How Happy Are You at Work? One of the first things I hear from clients, and others, about what they want from work is more meaning and creativity; this article echoes this. How we think about our contribution at work has everything to do with our happiness at work.

I’m Mad As Hell and I’m Not Going to Take It Anymore!

Applying to Any Area of Your Life Recommended.

Thinking Thoughts No One Has Thunk

Charles Darwin did this, slowly and painfully, and so can you.

Every day we walk through the world. We look around. We think we see what’s going on, but it is hard to remember how routinized we are as we look, how we automatically see things from our accustomed angle, never thinking of alternate possibilities.

I mean, who goes to Mount Rushmore and thinks about this?

Courtesy of Scholz & Friends

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You don’t have to jump in to your own enterprise without a safety net. Just as the panelists at our June event discussed, taking a risk to live your passion is necessary but you can mitigate that risk, as you’ll read below.

Older Americans Fuel Entrepreneurial Boom

Faced with bruised nest eggs and high unemployment rates, older Americans—ever resourceful—are becoming entrepreneurs.

According to the nonprofit Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, individuals between the ages of 54 and 64 represented 22.9% of the entrepreneurs who launched businesses in 2010 – up from 14.5% in 1996. Since 2007, the foundation says, this age group has created new businesses at a higher rate than any other. The data, writes Kauffman’s research director Dane Stangler, indicates “the United States might be on the cusp of an entrepreneurship boom—not in spite of an aging population but because of it.” Read the rest of this entry »

For those of you in post production services who have been struggling to find work…it’s not your imagination. This work is just harder to find.

Top 10 Dying Industries

The U.S. economy is recovering from a severe recession, but some industries are unlikely to ever fully bounce back.

A new analysis by research firm IBIS World looks at 10 industries that appear to be dying. The list isn’t exactly shocking, but it represents a mix of sectors that are being left behind by technology or have been hurt by cheaper overseas competition.

The biggest industry profiled by IBISWorld is wired telecom carriers, largely being supplanted by cellphones and the Internet. The dominance of the Web and digital media also puts Newspaper publishers, record stores and video-rental companies on the list. Meanwhile, photofinishing also takes its place among the top 10 dying industries thanks to the growing influence of digital photography. Read the rest of this entry »

Over the past few weeks, America’s colleges have sent another class of graduates off into the world. These graduates possess something of inestimable value. Nearly every sensible middle-aged person would give away all their money to be able to go back to age 22 and begin adulthood anew.

But, especially this year, one is conscious of the many ways in which this year’s graduating class has been ill served by their elders. They enter a bad job market, the hangover from decades of excessive borrowing. They inherit a ruinous federal debt.

More important, their lives have been perversely structured. This year’s graduates are members of the most supervised generation in American history. Through their childhoods and teenage years, they have been monitored, tutored, coached and honed to an unprecedented degree.

Read the rest of this entry »

Talk About Pay Today, or Suffer Tomorrow

NEGOTIATE your salary? In this economy?

Many job seekers would be thrilled to be offered a job at all. How ungrateful and even risky, they may feel, to haggle over salary when the unemployment rate is so high.

And research shows that even when economic conditions are good, women tend to be more reluctant than men to negotiate for a salary higher than the one initially offered.

But failing to negotiate can be a mistake that reverberates for years, says Linda C. Babcock, an economics professor at Carnegie Mellon University who specializes in negotiation. Because most raises are based on percentage increases, she notes, all of your future raises — along with contributions to your retirement account — are likely to be lower than if you had negotiated a higher salary at the start.

Some people fear that a job offer will be rescinded if they dare ask for higher pay, and that the employer will move on to the next applicant, says Barbara Safani, owner of Career Solvers, a career management firm in New York. But she says that is very unlikely if you negotiate reasonably.

Still, it’s easy to understand why the thought of salary negotiation induces fear. That’s because the employer holds almost all the cards in this game, and may ask you to give up the few you hold by requesting that you reveal prematurely your past salary and your pay expectations. Read the rest of this entry »

Join us for our June 8th Panel Discussion and Networking Event!  

Scroll down to read about our panelists whose inspiring stories and tips will help you formulate ideas and new strategies to move forward in your own business and career!

 

Have you been contemplating striking out on your own, by starting a new business? But a little – or a lot! – hesitant to do so? Not even sure where to begin, or if it’s the right move for you?

It’s clear that entrepreneurship is our way out of this recession – whether you head out on your own while working, or want to be a more innovative and proactive contributor in your current workplace – it’s essential to hold on to that bigger view of what’s ahead of you.

Join us on June 8th to meet our five panelists who will be speaking about how they started their businesses and what challenges and opportunities they’ve experienced. This will be an opportunity to hear the truth about working for yourself, from a variety of people who transitioned from employee to employer.

Event attendees will hear about the panelists’ trials and tribulations in launching businesses of varying kinds, and the accompanying ups and downs of entrepreneurship. We’ll be discussing the steps that the panelists took in order to follow their passions and to create their own autonomy. Attendees will learn about what it takes to get going, and to keep going, and will receive a realistic picture of what to expect, how long the process takes, and what not to do when launching a business.

Daisy Swan will moderate this panel, while adding information and recommendations for how others can make a similarly successful jump.

June 8th event attendees will have the opportunity to ask questions, offer perspectives and meet other curious individuals of like mind. Light refreshments will be available, and as with all of Daisy Swan & Associates’ events, there is a strong potential for meeting highly creative, intelligent people of all ages and LifeStages, through the networking portion of the evening.

June 8th event guests may opt-in to be included in, and receive, a contact listing of all attendees, for post-event networking purposes.*

Date: Wednesday, June 8, 2011

Time: 6:45 PM to 9:00 PM (Registration, 6:45 PM; Program, 7:00–8:15 PM; Open Networking, 8:15–9:00 PM)

Location: Working Village

212 Marine Street (between 2nd and Main Streets)

Santa Monica, CA 90405

Tickets for this event are $35 per person in advance, and $45 per person at the door.

$35 per person (in advance of the event):

Panel Members Include:

Amy Swift Crosby is the founder of SMARTY, a women’s entrepreneurial network based in Los Angeles, and as such, Amy has created hundreds of programs designed to foster community, education and collaboration across many business platforms. The thousands of women-owned businesses who have been helped by SMARTY have put Amy into the league of connector of women, creator of top notch in-person content and conduit for visibility, media and partnerships. Amy founded SMARTY in 2008 after a seasoned career as a brand strategist and copy writer in the beauty, fashion and lifestyle industries, where she continues to advise. www.smartypeople.com

Natalie Compagno fell in love with traveling when she spent a Summer in France for a high school exchange program. She has been to over 75 countries and six continents and her favorite part about seeing the world is how much she learns about world culture, music, art and people. Research is everything, which is why in 2007 she bought the Traveler’s Bookcase, an indie bookstore devoted to travel located in West Hollywood. She runs the store and is committed to helping people discover really unique travel destinations and experiences, whether at home or abroad. Natalie uses her travels to discover new and rare books from around the world to import, available in store or online at TravelBooks.com. Some of her most memorable trips have been to Iceland, Zimbabwe, Nicaragua and Slovenia, but her favorite city will always be Paris.

Chris Woodward is the president of Henry Woodward Communications, a Los Angeles- based corporate marketing and public relations firm. She creates successful campaigns for companies across the Western United States. She has spent more than two decades representing companies in a wide range of industries, including health, finance, insurance, architecture, engineering, real estate, law, recreation, high technology, and aviation. Chris has designed campaigns for Los Angeles World Airports, the Boeing Company, Earth Tech, Loyola Marymount University, and Raging Waters Theme Parks, to name a few. Three years ago, Chris created My PR Tools to bring the benefit of her expertise to small businesses with her marketing and PR consulting packages and DIY marketing guides.

She shows professionals and entrepreneurs how to stand out from the crowd and take their business to the next level with affordable marketing strategies that hit the sweet spot with target clients.

Reisha Fryzer graduated from Boston University’s business school, and then took a year off to study French in Paris, where she learned what her mama meant by eating fresh. Parisians shop daily for the ingredients they need for that day’s meal – from the neighborhood bakery, to the butcher shop, to the farmers’ markets that were open every day. When she returned to L.A. she learned her way around local farms and farmers’ markets, then earned her chef certificate at the Epicurean Culinary School and supplemented that with vegan cooking classes. Reisha then turned her love of agriculture and the slow food movement into a business that could bring this healthy way of eating to her neighbors in Los Angeles…that was the start of Farm Box LA, her business that delivers organic fruits and vegetables to your front door.

Josh Crosby is a multi-sponsored ultra-endurance athlete, Ironman World Champion Competitor, and World Champion rower. He brings an elite caliber athletic pedigree to Indo-Row®, a growing international fitness program he created for an intense, full- body, team-oriented workout. Indo-Row®, short for ‘Indoor Rowing’, was launched in 2004 at a small studio in Santa Monica with only 5 rowers. In 2008, Josh partnered with Fitness Quest, a renowned marketer and investor in early stage lifestyle products, and with WaterRower, a rowing machine manufacturer, in order to scale the business internationally. Now, with two bustling locations in Los Angeles and in 50 fitness clubs and boutique studios worldwide, Indo-Row has quickly grown into what has been dubbed “the next spinning”, for its popularity and cult following. Josh is a regular on the international fitness convention circuit where he has become a respected presenter and personality. Josh also consults with companies like Gatorade and FISA, the International Rowing Association, and has been featured in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Angeleno, DailyCandy, CNN, The Today Show, Fox News, Extra, Fit TV, and as the face for Nike, New Balance, Asics and Adidas. www.joshcrosbyfitness.com

For more information, please call 310-820-8877 or email anna@daisyswan.com.

* Event attendees may submit their contact information for an ‘opt in’ networking list; it is not a requirement that all event attendees submit their contact information to this listing.

If you want to learn about success, talk to a successful person. If you want to learn about failure, talk to a very successful person. In his new book Fail Up, TV and radio host Tavis Smiley offers lessons on how to turn life’s setbacks into success.

2011 marks Smiley’s 20th year in broadcast — and that anniversary got him thinking: “The way I arrived at this place [of success] was failing my way — all the way,” he says. The book is sort of a Top 20 Worst-Of list: It details the 20 biggest mistakes of Smiley’s life.

Some of these mistakes were news even to Smiley’s close family. Before the Fail Up manuscript arrived at his parents’ house, Smiley called home to tell his mother and father they were about to read things they’d never heard before. Smiley was the first person in his family to go to college — but when he marched across the stage at Indiana University to get his diploma, he hadn’t really graduated. It technically took Smiley 16 years to get his degree; during college, he had been arrested and sent to jail for check fraud. “I couldn’t bring myself to tell my parents that I’d gone to jail while I was in college,” he says. “[Or] that I didn’t have a college degree.”  Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve been struck by how many managers look for the ‘realness’ factor in interviews. Being grounded and curious, as well as genuinely enthusiastic and prepared, make the difference when interviewing.

Order Is Great. It’s Bureaucracy That’s Stifling

Q. Do you remember the first time you were somebody’s boss or manager?

A. It was in 1984.  I had the opportunity to work in construction in New York, coming right out of undergrad.  I was sick and tired of school at the time. I didn’t want to study anymore.  My uncle had built one of the largest construction companies in the world, so he got me a job on the Throgs Neck Bridge in New York as an assistant supervisor on site.

I was 22, and the men were double my age and tough.  And I think the only way I could go about it was just walk up and try to speak to them and try to earn their respect, which I did.  It took some time.  It was rough at the beginning, but I learned a lot from that.  It was hard, tough, but a very fair environment.

Q. How did you handle it?

A. They looked at me skeptically.  Who is this kid just out of school?  He doesn’t know anything about what you really do on a construction site like this.  But I was a foreigner, and they were curious, so they said, let’s hear him out, see who he is. Read the rest of this entry »