Last spring, I was reading the annual WorldBlu list of the most democratically run organizations in the world. One of the companies that caught my eye was one whose democratic organizational practices included eliminating a formal vacation day policy. I remember making a mental note of the idea, because I liked it and wanted to [ Read More ]
Tim Berry has a recent post on MyVenturePad that is highly worth reading. He takes issue with a VentureBeat post that essentially recommends to entrepreneurs that they sacrifice their life until they get their business successfully built. Tim hits the nail on the head right out of the gate: the absurdity of that recommendation is [ Read More ]
One of my favorite things about the information economy is the extent to which a highly commoditized, social web lowers the barrier to entry for prospective entrepreneurs. While some of us elect to dive into owning our own business head-first with little or no safety net, that’s not the best way for some people. Many [ Read More ]
For some families, business is just part of the package. As someone who grew up in a family-owned business, one of the reasons I ducked-and-weaved every time my husband used to bring up the idea of us owning our own business was because I saw a lot of headache (and heartache) as a result of [ Read More ]
Scott Shane‘s recent article on Business Week is called, “Beware the Freelance Economy.” In it, he posits that cheering for the increased number of new businesses is premature, since so many of them are really solo practitioners (a.k.a. “freelancers”). His point is that, because of this, these firms are not realistic sources of new jobs [ Read More ]
Well, I can’t say that I’m sorry to have seen 2009 go. Personally and professionally, it was one hell of a rough year. On the other hand, it did bring with it some changes that — despite fighting pretty voraciously at first — have ultimately proven to be profoundly valuable. The biggest and most obvious [ Read More ]
As someone who consumes most of her daily doses of new information through the blogosphere (as opposed to traditional media), there are different bloggers I read for different reasons. As I’ve been trying to streamline my process for writing more (and better), myself, I’ve been thinking more and more about what I specifically get out [ Read More ]
I’ve been feeling nostalgic this week. After so many years in ecommerce, supporting catalogers and retailers whose year entirely revolved around the Christmas season, I am almost at a loss for what to do if I’m not running around putting out fires from Thanksgiving weekend up until the week before Christmas. Strange as it seems [ Read More ]
In Deck the Halls with Pink Slips I discuss the November round of layoffs at several big companies. Of course, part of what brought these to my attention is that a dear friend of mine got caught in the pre-holidays cut-backs at Adobe. Even worse, however, was the fact that my friend loved working at [ Read More ]
People who did not meet me until at or around my 25th birthday would never believe it, but in school, I was the Queen of Slackers. Truly. School was too easy, too routine and I spent too long doing it to be able to breath new life into the experience. I could dodge classes, do [ Read More ]
At South by Southwest, Brazen Careerist author and CEO Penelope Trunk was quite emphatic that, when starting a new business, having a geographically distributed team is rarely possible. She said this on her panel, as well as again when we spoke in person. She was a strong advocate of the notion that, for the first [ Read More ]
It’s probably a weird thing for a vocal atheist to quote, but there is something about the famous prayer that has been resonating with me more and more lately. Well, maybe not the “God” part of it, but the recognition part. Grant me strength to accept the things that I can’t change, the courage to [ Read More ]