Bullish: Do You Belong In An Institution?

By Contributor Jen Dziura 

This article originally appeared on TheGrindstone

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.

Read the rest at TheGrindstone.

Jennifer Dziura (jenniferdziura.com) writes career and life coaching advice for young women at TheGrindstone and TheGloss. She believes you can make money without being a douchebag. She believes in working harder and smarter now so you can have "balance" when you're wrinkly and covered in diamonds. She believes in starting businesses on zero dollars, selling expensive things to rich people, and laughing very hard at people who try to "manifest their dreams" without learning any real skills or shaping the fuck up. She likes to help. Jennifer also performs (sort of) educational one-woman shows about philosophy and punctuation. Her "The History of Women in 30 Minutes" has appeared in the Women in Comedy Festival.

Bullish Life: How To Remember Names (Without Stupid Mnemonic Devices)

By Contributor Jen Dziura 

This article originally appeared on TheGloss.

I teach evening classes to adults, and I often have about 90 students at a time. I remember all their names (at least the names of the students who show up regularly).

My first year of teaching, I didn’t. I just gave up: there are 16 of them per class and only one of me, and also a lot of them are named “Iftikhar” and “Joo-Eun.”

Once, I forgot a student’s name, and he said, “It’s John. John. Like a toilet.” And that made me sad. And I did indeed think of a toilet every time I called on him. This is not how John or I want to live.

There are some very good ways to remember names.

First, let’s get this out of the way. Do not say, “Oh, I’m terrible with names.” Wrote commenter Bob V. about this column, “Whenever I hear a student say that they are not good at math, I want to tell them that I’m not good at juggling either. I tried it for about five minutes once and gave up.” Same with being on time or drawing or even carrying a tune. Saying you suck at something that you have failed to research and practice is a weak cop-out.

Read the rest at TheGloss.

Jennifer Dziura (jenniferdziura.com) writes career and life coaching advice for young women at TheGrindstone and TheGloss. She believes you can make money without being a douchebag. She believes in working harder and smarter now so you can have "balance" when you're wrinkly and covered in diamonds. She believes in starting businesses on zero dollars, selling expensive things to rich people, and laughing very hard at people who try to "manifest their dreams" without learning any real skills or shaping the fuck up. She likes to help. Jennifer also performs (sort of) educational one-woman shows about philosophy and punctuation. Her "The History of Women in 30 Minutes" is appearing on Sunday night of the Women in Comedy Festival.

Bullish: How Business Is Like Dating

By Contributor Jen Dziura 

This article originally appeared on TheGloss.

Business is a lot like dating. Like cold-hearted, competitive dating among people who don’t love each other. In other words, like awful, awful dating.

Once upon a time, when I was considering moving to New York, I looked for jobs. A Director of Marketing position was available at a company I’ll call QuixoticIdea.Com. I was an unconventional candidate — I’d never held a “real job,” but had run a company for about five years despite my relative youth — so I wrote what I remember to be a pretty persuasive email regarding some marketing ideas I had for QuixoticIdea.

The CEO of the company got back to me right away. He wanted to do a phone interview. Cool. During the phone interview, he asked me a lot of really detailed questions about my ideas. He said he’d get back to me about maybe doing an in-person interview.

Read the rest at TheGloss.

Jennifer Dziura (jenniferdziura.com) writes career and life coaching advice for young women at TheGrindstone and TheGloss. She believes you can make money without being a douchebag. She believes in working harder and smarter now so you can have "balance" when you're wrinkly and covered in diamonds. She believes in starting businesses on zero dollars, selling expensive things to rich people, and laughing very hard at people who try to "manifest their dreams" without learning any real skills or shaping the fuck up. She likes to help. Jennifer also performs (sort of) educational one-woman shows about philosophy and punctuation. Her "The History of Women in 30 Minutes" is appearing in the Women in Comedy Festival.

Bullish: How To Do Many Different Things At Once

By Contributor Jen Dziura 

This article originally appeared on TheGloss.

I am writing this column at 1:55 in the morning, drinking a Hoegaarden, before I catch a 10am train to Boston for a 7pm gig. You can take the bus from NYC to Boston for $15, but I paid over $100 for the train (damn you, Amtrak!) because I get a lot done on trains and planes, and four hours on a train will be enough to submit the final chapter of a textbook from my hotel just before heading over to the venue.

For some reason, the train back to New York was even more expensive, so I’ll surely be doubly motivated to write enough to make sure I make a profit on my mode of transport. I also calculate ROI in foreign countries — not that I’m against just enjoying a vacation (see Bullish: How to Travel Like a Gentlewoman). But when alone, I monumentally enjoy sitting in a Swedish cafe, writing math problems and contemplating that my herring platter is being paid for tenfold while I am eating that very herring platter and scribbling away on a legal pad that may now be inadvertently imbued with aquavit and lingonberries.

Let’s talk about how to do everything you ought to be doing in this world, all of it at once.

Read the rest at TheGloss.

Jennifer Dziura (jenniferdziura.com) writes career and life coaching advice for young women at TheGrindstone and TheGloss. She believes you can make money without being a douchebag. She believes in working harder and smarter now so you can have "balance" when you're wrinkly and covered in diamonds. She believes in starting businesses on zero dollars, selling expensive things to rich people, and laughing very hard at people who try to "manifest their dreams" without learning any real skills or shaping the fuck up. She likes to help. Jennifer also performs (sort of) educational one-woman shows about philosophy and punctuation. Her "The History of Women in 30 Minutes" is appearing in the Women in Comedy Festival.

Bullish: Be Broke Without Going Crazy

By Contributor Jen Dziura 

This article originally appeared on TheGloss, which is why Jen's talking about summer. Frankly, we think her advice is good year round!

It’s summer [see lead-in. -Ed.], when everyone gets lazy and begins asking the sometimes unintentionally infuriating question, “Are you getting out of the city?”

If you’re twenty-five and broke, well, no, probably not. And, no, you don’t want to contribute to a summer share in the Hamptons with fourteen other girls, because you have work to do and a career to build, and picking up the tiny crumbs of the privileged really doesn’t get you ahead or provide for a relaxing vacation, which, to me, requires a lack of class fury (see Bullish: Social Class in the Office).

I have this friend who constantly forwards everyone these articles from New York Magazine and The New York Times about how expensive it is to live in New York, or how New Yorkers are unhappy, or how New York ranks below Lesotho on some international scale of how long the average person has to work to be able to afford a colonoscopy. One article claimed that it takes $300,000 a year to live decently. Which, if you consider having a summer home and sending three children to private school (plus tutors, camps, and college counselors) requirements for living decently, is true.

Read the rest at TheGloss.

Jennifer Dziura (jenniferdziura.com) writes career and life coaching advice for young women at TheGrindstone and TheGloss. She believes you can make money without being a douchebag. She believes in working harder and smarter now so you can have "balance" when you're wrinkly and covered in diamonds. She believes in starting businesses on zero dollars, selling expensive things to rich people, and laughing very hard at people who try to "manifest their dreams" without learning any real skills or shaping the fuck up. She likes to help. Jennifer also performs (sort of) educational one-woman shows about philosophy and punctuation. Her "The History of Women in 30 Minutes" is appearing in the Women in Comedy Festival.

Bullish: How to Make Money as an Artsy-Artist Commie Pinko Weirdo, Part II

By Contributor Jen Dziura 

This article originally appeared on TheGloss.

Read Part I here.

If you’re reading Bullish two days before Christmas, either you don’t celebrate Christmas, or else you are mid-sculpture / business plan / book / musical composition. All of which I support. (Remember when Bullish cockblocked Thanksgiving?)

As I discussed in Personality Qualities That Are Way More Important Than Anything on Your Resume, you can’t just have a job anymore. So, when other people are quaffing eggnog is when it is your chance to get ahead; watch as your competitors fatten themselves up for the kill!

I jest, I jest (sort of). It certainly is important to take time out to recharge and to spend time with loved ones. But I’ll bet there are some people in your family you don’t even love, much less like. So that’s some time saved right there! Seriously: how much of the lazy-time around the holidays is actually quality family time, or any kind of real pleasure? At my familial homestead, a lot of it is sitting on the couch watching cop shows. So, rather than lose a day to twelve hours of low-intensity family prattle, there’s nothing wrong with taking charge and making suggestions for quality time (“I really want to play Scrabble after dinner! Who’s in?”), and otherwise sequestering yourself for productive stretches where possible.

Read the rest at TheGloss.

Jennifer Dziura (jenniferdziura.com) writes career and life coaching advice for young women at TheGrindstone and TheGloss. She believes you can make money without being a douchebag. She believes in working harder and smarter now so you can have "balance" when you're wrinkly and covered in diamonds. She believes in starting businesses on zero dollars, selling expensive things to rich people, and laughing very hard at people who try to "manifest their dreams" without learning any real skills or shaping the fuck up. She likes to help. Jennifer also performs (sort of) educational one-woman shows about philosophy and punctuation. Her "The History of Women in 30 Minutes" is appearing in the Women in Comedy Festival.

Bullish: How to Make Money as an Artsy-Artist Commie Pinko Weirdo, Part I

By Contributor Jen Dziura 

This article originally appeared on TheGloss.

Have you ever read a “How to Get Ahead in Your Field in 90 Days or Less Using Negotiating Techniques/Mind Control/Fairy Dust” article or book and just sort of let the advice glance off, assuming that it doesn’t really apply to you because you don’t wear a suit and look like a businesslady stock photo?

I live on Wall Street, and once walked up out of the subway to see a movie being filmed on Wall Street. It was a Saturday, and all the besuited people were actors. It looked just like … well, a movie. Because everyone was very young and attractive, and also carrying briefcases — rich, shiny leather, or gleaming chrome. Briefcases. No one does that. Not even on Wall Street. This was some Platonic ideal of Wall Street, minus all the grumpy older men with bad skin and frowzy trenchcoats who try to cut the line at Starbucks.

Are you are imagining “business” exclusively the way it is portrayed in the movies, or — even better — the movies of your formative years? Like Wall Street or Boiler Room or even What Women Want (gross when it came out, and even grosser now, Mel Gibson). I have found myself doing this. For instance, certainly you’ve heard the advice to make friends with gatekeepers, to always be nice to the receptionist. It’s easy to see myself doing this on Mad Men. She has a beehive and a prim little suit and would like it if you sent flowers. But in real life, the person at the front desk is almost certainly a 23 year old who is always on Facebook. She is wearing leggings. So, yes, that is the person you are supposed to be nice to. (For the record, if I made less than $15 an hour, I would wear leggings too, just to stay sane.)

Read the rest at TheGloss.

Jennifer Dziura (jenniferdziura.com) writes career and life coaching advice for young women at TheGrindstone and TheGloss. She believes you can make money without being a douchebag. She believes in working harder and smarter now so you can have "balance" when you're wrinkly and covered in diamonds. She believes in starting businesses on zero dollars, selling expensive things to rich people, and laughing very hard at people who try to "manifest their dreams" without learning any real skills or shaping the fuck up. She likes to help. Jennifer also performs (sort of) educational one-woman shows about philosophy and punctuation. Her "The History of Women in 30 Minutes" is appearing in the Women in Comedy Festival.

Bullish: Using Your College Skills to Succeed After College

By Contributor Jen Dziura

This article originally appeared on TheGrindstone.

I always say that you shouldn’t take business advice from someone whose only business is giving business advice (Pyramids: Great shape for a pharaoh’s tomb, bad shape for a business model), and that multiple streams of income are crucial.

One of my businesses is offering educational comedy shows to universities — I do about six gigs a year — and this was how I recently found myself at sunny Palm Beach State University, where I had offered, since I was in town anyway, to speak to any college classes that wanted to have me. That turned out to be an introductory composition class.

My speaking topic is “Forging Your Own Career,” but I tend to do my public speaking a bit on the fly — you really just have to get a feeling for things once you get there. Colleges are more different from each other than nearly any other group of groups of people; there is no Chamber of Commerce that only takes the top 8% of businesses, and then some other Chamber of Commerce for people who couldn’t get into that Chamber of Commerce, and then a bunch of Chambers of Commerce full of people who were excluded from the other Chambers of Commerce for a host of financial and sociocultural reasons.


Read the rest at TheGrindstone.

Jennifer Dziura (jenniferdziura.com) writes career and life coaching advice for young women at TheGrindstone and TheGloss. She believes you can make money without being a douchebag. She believes in working harder and smarter now so you can have "balance" when you're wrinkly and covered in diamonds. She believes in starting businesses on zero dollars, selling expensive things to rich people, and laughing very hard at people who try to "manifest their dreams" without learning any real skills or shaping the fuck up. She likes to help. Jennifer also performs (sort of) educational one-woman shows about philosophy and punctuation. Her "The History of Women in 30 Minutes" is appearing in the Women in Comedy Festival.

Bullish: Are You Thinking Too Small?

By Contributor Jen Dziura

This article originally appeared on TheGrindstone.

Ever since I first figured out how a screwdriver works (you don’t necessarily need to drill holes first — you can screw stuff straight into drywall!), it has occurred to me that there are plenty of really easy things that men are “better” at for absolutely no good reason. Aside from basic tool use, these may include parallel parking, map reading, and catching a gently tossed baseball or football. While it’s possible that men and women have cognitive differences at least in part caused by biology, I’m talking about really basic skills, here; however much either gender lags behind in such skills is clearly cultural. And I’d like to talk about a specific part of that cultural divide: the power of embarrassment.

Why are most American men pretty good at parallel parking, map reading, and catching things? Because if you are a man, it’s humiliating to be bad at these things. However, it is not terribly embarrassing to be bad at these things if you are a woman. Since the natural human condition is laziness, men have more motivation to gain these skills.

I think there is a very similar “embarrassment gap” between men and women about money and business. I think many women think too small because they’re not embarrassed by it, whereas men are forced to think bigger — in part for the obvious reasons (money, glory), but in part just to avoid shame.

Read the rest at TheGrindstone.

Jennifer Dziura (jenniferdziura.com) writes career and life coaching advice for young women at TheGrindstone and TheGloss. She believes you can make money without being a douchebag. She believes in working harder and smarter now so you can have "balance" when you're wrinkly and covered in diamonds. She believes in starting businesses on zero dollars, selling expensive things to rich people, and laughing very hard at people who try to "manifest their dreams" without learning any real skills or shaping the fuck up. She likes to help. Jennifer also performs (sort of) educational one-woman shows about philosophy and punctuation. Her "The History of Women in 30 Minutes" is appearing in the Women in Comedy Festival.

Bullish: When To Make Massive And Ballsy Life Changes For Your Career

By Contributor Jen Dziura

This article originally appeared on TheGloss.

I love talking about being “ballsy.”

Testicles are very delicate – very important, yes, but also very delicate. Like, say, eyeballs. Important, but quite fragile! Yet no one ever says “Eyeballs out, ladies! Let’s do this!”

So, when is it important to be ballsy? More specifically, when is it time to make massive life changes to get ahead?

There was once a time that I worried I was clinically depressed and would require medication I could not afford. After all, depression is a disease, right? It’s all chemicals in your brain? Clearly, sometimes, that is the case. It is especially not difficult to understand that the drastic hormonal changes related to pregnancy and childbirth might marinate a person’s cerebellum in liquid melancholia.

But, in my case, I was running a failing company in a dead-end town, I couldn’t pay my bills, I hadn’t had fun in (actual) years, my landlord was threatening to evict my startup, and I had cut out exercising and friendships in order to make more time to fail at things. So, I don’t think that was a case of my brain randomly deciding to make some depressing chemicals. I think that was a very rational reason to be bummed out.

Read the rest at TheGloss.

Jennifer Dziura (jenniferdziura.com) writes career and life coaching advice for young women at TheGrindstone and TheGloss. She believes you can make money without being a douchebag. She believes in working harder and smarter now so you can have "balance" when you're wrinkly and covered in diamonds. She believes in starting businesses on zero dollars, selling expensive things to rich people, and laughing very hard at people who try to "manifest their dreams" without learning any real skills or shaping the fuck up. She likes to help. Jennifer also performs (sort of) educational one-woman shows about philosophy and punctuation. Her "The History of Women in 30 Minutes" is appearing in the Women in Comedy Festival.

Bullish: Thinking More Productively About Money

By Contributor Jen Dziura

This article originally appeared on TheGrindstone.

When I was nine-years-old, I discovered that my allowance was the lowest of all the girls in my class (embarrassing!) and sometime later, started a small business making friendship bracelets and also reselling all the best (i.e., grossest) Garbage Pail Kids trading cards.

My classmate Crystal was rifling though my wares, which I kept in a Ziploc bag in my backpack. She questioned my business model – how come I was selling the good cards for more than they would cost in the store? (Seriously, don’t people’s parents explain these things to them?)

I said that, obviously, when you buy a pack of Garbage Pail Kids in the store, you don’t know which ones you’re getting, and also that marking things up was how all businesses operate. Stores, of course, buy things and then sell those things for more than they paid.

“That’s not true!” she said, incensed.

“Of course it is,” I said. “How else would they pay the rent and the people who work there?”

“You’re stupid,” she said, leaving without Harry Carrie, Adam Bomb, or Babbling Brooke.

Read the rest at TheGrindstone.

Jennifer Dziura (jenniferdziura.com) writes career and life coaching advice for young women at TheGrindstone and TheGloss. She believes you can make money without being a douchebag. She believes in working harder and smarter now so you can have "balance" when you're wrinkly and covered in diamonds. She believes in starting businesses on zero dollars, selling expensive things to rich people, and laughing very hard at people who try to "manifest their dreams" without learning any real skills or shaping the fuck up. She likes to help. Jennifer also performs (sort of) educational one-woman shows about philosophy and punctuation. Her "The History of Women in 30 Minutes" is appearing in the Women in Comedy Festival.

Bullish: How To Make Money From Being Hip As All Fucking Hell

By Contributor Jen Dziura 

This article originally appeared on TheGrindstone.

When I was a kid, I assumed that everyone on television was rich. Because showing off your dancing beagle on whatever program was the ‘80s equivalent to The Ellen DeGeneres Show obviously represents both a huge financial windfall as well as a sustainable business model.

We now live in an era in which it is painfully clear that fame does not equal money. Ashley Hebert made $30,000 for The Bachelorette (a tiny fraction of what she’ll soon be making as a dentist). All the other Real Housewives are jealous that Bethenny Frankel actually had a business plan all along, and a product (Skinnygirl Margarita) that other human beings would actually like to purchase for their own pleasure and consumption. I was in a pilot for a TV show on a major network and was to be paid a few thousand dollars per season if it took off – the idea being that, obviously, being a logic expert who helps people figure out how to steal cake would help me to advertise similar services in real life.

I’ve written before about how being attractive is helpful, but does not translate into money as readily as a person might think. Being awesome (or hip, cool, popular, famous, etc.) also does not just convert itself into money the way one might assume.

Read the rest at TheGrindstone.

Jennifer Dziura (jenniferdziura.com) writes career and life coaching advice for young women at TheGrindstone and TheGloss. She believes you can make money without being a douchebag. She believes in working harder and smarter now so you can have "balance" when you're wrinkly and covered in diamonds. She believes in starting businesses on zero dollars, selling expensive things to rich people, and laughing very hard at people who try to "manifest their dreams" without learning any real skills or shaping the fuck up. She likes to help. Jennifer also performs (sort of) educational one-woman shows about philosophy and punctuation. Her "The History of Women in 30 Minutes" is appearing in the Women in Comedy Festival.