Pre-Judging Other People – Never A Good Idea – I read this post by Thom Singer back on January 17 and it’s been sitting in my in box because I knew I wanted to link to it. He tells a story about how he was in a vegan restaurant reading Thomas Friedman’s book Flat, Hot, and Crowded and ran into a woman who had heard him speak about networking at the Austin Chamber of Commerce. She had made assumptions about him based on his talk, and he was unaware of the faux pax he was committing wearing a leather jacket at the vegan restaurant. A great and entertaining read…especially if you know Thom.
Who You Are And What You Do – I read this one right after reading Thom’s post I mentioned above and thought how appropriate given that on this post Seth Godin discusses how people form a judgment of you online. If you do certain things, people make judgments based on what they see you do. The key takeaway for me was “If you’re not happy with the perception you generate, change the words you type and the messages you send.”
Love (and Annoying) – Another great one by Seth Godin. I just love the way he writes and how he ties easily understandable concepts to the marketing of products. He starts off his post with “The goal is to create a product that people love. If people love it, they’ll forgive a lot. They’ll talk about it. They’ll promote it. They’ll come back. They’ll be less price sensitive. They’ll bring their friends. They’ll work with you to make it better. If you can’t do that, though, perhaps you can make your service or product less annoying.” Great advice not only for marketing products but also in life!
The Global Hug Tour – I found out about this on twitter. It’s an endeavor by 2 people in a small prop plane, flying around the world, delivering 100,000 hugs and $1,000,000 to important causes. I remember reading somewhere on their site or elsewhere that people need (or should get) at least 7 hugs per day. Now that’s a lot of hugs if you don’t have little kids because I’m sure I beat the little kid hug daily quota often! My kids are just so hug-able. 🙂
For just $10 you too can be a Hug Amassador! This feat is being run by Gail Goodwin and her husband and press will be following them to make sure the money actually goes towards hugs and not a second house! This endeavor particularly resonated with me because I once heard a story about the orphans in Romania who were never touched. The babies were left alone to cry and ocassionally given food but never held and cuddled. The story showed those children when they were older and how difficult it was for them to adapt to society, how they couldn’t relate to others, and how desparately lonely they looked. I can’t imagine someone not wanting to hold and touch a little baby. Us humans are such social creatures that sharing a hug can go a long way. Many of us in the online world know that we can even give virtual hugs by putting someone’s name in brackets so here’s a hug to {{my blog readers}}.
I just got back from a fabulous visit with my mom. I even got to see my sister. It was a much needed mini-life break, and it was nice to have the three of us together again. I could use more of those breaks, but I’m just ever so grateful to have a place to run away for a little bit and a husband who I trust completely to take care of the kids while I’m gone…well maybe a few things get forgotten but everyone survived!
One of my new year non-resolutions was to sing more. Since then, I’ve received an offer to sing with one of my bosses who I hardly see because he’s one, two (actually it’s unclear) levels above me, but he also happened to hire me to teach entrepreneurship back in the day so I know him reasonably well. I’m not sure if or when that will happen, but I hear he’s a pretty good guitar player. The other thing that happened is that my dear husband got me some singing lessons!
Now hubby has been hit and miss with presents…especially the big ones (when he hasn’t consulted with me first), but I have to say this gift was probably one of the more thoughtful ones he’s given me. I was skeptical at first because he found the teacher online, and I had visions of some weird, washed up, wrinkled singer with a cane giving lessons because they couldn’t make it in the ‘real’ world. But I was pleasantly proven wrong by Julie at Fiore Music Studio. She has a great operatic voice. I promptly told her I wasn’t interested in singing opera and she was totally fine with that. She travels on tour from time to time.
I’ve taken 3 lessons so far and I’m down to my last one and will probably sign up for a few more. The first lesson we just practiced warm ups and scales. I left thinking, “Hmmm…not sure if I want to sing scales for the next several lessons.” The second lesson she told me I had good pitch and an ear for music that is very hard to teach and in addition to singing scales we worked on one of my favorite hymns “Amazing Grace.” I left more inspired to come back next time. On my third visit we did some different warm up exercises and worked on “Summertime” by George Gershwin. For my next visit, I’ve printed out lyrics for “The Rose” sung by Bette Midler and “Blue Moon” sung by such greats at Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald to work on.
The day of my first lesson, Julie and I were talking and she said something that struck me as she was describing singers. She said something like “That’s why singers are neurotic.” I said to myself “Well darn the luck, so are most entrepreneurs! I’m doubly screwed if I decide to label myself a singer too.” So there you have it, I’ve just discovered I’m qualified to be a singer…well at least on the neuroses scale. 😀
Now if there’s proof that someone has to be a little neurotic to run operations at a technology incubator, then it appears I have found myself existing at the right place in time to battle three neuroses. Wish me luck. There must be a professor writing a textbook in need of a research subject out there somewhere…
Oddly enough, I was nominated for the Texas Social Media Awards. There were 125 nominees and I happen to know at least one of the people who nominated me and that was Thom Singer, our local networking guru. Thanks Thom!
There are some heavy weights in social media on the list and I’m honored to be among them! The list was created by people who happened to know about the awards, so I think they are missing some key social media people in Texas. However, they seem to have most of the relevant Austin folks on there with a few notable exceptions.
The judges will be hard at work selecting the top 25, and they will be announced on February 13. The winner will be announced at a party on March 15, 2009, the day before my Building A Web Business After Hours panel happens at South By Southwest Interactive (SXSWi)! 😎
The judges will take into consideration comments left on each person’s entry and mine is listed under my name Aruni Gunasegaram. So leave a comment there if you are so inclined and maybe I’ll have a better chance of making the top 25 than I did at winning that free trip to Tobago.
I’ll be on a blogging haitus for the next several days for a much needed life break. I’ll be back sometime mid to late next week.
I have mentioned a few times that my son is a budding comedian. So tonight over dinner, while their dad was at a board dinner, we were laughing about peas and cheese and other such stuff when he started telling knock knock jokes. Maybe only a mother would find these funny but I had to share. 😀
Knock. Knock. Who’s There? Lizard. Lizard Who? A lizard who went to a ball but he could not go in because the ball was too big!
Knock. Knock. Who’s There? Vanilla Wafer. Vanilla Wafer who? A vanilla wafer and another vanilla wafer were in a cup of milk and they were swimming in a cup of milk.
Knock. Knock. Who’s There? A wall. A wall who? A wall who wanted to dance with a chair but he couldn’t because the wall could not move.
Knock. Knock. Who’s There? Marker. Marker who? A marker who had eyes and he went downtown with a really small car that the ants have to use, but it was so small that the marker could not even fit.
So my daughter had to join in too, and here’s what she had to say:
Knock. Knock. Who’s There? Dolphin. Dolphin who? Dolphin who lives in a toilet and hair and nose and ears.
Knock. Knock. Who’s There? Middle Head. Middle Head who? Middle head who lives in a toilet and he lives in a fan.
OK. I just had to take this short blog break to share the genius of my children. Now it’s back to homework and getting ready for bed time!
Tomorrow is the inauguration of the next president of the United States of America, Barack Obama. The post I did called A Vote for Brown, Brains, and Change after he was elected was one of the most commented-on posts I’ve written on this little’ ole blog. It’s a historic event for America because as pretty much everyone in the world knows, it is the first time we will ever have a brown person, who also happens to be extremely smart and qualified, at the head of what is still the most powerful nation in the world.
There is much hope pinned on him to keep the US a strong world power and save us from the descent we are now experiencing. I believe that if he continues to openly communicate with the American people that he will set the realistic expectations that it could take as long to get out of the world wide economic quagmire we find ourselves in as it took us to get into it. He has a lot of challenges ahead of him and it comes down to each and every one of us contributing by continuing to work hard and helping others, as good Samaritans do, to help them get back on their emotional or financial feet one family at a time.
I was watching Dr. Martin Luther King’s I Have A Dream speech (August 28, 1963) earlier today on CNN and was moved, as I usually am, at his words. Just over 45 years ago, colored people could not drink from the same water fountain as White people. They could not stay in the same hotels or hotel rooms as White people. They could not sit in the same place on the bus. They could not get access to the same education. They could not play on the same football teams.
MLK and all of the people (White, Black, Brown, and blonde, red, hair-dyed, and dark haired people) who believed in his dream, knew that one day the children of the slaves and the slave owners would be able to sit down together for dinner as equals. They would be able to go to the same restaurants and stay at the same hotels. His dream took time to achieve but now almost half a century later most of his dream has become real. If he had not been killed for voicing his dream out loud, he would be 80 years old today enjoying his 4 children and granchildren. If he had not taken a stand, the world might have been a different place.
Not only colored people but also women have been able to achieve amazing things because of the barriers broken down by men and women who came before us. I am so grateful for the strong women I have met along my path who have helped me and instead of pushing me down, they offered their hands and their hearts to pull me up! These people fought hard to make our lives easier, and as I start to cross mid-life, I not only look ahead of me but also behind me to offer my hand in help to others.
The Obama experiment is a new one not only for the US but also the modern world. For any experiment to work, we as a nation need to be fully on board. Be skeptical, but push ahead with gusto. Put cynicism aside for a while and have faith that with our words and actions we can make a difference for the world!
A friend of mine, who I know is wrestling with his dreams although he won’t admit it out loud, recently told me that some philosopher said something like “we can change the world by changing the songs (narratives) we pass on to our kids.” The stories we tell our children about someone’s beliefs, someone’s skin color, someone’s gender are the stories they carry with them the rest of their lives. The stories have changed in the US with regards to brown people even from when I was a child, yet I still struggle to change those internal narratives even now. The stories have changed also with regards to women/girls. We still need to continue to change them for the positive. My grandfather once told me that one day the people of this world will all be a nice tan color so in some small way it became OK for me to marry a White man and have tan colored kids. He told me a bunch of other stories that were hilarious but not appropriate to blog about! 🙂
But the world still seems to have trouble changing the stories about people’s religious beliefs as we continue to see in Iraq, Israel, Palestine, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. The children are taught to hate and mistrust others based on their religion because that is what they see and hear on a daily basis. I wonder how we can help change the stories and dreams for those children?
In my mind, getting an education is the single most important way to continue to enhance the lives of each and every one of us, our children, and the world’s children. Tolerance and understanding come from open minds, open hearts, and trying new things.
As you think about how we can help change those children’s stories, I leave you with a YouTube video of Martin Luther King’s speech given in 1963 (see below). Isn’t technology amazing sometimes?!
This weekend I completely spaced on my daughter’s swim class. Her class has been at 10:00 for the last 4 months but because of a few unexpected things that happened on Saturday morning (e.g., our house cleaner who comes every two weeks called in sick so I had to quickly start changing beds/washing sheets & towels and my husband was gone for activities surrounding the founding of The Magellan School) my mind somehow shifted into thinking the class was at 10:30.
We showed up at 10:30, and I wondered where the other kids in her class were when my son pointed through the window and said ‘there they are!‘ It still hadn’t hit me that I had gotten the time wrong and I walked in and the parents said ‘there you are‘ and in slow motion I said ‘did I miss the class?‘ and they all nodded. I was in shock because I’ve never done that before. I apologized profusely. I asked the teacher if she could just get in for a little bit but she had to go to her next class. One of the guy teachers who was nearby said he’d give her a mini-lesson and thankfully he spent about 20 minutes with her in the water. I almost cried on the spot out of gratitude and not having to wallow in guilt while she cried about not being able to swim. My son waited as patiently as he could on the other side of the window given that I had originally told him he could play a game on my new iPhone for a little while during her class. The teacher was so kind to her and gave her piggy back rides while taking her under water. She laughed and smiled. He called her ‘sweet pea‘ and ‘sweetie pie‘ and if he wasn’t in the water, I would have given him a big hug for making/saving my day! You can’t buy that kind of marketing and in that one instant, I wanted to tell everyone how amazing Emler Swim School is!
Well, last month I forgot to pay the mortgage or shall I say I remembered too late. I’ve never done that either so we had to suck it up and pay a late fee much to my chagrin. I can’t recall ever paying a late fee although I’m sure it’s happened at least once on something.
Oh and I didn’t win my longed for trip to Tobago mostly because I didn’t have the time or wasn’t able to come up with the right strategy in a timely manner to make it happen. Looking back, I think if I had taken off a week from my day job to make sure I won this week vacation, I would have won. 🙂
UPDATE: After finishing this blog post, I went to a yoga class. I got there only to realize I forgot my yoga mat (for the first time ever!) at home despite going back into the house before I left to get it and a towel. I had to rent a mat and let’s just say a rental mat offers a sub par experience to your own purple mat. My right ankle hurts a little bit now.
So needless to say these are signs that I have too much going on…some of which I’ve blogged about and some of which I haven’t and probably won’t. I’ve started to look at the things I can give up in my life and I’ve given up a couple of things so far. I gave up co-writing the series for the UT Alumni magazine and just last week I took a leave of absence from my weekly Blog Mastermind call with some amazing folks who I mentioned in the GigaOm article I did on finding a business parter online. It was a tough decision but they were all supportive and told me I was welcome back at any time. I’ve also started to unsubscribe from blogs, newsletters, etc. that I haven’t been reading anyway. I’m taking a long hard look at my life and trying to figure out what I can give up without giving up anything I really want/need to do.
I may need to give up some things temporarily while I sort things out and find a way to integrate them back into my life once I deal with some of the other things going on in my life, but how does one do this without risking making the wrong decisions? Sigh.
I wonder if we had a crystal ball if any of us would still in fact be able to make the perfect decision. So far, I feel like I’ve been extremely lucky in the decisions I have made in my life and although I certainly wish I could change a few things, I don’t have any big regrets.
Have you given up something and felt relieved? Have you given up something and later wished you hadn’t because you weren’t able to go back to doing it again? Or as my friend Robb just asked “What is the biggest thing you have ever given up on?” and my answer was “Myself.” But I usually pull myself out of it pretty quickly when I repeatedly realize that I am my own worst critic and at times my own best cheerleader…
We are finally using an email marketing tool versus my hodge podge attempts at emailing our customers and friends many moons ago. It doesn’t look so professional when posting it here but I’m living life on the edge or ledge or whatever. And if you take our marketing survey, you will be entered to win up to $450 in prizes in the form of free Babble Soft subscriptions and Amazon gift certificates that you can buy your spouse, significant other, companion, child, co-worker, boss, employee, mother, brother, father, aunt, uncle, sister, mistress, masteress, lover, something lovely for Valentine’s Day!
Oh and did I tell you we just released an alpha version of our new iPhone application! The iPhone is so freaking cool!
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Hello Babble Soft Friends and Customers –
Happy New Year! It’s been quite some time since we sent out an official newsletter so we thought now would be a good time to tell you what we’ve been up to. Here’s what’s in this newsletter:
A New Partner On Board – Baby Sleep Expert Survey Opportunity – Giving away up to $450 in prizes Babble Soft Going Mobile (iPhone)! The Babble Soft Blog – NEW! Special Discounts through February 15, 2009
A New Partner On Board – Baby Sleep Expert
The biggest Babble Soft news that will make all of our lives easier is that we brought on a new partner! Her name is Nicole Johnson and she is our new VP of Product Development. If you want to know how we found her, please see a recent article I wrote on GigaOm called 5 Tips for Vetting a Partner Online. Now when we have bug or feature requests, she will be able to figure out how to fix them much faster. Nicole is amazing and not only is she going to help improve our existing Babble Soft applications, she’s also going to help bring new applications and features to market with the first new mobile application being available already (see below)!
Nicole is also the founder of Pick Nick’s Brain, where she offers an ebook and advice on how to help your baby sleep better. You can keep track of your baby’s sleep patterns using Baby Insights, share your reports with her and she can impart her sage advice to you!
I am so excited to have her as part of the team! Please say hello and/or send her any feedback on the website and applications. You can reach her at nicole@babblesoft.com.
A Quick, Fabulous, and Lucrative Survey – Up to $450 in prizes
In order to provide you with quality service and understand your needs better, we have designed a quick 10 question survey to help us provide the best, most useful products and services for new parents.
Please take a few minutes to take the survey by clicking the link below and enter to win several prizes just in time for Valentine’s Day! Feel free to forward this survey to other new or expecting parents who might be interested in Babble Soft applications.
We will pick the winners based on a random drawing after the survey is closed on January 30, 2008. If you want to be eligible for the prizes, please don’t forget to fill in your name and email address at the end of the survey.
1. First Prize: $100 gift certificate to Amazon and Two 6-Month Babble Soft email gift subscriptions (worth $29.95 each).
2. Second Prize: $50 gift certificate to Amazon and Two 6-Month Babble Soft email gift subscriptions (worth $29.95 each).
3. Third Prize: $25 gift certificate to Amazon and One 6-Month Babble Soft email gift subscriptions (worth $29.95 each).
4. Fourth Prize: Three lucky winners who weren’t selected to win any of the above prizes will get One 12-Month Babble Soft email gift subscriptions (worth $37.95 each) to use yourself or give to any expecting family members or friends.
Babble Soft Going Mobile (iPhone!)
Baby Insights 3.0 Alpha is now iPhone compatible! We have just released the Mom Pump & Feed and the Baby Bottle Feeding portions of the new application. We will be releasing sleep, diaper, and medicine tracking as soon as possible!
The application has been optimized (i.e., looks the prettiest) for the iPhone and we continue to work to make it look nice on the Blackberry browser and Opera Mini browser on the Blackberry. For those of you with an account, you can log in by going to http://m.babblesoft.com/ and enter your user name and password to get started.
Since this is an alpha release, if you find a bug let us know and we’ll add a month to your subscription or give a one month subscription in your honor to the person of your choosing! That’s a $9.95 value!
The Babble Soft Blog – NEW!
In addition to my blog, entrepreMusings, and Nicole’s blog at Pick Nick’s Brain, we just launched a blog on Babble Soft’s website located at www.babblesoft.com/blog where we will offer unique baby tips, advice, parent stories, etc. Sign up for FREE updates via e-mail or preferred RSS reader. Don’t miss even the first post!
We also welcome guest posts on your parenting experiences and will gladly link back to your sites and blogs. We look forward to you stopping by, subscribing, and/or sharing your comments with us on The Babble Soft Blog!
Special Discounts through February 15, 2009
In case your name doesn’t get pulled to win any of the free subscriptions from completing our survey, we are offering a New Year’s discount so you can still buy a Babble Soft subscription for yourself or your friends using coupon code: BABNOW15 for 15% off purchases from now until February 15, 2009.
Please also feel free to give the gift of sleep to yourself and your family members by using coupon code BABBSPEC for 15% off any baby sleep consulting services at Pick Nick’s Brain during the month of January 2009.
Please do not hesitate to contact us if you have any questions. Happy New Year!
So I’m not really sure how the winner will be selected or how much the independent voting counts but in case you missed it, I entered a contest to win a $5,000 trip to Tobago. I mentioned things like steel pan drums, blue water, cabana boys, foot massages, and 4 bedrooms in my contest entry post that was exactly 350 words long. I NEED this vacation like a fish needs water and to have it for free (well there’s no such thing as a free lunch — so almost free) would be blissful.
So if you could be so kind as to click this link: http://blog.homeaway.com/node/42 and hit the Vote button, I would be ever so grateful…well as grateful as any gal can be to people she might or might not know who vote for her to win something fabulous based on a blog entry.
When you hit the Vote button it will bring you back to my blog and show you the original entry. At the top of the browser, you will be asked to enter your email address in order to vote. Of course HomeAway, the sponsor of this competition, wants to make sure the voters are legit! Voting is open until January 15, 2009 I think.
UPDATE: You should get a confirmation email with a link you HAVE to click in order to confirm the vote. If you don’t get it, please check your junk/spam folder and if you still don’t find it, please email Victor at Victor at vwang@homeaway.com and let him know. I know this is a lot of steps…too bad this isn’t for a $20,000 vacation so that all of you could come with me! 🙂
THANK YOU from the bottom of my weary brain and heart that both long to sit under a palapa listening to the sound of the ocean and tropical birds, while sipping the perfect pina colada. 😎
I used to co-write articles for The University of Texas at Austin’s alumni magazine called The Alcalde. It was one of the things I had to give up when I started a day job. My writing partner, Pam Losefksy, and I enjoyed doing them but it took more time and didn’t pay enough money for either of us to justify being able to keep doing them in either of our schedules going forward. The articles are listed on the Success Profiles page of this blog. But we had a good run with the first article on Mort Meyerson (pdf) running in the Jan/Feb issue of 2005 and the last one in the Sept/Oct issue of 2008. The series started as Success To Me and during the middle of last year we changed it to Self Starter to focus more on entrepreneurs. They have apparently brought the series in house or found someone else to continue the series which goes to show you everyone is replaceable!
I blogged about a few of the more recent ones we did but not some of the initial ones, so I am going to start from the beginning and do some posts on the older ones where I highlight a quote or two from each article. You can see the full article on Mort Meyerson by clicking HERE (pdf).
Mort is the former President of EDS and former Chairman & CEO of Perot Systems. He currently leads 2M Companies and the Morton H. Meyerson Family Tzedekah fund. He received his BA in 1961 in Economics and Philosophy. He was at Perot Systems from 1992 to 1998 when the company went from $100 million to $1 billion in revenue. He was at EDS from 1975 to 1986 when the company went from $200 million to $4.4 billion.
We started the article with this quote by Mort:
When I first retired in 1986 at 48 years old, I asked myself the question, “Is this all there is to life?” I had been a CEO, I had financial security, I had great friends and a devoted family. I wasn’t unhappy, but I didn’t feel fully successful given my financial and work success.
He then went on to describe his philosophy on giving which is based on the framework of the Jewish philosophy of tzedakah.
So now our foundation strives to be a node in a neural network called the greater community of human beings trying to help each other. I am a connector. It’s interesting that that’s what I did in business for 40 years. So, I have been applying part of my business expertise within the tzedakah perspective, and I find it very rewarding. Through the concept of tzedakah, I’m beginning to feel more whole, more successful, than I did in 1986 when I retired from EDS and in 1998 when I retired from Perot Systems.
I (Aruni) have always found it interesting that in my search for meaning I have run across so many others with far more financial and material wealth than I certainly have who are searching for the same thing. I meet many with much less material wealth searching also for understanding and peace. I have run across very few people who are completely OK with who they are and where they are in life and 99.9% of those people are kids.
There is always something in between the black & white lines in an article, a newspaper feature, or a TV story that can never be accurately conveyed to the listener or the viewer. Most of us know this, yet we still make assumptions about people and situations as if their inner essences are completely different than ours…but are they?
That is what my kids kept saying every time we drove into our neighborhood during the Holidays and saw all the houses decorated with fabulous Christmas lights. “How come they have their whole roof lit up, a fire truck, 7 reindeer, and Santa all in their front yard?” was a constant refrain every time we drove home at night. “That’s not fair. They are luckier than we are!” they would say each time.
I tried to explain to them that just because people have a bunch of lights on the outside of their house during Christmas time doesn’t mean they are luckier and that we have no idea what was going on inside the houses. That explanation fell on deaf, young ears.
I also told our son that when he was old enough, he was more than welcome to hang up as many lights on the house as he’d like but until then mommy and daddy were just too tired (and frankly not interested). He thought that was a good idea. I’ve also thrown that logic on him when he doesn’t like what we are eating/cooking. So he’s going to have to do a lot of cooking and light hanging when he’s older. I’m guessing he’ll conveniently forget all of this when he’s about 10.
In previous years, just to keep slightly up with the Joneses, I found a North Pole candy cane light, some wooden stand-up Santa/reindeer thing, and some Santa singing lights (we turned off the music so as not to annoy the neighbors). Their dad wasn’t initially too fond of the candy cane light. But this year that wasn’t enough. They wanted more and better lights so this time he gave in to their whining and got some lights for our small bushes and hanging lights to put above our door. Of course we hung the door lights up about 2 days before Christmas and that seemed to appease them for a little while…until our son asked us why they didn’t get any gifts in their stockings. I told him that the gifts from us and Santa were just too big for the stockings and we didn’t want the stockings (that were hung up using scotch tape) to fall down. He didn’t buy that especially after going to my best friend’s house and their son told them about all the things he got in his stocking. I repeated my explanation and said “maybe next year you’ll get something in your stocking” until we put the stockings away and he stopped asking.
So the grass (or Christmas lighting) is always greener (brighter) on the other side as they say. And I keep thinking to myself “what if someone doesn’t like grass or Christmas lights and doesn’t want to pick sides?!”
Austin ranks 10th in the U.S. in job creation Austin Business Journal
Here’s the full story: http://www.bizjournals.com/austin/stories/2009/01/05/daily17.html
The Austin area added 6,200 private-sector jobs in the 12-month period between November 2007 and November 2008—the 10th biggest gain in metro employment in the country—according to figures released Tuesday by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Texas is showing considerable resilience amid a crippled national economy. The two largest markets in the state—Houston and Dallas-Fort Worth—registered the nation’s biggest private-sector employment gains.
The Houston area added 42,400 jobs between November 2007 and November 2008, and Dallas-Fort Worth picked up 35,100. No other U.S. market gained more than 15,600 private-sector jobs during the 12-month period.
All four of Texas’ major metro areas ranked among the top 10 in job creation in the last year. San Antonio was No. 4 with 11,700 new jobs.
But the rest of the country isn’t faring nearly so well. Just one-fifth of the nation’s 100 largest metropolitan areas managed to add any jobs at all. Seventy-eight suffered losses, 21 posted increases, and one was unchanged.
Detroit was hit with the biggest loss of private-sector jobs, 67,700 in 12 months. November 2008 brought the 38th straight monthly decline for Detroit.
Four other markets lost more than 50,000 private-sector jobs during the past year: Atlanta, Los Angeles, Miami-Fort Lauderdale and Phoenix.
The following are the 100 biggest labor markets in America, ranked according to raw change in private-sector employment between November 2007 and November 2008: 1. Houston, up 42,400 jobs
2. Dallas-Fort Worth, up 35,100 jobs
3. Washington, up 15,600 jobs
4. San Antonio, up 11,700 jobs
5. Seattle, up 9,900 jobs
6. Virginia Beach-Norfolk, up 9,100 jobs
7. Oklahoma City, up 8,100 jobs
8. New Orleans, up 7,200 jobs
9. McAllen-Edinburg, Texas, up 6,700 jobs
10. Austin, up 6,200 jobs
My friend, Robb Lanum, sent the following email today:
What if they built a world-class theme park [Hard Rock name behind it] and nobody came? It happened. Myrtle Beach, SC. Seven years and $400 million to build. Opened April 2008, closed forever by September 2008. Park put up for auction with starting bid of $35 million in December, auction drew ZERO bids. They made $19.7 million in ticket sales.
What an expensive mistake with a world recognized brand name behind it. The articles mention the reasons they didn’t make it ranging from the economy, inability to raise enough money to properly market the opening, etc. But mostly it says, they couldn’t really figure it out.
Just imagine how many small, entrepreneurial businesses that spend millions of dollars and no one (or not enough people) end up buying their products so they can sustain themselves past the good times of ‘easy money’ into the current times of ‘hard to get’ or ‘no’ money. We’ve started to see those companies disappear. I’m wondering how Hard Rock can take a $400 million plus hit and how that will effect them during the next few years with regards to store openings and closings.
Now think about your start-up and think about whether you should start on that potential 7 year path and millions of dollars without knowing if anyone will show up on the other end.
Now think about your start-up and see if you can bootstrap it with a manageable amount of money, a reasonable time commitment, and have it ready and waiting when the economy turns.
Last year I made New Year resolutions despite not normally liking to do so. I even did a blog post called One Entrepreneur’s 2008 Goals. And guess what? Some of them came true and some of them didn’t. This year I’m not making any resolutions. I’m going to try to go more with the flow. Now that doesn’t mean I don’t have things I’d like to accomplish but I’m not going to make them goals.
Interestingly, I achieved all of my 2008 personal goals. I lost 5 lbs (actually I lost more like 8). I signed up for and took yoga as consistently as is possible with two kids and two jobs. The yoga helped me lose 5 lbs, the other 3 I lost due to stress and an ongoing existential crisis. I’m one of those people who doesn’t eat much and fidgets a lot when I get stressed. I know some people hate me for it, but let me tell you the elevated crazy brain activity more than overrides the weight loss benefit. I mean I don’t get as bad as seeing dead people, but I start saying and doing things that don’t make sense (at least to me), and I start making wild interpretations of other people’s actions (and non-actions) and words that probably don’t make sense but might and if they actually meant what I thought they meant, my world would be turned upside down. Yeah, don’t even try to understand that last sentence.
I even laughed more and that’s because my son is a budding comedian, and I work with some funny people at my day job. The only personal goal that I can’t say with 100% certainty I made significant progress in was “be less concerned with what other people think.” I made some progress, but the trauma of “what will they think of me if I wear a purple peacock hat to a lunch meeting?” still plagues me. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve cared less but I’m waiting for that day I can walk into a room and say whatever is on my mind (well not whatever because it would shock the innocent) and not give a flying flip if people think I’m nuts, a crazy entrepreneur, or a hysterical brown woman because I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that what I’m saying is actually wise, intelligible, actionable, and worthy to be said.
I really only knocked out of the park one of my Babble Soft business goals and that was to “find great people to help make it happen.” And that happened when Nicole Johnson joined me as VP of Product Development back in October. We are slowly but surely making things happen and it’s so amazing to have someone as great as she is along for the ride. We don’t know how it will all turn out yet given what’s going on in the world, but I feel honored to be working with such a talented, personable individual, who can fully relate to my life situation of a day job and two little kids!
The other business goals were thwarted by: the economy, my husband leaving his job to consult and start an amazing dual language immersion school called The Magellan School (i.e., hence the day job – health care benefits are very important when you have kids), having to unexpectedly pay a significant portion of my father-in-law’s triple bypass surgery expenses (yes, he was not insured), my mid-life crisis, and a random butterfly flapping its wings in China.
But you know what? Despite not making most of my business goals, life is great. All my close family and friends are healthy. My kids laugh and smile every day which makes me happy. I enjoy my day job because although I’m underpaid (working on changing that slightly), it’s probably the best place I can be to help build the Austin entrepreneurial community and ride out this economic downturn. Plus, I really like the people I work with. I’m a huge believer in fostering an amazing work culture and a positive work environment, and we currently have that at the Austin Technology Incubator (ATI) and I have that with Nicole at Babble Soft. So yes, overall my life is pretty darned good.
So my non-resolutions for 2009 are to sing more, laugh more, write more, make more funny faces at my kids, be less repressed, empower people, unashamedly love people, continue to take yoga, find a purple hat (any suggestions?), make some life changing decisions (I already got my hair cut short), and move the ball forward one day at a time on Babble Soft and at ATI.
Oh, did I mention I plan to curse more too! For most of my adult and teenage life many of my friends (most of them guys) have tried to get me to curse more and I saw no need for it. Their jaws would drop on the rare instances I would curse, so I’ll see if I can work in more curse words into my daily (or weekly) discourse (mostly off the blog because I have a hard time writing curse words). It might be awkward at first, but I’ll suck it up and overcome the awkwardness just like Dooce and The Bloggess have been able to. They are some of the top cursing mommy bloggers on the Internet today and I cry laughing (or is that laugh crying?) whenever I read their posts. I mean go read: This is one of those posts about how you can make money off your blog but instead of money you get a coupon for a burrito and tell me you don’t start laughing your ass off. I’ll just have to remember not to curse in front of the kids… Sorry mom!
I’ve changed the tag line on the header of this blog from ‘babbling about business, babies, and parenthood‘ to ‘babbling about business and parenthood.’ I haven’t done any posts about babies in a long time and given that I finally completed my daughter’s baby album, I’ve closed the book on the baby stage of my life.
However, that does not mean I won’t be doing posts about babies ever again. Nicole, my new partner and resident baby sleep expert, and I will be putting some baby related posts up on The Babble Soft Blog. Our NEW blog (designed by none other than Swank Webstyle, who designed this blog) just went live last week and we don’t even have more than our “Hello World” post on it yet, but we’ll soon be posting baby tips and advice on a periodic basis there. We welcome great guest baby tips as well!
I’ll continue to post about the collision/intersection/graceful (and not-so-graceful) interweaving of the entrepreneurial similarities between business and parenthood here on entrepreMusings.
Author:Aruni | Filed under:blogging | Tags:blogging | Comments Off on Babbling About Business and Parenthood
And so 2008 comes to an end and the old saying ‘time flies’ is yet again reaffirmed. It seems to go faster with each passing year, especially with little kids jumping all over you, sucking your energy dry underfoot. Each year is a smaller fraction of our total lives. To our kids each day seems like an eternity full of laughter, playing, occasional tantrums, asking their parents for candy, and fun! And to us grown ups, the movie of our lives keeps going faster…slipping through our fingers….with fond and sometimes hard memories behind us and interesting times ahead.
So I’d like to thank all of you dear readers for joining me on my entrepreneurial parenting and business journeys. I haven’t spent much time trying to monetize my blog, and I don’t make much money from it. So your blog comments, your emails, your conversations, and your tweets mean so much to me! Most of us bloggers don’t blog for money, we blog to share ideas and to create conversations whether on or off the blog that might not have happened before.
My favorite form of compensation comes from those of you who comment directly on a particular blog post. The way to a blogger’s heart, after all, is through comments left on her blog. 😀
But, I also very much enjoy the comments from those who recieve the free blog updates via email who simply hit ‘reply’ and let me know their thoughts. I get many replies on twitter, and I wish someone would figure out how to integrate tweet replies directly into the blog comments, but that hasn’t happened yet (as far as I know).
And then there are those of you who I talk to on the phone or see in the business community who mention they read my blog and mention a particular post. I’m often taken by surprise by who reads my blog and what their interpretations are of my posts. The people who know me well usually know how to read in between the lines, and I keep it fairly tame because my mother and my favorite aunt read my blog! I wouldn’t want to shock them too much.
Special thanks goes to my husband, Erin, (who I honestly don’t think really reads most of my blog posts or he might feel more compelled to comment on some of my snarkier ones) for making sure this blog works smoothly. He upgrades the blog when a new version comes out, he installs the latest/greatest WordPress plugins that help make this blog as effective as it can be, and helps troubleshoot any random technical glitches that occur. He is our resident rocket scientist, and I have yet to see a technical problem that he can’t figure out.
THANK YOU AGAIN DEAR READERS for enriching my life! Have a HAPPY, PROSPEROUS, and JOY-FILLED NEW YEAR!
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