Posts filed under 'Popular articles'
I do a biweekly column called “How’d you land that great job?” for the Seattle Times and its NWjobs employment blog. Usually I have to profile 9-to-5ers, but for this week’s Q&A, my editor let me feature a self-employed pet photographer. The interview was too much fun to keep to myself…
The job: Like many animal-loving kids, Jamie Pflughoeft grew up with dogs, cats and birds for pets, and she dreamed of working with animals someday. In college, she studied animal behavior while working as a pet sitter and dog walker on the side. Stifled after graduation by a tight job market, she decided in 2003 to turn her hobby — taking photos of her pet-sitting and dog-walking “clients” — into a full-fledged business. Today, as top dog of Cowbelly Pet Photography, she snaps the mugs of hundreds of critters a year, turning many of them into brightly colored, digitally enhanced artwork that she’s dubbed Decopaw.
Q: How did you decide to hang your own shingle as a pet photographer?
A: I studied animal behavior at the University of Washington. My master plan was to start a dog training business. I graduated right after 9/11 and the job market was horrible, people were getting laid off right and left. I was willing to take any full-time job I could get working with animals that wasn’t entry level. I looked for a job for a year but couldn’t find one.
I had been doing pet photography as a hobby since 2000, never once considering that I could make a living at it. I’d been working part-time as a dog walker and a pet sitter for a pet-services company while I was going to school. And it was my clients’ pets that I was photographing — for free. So I had a ready-made model base.
I got really great feedback on the photos I was taking and ended up creating a portfolio just for fun. A friend of mine who was also starting a business suggested that I turn my pet photography hobby into a business, and I thought: What a great idea. You know how in the cartoons a light bulb goes off? It was just like that.
Q: Did you have a full-time workload as a pet photographer right away or did that take time?
A: I started the business in July of 2003. But I’ve only been doing it full time for the past two and a half years. For the first year and a half I was doing dog walking part-time to supplement my income.
Q: Do you have any formal photography training?
A: I took one photography class when I was 17. It was a film class and I did all my own darkroom stuff. I’ve always loved photography and I think I’ve always had an eye for it, but as far as the technical aspects of photography, I’m self-taught.
For this job, my background in working with dogs for six years as a dog walker and pet sitter and studying animal behavior at the university level was essential. I would not have this job now without that experience.
Q: What type of pets do you photograph?
A: Dogs are 85 percent of what I do. Cats are about 15 percent. I also shoot any other pet people want me to. I will shoot an iguana if you want. I’ve done rats and horses, too.
Here’s the rest of the article, which includes Jamie’s recommended game plan and resources for aspiring pet photographers. And here’s Jaime’s pet photography blog.
October 11th, 2007
From a new article in NAFE magazine by yours truly…
You’re at your desk by 8 a.m., wouldn’t dream of pocketing a single box of binder clips, and haven’t worn flip-flops to work since your lifeguard days. But there’s more to keeping your nose clean at the office than hitting deadlines and following the employee manual. Some of the most seemingly innocuous acts can kill your shot at that promotion — or worse, land you on management’s hit list next time layoffs roll around. Following are seven fatal workplace mistakes you should avoid at all costs.
Abusing technology
Think one little email rant about your boss to a sympathetic pal can’t hurt you? Think again. A recent American Management Association study found that 25 percent of companies have fired employees for email misuse. And 26 percent of businesses have given workers the axe for browsing sites they shouldn’t.
“Misusing the technology in your office is the number one career killer,” says Cynthia Shapiro, former HR executive and author of Corporate Confidential: 50 Secrets Your Company Doesn’t Want You to Know — And What to Do About Them. Thanks to computer monitoring software, “you’re no longer invisible.” So the next time you want to shop online for a new pair of pumps, vent about management via email, or burn up the phone lines with your latest childcare crisis, do it at home.
Butting heads with the boss
You don’t have to invite your boss out for happy hour, but you do have to build an amicable partnership with her. “If you don’t have a good relationship with your boss, your job is in jeopardy right now,” Shapiro says. “Your boss can put a raise freeze on you that will last your entire duration at that company.” Not only that, a bad write-up in your personnel file can haunt you any time a future employer calls to check references.
Unless you’re working for an abusive Neanderthal — in which case you might want to dust off your resume — treat your boss as though you’re self-employed and she’s your biggest client, Shapiro advises. A supervisor who is unsure of your commitment will have trouble grooming you for the next rung.
Settling for a support role
“Support roles are dead ends,” says Penelope Trunk, author of Brazen Careerist: The New Rules for Success. If you have your eye on the executive suite, Trunk advises getting out of HR, marketing, or customer service. Instead, move into a department that’s responsible for the company’s bottom line, such as sales, finance, or business development.
In meetings, too, avoid playing the servile mother hen who takes notes and ensures everyone’s had a chance to voice their opinion, says Michele Lodin, a veteran HR executive at Advanced Medical Optics, Inc., in California. Instead, focus on the job you were hired to do and fearlessly offer up your expertise.
Confiding in HR
Contrary to popular belief, your human resources representative is not your friend, advocate, or confidante. “The role of human resources is to support the company, not you,” says Trunk. “If you need support, hire a career coach.”
Complaining about your boss to HR is like griping about your husband to your mother-in-law and expecting her to keep quiet. Ditto for voicing concerns to HR about your health, family, or ambivalence toward returning to work after maternity leave. “You cannot tell them anything that would make you appear to be a threat,” either legally or in terms of job performance, Shapiro says.
Read the rest of the article here.
September 8th, 2007
I’m writing a series of articles affectionately dubbed “Take This Job and Love It” for the salary site PayScale.com. The first one’s on how to find and negotiate a flexible day job. Here’s an excerpt:
You can’t open the business section these days without seeing a story on companies that let employees work when and where they want. It’s good for morale, great for the bottom line, and with any luck, the wave of the future. All well and good for the country’s millions of flextime and telecommuting workers. But what if you, too, want to be there when your kids get home from school or would love Fridays off to pursue your side business? How do you find the flex-friendly companies, and while we’re at it, how do you convince your current employer to cut you a piece of the flexibility pie?
Targeting flex-friendly employers
It doesn’t matter how open-minded your employer is — your job can’t be done off company premises or outside “normal” business hours, you don’t stand a chance of nabbing a piece of the flexibility pie. But for the sake of argument, let’s assume a little flexibility wouldn’t compromise your getting the job done. So how do you spot a flex-friendly employer?
Read the headlines. Obviously, if a company you have your eye on makes the Working Mother Top 100 annual list, it’s cause to celebrate. Ditto for companies that prominently feature press releases and media coverage singing the praises of their work/life balance programs. “Employers who have something to brag about usually do,” says Pat Katepoo of WorkOptions.com, who’s been consulting hopeful flex workers for 14 years. But don’t stop at corporate propaganda. Pay attention to the local headlines and see what dirt a Google search turns up, too.
Get references. Use your personal network, professional memberships, and social networking sites such as LinkedIn to track down current employees of your target companies and see what information you can glean. Katepoo also suggests contacting your local chapter of the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) and asking what companies in your neck of the woods offer flex packages — and how their employees rate them.
Check the company culture. Once you’re on site for a job interview, play detective. Unless you get a job offer, avoid asking the hiring manager about company hours and the possibility of flex work. Instead, see how many cars remain in the company parking lot after 6 p.m. and how many of your potential co-workers have pictures of their kids on their desks. After the interview, ask to talk to some of your potential colleagues. Sniff out who has a flexible arrangement and how it’s going for them.
You can read the entire article here.
August 25th, 2007
My Oprah-style-roundtable piece on the way working women relate to each other across generations appears in the Seattle Times today. Here’s the start of the article:
Now that the country has four generations of women in the workplace, the stereotypes are piling up faster than to-do items in an overworked middle manager’s inbox.
According to the latest lore, today’s youngest workers are a bunch of midriff-baring, self-entitled whiners who demand constant praise. By contrast, their midlife counterparts are workaholic technophobes unlikely to hold open for younger women the doors they had to beat down themselves.
To hear what those in the trenches think, we invited eight Seattle area women ranging from age 26 to 63 to lunch. Excerpts from their conversation follow…
You can read the story in its entirety here. And you can share your two cents — or duke it out — with other Seattle Times readers here. Oh, and in case you’re wondering what generation I hail from, it’s X. I turn 40 this Thursday.
August 5th, 2007
My article on figuring out how soon you can ditch your day job is live on WORKS. Here’s how it starts:
Admit it. You’ve fantasized about turning in your letter of resignation no less than 100 times — and that’s just this month. You spend each lunch hour staring longingly out the window of your mind-numbingly sterile office at whatever footloose and fancy-free dog walker, landscape designer, or espresso-cart owner happens to be within view. And you often wonder if you’ll ever love your job as much as they seem to.
The good news is that a career you’re passionate about is always within reach. You just have to iron out a few of the logistics first, and one of the biggest is figuring out how you will afford to live while you pursue your dream. Here are a few tips to get you started.
Gather research. First, you need to determine how much you realistically stand to make in the first few years of your fantasy career. The Web is teeming with sites that can help — Salary.com, PayScale.com, and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, to name a few. But don’t stop there. Talk to honest-to-goodness people who already have your dream job. Ply them with lattes and ask what salary range a newbie like you can expect. Also contact the industry associations in your neck of the woods. Many of them regularly conduct salary surveys of their members.
Do the math. Your next step is to take a long, hard look at your monthly spending. If you don’t know how much you’re shelling out for groceries, pedicures, and Mai Tais, it’s high time you learned. Save four weeks of receipts or track every cent you spend in a notebook stashed in your purse. Then use a program like Quicken to record the damage…
To read the rest of the article, visit WORKS.
August 3rd, 2007
You know how I have an essay in a kickass new anthology, Single State of the Union: Single Women Speak Out on Life, Love, and the Pursuit of Happiness? Well, if you don’t, I do. The collection is edited by the hilarious Diane Mapes, and it features uproarious stories by funny/saucy women like Margaret Cho, Laurie Notaro, Lynn Harris, Susan Jane Gilman, Rachel Kramer Bussel, Judy McGuire, and on and on and on.
Well, tonight is the book’s launch party, and I’ll be reading with fellow Seattle singlefunnywomen Litsa Dremousis, Jane Hodges, Dana Rozier, Rachel Toor, and M. Susan Wilson. The details:
Friday, April 13, 7 p.m.
University BookStore
4326 University Way NE, Seattle
We’re also taking this singleskicksomeseriousass show on the road. In fact, I’ll be reading from my essay “House Without a Spouse” at the following Seattle and Portland, OR, events for the book:
Thursday, April 19, 7 p.m.
Third Place Books, Lake Forest Park (N. Seattle)
Friday, April 20, 6 p.m.
Elliott Bay Book Company, Seattle
Monday, June 11, 7 p.m.
Powell’s Books, Portland, OR
Tuesday, June 12, 6:30 p.m.
In Other Words, Portland, OR
For other reading dates and news about Single State of the Union, visit Diane’s gorgeous new blog.
April 13th, 2007
Nikki writes: I saw you mentioned that you’re working on an article about business plans. I’m working away on my business plan as we speak, and I’d love to read that article before I wrap up the final draft.
Nikki actually sent me this note last month, and the article is now out, in NAFE Magazine, published by the National Association for Female Executives. Sometimes they put the articles online, but this time they did not. It’s a no-no for me to run the article in its entirety here, but you can find it here. And here are some of the do’s and don’ts that didn’t make it into the online version:
Do…
- Flesh out everything but the executive summary of your plan first: the numbers, the competition, the industry trends. If you write the executive summary first, you wind up with a vaguer, weaker document.
- Toot your own horn. Don’t be afraid to promote yourself. It’s not bragging. Leaders list their achievements — plain and simple. Investors will want to see this.
- Be clear and concise. Ensure each section of your plan stays on topic. You want to make it easy for an investor or advisor who’s just skimming it to find the information they need.
- Obliterate all industry jargon from your plan. Likewise, nix all superlatives and adjectives. Prove you’re unique without having to come right out and say so.
Don’t…
- Say that you have no competition. Customers and investors won’t buy it. If there is nothing else like it out there, there probably isn’t a market for it, say the experts.
- Fudge the numbers or present only best-case financial scenarios. Use reliable numbers that are as recent as possible. Investors will challenge your numbers anyway, so you need to be able to defend them.
- Try to hide your weaknesses. Instead, include a “challenges that keep me awake at night” section in your plan to address the bigger hurdles — and your ideas for resolving them.
- Write a tome. If you’re writing a business plan for yourself (as opposed to investors), it can be as short as 10 pages. If you’re writing a plan for investors, keep it under 35 pages.
Some resources that can help with a business plan:
- SCORE.org. Free or low-cost business classes and one-on-one consulting throughout the U.S.
- The Planning Shop. All kinds of bestselling business planning books. They’re also the people behind TitleZ, a highly addictive site for us publishing types.
- Springboard Enterprises. A nonprofit that educates women on landing business funding. Great free resources on their site. (See the Learning Center section.)
- Venture Architects. A woman-owned consulting firm that helps those seeking financing write better business plans.
- Are business plans really evil? After you’ve read all the “rules” from the aforementioned experts, check out this take on more fluid, informal business planning from BootstrapMe — especially valuable if you’re not seeking any big fat financing.
[Tangential note: Nikki and I agreed that English majors should really take some business classes in college so we don't have to play catch-up in our twenties and thirties and forties when we decide we want to work for ourselves.]
UPDATE: Since I first wrote this post, the article’s been posted online. You can read it here.
If you have a question you want the Cubicle Expat to answer, send it my way.
April 11th, 2007
…When it comes to romantic commitment, you’re not the only game in town.
That’s the opening paragraph to the cover story I wrote for “Gender F”, a Seattle Times section that came out today. The story isn’t anti-marriage; it’s pro-alternatives-to-marriage-if-you-so-choose and pro-marriage reform (as in, let’s stop treating lesbians and gays like shit, and let’s think about giving singles — say, the widowed midlifer taking care of her mom with Alzheimer’s — the same tax breaks and workplace perks as the married twentysomethings she lives next door to or works side by side with). I’ve already written how I feel about this here, so I won’t rehash it now.
As anyone could have predicted, a couple of “concerned readers” have already graced my inbox to say that they will “pray for me” or to compliment me on being “a modern whore,” whatever that means. (“You, go, you modern whore!”) If they really want to save my soul, though, I would kindly request they immediately proceed to this web page and open their wallets. That would be the quickest route to salvation for this girl.
But I digress… My point is, I’m don’t think I’m a bitter old crone or whatever the fashionable insult to hurl at single thirtysomething feminists is these days. I’m just not sure marriage is the only way to go. And I’m not the only one who thinks so. But since you can read the facts in the aforementioned article, let’s personalize this here and now:
Maybe I would feel differently if I wanted to have children — after all, two incomes/caregivers are infinitely easier than one — but I’m pretty sure I don’t, and if I wait too much longer, biology will make that a moot point. And maybe I would feel differently if I wasn’t able to support myself, but I am and I do. (Ah, the ‘ole career tie-in.) And, as people say, maybe I would feel differently if I met the right guy. Only thing is, I have met the right guy, and we’ve been together three years, happily living apart. Maybe that will change someday, but neither one of us is in any sort of rush. (I write about that in Diane Mapes‘ fabulous new book, Single State of the Union, which you will hear lots more about this spring.)
From a romantic perspective, not needing a partner for financial reasons has been incredibly liberating. Without the biological clock ruling my every dating move and with a warm roof already over my head, I’m free — as countless modern women are — to date and fall in love for booty and companionship alone, not because I’m trolling for a meal ticket, real estate, or a sperm donor. Basically this translates into not freaking out if I’m alone on a Saturday night or my calendar is blank for a week straight. (In fact, right now, if my calendar actually was blank for a week straight, I would do the biggest fattest happy dance you’ve ever seen.)
What do you ladies think? Do you think today’s courtship is incredibly different than it was for our moms, now that we, too, can bring home the bacon like nobody’s business and buy our own homes? In other words, is marriage even necessary today? Or do you think that regardless of increasingly equal career opportunities/salaries, marriage is here to stay? I’d love to hear your comments, but kindly I request that you play nice.
March 18th, 2007
“If you work for yourself, aren’t you throwing away your retirement?”
A producer from Seattle’s KING5 TV news asked me this when we were prepping for my February 16 morning spot.* My answer: Hardly. Workers under 40 are lucky if they get a 401k at all — especially one with employer matching. And pensions? They’re pretty much extinct, unless you work for the government.
If you’re not getting a 401k with employer matching, you’re basically in the same boat as a self-employed person: You still have to siphon money from each paycheck for your retirement fund, even if it’s one you get through an investment firm like Fidelity or Vanguard. (I use the latter.)
Why the hell am I thinking about this on a Sunday, when instead I could be scrambling to rent the last few Oscar-nominated flicks I haven’t seen? Because I contributed to Your Money 2007, a Seattle Times special section that came out today. Basically we hooked up a handful of readers with certified financial planners, gave them the money makeover of their lives, and then wrote about it for all the world to see.
Working on this project made me realize that I’m a bit behind where I need to be with my retirement savings, especially since I’ve been self-employed forever and am single. If you’re self-employed, too, or thinking about joining the ranks of solo workers, here are some resources that can help you get a better handle on your long-term savings:
*Sorry, no video from le TV spot. But my mom and friend Diane swear I did great.
February 25th, 2007
Canadian Living magazine is now featuring two excerpts from The Anti 9-to-5 Guide. Check ‘em out online:
Quiz: What’s your perfect job? If you’ve got half a brain, you’ll find those “What Type of Job Is Right for Me?” quizzes on the web about as useful as your weekly horoscope. How you really feel about sharing a four-by-six-foot space with a hygienically challenged, socially stunted coworker usually has zilch to do with the meager multiple-choice options these tests offer. Read more.
8 simple rules for negotiating flex work Just because you’d like to set your own hours or work from home doesn’t mean your employer will share the sentiment. Employers don’t want to hear that you need a career makeover (or makeunder); they just want to know what’s in it for them. Read more.
February 5th, 2007
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