Category Archives: Business

Princeton Regional Chamber Events, useful tips from U.S. 1 Newspaper

Karen Finerman: Fake Confidence Until You Have It

Business,

Vulnerability was the very most impressive part of Karen Finerman’s keynote at the 2015 NJ Conference for Women today. I predicted she would be the Lean-In-Woman-Who-Has-It-All, the hedge fund founder with four kids, four nannies, a professional husband, fancy digs in New York City, the whole nine yards.

She did say Lean In. she has all that, but she wasn’t afraid to tell about the time she failed. Miserably. As a teenager she idolized Ivan Boesky and wanted to be an arbitrageur. After graduating from Wharton, she was riding high with her hedge fund until . . . the Wall Street melt down. Her inexpensive small cap stocks tanked and she discovered they were cheap for a reason.The fund haemorrhaged millions of dollars. They cashed out to pay angry investors and then the market climbed. Depressed, she didn’t want to go to work and walked to save taxi money.

“I was washed up at 33 and everyone knew it. I had to decide — am I in or out.”

Later, when someone asked how to get through adversity, she had a one-word answer: Prozac. But at this point she preached how to persevere by faking confidence. “Pretend you have what it takes to go on. Look for the smallest improvement. Know it will change.”

The “know it will change” rule comes into play with the “51 percent rule.” When making a difficult decision, don’t be afraid to go with the one that is 51 percent right, even though you feel ambivalent about it. (I call this buyer’s remorse). And if it turns out to be a wrong decision, don’t wait too long to cut your losses.

Finerman talked a lot about how men seem confident (they pound the table and sound as if they are right) whereas women are not (they feel like frauds when — shh– men are the frauds). Account managers prefer male table pounders to women that explain all the risks. Why? Women leave the choice to the manager, whereas a table pounder makes the choice seem less risky.

How to raise a culture of confidence in young girls (asked by Wanda Stansbury of the Center for Child and Family Achievement: Have expectations that are the exact same as the boys. Give them something they can master. Teach them to fake confidence until it is there. Practice what confidence looks like until you strengthen those muscles.

Six hundred women were at this conference. and they loved it.

***********************

Other female-centric advice, some of it in Finerman’s book (everyone at the conference got one). 

Men may make it through life without being in charge of their kids, but women will not make it through life without being in charge of their money.

Invest in a great CFO and scrimp elsewhere.

Women should not do investment banking as a long-term career — there is no work/life balance

Be willing to give up the lead parent position. Don’t have to be the bake sale mom. Instead, thank the stay at home mom volunteer.

Learn what it feels like to make mistakes.

Finerman has a book, given out to everyone who came. In my last post I nagged about the bad grammar in her title. But I can forgive that in a woman who can tell about her mistakes.

Hello, everybody, we’re glad to see you!

Business, Dance and the other arts, , , ,

Thousands of children and parents know that the greeting song for Music Together, the early childhood program founded in Princeton with a small legacy from a more well-known song, Happy Birthday. For the brief local story behind the story about the “Happy Birthday” copyright, click here. For a more complete history of how Ken Guilmartin founded Music Together, click here. Meanwhile, keep on singing!

Women – telling their stories on Friday

Around Town, Business, ,

njcw2015_finerman_large She runs a hedge fund, has two sets of twins and four nannies — read about the keynote speaker, Karen Finerman, for this Friday’s women’s conference in a revealing article in the Guardian. In 2007, when the article was written, the CNBC Fast Company commentator had $100 million dollars and rarely had time off. Has she taken a vacation since then — and how is her hedge fund doing now?

njcw2015_armstrong_largeI’m also eager to hear from video storyteller Nancy Armstrong, webproducer of MAKERS — womens’ stories that change the world, the largest collection of women’s stories ever.

The New Jersey Conference for Women is Friday, October 16, at the Westin, 7:30 a.m .to 2 p.m. Registration is $125 including breakfast and lunch and Finerman’s best selling book Finerman’s Rules: Secrets I’d Only Tell My Daughters about Business and Life. 

Curmudgeonly note: If only the use of the word “only” weren’t such a big secret To be grammatically correct the title should read  Secrets I’d Tell Only My Daughters …(i.e. not tell anybody else). As is she says she might reveal secrets in other ways, maybe — acting them out? singing a song about them? Sigh.

Still — I’m eager to hear these keynote speakers — helping people tell their stories is among my top priorities. Everybody has a story.

Three Techies for Thursday

Business, Healthcare, , , , ,

“How come you can go on Kayak and book a flight while you’re talking to me on the phone? But if you have a stomach ache you can’t make an appointment with a doctor on your iPhone. You should be able to put ‘stomach ache’ into your iPhone and immediately get a Jefferson physician.”So said  Dr. Stephen K. Klasko, MD, MBA, president and CEO of Thomas Jefferson University & Jefferson Health System. His ideas are right up my alley and I hope others will like them too. Click here for the U.S. 1 article. 

Klasko speaks at the Princeton Regional Chamber’s October Monthly Membership Luncheon at the Forrestal Marriott, 11:30 to 1:30, Topic:  What We Can Learn From Google, Facebook and Adidas: Reinventing Healthcare Is Not Impossible! .Click here for info or to register.

(I can’t go to this — if any readers can go and take notes I’d be happy to print them as a guest post on this blog).

In addition to the chamber’s unusual angle on technology on Thursday, Princeton University’s Entrepreneurs’ group has two more techie events on its Thursday calendar.

And you probably already knew about NJEN’s crowdfunding lunch on Wednesday, October 7. For the U.S. 1 article, click here. It’s OK to be a walk-in.

Here are the Princeton University listings:  THESE ARE MOSTLY FOR STUDENTS BUT THE COMMUNITY CAN ATTEND

Perspectives from a Young Alumni Founder, Patrick Wendell ’11
Where: The Hub, 34 Chambers Street
When: Thursday, October 8th, 5:30 PM
This talk will feature Patrick Wendell, class of 2011. Two years after graduating from Princeton in Computer Science, Patrick co-founded Databricks, a company commercializing the Apache Spark software platform for large scale data processing. Databricks helps companies extract value from large amounts of data. Over the last two and a half years, Databricks has raised more than $40 million in venture funding from lead investors Andreessen Horowitz and NEA Ventures. The company employs more than 70 people at its San Francisco headquarters.

Tech Talk by Nest Labs  
When: Thursday, October 8th at 5:00 PM
Where: Lewis Library, Room 121
Who: Peter Grabowski ’13 (Data Integration), Rosie Buchanan (Algo)
Nest reinvents unloved but important home products, like the thermostat and the smoke alarm. The company produces programmable, sensor-driven, Wifi-enabled home devices. Acquired by Google (now Alphabet) in 2014, Nest has rapidly grown into a company with over 1000 employees, and is one of the leading companies in the Internet of Things (IoT) space.
In this talk, they’ll be covering a few different aspects, such as what it takes to bring a product to market, how the company uses data to influence their feature development, and also the technical challenges that the company has run into in the past few years. Pizza and drinks will be provided!

Jacque Howard: Building community in Trenton

Around Town, Business, , , , ,

Jacque+HowardJacque Howard grew up in Ewing in a large family — 12 uncles and aunts and six siblings. He learned what “community” was. Now he aims to help Trenton by helping create community with his nonprofit Trenton 365, as profiled here in U.S. 1 Newspaper.He was quoted like this: Trenton was a major industrial port once. Once. Ago. So let it go. Stop trying to turn the city back into something it used to be. Start focusing on what it could and should be.”  

I listened to Howard’s story at the Princeton Regional Chamber breakfast today, and I’m buying into it. He recorded his talk and posted it at his website, here.

My comment to Howard at the chamber meeting, at about minute 38 on the tape, “With your personality and your media access, you can do what really needs to be done, which is to put people together. Racism and prejudice are part of the Trenton problem. and when you get people together so that  they are friends, and they have a friend in that city that they can trust — that’s going to help.”

His response: “If I can get three or four of you guys to agree –it’s going to change this community. I can connect you with somebody, Whatever you want to do — do a quick project, get lots of media attention, at very low cost —  that’s what Trenton 365 is about.”

The Trenton 365 website has lots of fascinating programs, including this interview with Bart Jackson of Bart’s Books done at Panera Bread. The sound is a little rough at the beginning, but it evens out and Jackson is always worth listening to.

Trenton 365 is broadcast on WIMG AM 1300 and streamed live at wimg1300.com Tuesdays from 8 to 9 p.m., and on WWFM 89.1 HD2 and streamed live at jazzon2.org Wednesdays and Thursdays from 6 to 7 p.m. But you can always get it on the website.

Rita Gunther McGrath: Jet lag results from travel privilege

Around Town, Business, , , ,

rita

Reporters often quote Rita Gunther McGrath on business topics, but her picture is in the New York Times today, in a front business page article, on the topic of jet lag.

Joan Raymond reports: “Jet lag has always been an issue for me,” says Ms. McGrath, who has been a business traveler for more than two decades and has dealt with itineraries that take her from New York to New Zealand to Helsinki to Hong Kong all within a matter of days. Raymond describes some of the supposed remedies.

The Princeton Regional Chamber hosted McGrath twice, most recently in 2010 on the topic of safe company growth, headlined in U.S. 1 Newspaper as “Avoiding Fabulous Flops and Epic Embarrassments.”

Shown above in Bryan Anselm’s photo, unpacking from a trip in her Princeton Junction home, McGrath has the last word in the NYT story:

“What we all need to remember is that we are incredibly privileged to be able to cross time zones so rapidly,” she said. “Plus, when I get home from a business trip and say something stupid, I just blame the jet lag. That’s good for about three days.”

Privilege: Giving back

Business, Faith and Social Justice, , , ,
-Sy-Stokes
The Black Bruins video

Robert Carr

“Those with less opportunity are fighting for position, trying to find their place, but those with privilege are hitting triples, when they were already on third base.” 

This succinct description of white privilege came from the video The Black Bruins, by Sy Stokes, which went viral in 2013. An article by Eric Hoover in the Chronicle of Higher Education, tells how the video challenged and changed UCLA:

At right, Robert Carr is an example of using privilege to help others find their place. He was not born rich, but as founder of Heartland Payment Systems, he made millions, and is donating $20 million through the Give Something Back Foundation to help low-income students get through college.

(A version of this post is at NIOT Princeton).

ADA is old hat now

Around Town, Business, , , ,

wheelchair-symbol-handicapped-parking-signs-4

I remember when the American Disability Act emerged 25 years ago. It signaled a sea change not equaled until the Y2k scare, which also provoked dire predictions of ruin because of projected costs. At U.S. 1 we reported on which restaurants had wheelchair-friendly bathrooms. We interviewed lawyers in the suddenly popular disability field.

Now accommodations are standard everywhere, no big deal. But according to the feds, accessibility is still an ongoing problem. 

Rich and Reclusive on Spring Street

Around Town, Business, ,

Back in 1987, when U.S. 1 Newspaper was still a monthly and everyone on staff was also on the delivery team, my  route was downtown Princeton. I tried to deliver to Princeton Newport Partners at 33 Witherspoon, on the corner of Witherspoon and Spring Street. Later Spring Street would be publicly notorious in the scandal of Lyle and Eric Menendez, owners of Chuck’s Spring Street cafe. But the 33 Spring Street building would be quietly notorious as an address associated with Princeton Newport Partners, raided by the feds in 1987 for its possible involvement in the Michael Milken junk bond case. (The charges were later dropped, as explained by my boss Richard K. Rein in his column last week.)

But when I arrived at the Princeton Newport Partners office I didn’t know about the investigation. All I knew was that no one at that office wanted to talk to me. And for later visits the office was closed.

Venture capitalists, private investors, investment bankers — all are notoriously close mouthed, none more so than Andrew Shechtel. He apparently still has an office at 33 Witherspoon and is now listed as the third richest man in New Jersey. As reported by NJ Biz, and also by Zachary R. Mider in Bloomberg News,  Shechtel put $9.7 billion into two trusts . . .some of it going to camps for Jewish youth, most of it to a Forrestal Village-based foundation dedicated to research into Huntington’s disease.

Rein explains more, in his column this week. .

Midsummer in Palmer Square

Around Town, Business, ,

chamber plaza

Palmer Square turns into a street fair several times a year, none more exciting than the Princeton Regional Chamber’s Midsummer Marketing Showcase.

Sometimes my church — a member of the chamber — participates, as above. But on Tuesday, July 21 I’ll be an onlooker, enjoying the tastes and freebies and greeting old and new friends.  It’s set for 4 to 7 p.m. — and it’s free!

Dress for the heat!