Part II.
{ Success: How to Go Big with It }.
Congratulations! You"re obviously reading this section because either you"ve achieved a significant level of success already or you have every intention of doing so. It"s a fantastic stage to be at in your career. Your skills and efforts have begun to pay off, and the work you"re doing at this point is probably more interesting and exciting than some of the stuff you were required to do when you first started out.
In my career, my first real success was being hired to run the articles department at Mademoiselle. Though at Family Weekly I"d eventually been promoted to the number two position, this was a much bigger deal at a much more prestigious company, and it was a fun time for me. I a.s.signed pieces to writers such as Jay McInerney and Tama Janowitz, had a cute office with an actual couch (well, love seat), and oversaw a staff of seven or eight, including my Harvard-educated male a.s.sistant. After I"d been there about a year, the magazine ran a four-page fashion story about me as a single girl in Manhattan. If there"d been a Carrie Bradshaw on TV then, I would have felt I was having a Carrie Bradshaw moment.
Yet first success brings many challenges. As you handle plenty of day-to-day demands, you must also focus on the larger picture in a way you were not expected to do as a junior player. You need to come up with even bigger ideas and run with them. Office politics can be intense, sometimes even brutal, at this stage of the game. And there"s a good chance you are overseeing staff now-perhaps only one or two people, but still, managing anyone takes understanding and skill. At this stage I sometimes felt as if I was flying by the seat of my pants. And I probably looked more confident than I was.
This is a period when you also should be paying serious attention to your career as well as your job. Where do you hope to go from here? What moves should you be making to help you reach the next level even if you don"t feel ready to jump right this second? Some opportunities may open up all on their own, but if you want to guarantee that you"ll go big with your success, you need strategies and you must work them. In some ways you have to think of your career as a living, breathing thing. It needs nurturing!
Plus, timing can be critical. At Mademoiselle I was becoming pretty certain that I really did want to be an editor in chief one day. But I also could see that I didn"t have all the time in the world. From my vantage point, it seemed that most editors in chief of women"s magazines had secured that t.i.tle by the time they were in their early forties, if not sooner. I was in my mid-thirties, so that meant I had a window of about five or six years for it to happen. Many fields have this kind of window. Do your homework and figure out at which points you should be going after certain jobs.
This section of the book is jam-packed with strategies for supersizing your success, including tips on how to generate winning ideas, handle office politics shrewdly, use information as your secret weapon, develop your personal brand, and navigate setbacks (because they happen to even the best of us). I"ll also share advice on how to manage your career-and finally land the BIG JOB.
{ Get Some Eye of the Tiger }.
I have a confession to make. When I was the editor of Redbook, one of the group publishers in my company asked if I would have lunch with a woman who had really impressed him. The woman had developed a cooking concept that she was now peddling, and the executive thought there might be a way for Redbook to feature her, perhaps even monthly. Sure, I"d be glad to join them for lunch, I said. We were always looking for new ideas and new voices.
We met at a Midtown restaurant, and though the woman seemed polished and determined, I quickly decided that there was no way I could use her for Redbook. To me there was nothing appealing about the concept she was championing: using store-bought foods such as pudding mix to create partially homemade meals.
Okay-wait for it-the woman I had lunch with that day was Sandra Lee, the author of the Semi-Homemade cookbook series, which by now has sold millions of copies, sp.a.w.ned other products, and led to her not only hosting her own show on the Food Network but creating a whole line of home products. Guys obviously like her cooking, too, since her live-in boyfriend is Andrew Cuomo, the current governor of New York.
Okay, clearly I"m pathetic at spotting talent in the chefs-Middle-America-will-love category. Still, I can"t help but admire Sandra Lee"s success and the gritty resolve that helped her achieve it. She knew what she wanted and went after it single-mindedly, not allowing herself to be discouraged when she met someone like me who didn"t go gaga for the concept. She liked it and sensed that many busy women would. Recently I came across an interesting comment she made about the secret of success. "You have to want it," she said. "You have to have the eye of the tiger, and you have to do it every single day."
The eye of the tiger. It means you"re focused, steadfast, and fierce. Sandra Lee"s point was that you absolutely must have those attributes in order to be truly successful. Though I still don"t appreciate her food philosophy-to me eating a chicken dish made with frozen haricots verts and condensed soup seems about as fabulous as hand washing a week"s worth of panty hose-I have to agree with Lee"s philosophy of success.
Helen Gurley Brown certainly had the eye of the tiger when she ran Cosmo. I didn"t know her well then, but everything I saw, heard, and read indicated that she was utterly focused and that she watched out for her brand like, well, a killer big cat. A major media executive told me a story that perfectly ill.u.s.trates this. Years ago, he was sometimes invited to attend the monthly luncheons at the "21" Club where Helen would preview each issue of Cosmo for a roundtable of advertisers. At one particular luncheon this guy ended up talking the whole time to a gorgeous advertiser seated next to him, even though he knew he should be working the table more. When it was time for the preview, Helen asked him if he would hold the display book-it was customary practice to have someone do that. Right before she started to speak to the group, Helen leaned down, put her hand onto the exec"s neck, and whispered something into his ear. He told me that anyone at the table would have a.s.sumed that she was saying something wonderfully flirty to him. But what she was really doing was digging her nails into his neck while telling him "Don"t you ever monopolize one advertiser again." Now, that is some awesome fierceness.
To take your career from "Hey-isn"t-this-nice?" success to major, fabulous success, you need the eye of the tiger. Where does that come from? Sandra Lee is clearly hardwired that way, and her tough upbringing ended up making her even more determined. In other words, a combination of nature and nurture creates that kind of drive. You actually can"t just go out and get the eye of the tiger.
But even if you didn"t wake up this morning with the urge to take down an antelope or a wild boar, do not panic. It doesn"t mean you aren"t cut out for big success. I think that focus and fierceness can sometimes take a while to fully bloom-and that they also require a bit of cultivation. That was certainly the case for me. By my late twenties I was a senior editor at Family Weekly magazine, reporting directly to the editor in chief and overseeing all the articles that ran in the magazine, including the celebrity cover stories. But in no way did I have the eye of the tiger. I wasn"t sure yet what I wanted professionally. Though I"d fantasized about becoming an editor in chief and was on a path that could lead there, I also sometimes toyed with the notion of being a freelance writer. That"s because the thought of becoming an editor in chief scared my pants off.
If you don"t feel full-throttle fierceness yet (but wish you did), the first thing you need to do is ask yourself if you are in the right place. I mean, do you love what you"re doing? Essie Weingarten, the founder and creative director of Essie nail polishes, which is now owned by L"Oreal, told me, "The one sure way to be totally focused is to be pa.s.sionate about what you"re doing." Essie ended up creating nail polishes because she was captivated by fashion and style (plus she adored getting her nails done). Loving what she was doing made it easier to work long hours, push the envelope with creativity, and cold call on hundreds of salons, introducing her polishes to them. Sometimes the reason you see other people charge by you is that you"ve stumbled into the wrong workplace or wrong field.
If it does feel like a pretty good fit (at least for now), one way to fire up your fierceness is to get a taste of what big success feels like. I still remember the moment that happened for me. After I"d been a senior editor at Family Weekly for several years, my boss, Art Cooper, was tapped to be the editor in chief of GQ. I was named executive editor and given the task of running the magazine while management searched for the new editor (they told me I was also a candidate). I was so nervous at first-28 million people would see what was published under my direction each week-but of course I couldn"t say no. Then all of a sudden, after I"d been running the magazine a few weeks, a funny thing happened: I discovered that I found the whole experience absolutely exhilarating. I loved being in charge, loved deciding what the cover stories would be, loved telling people what to do. I even loved having the buck stop with me. I realized that some of the stress I sometimes felt at work involved reporting to a boss, and when I didn"t have one-at least a direct boss-I actually was much happier. (When the editor in chief job went to a man, Art said he"d heard that had been the intention all along. But I tried not to let it bother me. I"d had an epiphany from the experience, making it all worthwhile.) So give yourself a hint of what major success in your field would feel like. If a leader in your company or field is giving a speech, for instance, go hear it and watch the attention that is paid to her, see how nice it is to command a room.
Another way to hone the eye of the tiger is to define your goal in a s.e.xy way for yourself. You may not be a hundred percent certain of what it is, but decide on something that feels right at the moment and go with it for a while. Saying it to yourself not only gets you jazzed but also helps guide your choices.
The wonderful crime novelist Karin Slaughter, who has sold more than 30 million books worldwide, used to own-are you ready for this?-a sign-painting company. But she secretly wanted to write. She finally found an agent to shop her first book, but it took a while to sell, and by the time she was close, she had written another book and had an idea for a third. When the agent asked her what she hoped for, Slaughter suddenly heard herself say, "A three-book deal." Just saying that phrased crystallized things for her-and she ended up with exactly that from a publisher.
Don"t be afraid to think big. I had the chance recently to work with a dazzling duo of women who run the PR and marketing firm Brandstyle Communications. One of them, Zoe Weisberg Coady, told me that from the time she was in her early twenties, she would tell herself, "One day I want to have my own company," and that phrase helped propel and direct her.
"Having that phrase in my mind helped me make certain decisions," she says. "I worked for one of the big agencies when I was younger, for instance, and my boss was crazy, but I stuck it out because I knew it was good for me to be there because of my long-range plan. I was learning things I would need to know when I ran a business one day."
Coady has always done something else that also helps hone the eye of the tiger: she uses envy as a motivator. "It"s so easy to get bogged down in the day-to-day," she says. "But when I read about someone else doing something interesting or being really successful at something, it"s a real kick in the b.u.t.t. I think, "I need to do that." "
No matter how fierce you become about your goals, at times certain things will steal your focus and possibly diminish your fierceness: setbacks, for instance, or crushing criticism. Experiment and find the tactic that gets it back for you. The comedian Amy Schumer, who parlayed being a finalist on Last Comic Standing into a very successful career as a comedian, had a trick that worked for her when she was first trying to make it. "When I felt like it was an uphill battle," she told me, "I reread the positive feedback I"d received in e-mails, on Facebook, and on Twitter. That always kept me pushing ahead."
{ How to Come Up with Bold, Brilliant Ideas }.
One of the reasons for the success you have today is that along the way you must have had a few d.a.m.n good ideas. Perhaps you suggested to your boss some clever way to trim costs, or you came up with a compelling tag line to use in the company"s marketing brochure. Being a good idea person helped you do your job and blast ahead. But now that you"re poised to go big with your success, you need to go big with your ideas, too. You need to come up with not just good ideas but bold, brilliant ideas, the kind that these days are called "game changers."
Think for a moment about some of the most exciting products and companies you know. Facebook, for instance, or Netflix, or lash-lengthening mascara or those spinners that dry your lettuce, or-one of my personal favorites-Paperless Post, whose online cards are as fabulous as anything in traditional stationery. They"ve made your life better or easier (or possibly even more exciting), and now you may even feel you couldn"t live without them. Each began with a bold new idea.
Great ideas are the currency of big success. No matter whether you"re a product developer in Silicon Valley, a high school teacher in Kansas, or a private wealth manager in Pennsylvania, if you"re going to make your mark and make a difference, you need to be a strong idea person. Your concepts may not change the world or make you millions, but you want them to have an impact in the work you do.
The ability to generate ideas comes easily to some people. I also believe that you can learn how to do it and make it a regular and exciting process in your job. Though I started off as a decent enough idea person, I"ve gotten much better over the years, not only by working at improving my own techniques but by studying how supercreative people seem to do it.
Here are the tricks I"ve used-as well as a few I"ve stolen!
Find your idea-creating zone. It took me years to realize that though I"m basically a night person, I have my best ideas early in the morning. That meant I needed to become a morning person, too. (I know-this could be called burning the candle at both ends.) Though it took getting used to, hauling myself out of bed at 5:30 A.M. made such a difference for me. And don"t be afraid to book creative time into your schedule. I read once that Madonna scheduled creative time each day. It"s a little like scheduling s.e.x. It may not sound so erotic, but just wait until you"re in the throes of it.
Give your brain something to spark off of. Ideas don"t happen in a vacuum. They occur when your mind encounters something and suddenly catches fire with a creative thought. Ideas are often about a.s.sociations. The Swede who invented Velcro began to develop the idea after finding burrs stuck to his pants leg following a walk in the woods.
Sure, sometimes people come up with stupendous ideas by letting one thought in their brain spark off another. But why not give your brain some help? In my home office I keep a huge folder of crime stories I"ve clipped from magazines and newspapers or downloaded from the Internet. Whenever it"s time to start thinking about a new novel, I make a cup of tea and sit for an hour going through those clippings. One of the best plot twists I"ve ever had was sparked by an anecdote I found on the twenty-fourth page of an article I"d downloaded.
Dari Marder, the chief marketing officer of Iconix, has a great approach she uses. She regularly has what she calls a "ten slides meetings." Everyone in attendance must give a PowerPoint presentation of ten images that have really grabbed them over the past few days or weeks. Those images often trigger amazing ideas.
Don"t become stuck to your desk. Clippings and images are helpful, but you also need to be out in the world. The more you encounter, the more there is to spark ideas. Walk in nature, as the Velcro inventor did. Go to museums, galleries, shows, events, theater. I once came up with an interesting idea for Cosmo when I was viewing an Asia Society exhibit on Marco Polo and the Silk Road ("What to Do When Your Guy Won"t Stay Put"-just kidding). Essie Weingarten told me that one of her nail colors was inspired by the plaid shirt she had seen on someone at a soccer game.
Put the question to the universe. I know this is going to sound crazy, but it"s something I learned from Laura Day, author of Practical Intuition, and it really, really works. Decide on a question ("What end-of-the-year project can I give my students that will enthrall them?" or "How can I encourage more people to come to the open houses my realty company gives?") and say it a few times in your mind. The answer eventually will come to you. It"s not a weird ESP kind of thing. You prime your subconscious to be ready to receive great input. I use this constantly not only for my work with Cos...o...b..t also when I"m writing my books. When I was gathering ideas for my second mystery, I posed the question to the universe and scheduled a pamper-myself-into-a-pound-of-b.u.t.ter day to help things along. While I was waiting to have a facial done, I looked at the instruments and thought, "You could kill someone with that!" Then suddenly I decided to set my second mystery in a spa.
Think about what"s really needed. Remember that statement I included in part I from Paperless Post cofounder Alexa Hirschfeld: "You have to consider what the world wants from you, not what you want from the world." In other words, if you hope to make money and be a success, your idea has to be marketable. Step away for a minute from your concept and consider whether it"s really going to be in demand.
Put your wildest, craziest thoughts onto the table. Years ago, I read an essay by Cynthia Heimel called "How to Be Creative." I still have a tattered clipping of it, and I reread it from time to time. One of my favorite parts: "There is only one way to be creative-and that is to have the courage to examine all our secret convolutions, hopes, and jokes and transform them into art. To h.e.l.l with what the other guy thinks! The odder and more personal we get, the more everyone identifies. It"s magic."
So let your wacky ideas see the light of day. Others can probably relate to them.
Brainstorm. In recent years, some experts have pooh-poohed brainstorming, saying it"s not an effective way to generate ideas, but I find it works great in many cases-and it can be a lot of fun. The key is to work with a small group of people (four or five) who feel totally comfortable together. And though this sounds ruthless, over time you may have to drop people from the group if they suck out the oxygen and don"t produce.
But also channel your inner loner. According to Susan Cain, the author of Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can"t Stop Talking, research suggests that people are more creative when they enjoy privacy and freedom from interruption-and that solitude is a catalyst for innovation.
Riff on it. When you see something that wows you or another person says something that you find intriguing, hold on to it mentally for a few beats and then kick it around in your mind. Why did it catch your interest? Could some permutation of it work in a presentation you"re doing or a new product you"re developing? That"s what the Velcro creator did. And it"s what I often do when I"m writing a mystery. There"s one kind of kooky example that comes to mind. Around the time I was finishing my first novel, If Looks Could Kill, I attended a three-day conference for work and ended up sitting next to Laura Day. Day explained to me that she was an "intuit," meaning she intuited ideas for companies. I told her I was struggling a bit with the final two chapters of my book and asked if she could intuit for me. "I don"t know why," she said after a minute of reflection, "but I"m seeing a lottery ticket."
Well, as much as I tried, I wasn"t able to think of a way to use that lottery ticket in the ending. But I hated to let it go. And then suddenly I had a thought. Bailey Weggins, my amateur detective, had broken up with her husband because he was a scoundrel of some kind, and though I"d yet to decide what his problem was, I knew I didn"t want the standard "he cheated on her." I decided at that moment to make him a compulsive gambler.
Sometimes your brain snags on something interesting but you can"t use it right then and there. But if you get into the habit of paying attention and mentally storing good material, you can come back to it. The PR guru Andrea Kaplan says that one of her best ideas occurred from an observation she made-and then returned to-when she was doing PR for Family Circle magazine. "During one of President Clinton"s State of the Union addresses, I noticed that Hillary Clinton was sitting next to Dr. Berry Brazelton, a Family Circle contributor," she says. "A week later in a brainstorming meeting, the editor in chief asked what we could do celebrate Dr. Brazelton"s ten years as a columnist. My synapses started firing, and I said, "Let"s do a Salute America"s Children campaign with Dr. Brazelton and Mrs. Clinton." It all came together, and I even booked them on Oprah. It was Mrs. Clinton"s first time on that show."
Ask yourself "What if . . . ?" That"s a technique that"s recommended for novelists as a way to develop plots. You see a lone glove lying on a sidewalk. You ask, for instance, "What if the woman wearing it hadn"t simply dropped it but was kidnapped and forced into a car? What if she had stumbled on information in her job that put her in jeopardy?" And on and on. You can use that same trick at work.
When I had lunch with reality star Bethenny Frankel, I learned that that"s basically how her multimillion-dollar Skinnygirl Margarita business happened. On an episode of Real Housewives of New York, she"d asked a bartender to make her "a skinny margarita," and gave him a recipe she"d concocted. After the show aired, lots of women went online and asked for the recipe. Rather than simply share it, Bethenny asked, "Since so many women like it, what if I create and sell the mix myself?" Bethenny said that you have to look at everything and see what you can do with it. "If I were Faye Dunaway," she said, referring to the star of Mommie Dearest, "I would have created a line of clothes hangers."
Try thin slicing your concepts. Sometimes making an idea tighter or more specific actually makes it much stronger. That"s been one of the tricks I use with cover lines. To me a great cover line deals with a universal issue but hooks you by addressing a specific aspect of it, thus making it seem an even more intriguing concept. Compare "9 Stress-Busting Tips" to "What to Do When Stress Keeps You Up at Night." The second is just grabbier (you can"t help but wonder, How do they know?). Two of my all-time favorite Cosmo lines are "The Most Crucial Thing to Ask Your Gyno" and "Why Guys Cheat in August."
I think this same approach works with ideas in general. So when you"re letting your mind play, don"t be afraid to thin slice.
Never ignore the pebble in your shoe. When you"re playing with information, look for patterns, too. Not long after I arrived at Cosmo, I began to notice all the e-mails from guys saying how much they loved sneaking a peek at the magazine because it was like "having the other team"s playbook." That eventually led to the iPad app CFG-Cosmo for Guys.
Once you have an idea, don"t overly perfect it. When you try to hold on to an idea too long in order to make it perfect, you can miss the moment. So put it out there. "Even if your product isn"t as perfect as you"d like, perfection in your hands isn"t relevant," says Paperless Post cofounder Alexa Hirschfeld. "You need to know what your consumer thinks. When you put it out there, you can begin to collect data to make it more perfect."
Stumped? Step away. Brandstyle"s Zoe Weisberg Coady says that when she is stumped for an idea, she does something totally different. "Then later, I come back to it," she says. "If you"re too pressured, it"s never going to happen. But if you step away, your brain solves it."
Press up on the bottom of your desktop or a table with your fingers. This comes from a study done by the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Apparently the motion flexes the muscles you use to bring things closer to your body, which your brain a.s.sociates with openness and creativity.
And always ask yourself, "Did I go big or go home?" You"ve got a winning idea. But could it be bolder? Could you take it further? Hold your ideas up to a phrase that nudges you to go bigger. When I met Colin Cowie, the lifestyle guru and party planner who put together Cosmo"s fortieth-anniversary party, he told me that everything he created needed to be a "jaw-dropping moment." What a great phrase to use! From the moment I started writing Cosmo cover lines, I tried to use a similar tactic: I asked myself if they were fearless enough. That"s how lines such as "Heinous Break-ups: You"ll Want to Slap These Jerks" turned into "The Most Heinous Break-ups in Cosmo History: You"ll Want to b.i.t.c.h-slap These Jerks."
{ You, the Brand }.
Several years ago I b.u.mped into a professional model I knew who was now over age thirty and was beginning to get involved in other projects, including being a product sponsor. We caught up, and then I asked if she was still doing any modeling. "No," she told me. "I"m really more of a brand now."
We"re constantly being told these days that we all must turn ourselves into brands. We need brand ident.i.ties and brand statements and brand promotions. It may seem silly to think of yourself the same way you would a bag of coffee or box of tampons, but it can actually be helpful to define your professional brand ident.i.ty, especially now when you"ve begun to achieve some success. It forces you to focus your efforts before you go too much further down the road, helps you market yourself for jobs, and enables you to create buzz about what you are doing.
What does a brand ident.i.ty mean? Here"s insight from advertising executive Bobbi Casey-Howell: "I was brought up in the world of advertising, and the idea I most cling to and believe in is the one Donny Deutsch, CEO of Deutsch, taught me: a brand is a set of values. Values are your beliefs and what make you you. Your brand isn"t how you wear your hair, what color your eyes are, or how you dress. Values are at your core. Your brand values actually inform your dress, your look, and how you act."
You can begin to think about your brand ident.i.ty by considering how you live your life and the kind of work you"re drawn to. "You make decisions every day based on what your brand is," says Casey-Howell. "Let"s say you"re deciding where to have dinner with friends. What values are reflected in your choice of restaurant? Energy? Friendliness? Creativity? Consistency? If you make a list of brands you prefer and purchase-detergent, shampoo, computer, cell phone, et cetera-you can probably find similarities among them and get an insight as to what your own brand is about."
Casey-Howell says that when she looks at the brands she prefers and what she values, it"s easy for her to see that her personal brand is all about no-nonsense.
After you"ve defined the values that matter to you, begin to think about the professional skills that you want to develop and showcase that will reflect those values. Early on in your career you may want to experiment and try your hand at a bunch of things, but before long you"ll want to start narrowing it down.
"You need to find your focus and stick with it," says Emily Heyward, partner and director of strategy at Red Antler, a branding company that believes in designing from the inside out. "A friend of mine who is a high-powered advertising executive gave me great advice, which was to stop trying to be good at things I don"t enjoy doing. Of course, every job is going to have unpleasant tasks a.s.sociated with it. But instead of trying to be good at everything, work on being great at a few key things. By completely owning a few core functions, you become indispensable in those areas, and everyone knows your value-versus the brand that tries to be all things to all people and ends up standing for nothing."
Casey-Howell also stresses the importance of focusing. "It"s almost impossible to be a generalist today," she says. "As a consumer you want to work with a specialist. You want someone who specializes in what you"re paying for. Your hair, for instance, or an exercise cla.s.s or the software you use. The same holds true in your career. Your brand can be your specialty or how you get something done."
But be aware, says Casey-Howell, that at the rate things are moving, your specialty may not be a specialty forever. Always keep an eye out for how you can adapt. And, of course, one day you may want to change directions altogether.
Even if you think you"ve focused, ask yourself if it might be smart to go ever tighter. A strategy in one of my favorite marketing books, The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing: if you can"t be number one in a category, set up a new category you can be first in. Example: Amelia Earhart wasn"t the first person to fly solo across the Atlantic, but she was the first woman to do it. Look for a void that needs to be filled.
Once you have a sense of your brand, boil everything down into a sound bite that you can use as a measuring stick. This is especially true when you"re creating any kind of product or service. Recently I went to a breakfast to hear designer Tory Burch speak, and she defined her wonderful brand as "upscale flair at an accessible price point." All her designs are held up to that statement. She also described the piece that had crystallized the concept for her: a tunic she saw in a Paris flea market, one that reminded her of a lovely tunic her mother had worn. Tunics are still a key part of her collections. It can help with any brand to have a visual in mind. Try making a board of images to help you focus.
As your career progresses, you will need to make choices that keep you true to your brand. "The agency I work for is no-nonsense, just as I am," says Casey-Howell. "And at this stage in my career, I hire people I believe possess that value. Since I want everyone I hire to be successful, I ask questions to uncover that value."
Take on as many a.s.signments as possible that will enhance your specialty. And learn what you need to make it even stronger. Just as important as saying yes to what fits your brand is saying no to what doesn"t.
Pay attention to your gut, too. It will help inform you when things are off brand for you. But you have to take the time to listen and question yourself. One of the things I eventually realized at the end of my first year at Cosmo was how much better of a fit the magazine was for me than either Redbook or McCall"s had been. I"ve always been drawn to what"s kind of edgy (um, maybe that"s why I write mysteries), and I"d always felt weirdly constricted in those other jobs. But I hadn"t done enough thinking at the time to put my finger on it and wonder if there was something better suited for me. Luckily I found my way there.
What you want to strive for is consistency. "The reason Lindsay Lohan has had such a hard time making a comeback is because she went from being America"s sweetheart to a hot mess," says Jo Piazza, the author of Celebrity, Inc.: How Famous People Make Money. "A lesbian, then not a lesbian. She"s a brand flip-flopper. Consumers don"t know what they will get, so that"s why they are no longer willing to invest in her. On the other hand, Charlie Sheen"s fans didn"t abandon him when he had a breakdown because his brand had always been consistent. You know he is a bad boy, and the badder he is, the more successful he is."
Once you"re sure of your professional brand ident.i.ty, you need to advertise it, promote it, market it. "You want to make sure you"re communicating your key point of difference-your positioning-at every occasion," says Heyward. "When you create a resume, for instance, it"s not about listing every single role and responsibility you"ve had. Instead it"s about highlighting accomplishments that all ladder up to your overall positioning, expressing a clear point of view. You"re taking control of the impressions you make by doing the work for them."
You should also have a bio that plays up your brand-this will be used for any kind of press or speaking engagement. Make it jazzy and exciting, and don"t be afraid of language that really touts you. For instance, Rita Hazan"s online bio doesn"t simply call her a hair colorist; it refers to her as "one of the most sought-after colorists in the world."
Keep reinforcing your brand at every opportunity-on your website, in blogs you write, in speeches you give, in interviews.
You"ve got to have the guts to say no here, too. If a particular activity isn"t going to reinforce your brand, it may very well be a waste of time. Sometimes, though, things can be tweaked to your advantage. Let"s say you"re an environmentalist who specializes in saving lakes, and you"re asked to be on a panel on global warming. Does that support your brand? It does if you speak specifically about how the warming of northern lakes makes them more susceptible to invasive species and the lack of snow cover threatens the replenishment of lakes.
Think about the details, too: the way you dress, the accessories you use, your stationery. One day when we were chatting at her salon, Rita Hazan showed me the screen saver on her iPhone. It was a close-up shot of the back of Katy Perry"s hair, dyed the most fantastic shade of blue by Rita. Her screen saver wasn"t a shot of her dogs. It was a shot of her brand.
One last point about brand: go big or go home with your brand whenever you can. Ask yourself with each step: Can I go further? Can I push the envelope here? Can I make a bigger statement? When the dermatologist and surgeon Ellen Marmur decided to leave her offices at the Manhattan hospital where she practiced and open up her own office, she decided not to call it Dr. Marmur"s office but rather Marmur Medical. Thinking big. I just love that.
{ My Best Rules for Being a Boss }.
When I was sixteen years old and eager to make more regular money than babysitting provided, I took a job as a part-time dental a.s.sistant, working on Sat.u.r.days and every weekday during the summer. The dentist taught me something he called four-handed dentistry, where we slapped the dental instruments back and forth into each other"s hands like you see on shows such as Grey"s Anatomy. While other girls were cheering at football games on Sat.u.r.day, I was securing bibs on patients, a.s.sisting the dentist as he filled their cavities, and vacuuming debris out of their mouths afterward. In many ways it was a good experience (though there"s something creepy about hearing someone say "Miss White, get me the bone file" when you are only sixteen). The only major problem: my boss, the dentist, was a total meanie.
He was charming to patients, but he constantly snapped, barked, and even yelled at the staff, often in an ego-crushing way. In the three years I worked there, something like fifteen receptionists came and went; one never even returned from lunch on her first day on the job. Because I wanted the work, I stuck it out, always doing my best to keep a stiff upper lip. The worst moment for me was when, just before we closed the office one summer day, a star athlete from the rival high school came in for an emergency filling. The dentist reprimanded me harshly in front of him, totally humiliating me. To this day, I can still picture myself leaving the office later. I slammed the door as hard as I could (the dentist obviously felt the walls shake because he called me at home to apologize), and on the front stoop I made a vow to myself: I would never, ever be that kind of boss.
I"ve been in charge of people for several decades-starting with one person and eventually overseeing more than sixty-and I would give myself decent marks for keeping my vow. Wherever I"ve gone, I"ve tried to create a supportive and easy atmosphere that people thrive in. I"ve enjoyed nurturing talent (I love the fact that at least seven people I"ve hired have gone on to become editors in chief), and I think most people would say I"m a fair and encouraging leader, bearing little resemblance to a The Devil Wears Prada type. I"ve given a huge amount of thought to what makes an effective boss, and when I"ve stumbled-far more times than I"d like-I"ve tried to a.n.a.lyze what I"ve done wrong. Here are the rules I"ve tried to live by.
Rule #1: Study good bosses-and lousy ones. Though some companies offer management-training programs, most places are not going to provide you with any instruction in being a boss. What I"m trying to say is, girlfriend, you"re on your own. But don"t just wing it. Watch your boss and her boss and other bosses around you, and try to articulate to yourself what they do right and what they do wrong, which behavior you"ll want to emulate and which you"ll want to avoid. What are their tricks for inspiring and motivating employees? Or not? How do they handle pressure? What do they do that works your last nerve?
One of my best bosses was a guy who had a Zen-like calm and handled everything with near-perfect equanimity. Though I knew I wasn"t hardwired to be exactly like him, I still learned so much from being around a man who saw the advantages that came from not overreacting. One of my worst bosses was a guy who actually sneaked my idea folder out of my tidy file while I was at lunch one day (I found out because my lunch date didn"t show and I came back early). He was terrified of losing his job, worried that everyone had more ideas than he did. From this dude I learned that desperate feelings can lead to desperately stupid actions if you don"t pop a chill pill.
Over time, think, too, about your own strengths and weaknesses as a leader. And though it"s important to work on your weaknesses, it"s also smart to keep polishing those strengths. Look, you can"t do everything, so make your mark in what you excel at.
Rule #2: Tell your team what your mission is (even if your team is only one person, i.e., an a.s.sistant). Besides the fact that people need to know what they"re doing, they love to work with a mission in mind. It"s totally energizing. Tell them that you want to "kick the b.u.t.t of the compet.i.tion by increasing sales by 15 percent" or "be the standout department in the high school by boosting student test scores by ten points."
You should also be sharing a set of values. What are the standards you want your employees to adhere to?
Rule #3: Tell people what you want them to do and when you want them to do it by. In "4 Tips for Masterfully Managing Your Boss" (part I), I stressed the importance of clarifying with your boss what your responsibilities and deadlines are. In an ideal world, it"s the boss"s job to arrange those sessions. So when you are the boss, do it. Be clear with your employees. Spell out their a.s.signments and their completion dates. It might prove valuable to hold a quick daily or weekly meeting with your staff at which you review what"s going on. People, I"ve found, like the ritual (and when done right, the fun) of regular catch-up meetings, as long as they aren"t a time suck. Consider making meetings "stand up"-where everyone remains standing while quickly running through what they"re focusing on.
And don"t just tell, teach. Let staffers try new stuff. The smart people want to learn what you know so they can have a job like yours, and this will help keep them engaged. One of the best compliments I ever received was when a former staffer said in an interview, "Working for Kate was like going to editor in chief boot camp."