Barbara Walters Price

It's Perplexing to be a Professional Woman Today

Check out Maureen Dowd's Sunday NYT magazine piece, What's a Modern Girl to Do?.  I know some folks really do not appreciate Maureen Dowd but don't hold that against her.  It's an interesting piece.  Sample excerpt:

Sylvia Ann Hewlett, an economist and the author of "Creating a Life: Professional Women and the Quest for Children," a book published in 2002, conducted a survey and found that 55 percent of 35-year-old career women were childless. And among corporate executives who earn $100,000 or more, she said, 49 percent of the women did not have children, compared with only 19 percent of the men.

Hewlett quantified, yet again, that men have an unfair advantage. "Nowadays," she said, "the rule of thumb seems to be that the more successful the woman, the less likely it is she will find a husband or bear a child. For men, the reverse is true."

Contrast that with a special section in today's WSJ, Top 50 Women to Watch.  While it's an impressive list, this introduction is telling:

Around the globe, women are leading companies in new and successful directions. But while a steadily growing cadre of women are making their mark in business, their ranks have barely touched broad swaths of the corporate world. Instead, women business leaders are largely concentrated in a select group of industries, in businesses with large numbers of women customers.

Am I the only professional woman out there who is confused about the "rules" of today?  All I know is I don't know and I'm too tired to figure it out.  My advice to other professional women: act with integrity, insist upon excellence, look always for new challenges, give away the credit, be interested in others as people, and keep your sense of humor. 

An important aside: upon reviewing the pictures of those Top 50 Women, I remarked to my husband, "Where's my picture?"  His answer: "It's in your daughter's room and she sleeps with it."  Turns out I'm doing the important things right.

Interesting: China's Labor Shortage?

From "Herman Trend Alert," by Roger Herman and Joyce Gioia, Strategic Business Futurists, copyright 2005

China’s Labor Shortage (October 26, 2005)

One of China’s assets is the country’s huge population, although most workers are insufficiently prepared to perform jobs necessary to shift from manufacturing into services and research-based industries. Education is emphasized; large numbers of new graduates are being produced. China will graduate 3.1 million university graduates this year compared with 1.3 million in the United States. The question is graduate quality and capacity to perform the needed work.

"Few of China's vast numbers of graduates are capable of working successfully in the services-export sector," says Andrew Grant, director in McKinsey's Shanghai office and author of a report recently released by the consulting firm. "The universities have a theoretical, text-book, fact-based, learn-from-the-master approach," he said. There is also insufficient emphasis on conversational skills in the teaching of English.

The report asserts that a shortage of well-trained graduates could hinder growth of the Chinese economy and prevent development of more sophisticated industries. Lack of practical skills and poor English-speaking proficiency suggests difficulty developing industries such as information technology outsourcing that has brought jobs to India over the past decade. India and China compete to attract jobs from developed countries.

What Are You Doing With Your Ideas?

Richard Branson controls over 200 companies. He was starting businesses before he got out of high school and has never slowed down. His Virgin Galactic is already accepting reservations for flights that the company says will commence in 2008. A British paper reports that Sigourney Weaver, Victoria Principal, and, of course, William Shatner have already booked the $200,000- plus ride. Here’s a guy who thinks of an idea and creates the business to make it happen. What are you doing with your ideas? http://www.fortune.com/fortune/streetlife

Tip of the hat to Dan Miller's 48 Days newsletter

FYI - Info Added to AICPA Marketing Tool Kit

From a recent press release:

Two new brochures and accompanying speeches have been added to the award-winning CPA Marketing Tool Kit at www.aicpa.org/cpamarketing. Both the brochure and speech, "College Planning: Easing the Financial Burden," offer financial guidance to people planning to send their children to college. Additionally, the speech and brochure, "Securing Your Business Financing," discuss funding options for businesses and how a CPA can help to secure adequate capital to start up or expand a business.

New Marketing Blog for CPAs

Patrick McEvoy has begun a new blog - CPA Marketing Best Practices.  Other than some structural issues (the RSS feed, blogroll, etc. seems to have fallen to the bottom of the right column), it looks like it might have some interesting content.  Take a look.

Top 10 Most Practical Blogs for Entrepreneurs

Scott Allen, writing for About.com, lists his pick of the "Top 10 Most Practical Blogs for Entrepreneurs" today. 

In addition, he has an "honorable mention" list which highlights Blogs by Famous Entrepreneurs, VC Blogs, Aggregator Blogs, MIA Blogs, Too New to Tell Blogs, Blogs about Business Blogging, and Niche Topics, among others.

Whether you are a solo-practitioner or work for a firm, you are still an entrepreneur (if you don't think of yourself this way, you are already behind).  I follow several of these blogs via my news aggregator and they are often helpful.  Check out some of the blogs on this list for career-building ideas. 

Give Away the Bread First

Marshall Goldsmith, a very successful corporate coach, shared a pearl of wisdom in this profile article. 

As a high school senior in Valley Station, Ky, Goldsmith was chosen to head the annual March of Dimes Bread Drive. Traditionally, high school students would solicit donations from community residents and give them a loaf of bread in return.

Noting that he lived in a poor community, Goldsmith elected to give away the bread first, and residents responded by donating more than they had in previous years.

"I found that if you gave away the bread, people would respond better," he said. "After that, it sort of influenced my philosophy of life."

This is so simple and yet so many people just don't get it.  Our firm, Mercer Capital, has been giving the bread away first for years and it has served us well.  Our "bread" is our intellectual capital.  We share what we know in the form of articles, presentations, and consultations.  We don't charge for it unlike many other firms who are so focused on the nickel in front of them that they can't see the dollar on the horizon. 

Figure out what your "bread" is and then give it away and watch what happens.

As my boss, Chris Mercer, always says "life is not a zero-sum game."

Is This You?

On PoynterOnline, scroll down to read Peggy Duncan's "Twenty-seven E-mail Pet Peeves that Tick People Off as Much as Spam."  Do you recognize yourself in any of these?

The e-mail pet peeve that most irks me is passing on hoaxes instead of checking them out first.  If it sounds too good or too bad to be true, it likely is! 

Peggy recommends http://www.sarc.com/ as a source to check.  I use http://hoaxbusters.ciac.org/.

Happy e-mailing!

A Bar Association Just for Women?

I came across this article from the Charlotte Observer - "Female partners scarce at law firms: Charlotte ranks last in percentage of women in leadership" by Mike Drummond (Sunday Oct. 23, 2005). 

The NALP conducted a gender and diversity survey for about a decade and found that only 11% of the partners in law firms in Charlotte-area NC were women.  That's nothing to be proud of, for certain.  There were excerpts from the article that were expected:

As in other cities, Charlotte's low female representation, in part, reflects law-firm practices that put a premium on billable hours over work-life balance.

In a field still dominated by white males and heavily dependent on networking and mentoring -- often at male-dominated bastions such as golf courses -- women often feel left out.

However, I was struck by this:

The Charlotte Women's Bar, formed in April, already has 133 members. [Women's Bar??]

And the Mecklenburg County Bar launched its first special diversity committee last year.

Mary Howerton, who stepped down as executive director of the Mecklenburg County Bar in 2003 after 18 years in that position, says that in that time the group paid little attention to lifting the profile of female lawyers.

She recalls that in the 1980s, a collection of hard-charging female lawyers were climbing the ranks. She viewed them as a vanguard. Howerton says she thought there was no need for a women's bar.

She has since changed her mind.

Women need their own local bar association to help them define and advance their own issues, such as increasing the numbers of female partners, she says.

As a professional woman with two small children who is also the sole breadwinner for our household, I understand the challenges and the demands on your time. 

I say bravo to the women attorneys of Charlotte who are taking part in this Bar Association.  If we haven't learned yet that we can't change the game, we can certainly take a look at changing some of the rules. 

Life is short.  Think differently and define "success" on your own terms.

It's Been an Interesting Two Weeks

I apologize.  I haven't been posting for two weeks.  Life has intruded.  First it was a stomach virus that went around our home.  Noooo fun.  And of course, blogging wasn't a priority.  Feeling human again was.

Then, we had family visiting.  The visit wasn't planned.  They were evacuees from Rita.  My husband and family are from Lake Charles, Louisiana so we had two sets of his immediate family with us for a time.  And that was great fun for us.  We're so blessed that we love both sides of our family.  But access to the computer was minimal.  I found out that twelve year olds check their e-mail often!

They left us mid-week last week to head home and salvage their lives.  Then my husband went out of town and I cared for our two little ones (aged two and six months).  My husband is the stay-at-home parent so I was a little over my head but that too was a lot of fun.  We all got into a groove and had a good time.   But I found out that I had basically no time for anything but taking care of the kids and the house.  I am extremely grateful to my husband for all he does because he does all the hard work -- it's good work but hard work.

My husband returned last night so life is back to normal and blogging will be back to normal as well.  Take care.