A New Hampshire Economic View of Los Angeles

Posted on May 14, 2012 by Bill Ryan

I’m back in New Hampshire rebounding from an extended three month sublet stay in Los Angeles. There were several reasons for going, and one of them frankly was to escape for the first time in my 59 years a New England winter. Little did I realize that the northeast’s winter would be the warmest since Biblical times, but I enjoyed sunny Southern California nevertheless.

Given that I try to help people find meaningful and satisfying work I have a tendency to observe the local economy whenever I travel. I’m interested in several indicators like the number of open store fronts and office space available, how many houses and condos are for sale, local news reports regarding employment, and the overall demeanor of commercial street activity. Observing the economic goings-on of LA was then a natural. I’d like to share some of what I saw in this other corner of the country.

To begin it might be useful to mention what I expected to see of California coming from a state that certainly has experienced a tough downturn as of late, but that weathered the Recession better than many other states, including CA. I had heard about their 10%+ unemployment rate, high number of home foreclosures, elevated cost of living, multitudes of illegal immigrants, and the state government’s inability to fund many services. And then there is the whole Tinsel Town reputation the city has, replete with superficiality and inflated egos all vying for someone’s, no anyone’s, attention. I was expecting the city to be facing hard times. Were these negative preconceptions reinforced through observation? Not nearly as much as I thought they would be.

On the contrary, living on LA’s Westside I saw vitality, lots of economic activity, and surprisingly little homelessness. The place is abuzz. Now I was not in one of the more upscale sections, such as Brentwood, Westwood, or Marina Del Ray (Although I was within walking distance to the charming Culver City). What I saw in what passes for LA middle class was that most commercial and residential, buildings and the sidewalks connecting them were occupied by a mix of Mexicans, Pakistanis, Asians, African Americans, Middle Easterners, Indians, Central Americans, Jews, Muslims, transplanted Europeans, Christians, Hare Krishnas, Anglos, and others in a single non-segregated community. Business was being exchanged robustly within this population. Residentially, too, there was a high level of integration.

The one sociological and economic phenomenon that is historic and still occurring to a large extent is the labor class being largely inhabited by Latinos. They are washing the cars, cleaning the buildings, maintaining the gardens, and doing the construction. But the strong family bonds I saw shared, the high quality of the work shown, and the ubiquitous Spanish language that rivals English in community usage demonstrates the growing power and influence of this group in the life of the city.

One could think that the second largest city in the country would have such a diversity of industry that no one would predominate over the others. It doesn’t take long to see, however that entertainment is king here. The movie, television, and music industries strongly support the economy, culture, and lifestyle of Los Angeles. From the large studios like Paramount and Sony to the small boutique editing shops that dot the cityscape production of what the world likes to see and hear is foundational to what makes this place tick. But it isn’t just the production of a commodity that defines the character of the city. It’s their ability to be creative and innovative that is so striking. LA attracts artists from around the world that form a vibrant creative arts scene. New ideas and ways of shaping the future abound. Hybrid concepts are everywhere. I saw what I believe to be America’s future alive today in Los Angeles.

One scene that captured LA life for me was a day in February when I was walking along a residential street and I heard the oncoming din of pop music pounding out of the windows of an approaching car. Expecting a teenager to be behind the wheel I found myself doing a double take at one of the neighborhood’s Islamic women wearing a burqa driving a Prius, and playing her contemporary music at top volume. I knew then that I wasn’t in New Hampshire anymore.

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Retail Selling as a Possible Career Choice

Posted on April 26, 2012 by Bill Ryan

Lots of people work in retail. Whether one has chosen it as a career or parked there temporarily as they try to put their career plans together, retail employment occupies the time and energy of millions of employees. Retail is viewed simultaneously as both career lite by some and then again very seriously, particularly for managers and people very passionate about the product they are selling. Trying to determine if long-term work in retail is right for you requires a bit of contemplation and planning.

By retail we generally mean selling products in a brick and mortar store. How much longer this will last is uncertain. On the one hand it is obvious that millions still love to “go shopping”, i.e. getting in a car and driving to a store where you can browse, select items to buy, pack them into the car, and take them home. But buying products is migrating much more to an online shopping practice that leaves the driving to UPS and FedEx. Come home from work and there awaits the product you ordered two days ago from your phone while watching TV. Even Best Buy, which appeared victorious when defeating Circuit City in the consumer electronics war a few years ago, is now in trouble. Are they being challenged by another big box outlet? No. They are succumbing to Internet shopping.

So expecting a long career in retail is like expecting certainty in any kind career today—don’t count on it. But does that mean devoting your career to selling products is a dead end? Not necessarily. Let’s take a look at a company that knows a thing or two about the Internet, but that also performs retail selling at a high end.

Apple Retail Stores, yeah the computer guys, manage to create a superior shopping experience for consumers. Ever walk into one of these glass and white steel shops? They are as clean and antiseptic as the spacecraft on 2001 A Space Odyssey and occupied by intelligent, enthusiastic, and hip salespeople. Kyle Lagunas, an HR Market Analyst writing for SoftwareAdvice.com describes the in-store sales model used by Apple that makes it among the kings of retail: http://blog.softwareadvice.com/articles/hr/how-to-staff-your-organization-like-an-apple-store-1031512/

They have a way of dividing and training their sales teams into Experts, Specialists, Geniuses, and Creatives. Experts determine what you need and then send you to Specialists who understand the products inside and out or to Geniuses who are real live human tech support. Maybe a chat with a Creative is needed so that you can truly geek out with someone who knows your Mac at a higher plain. Together they work to deliver the revered Apple brand at the most personal of levels while leaving the consumer feeling that they are being well cared for.

It is possible to work high quality retail as our friends at Apple have shown. It stands to reason that this model could work with other products as well. Perhaps a way to look at a career in retail is to think about which of these categories you may fall into and then hone your skill in one or more of these select selling areas.

Combining product expertise with person to person outreach to consumers can develop into a wonderful career, whether it is in a real or virtual store.

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Reflections On My Business

Posted on April 9, 2012 by Bill Ryan

With this, my 100th blog posting since opening my career development business Ryan Career services LLC in January 2009, I am compelled to stray from my usual pattern of offering career advice to instead summarizing how the business experience has been for me and to reflect on what I’ve learned from this venture.

Following a 31-year career in public education, which I left in 2008, I was primed to try something completely different—an entrepreneurial enterprise that capitalized on strengths I had developed as a teacher. Primarily, assisting each individual to become the best they could be.

I had been working on the concept, including the writing of a business plan, for three years prior to formally offering career counseling, coaching, and resume, cover writing services. Although I felt qualified to deliver a superior experience for clients I found myself faced with two big uncertainties:

1. Was there really a viable market for these services just waiting to be tapped into?

2. What impact would the start of the most serious economic recession since the Great Depression have on the success of my business?

I can’t tell you how many times I had heard from people that “so many must need what you are offering during these times!” But what I found instead was that I was competing against the need for people to make sure they had food and shelter as the unemployment rate continued to rise.

The first year was an expected financial loss. I wasn’t naive enough to think a profit was to be realized at the outset. Despite the anxiety associated with launching a business, however, what I most feel about that first year is profound gratefulness for the clients I did have who placed their trust and dollars with me.

I had two goals for year two. One was to increase my knowledge and skill and to refine my expertise. This did happen and continues to this day. I wanted to strike a balance between what service I could credibly provide with what service clients most wanted. I did get closer, but realized that this would be an ongoing process. What I learned from teaching came to mind—that there is no pinnacle of perfection. You always keep learning.

The second goal had to do with trying to build a positive cash flow. Quite simply I wanted revenues to at least match expenditures. I achieved that point by the end of the third quarter and have never looked back.

Two significant lessons from year two included:

1. Half of my time was being spent on marketing, which I found interesting, but had no experience with at all. I can say, however, that I became impressed with the power and cost effectiveness of pay-per-click campaigns on Google AdWords. That along with continued optimization of my website has strongly increase my exposure.

2. The realization that career development was becoming more technological, in that how a client appeared online correlated more and more with the success of their career and employment prospects. It was during this time that I added a third leg to my stool, that of Online Profile Management. I became committed to being a go-to professional in this early stage industry.

By year three I reached an important milestone by earning one of the nation’s most prestigious resume writing credentials, the ACRW or Academy Certified Resume Writer. This has boosted not only my writing capacity, but my client base. Consequently I also found my writing going into two additional areas along with resumes and cover letters: LinkedIn Profiles and Professional Biographies.

Financially, I set a specific revenue to expense ratio goal to reach by year’s end that I again hit by the end of Q3. I began paying myself for the first time and found that my first big uncertainty from the start was no longer one. I became convinced that there is a market for these services.

But there was another significant risk to take. I knew I would get to this at some point and the beginning of year four, my current year, was the time to take it. I had always envisioned the business becoming one that drew in clients from around the country and that I wouldn’t be too reliant on just one geographical region, like New Hampshire. I knew that my lifestyle was starting to shift to one that involved more travel and living for extended periods in other places beyond NH. I have always felt that technology gave me the tools to merge a mobile style of living with the ability to continuously bring in work no matter where I was—as long as I had an Internet connection.

The past three months gave me an opportunity to test this concept out. I just finished living in Los Angeles for the winter, which is about as far away as one can get from NH while still being in the U.S. What have I learned?

1. The writing services are much more mobile than counseling. I provide resume, cover letter, online profile, and professional biography writing services to clients from around the country who I never meet face to face. Many times we may never even speak on the phone. Email is an incredibly efficient means of conducting this end of the business.

2. How to offer career counseling and coaching from afar remains elusive. Despite Skype, webcams, and video conferencing technology the adoption rate for utilizing these tools into a counseling context is slow. For the issues that are raised in these types of sessions the preferred means of contact is still face to face. I’m still working on figuring this one out.

3. Marketing on a national level can be a lot more expensive than on a state of regional level. Google AdWords is based on selecting geographies to showcase your ads. That is no longer as relevant to me as before, even if I pick multiple locations to post ads. Pay-per-click with sites that are more national and targeted to professionals, such as LinkedIn, may be more appropriate. I shall see.

Financially, I have lost ground as I try to shift to building a more national client base. But I am confident that I can make this work eventually.

The other challenge that I have faced is to develop a resume writing tutorial service that is usable from my website for those clients who want to try their own hand at writing a resume, but need a teacher to guide them. I have begun working with a web developer who has experience in course management software. I hope to have this up and running by the end of year four.

In closing, I have to say that my basic premise, which has always been that the quality of one’s life is tightly linked to the character of their work, has been reinforced by working with hundreds of clients to date. As the saying goes, do what you love and you will never work a day in your life, still holds. I feel very fortunate to be playing a small role towards helping people reach that goal.

 

 

 

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Success and Happiness

Posted on March 19, 2012 by Bill Ryan

We have all been taught that if we toil, apply ourselves, and put our noses to the grindstone that we can attain success which leads to happiness. Contentment, we are told, must be preceded by success, which in turn must be preceded by hard work that is often associated with not being happy. This cause and effect paradigm is an American truism harkening back to our earliest past. And it continues to find widespread expression, particularly with a bullying management style that implores workers to row harder.

But could it be possible that the success / happiness formula should actually be viewed in reverse? That is— happiness begetting success. There is a researcher and writer named Shawn Achor who postulates in his book The Happiness Advantage that conventional thinking has this cause and effect sequence wrong. He is instead promoting the notion that happiness forms the groundwork for success to occur. Achieving a grand objective like finding deep satisfaction from one’s work can best be reached by approaching your job from a positive place to begin with. Having a more enlightened outlook and energized perspective is preparatory to meeting your goals.

The brain may be better suited toward intelligence and innovation when the emotional viewpoint is uplifted. Possible routes to greater success become apparent with a more resilient and stress free mind. If we consider for a moment that Achor has this right, then it begs the question of how we are all so off track. We as a culture seem to have accepted the belief that negativity, in the form of unpleasant exertion, sets the stage for a better life to come. I think of the mythic entrepreneur who works day and night to launch and grow a business and then retires many years down the road, living with the gratification of a job well done. Working “day and night” sounds unpleasant, doesn’t it? But for the truly successful it may not be. The difference between finding success and just getting a job done may come from the level of positive thinking present in the individual.

The problem with thinking of success in a traditional sense is that it is so elusive. When we successfully reach a work quota, then management sets a higher goal. If we increased revenues by 18% this month, then we need to hit 22% next month. The goal post is always being placed just a little further away, the bar is raised just a little higher in order to meet success. Attainment becomes fleeting, a temporary way station on the road to something bigger and better. This set of circumstances has really become the norm in these post-recession days of workplaces always trying to do more with less.

Perhaps our competitive nature has us on edge in ways that detract from the preconditions necessary to approach our objectives. When work becomes a slog our positivity slips away and the “success” we achieve may be of a lower quality than is otherwise possible. Maybe it’s time to think that having a more positive attitude actually makes us more productive.

If an elevated level of positivity leads to a more productive and higher quality success, then how do we get to this starting place? Reframing your perspective may be a place to begin. Note the good stuff around you, appreciate what is right, favorable, and agreeable in your daily life and in the work you do. Being kind to others whenever you can raises your mood and influences your behavior. Take the time to be healthy and make lifestyle choices that are potent for your mind and body. As counterintuitive as it may sound you may have to work at being positive. If we over focus on the negative aspects of our work or feel happiness is to be delayed until success is found, then we may never really get there.

Happiness need not be a dreamy far away goal. Instead it may be a state of mind that we continually build upon no matter where we are in the success cycle.

 

 

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Preparing For the Changing Workplace

Posted on February 27, 2012 by Bill Ryan

I recently read an article in a statewide business news publication written by a respected and intelligent business pro who was also an obvious Baby Boomer. In it he directed a subtle jab at LinkedIn, the social media website dedicated to professionals, and with it a not so subtle poke at social media in general. Although I agree with his point that time is too valuable to waste on frivolous or trivial matters, I don’t think this necessarily applies to social media. But what struck me more was the tone of the piece, which I place as yet another example of a problem older generation workers have in succeeding in today’s job market.

As I’ve indicated in the past, we are living through a period of age bias when it comes to hiring mature workers, many of whom were laid off aggressively during the recession. To date much of this age cohort is struggling to get re-employed. A key reason for the reluctance to bring mature workers back on board, despite their vast experience and accumulated wisdom, is because they are not keeping up with, and in many cases resisting, technological changes that are largely being driven by the generation of their children. And with each passing day it is this emerging younger section of the workforce that is setting hiring policies.

Rapid innovations of a technological nature seem to fall into two main interrelated areas: Information Search / Management and Interpersonal Connectivity. Efficiently reaching out to grab the data you want when you need it and connecting to people you need when you want them drives much of the hardware, software, and web-based applications currently available and under development. The necessity of achieving this efficiency is reflected in many workplaces today and that is expected to grow in time. As a result, the current and future workforce is expected to be adept with the tools and apps of information management and connectivity. Just as many employees now are expected to use email and word processors, a similar familiarity is becoming expected with various types of social media and Internet
navigation.

There is no question that keeping up with these new demands can be daunting and intimidating for some, particularly for the older folks among us. When we look at the younger generation and see that their daily use of Facebook and smart phones is as common to them as telephone and television are to us it can leave us feeling out of touch. One option often taken is to develop an attitude that the way these young people act is superficial, misguided, or even wrong. We think that we got by just fine without these gadgets and that these changes are not necessary. Now does it sound familiar from our distant past to Boomers that an older generation just didn’t get the younger one?

The larger is issue is accepting change. Adaptability is one of the most important and employable traits a person can have, especially during the time of exponential change we live in now. Unfortunately, older workers are too often feeding the perception that we are not adaptable and even potential impediments to innovation. When we observe a now common practice and describe it as a bandwagon or fad we place ourselves out of the new mainstream. And if you’re trying to present yourself as relevant in today’s workplace this is not a message you should be broadcasting.

The challenge for mature workers is to merge their attributes of solid work ethic, tenacity, and big picture viewpoint with the obvious and fluid developments of conducting business in the modern era. We don’t have to necessarily embrace and personally adopt every new practice, but it is in our interests to at least try to understand the trends that underlie them. When you think about it, Baby Boomers were the ones who once prided themselves on agitating traditional thinking and setting out to create a new world. If any generation should be able to show flexibility and have an appreciation for new ways of doing things it should be them.

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