SubscribeAuthor: Jen Dziura
Bullish: How To Ask for More Money, Part II
It is not selfish, greedy, or evil to want more money. Wanting more money is smart, ambitious, responsible, and caring. I wrote about the social and altruistic benefits of wealth in Bullish: Actually, We’re All Kind of the 1%. Specifically, at some point, someone you love will almost certainly get cancer. Having money allows you do to things like buy your family member’s groceries during a tough time, or take time off work to care for that person yourself. More »
Bullish: How To Ask For More Money, Part I
There’s a lot of advice out there about negotiating for raises. Do it, and do it often; keep records of your accomplishments so you can make your case. Please, dear god, make sure your sentences don’t come out sounding like questions. (I need a raise? I am a valuable member of the team?)
Here’s the Harvard Business Review on How to Negotiate Your Next Salary. From HBR, among other suggestions: Do your research on what the company pays others and what other companies pay for your role. (I have long advocated salary openness – see Bullish: How Talking About Money Can Make You More of It.)
But I think that a lot of the decisions and communications that determine how much money you make just don’t always happen in a formal negotiating meeting, in which you know in advance that you will be discussing your salary and that you should come prepared. More »
Bullish: Reg Braithwaite On How Tech Can Help Women, Minorities, And Any Non-Schmoozers
Last week, I pointed readers towards a piece called A Woman’s Story, by Reg Braithwaite. The piece tells the story of Reg’s mother, Arlene Gwendolyn Lee née Barzey, finagling her way into being able to take a qualifying exam for a job as a computer programmer, back in the Mad Men days.
Gwen went on to have a long and fascinating career – Reg writes in a followup piece about uprooting the whole family to Nigeria in 1968 to write software for a new IBM computer that had been sold to a Nigerian university – and is now retired. When asked about the difficulties she faced, she responded, “I had it easy. The computer didn’t care that I was a woman or that I was black. Most women had it much harder.”
Like many people, I found this story compelling, so much so that I contacted Reg Braithwaite and asked him a few questions. More »
Bullish: Tech Skills Are Not Optional For Your Career
I think most people agree that, even if you don’t want to be a writer, it’s important to be able to write.
Whether you want to be an opera singer or a relief worker or a mountaineering instructor, you need to be able to send literate emails to people in positions of power and to send out typo-free resumes. You might need to write grant proposals. Et cetera. Which is why you had to take English every year of school, even if you only wanted to do music or science.
Technology is now the same thing. More »
Bullish: Be A Badass, Not An Intern
When you’re applying for internships, it can be demoralizing to find out that no one wants your labor even for free. Even though – unless you have rich parents – you will very possibly have to work some second, paying job (folding jeans at the mall!) in addition just in order to be able to afford to work for free! And you still can’t give your damn labor away!
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Bullish: Kim Boekbinder On Making A Living As An Artist
Musician Kim Boekbinder made news last June when, in response to a show she played for 18 people – netting exactly $12.50, which she spent on whiskey – she announced her new business model:
The problem, as I see it, is that we’re living in THE FUTURE (cue theremin!) with ease of communication, downloadable gratification, large networks, and constant information at our disposal, but we’re still acting like it’s the 1990′s and being a musician driving around in circles is going to help you “Make It.”
Bullish: Getting Bullish on Bullies
I know that a lot of us like to pretend to be too cool for mainstream things – for instance, I took a good swipe at Coors Light recently – but it’s hard to deny that Friends was a pretty good show.
I remember seeing the episode, “The One with the Bullies” (Googling “Friends Ross hat bully” totally worked), in which bullies demand that Ross and Chandler give up the good couch at Central Perk, take Chandler’s hat, and order Ross and Chandler never to return.
Sure, the episode was funny, but I remember it out of hundreds of episodes I must have seen because it really hit on something – as adults, we don’t necessarily have better responses to bullying. It just happens less often and it’s easier to get away. More »
Bullish: Do You Belong In An Institution?
I’ve been thinking a lot about institutions – those who can’t function without them, and those who can’t fit into them.
Two things converged for me this past week: I’m working through a training program in executive coaching and considering the difficulties of coaching my clients to function better within large organizations, especially in cases where the clients may not really want to be part of such an institution the first place. And then, a question came in from someone wondering whether to drop out of college to start a business.
And personally, I have a storied history with institutions: I was always in combat with teachers and professors (like my third-grade teacher who incorrected corrected “ice cream sundae” to “ice cream sunday” – rage, rage, against the dying of literacy!) In my masters in education, I’ve viewed my classmates as horrifyingly subservient and unskeptical. And I always harp on multiple income streams – I don’t want any one boss to have enough power over me that he or she can tell me when to get up in the morning and where to sit for forty hours per week. More »
Bullish: Career Killers You Might Not Know Are Killing You
Back when I ran a company, I regularly neglected to respond to anyone whose cover letter began “Dear Sir.”
In fact, I did so with glee. Like this:
Look at this! Dear Sir! Oh wait, where’s my penis? I do not have one, because I am a lady. It’s not sexist or anything to assume that I am a Sir – after all, not everyone has time to use the Internet to research a company or to type “or Madam.” It’s cool. Let me pencil in your interview for the FIFTH OF NEVER. Muhahahahahaha!
It was a small company. My company. My bio was on the website. And in case you consider “Jennifer” a gender-ambiguous name, my photo was on the website as well. Anyone who addressed a cover letter “Dear Sir” was simply lazy, bad at reading comprehension, or very sexist, all of which disqualify applicants from working for me.
Are you committing “career killers” you just don’t know about? More »
Bullish: The Nerdy, Reflective Person’s Guide To Networking
I recently began reading the classic networking manual Never Eat Alone. I’m just not that into it.
To an introvert, saying Never Eat Alone is like saying Never Go to the Bathroom Alone.
The book begins with author Keith Ferazzi’s life story. He came from a modest background, and I appreciated his insights on how to infiltrate the upper classes (see Bullish: Social Class in the Office). Moral? People will often help you if you just ask, and ask audaciously. More »
Bullish: Teamwork Is Overrated (How To Be A Lone Unicorn)
I started thinking about lone wolves when a friend told me her hiring problem. She posted a job listing for a fundraiser – a very good, executive-level job – and everyone who applied kept talking about how they work well in teams.
Interviewer: “What’s the first thing you would do?”
Many candidates: “I’d assemble a great team!”
Interviewer: “No. Your team includes this receptionist. She’s right here. Try again.”
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Bullish: What I Learned About Business from Being a Low-Rent Model
Fashion Week has come to an end, and we in New York will soon no longer be subjected to ads about “Mercedes Benz Fashion Week’s” official fiber snack bar (Fiber One) and diet soda (Pepsi). Hey, in 2005, Fashion Week had an official toilet.
(Do any companies out there want to provide Bullish’s “official espresso” and “official post-Bullish wheat beer”? And “official shoulder massage provided by a muscular gentleman”?)
So, in a followup to this week’s Bullish Life Fashion Week Edition: What Modeling Taught Me About Men, Money, and Life and How to Hold a DIY Fashion Show on TheGloss, I’d like to share a few business lessons I learned as a low-rent model. More »
Bullish: The Resume Wall Street Is Laughing At, And What We Can Learn From It
This recruiting season, an NYU student wrote a “laughable” cover letter for J.P. Morgan. According to Yahoo! Finance:
Since Thursday, February 2, when a Bank of America Merrill Lynch director forwarded the cover letter out to his entire team, offering drinks “to the first analyst to concisely summarize everything that is wrong with” the note, it has passed through more than a dozen firms.
Bullish: How To Make A Career Out Of The 10,000 Things You Want To Do
If you grow up being told that you can achieve anything you set your mind to, and that girls can be President and go to the moon, it kind of leaves you a little paralyzed by all options, doesn’t it? Or even guilty that you’re not an astronaut. (Or better: PRESIDENT ASTRONAUT!) More »
Bullish: Fund Your New Business (Or Get Started Investing in Startups), Part II
Last week’s column, Bullish: Fund Your Business Or Get Started Investing In Startups, Part I, covered angel investing, microinvesting, and the evergreen topic of what being a lady has to do with it.
This week, we’ll discuss more ways to fund your startup or small business, and more ways that you can invest without being a millionaire (or even a tens-of-thousands-aire). More »
Bullish: Fund Your Business Or Get Started Investing In Startups, Part I
Today’s column is for two camps of ladies – those of you wondering how to fund a new business, and those of you whose careers are doing well enough that you’ve got some cash to invest, preferably in an exciting and satisfying way.
I’ve done a ton of research, so today’s part I will cover angel investing, microinvesting, and what it means to be a lady in investing, and next week’s will cover crowdfunding, peer-to-peer lending, microlending, and a few creative alternatives.
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Bullish: How To Nail The First Day At A New Job
You know, I find that a lot of career writing is overly focused on “The 10 Stupidest Mistakes Other People Made” – like getting drunk before noon and using the company’s servers to email everyone a pornographic racist joke-virus that spreads potentially-lethal peanut dust – so that we can all feel superior that at least we’re not that dumb.
But what are competent, intelligent people actually supposed to do? You know, to do better than neutral? More »
Bullish: How To Whip Your Life, Finances, And Brain Into Shape For Entrepreneurship
In last week’s Bullish: This Year’s Most Aggressive Lady-Advice (and Bullicorns!), I shared that my project for 2012 was to start many companies that work together, sharing resources. In Bullish: Screw New Year’s Resolutions – Try Designing Your Career, I talked about how this shit seriously does not happen on its own. More »
Bullish: This Year’s Most Aggressive Lady-Advice (And Bullicorns!)
This time last year, The Grindstone didn’t even exist! It was just a gleam in B5 Media’s eye! An egg resting comfortably in the ovary of the Internet!
Here’s how it all happened. In early 2010, I met Jennifer Wright, now Editor-in-Chief of TheGloss, at a networking event, which I had angrily dragged myself to because I know you’re supposed to do things like that, but I am an introvert. She commented on my seamed, Cuban-heeled stockings (fashion really is for other women), and then came this article on how to get your stocking seams straight, followed by one on shutting down street harassment, and this old favorite, Ask a Beauty Writer Who Uses a Wheelchair How to Look Good Sitting Down.
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Bullish: Use The Holidays To Get Ahead (While Sitting On Your Mom’s Couch)
Business has slowed down for me this month, as it always does, which has given me some time to clear out my inbox, pitch things, and schedule my 2012 to my satisfaction — I am starting multiple companies in 2012 that all work together in clever ways, and I’m possibly hiring, and I’m going to tell you all about the whole thing, including dollar amounts!
So, today, in the spirit of Bullish Life: 5 Ways to Improve Your Life in 5 Minutes, here are a few ways to use the holidays to get ahead.
I tried to suggest things you can do while sitting on Mom’s couch, half-paying-attention to a laptop, or in little snippets in between chopping onions and adding more booze to the eggnog.
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