Over-50

Sales w/o Selling - Bob Dilenschneider Can Go Cool in 2021

The gameplan for marketing keeps mutating. And, during COVID-19 times, with so many businesses failing, survival of the fittest keeps requiring new plays.

Sure, for some, the tactics can still include publishing a book. Venture capitalist and co-founder of PayPal Peter Thiel put out there "Zero to One." That was in 2014. Currently it still ranks high on Amazon - 8,140. Expect an uptick.

In that guide for entrepreneurs, Thiel discusses applying to clerk for two justices of the U.S. Supreme Court, being rejected and lessons learned. Given the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, sales of any book reflecting on SCOTUS dynamics are bound to soar. 

However, public affairs Manhattan boutique owner Bob Dilenschneider published "Decisions" on December 31, 2019. Currently it ranks quite low on Amazon - 1,024,555. That makes publishing a book, at least for Dilenschneider, a - not a +. 

You bet, book publishing is risky for the non-Thiels as well as the non-Woodwards. Sales are made public on Amazon. That is information available to the author's competitors and enemies. Prospects for the author's services are also aware of the rankings. In America, we count. That's why resume experts hammer to quantify accomplishments. You not only increased traffic for X social site. That totaled 32% in 14 months. 

What Dilenschneider ignored was this: All the other cool marketing tactics he could have invested his resources in. They include podcasting, YouTubing and Instagram. The content of those could have been entertaining. 

The essence of marketing is a distraction from the existential tragedy that is life. 

The message is supposed to lift the targeted demographics from focusing on what is to the promise of what could be. That ability characterized Don Draper's creative talent in AMC's programming "Mad Men."

Successful marketing is actually a process of not-marketing. The response is built-in. The targets respond, kind of on autopilot. 

In constructing his gameplan for 2021, Dilenschneider can dismantle his in-place marketing machine and conjure up the voodoo of sales w/o selling.

The genius in that category is chairman of law firm Paul, Weiss Brad Karp. Each and every outreach doesn't look, walk, talk or smell like marketing. Those range from social justice initiatives to acquiring brandname laterals from his competitors. There is no heavy-handed marketing imprint. 

When I consult with clients for my career coaching services, early into the session it is usually appropriate to introduce the question: Have you considered experimenting with how you are marketing yourself?

Their answer is always "yes." That is because the answers for our economic survival are always within us. Otherwise, caveman wouldn't have had endured long enough to produce the next generation of the human species.

Small changes can have big impacts. Results-driven career coaching.  Affordable rates (sliding scale).  Make an appointment for complimentary consultation (janegenova374@gmail.com) Download UnleashingPossibilitywithJaneGenovaCareerCoaching

 

The Rise, Fall and Comeback of (aging) Yale Law Professor Jed Rubenfeld

Media outlets have been busy bees chronicling the fall of Yale Law School professor Jed Rubenfeld.

But that's today.

If he lays low for a while, then soon enough he can conjure up the magic of reputation restoration.

As a career coach, so many have been asking me if Rubenfeld is "comeback material."

In response, I have published this article in Odwyerpr.com.

With the growing number of strategies and tactics in public relations, no one has to be stuck more stuck most stuck. There are Nexts. 

The answers about your professional life are inside you. You will learn through coaching how to open yourself up to them. And get unstuck. Soon enough you will be your own coach. Affordable rates. Make an appointment for complimentary consultation (janegenova374@gmail.com)

The Retirement Dream - How It Keeps You Stuck in 3 Ways

In giving relocation advice to those about to retire, MarketWatch hammers the importance of, well, not retiring. At least, not completely.

Even for a financially comfortable couple, there is a recommendation to grab part-time work and back off from touching the nest egg.

High healthcare expenses may bite them in their pocketbook in the future.

Work is increasingly the necessary hedge.

Overall The Retirement Dream of extreme pleasure and no work can keep you stuck. That's because of 3 realities.

One, you can doom yourself to living on a fixed income. That's the platform for worrying since just about everything, from the cost of housing to that of groceries, is going up. Yes, there is work out there. Here, free to read, is my bible on how to land, hold and move on to better work Download Outwitting ageism.

Two, you socially isolate yourself. Work, from the days of ringing up purchases at CVS in high school to the career-path jobs, is where you have access to God's Plenty.

Isolation triggers more isolation.

When I visited former college acquaintance Kathleen Huebner in an Oro Valley, Arizona retirement community too many residents experienced "shrunk boundaries." They preferred, for example, to celebrate holidays in the development's dining rooms rather than the affordable restaurants beyond that box.

And, three, the ability to work, if you need to (and, surprise surprise, so many need to), can atrophy. In the old days parents mandated their offspring get a job, any job, in order to kick off the go-to-work socialization process.

When I coached displaced lawyers who had lived off severance and savings I noticed that when the money ran out they had difficulty interviewing for even survival jobs such as security guard.

Being without work for too long also resulted in their failure to nail down a position back practicing law. They had put themselves outside the work loop by not working. In addition the adage is on the money: Nothing gets you a job like a job. While doing a job you are maintaining the eager-beaver worker persona.

Once some retirees are stuck, the condition may harder into ossification. They are even fearful, like a number of those in Oro Valley, to venture out and try to amuse themselves in another sandbox. If there is a low-cost tour to X, they pile on the excuses why they have to stay in their box with the worn-out toys.

Takeaway: Structure The Retirement Dream with porous boundaries. That full-time, part-time or gig assignment can wind up being a fresh career path. You might find out you have unexpected talents and skills. Welcome, Late Bloomers.

All the answers are within you. Get unstuck to gain access to all the insight. Intuitive Career Readings (intuitivereadings123@gmail.com) invites you to a 3-minute complimentary session.

 

Your Job Is Gone, Maybe Forever - Don't Let Anyone Lay Resilience Talk on You

Finally, influential The New York Times exposed it: The Resilience Scam, or the pressure to not bother society with your distress about a whatever. It could be a lay off or not making partner at a professional services firm.

According to the resilience cheerleaders the enlightened response to life's difficulties, even the extreme ones, is to demonstrate that you can bounce back. Completely. Quicklsy. And without using a lot of society's resources. 

Obviously, in a sense, that's a version of blaming the victim. And there's a lot of that during COVID-19 with so many layoffs. Some of those jobs, especially white collar ones, are not coming back. Those professionals have to start from square one. 

The reality is that resilience is not required. All that is needed to navigate the ups and downs of a career is to be straight with yourself about how you view the reversal of fortune and not allow any person, place or thing to get you stuck. That doesn't mean you will land a new job in a few months. What it does mean is that you won't get trapped in a loop of powerlessness.

After Bill Clinton lost the campaign for governor he made it his business not to get stuck in the setback. In fact, he used it as his teacher. Although not a Buddhist, Clinton understood that fundamental of transforming the negative into power lessons.

If society stopped with the resilience mandate there might be a plunge in the suicide rate. 

All the answers are within you. Get unstuck to gain access to all the insight. Intuitive Career Readings (intuitivereadings123@gmail.com) invites you to a 3-minute complimentary session.

Everyone Is the Over-50 Pickle - 4 Questions to Ask Yourself to Figure Out If You're Stuck (even if you're a Gen Zer)

Blame it on systems theory.

Organizations and careers come to be thought of as living, breathing entities. When they stop functioning well, they are said to be "stuck." Consultants parachute in to get them unstuck. 

Most applied systems theory.

Not enough told those paying the consulting bill that is the human beings who operate those organizations or put together careers who are the sources of the stuckness. 

Sure there are external factors. The economy. New technologies making what-is obsolete. Shifting consumer tastes. Age bias. Personal problems. 

But why some organizations and careers derail and some don't amid those conditions is usually because of this: One or more human beings got stuck. The most brilliant marketing communications won't cut it, not for long. Stuck has a way to keep stuck. What's needed is to get unstuck. 

When that is impossible, then an unstuck pro has to come in.

That's why, in the early 1990s, IBM has to cut loose chief executive officer John Akers. A first that conservative corporation. It brought in the outsider with no preconceptions. That was Lou Gerstner Jr.

Before that, nearly bankrupt Chrysler brought in Lee Iacocca. He had nothing to lose after being fired from Ford. So, he wasn't dragging in "oughts" like dog turds on his shoe.

And, I have a hunch after he also got the boot from Apple Steve Jobs got himself untangled from what was holding him back. 

If your organization is sputtering or your career is stalled, including in joblessness, that's about you. 

The good news is that, since all the answers are inside you, you can get yourself unstuck.

That is, if you can embrace that you are off the game.

How can you assess that?

Ask yourself 4 questions?

• Are the stories you're telling yourself about your professional performance full of blame or praise? Both are red flags. You shouldn't be engrossed in so much self-talk.
• Are the stories you're telling others falling short of any authentic connecting? That means you're not exchanging the information and insights you need for your organization and career. There's a reason for that.
• Do you regret your setbacks? Shame on you. They are your teachers.
• Are you asking others for "permission" to do this or that? Obviously, you've lost your confidence.

Unfortunately, most of those for whom I've done communications assignments couldn't manage to unglue themselves from hardened mindsets and behavior patterns.

However, what they noticed was that the intuitive observations I made about them, not the organization or careers, was what got things moving again. That's because they got moving again.

They requested more intuitive career readings and less communications strategy.

That's how IntuitiveCareerReadings had been born during The Great Recession. The New York State Bar Association invited me to lecture displaced lawyers. Odwyerpr.com published my articles. My target market back then was the over-50. 

Then there was a recovery. And more of a margin for error.

IntuitiveCareerReadings became a side dish on the menu of services.

Now, it's the main dish. And it seems like the only dish. Demand has surged with the wildness of 2020. All generations are asking for me to take a peek to check out if they are stuck. However, the over-50 are experiencing more of a challenge landing, holding, and moving on to better work than in The Great Recession. 

For a complimentary 3-minutes, please make an appointment at intuitivereadings123@gmail.com. You might not need any more than those 3 minutes to start the unstuck. 

All the answers are within you.

From now on, this blog is getting unstuck from its traditional content. I am transforming it into a platform for helping professionals help themselves in their jobs, entrepreneurship and career paths. 

Weird, Like Our Grandparents/Parents

The fear was: another lockdown.

After all, Lucas County, Ohio still has a growing number of new cases of COVID-19. There are more deaths. 

But, surprise. Last night the local news announced that there would be some re-openings. That is, some places where residents of Toledo can go and get out of the house.

One re-opening is the local movie theatre - Cinemark at Franklin Park. Right now, it's showing classics such as "Beauty and the Beast" and "Raiders of the Lost Ark" for $5 for adults.

How film buffs have longed to be back in the dark, transported into another dimension. That parallel universe can be more real to some of us than what's foisted on us as "real life." Also, it's been an old-fashioned platform for maintaining emotional stability. 

On Monday, the Lucas County Public Library also will be re-opening. Most branches will be available for limited computer use, access to WiFi and an hour browsing the book shelves and checking out selections. For years, the public library has been a key Third Place. It's where both adults and children went to hang out, attend free special events, and have access to free books, videos, and music CDs. 

Already, some support groups such as Alcoholics Anonymous have been meeting in-person. But since social distancing makes for limited seating, members have to get there early if they want to be admitted to a particular meetings. Yes, they have to wear masks. No coffee is served. And the room is disinfected after each meeting. That access is likely saving lives. 

However, having someplace, anyplace, to go could be on short time. There are healthcare experts predicting that COVID-19 will circle back when the cold weather comes.

There may be no Halloween and no Christmas in 2020. We will stare into the Netflix abyss. The local television channels will blare platitudes that we are all in this together. Yet, people die alone from COVID-19. During the night they are by themselves with their anxiety about unemployment and under-employment. If they are evicted they are frequently without any safety net. 

Hope seems premature.

And, like our relatives who had made it through The Great Depression, we might become weird.

Already I have developed a phobia about spending money. The same thing is happening to those on my social network. Adversity might not make you better.

It just might make you a caricature of a human being. The universe has cast an ugly spell. 

The Message Glut. You need bold strategy/ghostwriting. Let’s talk about what will work. Please contact janegenova374@gmail.com.

That Whole Aging Lifequake - Recall the Comfort of Story Time at the Local Library

"I don't know who I am."

That's how people in transition usually sum up how they feel.

But what would be more accurate and what would make moving forward less painful is if they noted "I need a new story."

We are the stories we tell about ourselves. Both professionally and personally. Way back when in a less chaotic era we used to call that the "elevator speech." In a sentence or two it summed up what we were about. If it concerned our professional identity, it could help our career. For instance, "I'm Joe and I help big companies sell a lot of products." 

In transition, that identity, once so solid, is shifting. In the interim and then longer term, folks can gain control of the process if they put together a fresh narrative. That tells the world where they are in their careers and personal lives. More importantly, it delivers the message to themselves that they are in-charge.

That's especially needed in what Bruce Feiler, author of "Life Is in the Transitions," has called "lifequakes" or seismic shifts. As MarketWatch reports, Feiler anticipates lifequakes to increase in number and intensity.

So, as folks sense a lifequake coming to rattle their lives to the core, a multi-dimensional tool could be conjuring up a new story.

The partner at a law firm gets it: The firm wants him out. He isn't bringing in enough new business or billing enough hours. The way to emotionally, socially, and professionally manage that experience is to capture it in a story that moves the process forward. An example? "I'm reviewing what could be Next. This is the first time in 30 years I looked up from my desk." 

A former star in public relations contacted me for a complimentary consultation on her career. She wanted another one. So typical she framed that in the narrative embedded in the past, in who she used to be. "At Corporation X, the world knew my name. I made a lot of money. The media quoted me." 

To have a shot at a Next, she had to extricate the story from the past to possibility. During four coaching sessions, she came to manage this lifequake with the story "I fix brands. That could be your personal or social brand. Or the brand of, say, Uber." That got people interested. Even before she had fully established her communications boutique she had business. 

In COVID-19, it's the rare professional, parent or retired who isn't being rattled by a lifequake.

How to start on the new story? 

Accept that what was is no longer. Then be ready to take the first few steps. Get those down in one or two sentences. Let language take charge. It's not what is happening. It's how people manage that whatever. Christians came up with the narrative of how the word was made flesh. 

Coaching, lecturing, and writing/ghostwriting thought leadership content on human resources and careers.  

For individual coaching – sliding scale fees. Complimentary initial consultation. The special area of expertise is the displaced over-50 professional. Please contact Jane Genova janegenova374@gmail.com.

COVID-19 Pillages Our Memory Bank

The business of Ann Arbor, Michigan isn't really the university based there.

Rather it's embedded in all the industries supplying services and products to the 45,000 in that academic community. Those range from real estate which leases rooms and apartments to cheap wine and salty chips for partying. 

Because of COVID-19, which has resurged, that business is on life support. Business Insider points out how some entrepreneurs have reinvented their enterprises for the new realities. But the revenue remains lousy.

And things don't look promising for the 2020 - 2021 academic year. As that kicks off, the University of Michigan will provide a hybrid of in-person and online instruction. After Thanksgiving it will be all online. Then all courses will be halted until after MLK day. 

Along with this financial impact, there is the disruption to nostalgia.

For years University of Michigan alumni have circled back to Ann Arbor for time travel to that important part of our lives. I would revisit the restaurants and bookstores. A favorite was doing a walking tour of all the badly furnished "firetraps" I had rented during my seven years of doctoral studies. When living the life of the mind, we didn't need much.

Pre-COVID-19, I did return to Ann Arbor last August. Every year there are more university buildings and more upscale shops. But the ethos of extreme self-confidence was there. Everyone, it seemed, believed she or he was destined for success. 

I won't be returning this August. Instead, I have to reconfigure my memory bank to treasure another kind of seminal experience. But that won't be easy.

Because of global COVID-19, I can't absorb the ambiance of Calle de San Francisco in Barcelona, Spain. There, in the 1970s, I had leveraged my academic Spanish training to work in the hospitality industry. Those were days of heaven. Look, Mom, I am thinking in Spanish. Back then, there was the Ah-Ha moment that I was good at something else beside getting good grades in school. 

Reflection: The unacknowledged victim of COVID-19 is nostalgia. We can't go back, at least not now and not in the near future. 

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How Did We Get Here? - Mostly, Painfully

These times mirror those of the Counterculture. During revolutions many hold as sacred the belief that they are held to a higher code of law, not the conventional one. 

So, it is no surprise, as Law.com reports, that Colinford Mattis has plenty of supporters. They spoke up during the conference call which was how his arraignment had been conducted. He took a plea of not guilty to 7 counts.

Laypeople who aren't sophisticated in legal matters know that he is accused of being in the loop of a Molotov Cocktail being thrown during a George Floyd protest.

In addition, there had been an open letter from the New York Law University on June 17th in support of him. Mattis is a 2016 alumnus of that law school. 

However, the compassion for his alleged form of response to a system he might have perceived as racist (he is a man of color) is not universal. On social networks I have received push-back. I shared my understanding of how such anger could build up and then burst through safety valves. 

The wrench in the works of supporting Mattis is this: Civil disobedience is supposed to be non-violent.

Back in the Counterculture, we had joined hands, marched, and sang "We Shall Overcome" during the human rights movements of the early 1970. We didn't condone those who had thrown rocks through the windows of the Ann Arbor, Michigan banks surrounding the University of Michigan campus. We tutored our parents in what we considered was right thinking. We dragged our younger siblings along to D.C. on protest trains.

Nobody has to condone Mattis' alleged act of violence. But attention must be paid to what a man of color might have endured jumping through the hoops he had. Those range from matriculating in the Ivy League to being an associate at an elite law firm.

A female from an immigrant ghetto in Jersey City, New Jersey during the vestiges of the Frank Hague Machine, I felt like a novelty in a circus. It was palpable, at least to me. I experienced being watched as I struggled to navigate doctoral studies at the U of M, first year at Harvard Law, and being an executive ghostwriter/speechwriter for the Fortune 100. Therapists told me that I was very angry.

I call that phenomenon The Curse of Opportunity.

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When It Was Smart to Anglicize Your Name

Anglicizing a last name used to be an economic survival move. 

Back in the early 1950s, on the Hudson County, New Jersey docks, my maternal uncle Frank Miksza did just that.

It wasn't until I read my grandfather's obituary in the Jersey Journal that I found out that Uncle Frankie was going by the name Frank Mitchell. And, at the time, Mitchell was a big boss on the docks, overseeing many who were unloading ships. 

That was then.

Now, as the Daily Mail reports, the statement a professor at Laney College, Oakland, California, made to a student from Viet Nam about anglicizing her name resulted in his suspension. The professor is Matthew Hubbard. The student is Phuc Bui Diem Nguyen. 

Incidentally, the Daily Mail headline got it wrong. It indicates the Hubbard demanded the change. Rather, in an email he phrased it as "Could you …" 

His was a recommendation. It was based on a reality of language. When pronounced, the name sounded like that of an American English expletive. Could that have damaged her personal brand? Maybe.

The student took offense. Unfortunately, the professor persisted. He should have stopped there. She responded to Hubbard that she was going to file a Title IX complaint. 

Right now, Hubbard is on suspension.

In the play "Romeo and Juliet" by William Shakespeare, there is that iconic line: "What's in a name?"

Well, in reality, plenty. Obviously, it's a hot button in 2020.

To me, in 2001, after my industry collapsed after 9/11, it was a shot at a comeback.

Back then, I took a page from my uncle's playbook. I changed my first name from the very Catholic, very ethnic, way too cute "Mary Jane" to "Jane." On that platform, I found it easier to build a new business. I have no way of knowing, of course, how much the name change did or did not have to do with my eventual new success.

Yes, the shift was small or it seemed small to me. Yet, lots of folks pushed back. They insisted I had no "right" to inconvenience the world by forcing them to adapt to my new identity. Ironically, one relative on the maternal side persisted in calling me "Mary Jane." 

Reflection: Name changing carries plenty of economic, political, and social baggage. Beware.

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