Needle, Meet Haystack

FOR THOSE JUST TUNING IN: I’m spending the next few days discussing my successes and failures and stereotypical misadventures as a member of Generation Y.  Read part one here.

So there I was: a 21-year-old fresh out of college with no solid job prospects and just over $2,000 in the bank.  The dark cloud of student loans was still building up off in the distance, and without a second thought, I hopped on a plane and made my way to Washington, DC to seek my fortune.

My once and future roommate and soon-to-be business partner and I had scouted out apartments online, and we had decided on a charming $2,400 a month (minus utilities) two-bedroom place in the northwestern (read: safe) part of DC.  He was going to go to Georgetown and pursue an MBA in  finance by day while I would find work in advertising or marketing.  And at night, we would build our music empire.  Or at least that was the plan.

By the time I had lived in the District for two months, my bank account was exhausted and my credit card was nearly maxed out.  I’d sent out hundreds of applications, attended networking events, talked with industry professionals, begged and pleaded with employed friends and even considered working for the post office – but nothing was working.  My personal deadline for finding employment was about to expire, when, miraculously, I got an interview.  And even more astonishingly, I got the job!

So for the next few months, I helped secure media placement for advertisements for political candidates and causes all over the country.  The hours were long, but the amazing staff, challenging work and excellent pay definitely made up for it.  Unfortunately, there were two problems with the job.  The more pressing problem was that it was only a contract position that ended once the election had passed.  But personally, telling people what I did involved conversations about politics.  And as the party affiliation of most of the candidates was called into question, I often got looks from people that are usually reserved for those who steal candy from babies or punt kittens across a city block.

So as the election passed by and the new year approached, I once again found myself unemployed.  And yet within six weeks, gainful employment was again mine.  This was especially fortunate, as my roommate had decided to put his MBA plans on hold and start focusing more seriously on music.

I was hired to find bookings for a self-help and body language guru, but wound up writing newsletters and articles, helping her coach classes (most notably a dating class for busy professionals) and developing content for her book.  This job was not as enjoyable as the last one, and my pay was much lower – I had the misfortune to be one of the few people in DC who had to commute to Virginia for work, so public transportation ate up most of the paycheck.  Since I was scrambling to make rent with my meager earnings, I decided to seek opportunities elsewhere.

It was about this time that my roommate and I realized that we had yet to fulfill our original goal of starting the record label.  But once my schedule had opened up from leaving the body language job, that all changed.

I was talking with my cousin yesterday, and he mentioned how my generation is going to have a very different view of work and employment.  And while I’m not the strongest advocate of generation gaps, he does have a point.  After all, my experiences in the working world are a good example of that.  So now, I present to you the first of several installments detailing my successes and failures and stereotypical misadventures as a member of Generation Y.  Or as a Millennial.  Or whatever we’re supposed to be called this week.

I hadn’t bothered to apply for any jobs until about three weeks before I graduated from college.  The HR representatives and hiring managers at the career fairs I’d been attending for the better part of the past five months had instilled me with the belief that doing so any earlier would yield negative results.  After all, advertising is a capricious field in which hiring practices are based on obtaining and retaining clients.

So as I was putting the finishing touches on my financial aid closeout forms and pulling all-nighters for my remaining classes, I desperately clung to the belief that one of these magical applications would get me a job that I would start the week after graduation.

That didn’t happen.

So as I finished up school in Tulsa, Oklahoma, I packed up my belongings and moved back home to Phoenix to stay with my parents as I planned out my next move.

For two weeks, I sent out applications to advertising agencies on both coasts and everywhere in between, hoping that one of them would fall in love with my portfolio and resume and scoop me right up.  At best, I would receive a generic response that my application was received and I would be contacted if there was any interest.  My prospects were looking dim.

But then, an old college friend called me up with a proposal: move to Washington, DC and start a record label.  And as an unemployed new graduate with no job prospects, the offer seemed quite appealing…

How many ways can you spell “Flavor Flav”?  Let’s find out…

As I glanced over the new 500 page book in my hands, hoping to find something to ask about before the event started, I felt a pressure on my shoulder.  Glancing over, the source of the pressure was discovered to be a large hand with long, thick, sausage-like fingers at the end.  They belonged to a large man, dressed in a black suit with a white shirt and black tie.  His head was shaved, and he was wearing sunglasses indoors, giving him the impression of a stereotypical bodyguard or secret service agent.  He smiled a wide grin.  ”Hi, I’m Sultan.  Are you excited for the reading?”

Yes, I really should have thought this through more.

The last book signing I had gone to was when I was 11 or 12, and Walter Cronkite had been in Phoenix signing his autobiography.  Having recently learned about the early days of television, I begged and pleaded with my parents to let me go.  Luckily, the persuasion worked, and I soon found shaking hands with the greatest newsman of the 20th Century, who had a surprisingly strong grip for an 80-year-old.  At this signing, people just lined up to have copies of A Reporter’s Life.  But the author that I was going to see was definitely not Walter Cronkite.

Looking around the room, I saw that I might have been the only guy there whose decision was based off of the author’s work rather than his reputation.  All around me, men (and a few grumpy-looking girlfriends) shifted in their seats with nervous anticipation, some wearing leather pants making an almost fart-like noise against their chairs.  Turning around, I saw that there were even more people standing behind the seats, a cloud of hair products and cologne almost obscuring the crowd.

When Neil Strauss finally arrived, the crowd applauded and cheered loudly for what seemed like a full minute.  Their reactions to his stories and comments seemed almost over exaggerated, like a sitcom laugh track.  But by the time that everyone jumped in line to get their books signed, I was sucked in.  When I finally got the chance to talk to the author, I was a nervous, blubbering mess.

Why?  Because the energy from the crowd caused me to hop on the bandwagon of excitement.  Although I had really only gone to support an author whose work I enjoy, I wound up a drooling fanboy.

Although groups can be more knowledgeable and accurate than experts, they can also suck people in and project their collective feelings onto them.  A group is a powerful social organism and a crucial element of social change.  Think about the times that you’ve bowed down to peer pressure, wondered about how so many people could like something, or made a concentrated effort to be  nonconformist – these are conscious steps taken to resist the pull of a group.

Social media people know this.  Marketers know this.  Hell, most everyone knows this.  And yet, time after time, we fall victim to the power of groups over our individual preferences.  But if you can transition your personal brand into a driving force for a crowd of people, you’ll find that your status goes up considerably.

I’d had little to no interest in seduction community stuff before I came to the book signing, despite it being the field in which Neil is most widely known.  But after my experience with the crowd, I wanted to buy every pick-up artist-type book that was in the store.

Neil Strauss created a personal brand that developed a loyal and passionate following.  Doing so has allowed him to cut his time spent working on his brand, allowing his crowd of fans to do the work for him.  And maybe that’s the goal of creating a personal brand in the first place – to let the group take over, spreading excitement and energy to others, giving your brand even more power than you could have harnessed on your own.

Not too long ago, I was looking for a way to make a digital resume that would stand out more than a standard Word document or pdf.  After all, the digital format offers more opportunities to be creative and to innovate the old format.  BriteTab is a free service that allows you to create great-looking digital resumes for free, with videos, links and images.  So if you want to create a resume that better represents who you are, check it out!

BriteTab

I woke up last Sunday feeling truly awful.  I was expelling fluids and waste products through various orifices, and my nose was like a stuffed-up, yet somehow still gushing, faucet.  Since then, everything has downgraded to a case of the sniffles.

I decided to write a post called “What Being Sick Taught Me About Business,” until I realized that it really hasn’t.  I’m a location-independent worker, so my office is my laptop, which was 10 feet away from my hacking, wheezing body.  As you can imagine, I didn’t call in a sick day.  I have since wiped everything down with Lysol wipes though.  Twice.

Instead of going to the doctor, as a 20-something male, I chose instead to treat the symptoms with OTC medication (thanks, Walgreens!) and check out WebMD.  My problem with WebMD has been that no matter how specific I get with my symptoms and problem areas, it always gives me results that range from “light cough” to “certain death.”  Here’s the list from this time around:

• common cold
• acute sinusitis
• migraine headaches (adult)
• hay fever
• bronchitis
• chronic sinusitis
• indoor allergens
• tension headache
• allergic reaction
• nonallergic rhinitis
• nasal congestion
• cluster headache
• pneumonia
• dust exposure
• nearsightedness
• nasal polyps
• high blood pressure (hypertension)
• foreign object in the nose
• chemical pneumonia
• asthma (teen and adult)

So basically, I could have had the disease that killed George Washington (pneumonia), a severe allergic reaction, or something stuck up my nose.  And I should’ve been looking into buying facial tissues, antibiotics, low-grade steroids, or glasses.  Gee, thanks WebMD.

As a result of being not of the healthy persuasion, I stayed in and spent a lot of time online and watching TV, hence this week’s two current events-based posts.  But now that I’m lucid and no longer taking copious amounts of cold medicine, posts should be back on track.  But I must say, I learned something from this whole experience:

Don’t get sick.  It sucks.  And for the love of Gosh, don’t trust WebMD.

Man, I hate natural disasters.

It’s not just because they give me that feeling of powerless and impotence against the forces of nature.  It’s not because of a sense of fatalism about the downfall of human society as mother Earth strikes back at us for our transgressions.  And it has nothing to do with how I feel about the loss of human life.

No, the real reason that I hate natural disasters is because of all of the charities.

I’ve mentioned before that the best way to help out a charity is to volunteer, but when disaster strikes in another country (or even in our own), volunteering is a less plausible option, so making a donation seems like a plausible idea.  The problem is, making a donation is not as easy as it seems.

When people donated medicine for tsunami relief in Asia a few years ago, most of the donations (from individuals and organizations alike) sat unused.  And yet there was about 4 pounds of medicine for every affected person.  Why?  Because the labels were in languages that the locals couldn’t understand, and there wasn’t a solid infrastructure to handle the distribution of medicine.

Food and clothing donations can often sit in warehouses and never arrive at their intended destinations.  Or in some cases, aid packages are seized by militant groups and are hoarded away from the people who need them.

But there are two offenders that stand above the rest: social networks and the Red Cross.

CNN recently ran an article about the outpouring of support for Haitian earthquake victims over the Internet.  But the story doesn’t really ring true.  I ran a quick check of Facebook groups with the words “Help Haiti” in them, and came up with over 570 results.  Yet most of the groups are like this one, where someone pledges X number of dollars (or cents) will be donated for every person who joins the group, then leaves the group, so no donations occur.  The self-congratulatory feeling of joining a group means that one doesn’t feel the need to actually donate (since someone else is doing it while people join), leading to less money going to the victims who desperately need it.  And most of these groups will never mention how or when or to whom the donation is going.

But the Red Cross is far, far worse.

I’d rather gloss over the 570,000 Google results for the search “Red Cross corruption”, the controversial and poor execution of aid that the group provides (noted here and here on its own Wikipedia page), the Ripoff Report comments, and the ridiculous salaries paid to its top executives.  The LA times and this blog explained a lot of that already.

And if you’re thinking of using the Charity Navigator figures to tell me I’m wrong, consider that the Red Cross is reimbursed by the government for most of its costs and that it relies on a volunteer workforce.  Who it charges to help.

Years ago, my dad was a volunteer helping to fight forest fires in Arizona.  Many local businesses donated food, water and supplies for the volunteers, but the Red Cross charged volunteers for stale, weak coffee in small styrofoam cups and hastily-made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.  So even though hardware stores and McDonald’s franchisees were donating to help the volunteers, the Red Cross made people who came to help for free pay for food.  So where does the money go?

If you must give to the Red Cross, donate blood.  That’s one area where they might follow through on their charitable promises.  But if you want to donate funds to help people, do some research first.  Or else you’ll be doing more harm than good.

NOTE: I recommend Doctors Without Borders or CARE.  These charities actually help.

On Monday night, I was out at a bar with my best friend, celebrating his birthday.  We were watching ESPN highlights (mostly about Mark McGwire’s recent announcement or the Cardinals game on Sunday) when a commercial break came, and Anthony Sullivan appeared to promote a new drain unclogging wonder that could be bought For Only $19.95 (plus shipping and handling).  ”I can’t believe that [Sullivan] has been getting all Billy Mays‘ work since he died,”  my friend lamented.  ”How did that happen?”

Which got me wondering – how did that happen?  How did Billy Mays become such a cultural touchstone that people are sad that he’s no longer making infomercials?  He was a TV pitchman, a role that isn’t typically associated with celebrity.  And then I remembered how Dick Van Dyke got famous.

In some PBS special I watched too long ago to remember the name of, Carl Reiner was being interviewed about The Dick Van Dyke Show, and was telling the story of its name.  When the creators were developing the show in 1961, they were having trouble finding a hook to draw viewers in.  None of the actors were well-known at the time, and the generic names the network offered for the series didn’t work.  So the creators took a gamble and named the show after their leading man.  Dick Van Dyke wasn’t a celebrity then, but his eponymous show created self-fulfilling prophecy that made him a celebrity.  After all, he had his own show – he HAD to be someone!

Similarly, Billy Mays was endorsing a lot of products with the strength of his pitches resting on his opening line, “Hi, Billy Mays here…”  Who was Billy Mays?  Well, if he was on TV endorsing something, he HAD to be someone!

The key is total brand confidence.

Both Dick Van Dyke and Billy Mays were thrust on stage (metaphorically speaking) and through sheer force of will and conviction, people accepted that they had value and were worth paying attention to.  Sure, it’s a more risky gambit than creating a persona over time, but if you can present your brand with enough charisma, and then back it up by showing utility, people will take notice and follow.

However, this move can be overplayed.  After all, what’s more pathetic than someone saying “Don’t you know who I am?”  If you have to resort to this, you’ve already lost, and your brand loses value.  All you need is to confidently say something that gets across the message, this is who I am, and this is what I can do.

It might sound simple, or even a little contrived.  But getting by on the strength of one’s name has worked since the early days of television.  So give it a try – there’s no shipping or handling involved.

As much as people talk about failure and how to right your career path from a downward trajectory, there seems to be a lack of discourse on how to deal with (and manage) success.

I’m terrified of becoming successful.  And the more I think about it, the less it seems like a self-fulfilling prophecy or a subconscious reaction.  I might be deliberately setting myself up for failure.  And I don’t think that I’m the only one.

A while ago, an article that I can’t seem to find online (it might be this one) discussed how future success could be predicted by someone deciding to apply for an Ivy League college – not whether they get in or not, but just the act of applying boosts odds of future achievement.  But this is tied more to self-esteem and confidence issues, which do not always create a self-fulfilling prophecy of personal and professional triumph.

It takes a lot of time, dedication and hard work in order to become successful at something.  You have to have some amount of expertise in your field, proficiency at the task at hand, and enough of a competitive advantage that pushes you past the rest.  You need to cultivate a strong personal brand and extend it out as far as possible.  But a fear of success is not necessarily tied into procrastinating on any of the steps that will land you on easy street.

For me, it’s an issue of balance – weighing the opportunity cost of becoming accomplished in one area means that I lose out somewhere else.  If I start doing well with my writing, then I won’t accomplish as much with my music.  If I get more renown for my PR skills, I won’t be known as a good advertising copywriter.  Sure, it might be the onset of a quarter-life crisis, but this indecision is slowly crippling my future.  Since I can’t have my cake and eat it too, I’m just staring at it, brandishing a fork (metaphorically speaking).

Taking steps to resolve this problem isn’t an easy thing to do either.  Not only is it disheartening to find that one of the top Google results for “fear of success” is on a website called “Weird Phobias,” but apparently the most exhaustive list of phobias online doesn’t even have a name for it.  I’ve made one up, though: Anti-Atychiphobia (Atychiphobia is the fear of failure, which also has a second name, Kakorrhaphiophobia).  And if one is pursuing a goal of conquering a fear of success, being successful in that pursuit is a part of that fear, creating an ouroboros of non-achievement.

So I’m setting more short-term, attainable goals for myself and creating tangible proof that I’m accomplishing what I set out to do.  I’m redefining my personal definition of success.  And maybe if we all try to do that a little more, we won’t focus so much on failing.

Is anyone from NBC reading my blog?  Because if you are, you guys seem to have missed some of my posts from last week, especially this one.  The network seems to have forgotten history, which one would think would be more difficult to do, given that there was an HBO movie about it and many blogs are drawing comparisons between the current situation and the one that occurred almost two decades ago.

Basically, the network has decided that drastically altering their primetime schedule and creating an almost-solid (except for the local news) block of four evening talk shows isn’t such a good idea.  The ratings have been poor, and rescheduling the different shows might not help much.  Conan O’Brien might lose his shaky grasp of The Tonight Show, Jimmy Fallon will be competing with infomercials for ratings, and Carson Daly (remember him?) will be cast off from the network.

The person who is most affected by this decision is O’Brien, who was given a late night institution, only to watch as the network showed their lack of faith in his abilities by giving Jay Leno another show whose very presence trivializes Conan’s promotion.  There have been suggestions that O’Brien quit and find a home at another network – 15 years on the air have helped him create a powerful brand – but the problem is, where will he go?

CBS has firmly established a counterpoint to NBC’s lineup with David Letterman and Craig Ferguson’s shows.  ABC has Jimmy Kimmel doing late-night hosting.  The CW isn’t making much money and seems to be more interested in teen dramas.  So that leaves Conan a choice of moving to FOX, a network whose record of late night talk shows is spotty at best, or cable.

Leno’s Reverse-Chappelle*  has forced Conan into a situation that many of us have found ourselves in at one time or another: an Either-Or debacle.  Either Conan takes his lumps with NBC and hopes that everything works out okay, or he quits (keep in mind that the jobs and paychecks of all of the people who work on his show would go with him).  But, as with the seemingly limited number of options that are presented to us when we’re between a rock and a hard place, he has a third option.

He can make his own choice.

Conan has proven that he has a powerful brand that attracts younger viewers.  His audience is more likely to categorize him with Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert than Letterman or Leno.  So if he wants to send a message showing not only his brand power but also his utility, he needs to mobilize his fan base in a way that his network bosses will notice.

Online petitions don’t really do anything, but ratings do.  A concentrated online campaign to increase the number of Tonight Show viewers might help (ie: “Save Conan by watching”) as it attracts his fan base through a medium that they are comfortable with.  He could partner with Leno, as Letterman suggests, and co-host the Tonight Show, helping to increase his visibility and popularity among viewers who may have left when he took over the show.

There are many things that we can learn from the current trials and tribulations of Conan O’Brien. Getting a promotion does not increase your job security.  Your personal brand value is a constantly shifting thing.  You’re allowed to diss your own network on your show.  Even when it seems like you have very limited options, you can create your own solutions.

When you’re developing your brand and establishing yourself in a new position with a company, it’s difficult to find solid footing, and even harder to do when the rug is pulled out from under you.  But if you can maintain your brand, demonstrate your utility and come up with your own solution to solve the problem, you’ll come out ahead.

UPDATE: It looks like Conan chose the third option.

*Dave Chappelle, as you might remember, quit his show and a huge paycheck when he didn’t like the direction that it was going in.  Conversely, Leno continues to stick around and collect what I imagine to be cloth sacks with a dollar sign printed on the side that are full of money.