— Archive for July, 2010 —

• The importance of mentors

  I drove up to New Hampshire last weekend to see my mentor from my old San Diego days. Tim has been a venture capitalist for almost thirty years now and took me, a freshly minted college graduate, under his wing as part of his leadership of the Yale alumni network in San Diego. It was wonderful to visit with him and Cindy again. We sat by the shore of Granite Lake talking about old times. And as we chatted, I realized that his stories about the old times had always been my foundational stories for learning about business, my career, and my place in the professional world. There’s the Story of the Recalcitrant Facilities Manager, or the lesson on Beware! the Big Company Acquirer, or the wonderful story about How to Start a Billion-Dollar Company with a Retired Cardiologist and an Ex-Nun. And these stories weren’t just great tales of [...]

  Jul 26

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• How to stop dreading networking calls…

  ** From my weekly newsletter to TheLadders.com subscribers ** Even if you’re a sociable, gregarious, people-loving person, the “networking” phone call can be a dreaded task in the job search. You feel like you’re imposing, and it feels awkward to ring up your friends, former colleagues, and college buddies to ask for a favor from such a helpless position. So here’s how to stop worrying and learn to love the networking call. The tip, which I picked up from John Lucht in his book “Rites of Passage“, is this: “Don’t ask for a job, ask for a reference.” Asking someone to be a reference is an easy way to make networking a positive experience. You see, everybody hates to say “no” to a request from somebody they know. And when you call your contacts and ask if they know of any jobs out there, you’re putting them in the position [...]

  Jul 19

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• Can I help you?

  ** From my weekly newsletter to TheLadders.com subscribers ** I have a lot of quirky interests: the music of the Grateful Dead, 19th century American history, travelling to formerly Communist countries, historical linguistics, and providing directions to tourists around our Manhattan office. As I was walking to the office this weekend to write this newsletter, I stopped twice to provide directions: first to a family from Spain looking for the Angelika Theater and then to a group of girls from Iowa trying to find Balthazar. We’re located right in SoHo near the southern tip of Manhattan, so we get a lot of tourist traffic around our building. Having lived in New York City for over a decade, I’ve learned the ropes and can tell you why Houston is pronounced HOW-sten, and not like the city of the same name, or why we call it Greenwich Village when it’s in the [...]

  Jul 12

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• We’re not gonna take it

  *** From my weekly newsletter to TheLadders.com subscribers *** Happy Fifth of July, The day after the fireworks, the parades, the hot dogs and hamburgers on the grill, is a good day to remember these words from a great American: “It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least [...]

  Jul 5

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