A Businessman's View

People who have known me for some time in real life or on the Internet know that I'm resistant to hop on the bandwagon whenever a new social networking fad hits. In fact, my wife has consistently harassed me by saying that I'll be the last human being to join Facebook . She and everyone else does not understand that I already spend far too much time reading the news (and the local newspapers hate me for it); posting on my favorite gaming website ( www.teamwarfare.com ); playing games; recording music; etc. I have no more free time in that I don't know what to do with myself, so anything new has to be added to the waiting list, prioritized, etc. Facebook would simply suck away so much time that all of the things I want to do now would suffer as a result. So when I joined Twitter last week, it was equivalent to the Second Coming of Christ (my apologies if people consider that heresy) in terms of the surprise that people had when they saw me tweeting of all people. After ...

This week's exciting news is that - ta-da! - I have received and accepted an offer at a Fortune 1000 software company selling IT Security solutions. After I received the formal offer, I was reminiscing on the journey to get to this point and decided to share some of these thoughts. In any business endeavor, whether short- or long-term, it is foolhardy to "just do it" without any forethought regarding the consequences. From personal experience, I have had a few times in my life where I've said or done things and then (sometimes immediately) wished that life had a Backspace key or that I could somehow press Control-Z (Command-Z for you Macheads) to undo what just occurred. Therefore, if you are going to set your mind to accomplishing a particular goal, you should keep the following three things foremost in your thoughts: Planning. Planning is a necessity regardless of the importance of the task, and I wrote about this in Be Your Own CEO of the Decade (November 23, ...

This is the wonderful time of the year when you get your Year in Review edition of Time in the mail and read similar nostalgic pieces around the web. Personally, I think it's a cop-out on the parts of editors and authors because this seems to be a "softball" that the calendar gives them. However, it's not politically correct to have a Scrooge-ish attitude, so in the spirit of the holiday season I bring you this week's blog entry. When I was a lad, my parents had on their bookshelf a book entitled How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. The cover looked boring, and I was only 9 so the outdoors were calling a lot more than reading some unknown book with a stodgy cover. Over the years, I heard now and again how this book was the definitive source on the topic and even recently learned that many considered it a "must read" for salespeople. So while I was in Manhattan last week, I stopped by a Barnes and Noble. I was intending on buyi...

William Hammer , who is a good friend of mine as well as the founder of Vanderbilt Securities , once told me (paraphrased): "it's a Management 101 concept to stipulate a 'due date' whenever you need something to be done. Otherwise, there will be a lot of hemming and hawing, and you'll never get the information you need." I couldn't agree with him more, but since he said this to me about 10 years ago I'll take it a step further: with the sheer number of hawkers vying for one's attention it's tough to stay focused. In fact, it's so tough that you cannot rely on someone to remember something they promised much less deliver it when you need it. When I was a senior at Clemson University, I had already spent two, seven-month periods working as an intern at IBM's Application Systems Design Lab in Cary, NC. But I had set my sights on their T. J. Watson Research Center for my last seven-month stint before my graduation. My soon-to-be manag...

Warning: if you're here this week to read a business-minded blog entry, you will be disappointed. Instead, this week's entry is about relief. "Relief from what?" you ask. Relief from a lot of stress and anxiety is my answer. While the vast majority of America was relishing (pun intended) in the taste of a properly cooked turkey, my wife and I were unpacking in our new residence in NJ. On Tuesday, she came here as the vanguard to accept the keys from our landlady; Wednesday found me riding behind the moving truck as all of our possessions were transported from Great Neck, Long Island to the new place in Crystal Springs (technically a resort, but we live in the residential area of the development). "Moving is a form of relief?" you reply. When you consider that my wife, my 14 month old, and I lived in a 600 sq. ft. apartment where I alone had enough possessions to fill the entire place then you can understand the stress. Now we live in a 2,000 sq. ft....

Steve Jobs was deemed to be the CEO of the Decade by Fortune Magazine . As they put it, he not only revolutionized one industry, but he revolutionized four industries. And he did it when there were already other established leaders in each, unlike his compatriots Josiah Wedgwood (chinamaker), John D. Rockefeller (oil), Andrew Carnegie (steel), Henry Ford (automobiles) and Estée Lauder (make-up). After reading the 31 page exposé about him, one thought struck me like a wall of bricks crashing down: how do I ensure that I am more than a footnote in history? Will I ever leave a lasting impression on something more than just a gravestone? The only effect I seem to be leaving right at this moment is the effect that I'm not as good a planner as I thought I was. I intended on writing about a few things I read in Entrepreneur , but due to the fact that we are moving from Long Island, New York to New Jersey on Wednesday I mistakenly packed the issue in question away and don't remem...

One day, several years ago, I was eating dinner with some Chinese new friends in a small, Chinese restaurant in Flushing, NY. After the food was gone, I turned to Jeff who was sitting next to me and watched him eat the rest of his bowl of rice by itself. The young, philosophical me had a picture in my head. I could see the women in their bamboo hats, ankle deep in the mud of the rice fields. So I asked him at that point, "are you eating the rice because it symbolizes the hard work of the laborers in the fields and you don't want to waste it?" Jeff assessed my mental state for a few moments, then resumed eating his rice. It turns out he was just hungry, and plain rice was better than no rice. Elegance is...well...elegant. It's nice to devise a solution to a problem that you feel would qualify for a place in the Museum of Modern Art, but sometimes the best solution is the easiest. We know this as the Keep It Simple, Stupid or KISS principle. (For the astute read...

Yesterday morning, I panicked because I had not written a blog entry for this week. When I first started this blog, I had so many things that I wanted to share with the world, but new topics weren't arriving as fast as I had been spending my philosophical coin. There have been plenty of distractions here too: I've been out of work since the end of May; we have (as of this month) depleted our savings account and in fact are a few thousand dollars in short-term debt so that we could meet our financial obligations for the month; we accepted an offer on our apartment out of necessity (since we didn't know when we'd get the next offer...we had already been on the market for 18 months) that resulted in a 27% loss in two years; we're moving from NY to a location in NJ that is a few hours away; etc. This isn't an excuse, but it is worth noting that the stress level that I have been exposed to on a constant basis has been quite high. And while I've been trying to ...

Last week, I talked about how I didn't take advantage of extra time in an attempt to influence my future when I knew my employer was not in the best financial and sales health. I'm sure that after reading that, especially with my opening line stating how I've been unemployed since the end of May, many of you are wondering "have you learned from your experience?" Obviously, if I'm unemployed there are things that I could be doing right now to lessen the stress level and more quickly reenter the workforce... ...right? Last week, Donna Sweidan posed a question on LinkedIn that followed a similar vein. She's currently finishing up a book / DVD set on using LinkedIn effectively for a job search, and wanted some final input. Specifically, her question was: " What do you do on a daily/weekly basis to maintain your networking momentum ? It seems a given today that networking for your job search is as important as exercise is to a healthy lifestyle, but ...

It's no secret that I've been unemployed since the end of May. And although I'm sticking by my decision to take my time and find the right position that satisfies both my responsibility to provide for my family and my desire for career growth, I won't deny that the past few months have been tough. In fact, with my wife having her own, home-based business, we are frequently ready to maim each other simply due to my ennui and our constant exposure to each other. This "I'm so bored that I want to gnaw my fingers off" feeling can happen at other times too. Several years ago, during the last business downturn (or, more specifically, during the Internet bust that occurred earlier this decade), I was working for a small company that produced web-based software. Our pipeline was in the dump and there was little to do, which was scary considering that we had 150 people and a rapidly dwindling bank balance. To put it bluntly, even though we had some small consul...

Anyone who is a baseball fan has to wonder what is going on in the Angels' heads based on the way they are playing. I can't easily recall two games that were filled with more game-changing blunders than the two that I've watched between the Angels and the Yankees. It sometimes makes you wonder if the Angels have even practiced much. Maybe they should take a cue from Direct TV. Craig Calcaterra put it in a humorous light in his NBC Sports blog Random observations from ALCS Game 2 . As I sipped my beer and waited for the commercial break to end, I wondered to myself: "is there a single person watching this game who said 'you know, I wasn't going to get Direct TV, but now that the Black Eyed Peas have weighed in on it, I'm going to take the plunge.' " He is talking about, if you haven't watched the games yourself, the incessant commercials that feature Fergie and Will.i.am overdubbing their own music video (for the song Meet Me Halfway ) with a...

Last week I discussed how having an eye for the needs and desires of the customer can translate into real, tangible benefits for your company. Since then two other incidents have occurred that I feel a desire, almost an obligation, to share with you. We've been looking to relocate to NJ to be nearer to my wife's family. With the real estate market there is in a real slump - that's relative to the rest of the country, where things are bad as well - there are some great deals to be had. We stumbled across one of those deals when my wife chanced across a bank-owned, previously attempted to be auctioned off but failed property that is listing at 50% of what it was sold for in 2003. We looked at the property on Friday night; saw the apartment to be in rather good shape (not perfect, but who's going to argue about minor stuff with a Viking Professional stove and Subzero refrigerator in the kitchen?); and as we contemplated our next step found out that the bank was going t...

Lately, I've been looking at the finer details of people's experience, especially those who are in senior positions within their respective companies. After noticing a lot of MBAs in the group I asked Tom Schodorf , who is the former General Manager of BMC's Services Delivery business unit and now has his own executive consulting company, what work experience or other tangible credentials / certifications a CEO needed to have to be successful. His response was insightful: "Very few things sharpen the senses more about the needs of your customers than having a quota and selling the product quarter after quarter. Experience in sales and marketing as an individual contributor and in management helps you understand nearly every facet of your own business as well and is very valuable experience for future CEO's." If I may summarize the first point it is "be customer focused." I would argue that this is not only necessary for a CEO to be successful but ...

Last week I wrote about how Google and "the cloud" seem to be synonymous due to the bevy of highly visible applications available by the company that are typically free for non-business use. I wanted to explore the topic a bit further, so I had an e-chat with Gabrielle Smith , VP of Enterprise Sales at LTech, a Google Applications Premier Edition (GAPE) reseller. Me: Cloud computing has always been a term that, in my opinion, has never had a concrete definition. Can you provide a definition? Gabrielle: I'm stealing this from NIST who defines it in the following way: "Cloud computing is a model for enabling convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction. This cloud model promotes availability and is composed of five essential characteristics, three deliv...

In college I worked for the collegiate computer department, chaperoning any of the various labs that peppered the campus several times a week. I would arrive for "work," collect Student ID cards in exchange for a 5 1/4" DOS floppy, and then do my homework or play Ultima III. (Yes, I'm dating myself.) One evening I was working in the lab that was located in the Finance building, when one young gentleman gave me his card and dutifully took his floppy disk to a computer a few rows back. Inserting the disk, he pressed the button on the computer monitor and waited. And he waited some more. And he waited even more, occasionally checking his surroundings to act like he knew what he was doing. After 20 minutes, I felt sorry for this person who was obviously a Mac user and went over to show him that you also had to turn on the power for the computer. Apple has consistently shown itself to be an innovator in design, whether in the grandiose things (iPod anyone?) or the tiny...

One of these things is not like the others, One of these things just doesn't belong, Can you tell which thing is not like the others By the time I finish my song? The song above, from Sesame Street , was a catchy one. And it ended up in the strangest places too. My brother was harassed with this song by his sergeant during Air Force boot camp when his dresser drawer wasn't organized properly. Lately, I've been noticing things in the strangest places too: - A sign on the wall of a Victoria's Secret that is under construction. "Reopening Fall 2009. Visit us at our temporary location next to The Disney Store." (Women's lingerie next to a children's toy store?) - A Chinese er hu (a two-stringed "violin") playing the melody to Dave Brubeck's famous anthem Take Five . (Paul Desmond be damned!) In the business world, we're in the midst of one of the largest acts of "out of place" ever witnessed. Specifically, a lot of compani...

My 9 year old daughter told me recently that she wants to "do something." When I asked her to clarify she said, "I want to get a job." Now that was interesting. I stifled the urge to laugh (because I can hear her as an adult saying how she wishes she didn't have a job, but I digress) and discussed it with her in a serious fashion. We decided that she could put her great imagination to use and start a "clothing line" that she would sell through CafePress.com or a similar site. I will proudly state that my 9 year old is extremely intelligent and has the vocabulary of a 15 year old, but even that doesn't mean she would automatically "get it." So, for several nights after she expressed her desire, we spent some time each night talking about concepts like product design, marketing, and sales. What I found was that I had to put an extraordinary effort into internalizing the functions of business so that I can synthesize new ways to desc...

I wanted to entitle this Think Outside of the Box but that expression is so overused that I realized no one would read this if I did. Yet, just like Apple did with the brilliant marketing campaign that upset every English teacher in America, that is exactly what I am condoning here. "Yes, yes," you say, "I've heard this a million times before. And I do try to look for new approaches to common problems that I encounter." It's great that you do, but I offer that you need to do it as your modus operand i , i.e. your current way of doing things should be the "outside of the box" in the future. As a simple example, let me describe a situation that happened to my wife's business . My wife, a professionally trained makeup artist (shameless plug: with experience in film, TV and special effects ) that provides hair and makeup services on location to brides and their bridal parties, is receiving more requests for weddings that will occur on Long Is...

"First impressions last a lifetime," it is said. When a potential employer reads your resume, what impression does your Summary section leave behind?* * I'm assuming that you aren't seeking your first job, which would mean that your Summary section would instead be entitled Objective and would describe what you're looking for. Everyone else should omit the Objective section and instead summarize what they have accomplished professionally. Here's my 30 minute resume makeover. In 30 seconds , choose as many one word nouns that describe yourself. Don't try to overthink this: the first words that pop into your head will be the ones that you feel most comfortable describing yourself as. (Example: strategist ) In 1 minute , choose a single one word adjectives for each of the top 5 nouns. Do not use the same adjective twice. (Example: excellent strategist ) In 5 minutes for each pair of words , write a single sentence that justifies the adjective-noun pai...

"Job titles don't mean shit," he said. (Okay, so maybe I took some "creative liberties" there. Sue me.) I was a young kid with only a few years' of experience trying to claw my way up the corporate ladder by taking new jobs with more responsibilities. At that moment, I was arguing about wanting to pursue jobs that had specific titles with Ryan Abbott , a "wet behind the ears," junior recruiter at some no-name agency. (He is now, by the way, the Director of Recruiting at Tuttle and is one of only two recruiters that I trust completely). Ryan's argument was that job titles vary from company to company but job responsibilities will always tell the true story. (A running joke from when I worked on Wall Street was that even the janitorial staff had the title AVP. Does this sound familiar in your company or industry?) During the interview process, the person asking the questions will be able to tell if you are a director level person in title ...

It was once told to me that when someone says "to summarize" (or something to that effect) you typically get 30 seconds of absolute focus. I honestly hope it's not because my presentation or discussion was so boring that they started mentally composing a list of items to get from the grocery store on the way home. But I digress... Someone recently asked on LinkedIn how one can effectively negotiate a job offer, so I immediately responded that you need to communicate your value to the company as a basis for any negotiation. My answer started the gears in my head that perhaps a summary of some of the points that I've made so far in previous blog entries would be useful. @You: don't think the following is a 30 second read, but "in summary" here are some things to consider when establishing a baseline of your value to a company. Stay relevant. I used the "@" sign not because I have a Twitter account (my wife says I will be the last person on Ea...