson and huddled around his bed for most of the day, just praying with him and telling him how much we loved and admired him.’
It was like a fairy tale farewell – I remember at one point, it was just me and my 2 brothers in the room with him and he said “well boys, this is it, I’m ready to go.”
About then I remembered that his will and trust were all messed up and I had been working with his estate lawyer to get them cleaned up, but it wasn’t done and if the end was near – we needed to act fast.
I ran out to my car and called the attorney – and I have to say, she flew into action. She asked me a few questions and then told me that they’d work through the night to draw up all of the new documents. She said she expected to have them ready in the afternoon and that she’d need to bring in 2 witnesses to attest to my father’s sound mind, and so we scheduled it for 3:00 the next afternoon.
The next morning, my mother called me at 8:00 and said that my father had been talking to his doctor and they were about to stop the life sustaining support he was on – my father wanted it to end as soon as possible.
To which I said:
“Mom, he can’t die — we haven’t fixed his will yet!”
She said, okay I’ll tell him, but you better hurry, he may be gone by 3:00.So I called the lawyer and fortunately, they were just about done preparing the new docs. They said they could come over for the signing at 10:30 and so I called my mom and set it up. Anyway, they showed up at 10:30 – the attorney and the 2 witnesses.
My father executed a stack of documents and made a joke or two. They left the hospital room and my father turned to my mother and smiled. Then he took a final breath and died – 5 minutes after signing his new will.
He left the stage while we were all still applauding
This Week’s Career Mechanic Show – “Take Me To Your Leader”
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Are great leaders really the same as the rest of us, or do they have unique traits that make them do what they do? This week, we’ll look at the “Inside Secrets of Great Leadership.” Dave will be joined by author Jennifer Kahnweiler, who wrote the book “The Introverted Leader” and business strategist Doug Smith.
Last week I met a really special person. His name is Max Levchin and he was one of the founders of Paypal. At the age of 27, he sold the business to eBay for over a billion dollars. But Max didn’t buy a huge yacht and sail around the world; he rented some space in San Francisco and started an incubator for other new business.
Max Levchin
Since then, his incubator has turned out the fabulously popular review service yelp and also slide.com. After I first met Max, I found a couple of stories about Max and the “Paypal Mafia” that literally blew me away:
“The eBay deal, remarkable only because it happened in the bleakness of 2002, wasn’t so much an exit as an explosion. Most of PayPal’s key employees left eBay, but they stayed in touch. They even have a name for themselves: the PayPal mafia. And the mafiosi have been busy.
During the past five years they’ve been furiously building things – investment firms, philanthropies, solar-power companies, an electric-car maker, a firm that aims to colonize Mars, and of course a slew of Internet companies. It’s amazing how many hot web properties can trace their ancestries to PayPal.
Besides Facebook and Slide, there’s Yelp, Digg, and YouTube. Thiel and Levchin, the don and consigliere of the mafia, figure that all told, there are dozens of enterprises worth a total of roughly $30 billion – and that value is growing rapidly, as evidenced by Thiel’s good fortune with Facebook.”
These guys turn out billion dollar businesses like cotton candy.
Guys like Max are the life blood of the US Economy. Their big ideas and grand execution plays create huge new employers that drive great careers and send trainloads of tax money to Washington DC.
I really think this week’s episode of The Career Mechanic nails this critical component to the US economy.
It is my tribute, of sorts, to the soul of the serial entrepreneur.
This Week’s Career Mechanic — The Soul of the Serial Entrepreneur
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The Wall Street Journal has finally cried foul to Obama’s claim that “saving” jobs is the same as creating them. And people everywhere are starting to point out that “The Stimulus” is not creating any new jobs at all. Unemployment has hit 9.4% and doesn’t look like it will be slowing down soon. But there is still hope as long as we have Entrepreneurs in America. This week, Dave and his guests will look inside the soul of the entrepreneur. Dave will be joined by venture capitalist Bob Fleming, entrepreneur and author Jon Yates, and Max Levchin — the brilliant young entrepreneur who cofounded Paypal and sold it to eBay for billions.
Graduates this year face a faltering economy and an extremely tough job market. Less than 20 percent of those who applied for a job have one at the time of graduation. By comparison, 51 percent were employed by the time they graduated two years ago.
Commencement speakers across the country alluded to the uncertain times, but encouraged the graduates to prevail.
Is this you?
“The times that you are graduating in are, yes, perhaps more difficult and somewhat more daunting,” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said at New York University. “But that’s when we really rise together.”
Author David McCullough said to graduates at the University of Utah:
“You who are part of this over-ripe, shadowed, uncertain time which has understandably given rise to so many grave forebodings about the future.”
So reported ABC news in a recent story about the bleak job prospects for the class of 2009 and the words commencement speakers were using to motivate all of the young minds that were about to enter a maelstrom that they never would have anticipated four years earlier.
Click HERE for full story.
Thinking about all of young souls who now find themselves staring into this abyss, we brought a couple of Gen Y career experts into The Career Mechanic show this week and picked their brains about job search strategies for the class of 2009.
Here are my takeaways:
- Get Real: Create an ABC game plan for your job search that includes a “Plan A” for the job you always hoped to land after graduation; but now realize may be temporarily out of reach. Then have a “Plan B” for jobs that while less than ideal, at least will enable you to exercise your education and stay in the game until your Plan A opportunity opens up. And then have a Plan C in case you can’t find any Plan A or B jobs. Plan C should be a job you can live with – that has nothing to do with your career plan. Think Starbucks or Jamba Juice for 6 months to a year just to earn money.
- Stay in the Game: Just because you end up with a Plan B or worse, Plan C job, “don’t stop believing” that you will one day land your Plan A job. If you can afford it, take a postgraduate internship that might line up a Plan A job offer in 3-4 months. You can also continue to study your field and write about findings in a professional blog. Imagine looking for a Plan A job in 6 months and being able to promote your blog that is rich with 20 or 30 posts your wrote on the subject matter at hand.
- Link Up (as in Linkedin): You never would have gone to college without a strong Facebook page and the same is now true for Linkedin. This is where real companies and recruiters look to find and qualify job applicants. Set up a page and make it as rich and professional as possible.
- Clean Your Face(book): Now is the time to go into your Facebook account and clean it up. Every recruiter I’ve talked to in the last year has told me that part of their hiring process involves a thorough review a candidates Facebook presence; primarily looking for dirt. What kind of dirt? I have heard about job offers being withdrawn due to the mere appearance of heavy partying, drug or alcohol abuse, partial nudity, and extreme political positions.
- Scramble, Scramble, Scramble: I know you’ve been told that the right degree from a good school with a strong internship resume will get you a job after graduation – DO NOT BELIEVE IT! There are not enough jobs out there for everyone. It will be like a game of musical chairs and if you want win the game, you need to do everything in your power to increase the number of potential chairs your can go for when the music stops. I’m talking about networking like a mad man (or woman). Your parents, their friends, aunts, uncles, neighbors, teachers, alumni, sport coaches, the freaking mail man – everyone. You must make sure that you know about every single job opportunity that might be out there.
Our guests also introduced two great web sites with tons of free information for graduating seniors looking for a job.
cbcampus.com is careerbuilder.com’s mega site dedicated to helping college students with their careers. There is an immense amount of free stuff here that will literally take a week to digest.
nomoreramenonline.com is author Nicholas Aretakis’ web site. It looks like Nicholas is a pretty methodical guy and he’s created quite a few FREE planning tools on the site. Give them and try and if you like them, buy a copy of his book “No More Ramen.”
Back to that ABC story again, here are a copy of quotes that might lighten up your day:
“The Great Depression spurred some incredible innovations … Rice Krispies, Twinkies and the beer can,” Google CEO Eric Schmidt said at
Follow The Path!
Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. “You would never have gotten through college without these three things.”
In New Orleans, comedian-actress Ellen Degeneres told graduates at Tulane University, “To conclude my conclusion, follow your passion, stay true to yourself. Never follow someone else’s path unless you’re in the woods and you’re lost and you see a path — and then, by all means, you should follow that.”
This Week’s Career Mechanic Show — Career Ground Zero; Starting Out Right
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All over America, graduates are tossing their mortar boards in the air and getting ready to embark on their careers. But what a nightmare; imagine looking for your first job in this economy. This week we’ll be looking at the things young people can do to launch their career on a winning trajectory. Dave will be joined by Nicholas Aretakis, author of the new book “No More Ramen,” and Michael Erwin of careerbuilder.com.
In February, Obama’s recently appointed Attorney General Eric Holder gave a speech to honor Black History Month; he said:
“Though this nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting pot in things racial, we have always been, and we, I believe, continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards.”
Eric Holder
“Though race-related issues continue to occupy a significant portion of our political discussion, and though there remain many unresolved racial issues in this nation, we, average Americans, simply do not talk enough with each other about things racial.”
Addressing reporters after the speech, Holder, 57, said his comments were “a question of being honest,” adding that “we have to have the guts” to talk about race issues instead of avoiding them.
My Own “Race Relations in America”
So here goes, I am going to discuss race relations in the country and the future of people’s careers. First, I think everyone needs to know a few things about my own racial experience.
I grew up in Acton Massachusetts and we were a very white town. In fact, we had 2 black kids in my class of 275. In 1971, I lived at home in my parents’ house during summer vacation while they were away. I was good friends with Lonnie Jones, who was one of those 2 black kids. Lonnie’s family had moved away and he was hanging around town for the summer. I invited Lonnie to stay with me that summer in my parents’ house (no, I didn’t tell my parents, so let’s keep it a secret).
In 1976, I received a verbal job offer at Data Terminal Systems for my first job after college. The day after that I got a call and was informed that they would be giving the job to woman without a college degree or my depth of experience because she was a woman and the company needed more female employees (fortunately for me, she was pregnant and resigned after 3 weeks and they then gave me the job). That was my first exposure to discrimination and it was against me on my very first real job because I was the wrong sex.
In 1977, I applied for a transfer at DTS into the Materials Management department working for great guy named Marcellus Stamps, who happened to be black. Marcellus and I became great friends and he had me over to his house for dinner on multiple occasions.
In 1986, I was honored by the Black MBA Association of Boston for doing so much to advance the careers of blacks in the greater Boston area. I had hired and promoted a couple very talent young people who happened to be black and members of the Black MBA Association.
I’m sure I’ve had a few other encounters with race and discrimination over the years, but those are the most notable.
So why am I bringing this up today? Last week President Obama nominated a Latino woman – Sonia Sotomayor — to replace David Souter on the US Supreme Court.
Apparently, she has a great track record as a judge and a heartwarming “rags to riches” story after growing up in severe poverty in Puerto Rico — all good. Like many Americans, I thought her nomination was a good idea on the surface, just like I thought it was a good idea when George Bush nominated Alberto Gonzales to be his Attorney General.
But then I did a little research on this woman and now I’m not so sure.
Is Sotomayor Really a Racist?
In the last few days, charges have emerged that Judge Sotomayor may have a racist track record. The most damaging claim comes from a speech she made in Berkeley California in 2001.
Sotomayor said:
“…a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male”
This certainly didn’t sound right.
Then there was the opinion she wrote in 2006 upholding a lower court decision that threw out the results of a firefighter promotion exam because the only ones who passed were white.
Click HERE for story.
There is also this — according the American Bar Association, Sotomayor is a member of the National Council of La Raza. I don’t know much about La Raza, but yesterday former Colorado Republican Tom Tancredo called La Raza “The Latino KKK.”
I suppose Tancredo is a bit of a nutjob, but when you add all of this up, it does give one reason for pause. After all, the US Supreme Court is a lifetime appointment and more importantly, it is the final protector of our constitution.
Is Sonia Sotomayor really a racist? I don’t know, but we certainly should find out before she’s sworn in!
Thoughts on Affirmative Action and Reverse Discrimination
I love the word “Affirmative Action”– it sounds so positive. Even the details of the program sound pretty good. But here’s my problem. I believe that babies are born without a racist bone in their body; it’s what they hear and see that changes them. And what actually happens to them in their lives has the most impact. At its core, Affirmative Action involves taking something away (an opportunity) from one person (usually a young white male) and giving it to someone else (a minority of some kind).
On the surface, this sounds fair, but what happens inside the head of that young person who had their opportunity taken due to the color of their skin? I doubt it reduces their chances of developing racist views, in fact, I suspect it does just the opposite.
But it looks Judge Sonia Sotomayor may not see things this way, and if that’s true, it would be bad for the country and bad for careers in America.
I think we need to have a thorough nonpartisan hearing on Judge Sotomayor’s nomination – for the good of the youth of America.
So Eric – What do you think about that?
This Week on The Career Mechanic – The Power of Unconventional Leadership
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The truth is the greatest leaders are seldom conventional. They think out of the box, take calculated risks, and mostly inspire others to do their best work. This week, Dave will be joined by John Hanes author of “Change Focused Leadership” and Ralph Heath – author of “Celebrating Failure.” Together, they will examine the DNA of great leaders and in particular talk about how they thrive in troubled times.
Recently, President Barack Obama gave a 60-minute speech to the nation regarding the state of the economy. His speech discussed his administration’s five pillars for addressing the economy. However, President Obama’s plans for helping America’s biggest job creators, its small businesses, were conspicuously absent.
Small Business Job Killer?
During the campaign, President Obama said he would create millions of jobs. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 98 percent of all U.S. firms have less than 100 employees, yet those firms are responsible for over 98 percent of all new jobs in America. To date, President Obama has given 100 percent of the stimulus funds to the top 1 percent of American firms. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, those large firms have not created one net new job since 1977.
In his March 22, 2009 column in the New York Times, Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman wrote about President Obama’s plan to save the economy and stated, “This is more than disappointing. In fact, it fills me with a sense of despair.” Klugman wrote. In March, Krugman also stated that Obama’s economic policies are almost certain to fail.
Click HERE for Full Story
Obama The Job Killer?
Yes, we do hear a lot about “Jobs” coming from the President, but where are they? Every week another half a million Americans lose their jobs — mostly from the private sector – but all that Obama does is pour more borrowed money into fattening up government and social programs.
Here’s an excerpt for a story by Don Lambro in The Washington Times:
“You don’t build a house by blowing up its foundations. Small businesses and the entrepreneurs who lead them have been the primary drivers of job growth over the past decade. This plan would punish them with higher taxes, resulting in less government revenue, less economic growth, and fewer jobs – not more,” said Bruce Josten, chief lobbyist at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
On Capitol Hill, House Minority Leader John A. Boehner of Ohio called the budget plan a “job killer,” saying that “small businesses, family farms, middle-class families, retirees, charities, everyone with a 401(k), and anyone who flips on a light switch is going to pay higher taxes under this plan.”
Click HERE for Full Story
Is it Too Late?
On February 6, 2009 — Economics professor Martin S. Feldstein was named to president Obama’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board. But here is what this world recognized economist said about Obama’s economic program two weeks ago in a Wall Street Journal Op-ed:
“It’s not too late for Mr. Obama to put these tax increases on hold. If he doesn’t, Congress should protect the recovery and the longer-term health of the U.S. economy by voting down this enormous round of higher taxes.”
What Can You Do?
I think it’s safe to say that Obama has pulled a few surprises on the American people since taking the oath on January 20th. It is also clear that the only stimulus he has planned is government and union stimulus. He has not only done nothing for business, but has actually hurt the ability of American small businesses to do what only they do best – CREATE NEW JOBS!
If this concerns you as much as it does me – write the White House and tell the President to cut taxes for small businesses that create jobs. If that doesn’t work (and I doubt it will), start looking for candidates for the 2010 election who are committed to cutting taxes to fuel business growth.
Don’t get hung up on the party affiliation. While most republicans support growing business by cutting taxes, not all do; and there are a number of democrats who break ranks with the president on taxes as well. Vote for the person, not the party.
This Week on The Career Mechanic – Going It Alone
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Do you realize that 98% of the new jobs created in the United States over the last decade came from companies with less than 100 employees? Ever think about taking the plunge and going it on your own? This week, Dave will be joined by George Hill, Senior Vice President at Office Depot and Geoff Burch, small business speaker, author, and the host of the BBC reality TV show – “All Around the Shop.” They will look at what’s happening in the world of the self-employed.
Next Week: The Power of Unconventional Leadership — we’ll be on the bleeding edge, with two authors who have books due out this summer that relate directly to this topic. Our guests will be John Hanes author of “Change Focused Leadership” and Ralph Heath – author of “Celebrating Failure.”
I’ve now been back in New England for a month. This is the earliest I’ve been here in 15 years and I realize that one of the things I miss the most is the arrival of spring in New England. Winter here is cold and wet; it’s quite depressing. But that’s why spring is so wonderful here.
Spring Snow
The buds are blooming, the grass is growing, and the birds a singing; it is the essence of rejuvenation. And even though I didn’t suffer the torment of winter in Massachusetts, I can thoroughly enjoy the arrival of spring and the human rejuvenation that comes with it. You see it in people’s faces as they come outdoors again and begin to enjoy the sun’s warmth.
Career Rejuvenation
This spring, we can all really use some rejuvenation. Who would have imagined a year ago that we’d go through the national malaise of the banking crisis, massive lay-offs, and unemployment rates going through the roof? And although things seem to have settled down a little, they’re far from normal.
If you feel like your career needs some rejuvenation, now is a great time to take action. Take on more results oriented projects that you can tout on your resume. Start promoting yourself on linkedin.com; get associates to “endorse you” and if the shoe fits, start your own blog with inside secrets about how your specialty.
Resume Bay
Career Rejuvenation?
I met a couple of guys recently who started an Internet service called Resume Bay that can help you with a career rejuvenation. It’s pretty cool. They offer a lot of important essentials for a couple of hundred bucks (resume writing and interview coaching) and they also have some pretty good free stuff too (I love free stuff).
Jay and Jon at Resume Bay are former corporate recruiters. They know all the things that make one resume jump out of the pile and scream “call me in.” They also know all of the little mistakes people inadvertently make that can send their resume to the trash can without a second look.
I think the guys at Resume Bay can help people rejuvenate their careers in general, but I’d really recommend it to two opposite groups. In this economy, young people entering the job market for the first time can use help figuring out what Gen X and Baby Boomers are looking for; things they didn’t learn in school.
The other group is Baby Boomers who have resumes that stand out in the crowd and scream “dinosaur.” I have only recently learned how the art of resume writing has changed in the last 5 years. I think it’s worth a couple of hundred bucks for people in either of these groups to get some career rejuvenation outside help.
You can listen to me interview Jay and Jon about Resume Bay on this week’s episode of The Career Mechanic.
Life Rejuvenation
Sometimes our problems run deeper than simply our jobs. Our relationships, family priorities, home finance struggles, even spiritual needs all conspire to pull the rug out from under us. And when you add in this stinking economy, it’s pretty easy to drown in the struggles of everyday life.
If your job is okay, but the rest of your life is a mess, you need to call a “time out” and address it. Life is too short to suffer needlessly, and if you have personal problems stewing in the background, it’s just a matter of time until they boil over into your work life and jeopardize your career.
Blastation – An Interactive Life Coach
Allison Maslan's Book
One of the nice things about doing the radio show has been the people I’ve met doing interviews. One person, Allison Maslan is really quite incredible. She’s a pathological entrepreneur – having started eight new businesses, but she is also a Homeopathic physician. I met her talking about her new book (Blast Off! The Surefire Success Plan to Launch Your Dreams into Reality) and we also talked about her experience as a “personal and prosperity coach.”
Recently, Allison has launched a “mini-me” version of her coaching services in the form of and Internet service called Blastation . This tool helps people set goals in every area of their lives and then manage their achievement on a day-to-day basis celebrating something called “mini-feats.”
You can listen to my interview with Allison on this week’s episode of The Career Mechanic by clicking here.
Try It – It’s Free
After talking to Allison about Blastation, I asked her to come up with a deal that would let all of my friends, readers, and listeners try it out for free! She came back with a free 30-day license deal. Just click here, sign up, and use the promo code BlastationFB. Please give it a test run and let me know what you think.
The Career Mechanic This Week – Career Rejuvenation
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Some Careers “stall on take-off”, others get stuck in a rut, and unfortunately some crash and burn and need remedial help. The truth is, everyone needs a little career rejuvenation now and then. And occasionally we need to rejuvenate our lives to balance all of our competing obligations. Dave will explore this topic with his guests Jay Hofmeister and Jon Davidson, cofounders of the new career service “Resume Bay” and Allison Maslan, author and creator of Blastation, a new web based interactive life coaching system.
Everyone knows there is never enough talent to go around. In fact, according to Dr. John Hoover, author of the book “How to Work for an Idiot,” the majority of managers actually are idiots. John’s definition of an idiot manager is a little complicated.
First, they’re clueless when it comes to doing the management part of their job; and second, they’re very good at defending themselves from accusations of incompetence. They are masters at shifting the blame for their failures to others.
This is all the more reason why you need to seek talent relentlessly when you’re hiring new people, and seek companies that are rich in talent, when you’re looking for a new job.
The Talented Joe Petro
As I look back at all of the talented people I’ve worked with, the one that stands out the most is a fellow named Joe Petro. First, Joe really didn’t care much about his career when I first met him in 1994. He was interested in racing cars and his gourmet pizza restaurant.
Here is an article from Motorsport.com featuring Joe’s racing skills and his corporate “side life.”
Joe Petro – ISMA spotlight
| Racing series | ISMA |
| Date | 2005-04-17 |
NO MORE EXCUSES FOR ISMA’S JOE PETRO
Joe Petro Racing Number 33
Oswego, NY — Joe Petro has been an on and off competitor on the tough ISMA Lucas Oil/Helping Hands of America supermodified series circuit, mainly due to his work schedule. In 2005, Joe is ready to meet the challenge of a full season head on. He has a new car number (33) and the strong desire to prove to himself he can be competitive.
“The real goal for 2005,” said Joe, “is to take all the excuses off the table. We’ve got the car and the engine, now it’s up to me.”
Petro may not look like the ordinary guy around the racetrack. He may look more at home as an executive in a board meeting, but Joe’s family background yielded both his racing and business careers.
CLICK HERE FOR FULL STORY
Talented People Find Their Own Career Defining Moment
Joe started working for me in 1995 and slowly but surely started taking his career seriously. In 2008, I featured Joe in a story on careersecretsauce.com about Career Defining Moments.
Here’s a powerful excerpt:
One of the key ingredients in Joe’s formula revolves around something he called “career defining moments.”
Specifically, Joe said: “If you can recognize these [career defining] moments and ‘knock the ball out of the park’ you will break away from your peers and be recognized by everyone as a star. It doesn’t matter how many hours you put in or how many ‘i’s you dot or ‘t’s’ you cross, NEVER allow failure or mediocrity in these moments. I have personally found that this is the most important lesson of my entire career.”
The Hooligan was a Perfect Idiot
Dr. John Hoover's "How to Work for an Idiot"
You know, talking about talented people is fun, but not as fun as talking about idiot bosses. I’ve been lucky to know more people like Joe Petro than idiots, but I’ve known my share of idiots as well.
The biggest idiot of all was this guy; I’ll just call him the Hooligan. He ran US operations for Computervision for one year in the nineties and really stunk up the place.
Anyway, if you want to hear a great story about a “perfect idiot,” especially if you worked for CV in the nineties, you won’t want to miss this week’s episode of The Career Mechanic.
We’ll also be joined by Dr. John Hoover, author of “How to Work for an Idiot’” John and I dissect the anatomy of idiot bosses and even talk a little about Joe Biden; who Dr. John calls the “Village Idiot.”
The Career Mechanic – The Quest For Talent in a Sea of Idiots
Talent is not a word that is often associated with the corporate world, yet talented people can make or break a business. Unfortunately, talented employees are hard to find; unlike idiots – who seem to be plentiful in all walks of life. Dave and his guests — Susan Burns, President of Talent Synchronicity and Dr. John Hoover, author of the book “How to Work for an Idiot” will discuss this conundrum. And Dave will share a story or two about a perfect idiot he’s worked for.
Yet another old adage – “nice guys finish last,” but is it true? It could be, if you think being nice means sitting back, being passive, accepting things as they are, or letting people walk all over you. But who says that’s being nice? I think that’s being stupid.
To me, being nice means being considerate of others, saying thanks when someone does something nice for you, and offering a helping hand – or simply a kind word – when someone is down.
People who live by this definition of “niceness” seldom finish last; in fact they often finish at the top of the heap. Too many people believe that the best way to advance their career is to constantly remind people that they are “the smartest guy in the room.” Unfortunately, people who do this alienate their coworkers and smart managers see this and avoid promoting these wise guys because they don’t want to upset the team.
On the other hand, people who are reasonably bright and exceptionally nice to the people they work with are far more promotable. Managers know that a person with a reputation for kindness will be “followed” by more subordinates than someone whose only asset is their cleverness.
Kindness and Promotionology
Readers of Career Secret Sauce: 9 Winning Strategies for Building a Great Career, know about Strategy Seven – Promotionology; The Art of The Raise. But you, and others, may have missed the fact that kindness is actually a key building block for Promotionology.
- Peer Support: Most promotions come from within, which usually means a coworker suddenly becomes the new boss. Most
Kristin Tillquist's New Book
people hate this. They wonder why they didn’t get the bump up the ladder and if the one that was promoted is “the smartest guy in the room,” they really hate it. The best way to fight this is to become the “least hated potential new boss” – be nice.
- Save a Butt: Simply being nice isn’t enough to establish yourself as the least hated. In my experience, winning over coworkers is a process that happens one coworker at a time. And the best way to win over a coworker is to come to their aid when their in trouble, or better yet, about to hit a land mine. They will never forget you for it, and they might even be happy to see you become their new boss one day.
- Send the Boss a People Plan: Once you’ve “thrown you hate in the ring,” I always recommend that you surprise the hiring manager with a 30-90 day plan for what you’d do if you got the job. It’s not really possible to come up with a plan that doesn’t make you sound like a smart guy (or gal), but I recommend that take it one step further. Discuss the deeper people issues of the department you’re hoping to takeover in the plan. Show your future boss that you’re a leader of people and not just another up and comer.
- Don’t Go Changing: Nothing feed the ego like a promotion, but if you let it go to your head and start acting like you’re now “somebody important,” it may be a long time before your next promotion. Coworkers, subordinates, and executives want team leaders, not rulers. Stay connected to the people who supported you on the way up and go to bat for them and try to help them win promotions.
These are just a few tangible ways you can apply kindness to career advancement. Listen to this week’s episode of The Career Mechanic and pick up a lot more. You will also hear how kindness and new social habits are shaping the next generation of corporate leaders.
Leading The Next Generation
Click HERE to Listen to this week’s Career Mechanic Show
Every generation sees things through their own unique lens. This means that how you act at work and how you interpret the acts of others may be misinterpreted and that could be bad for your career. This is challenging enough among coworkers — but what about managers and their subordinates? You better know what makes people in different generations tick or you could get in trouble. This week, Dave will be joined by Kristin Tillquist, author of the book Capitalizing on Kindness: Why 21st Century Professionals Need to Be Nice and Darren Cinti, a partner with world leading executive search firm Heidrik and Struggles. They’ll discuss emerging leadership styles and the latest trends in workplace personal interaction.
