Mamas, Don't Let Your Babies Grow up to Be Writers

The other day, my seven-year-old said to me: "Mom, when I grow up I want to do nails or write children’s books."  My guess is that she will pursue something different altogether, but it made me think: do I really want my kids to follow my rocky path as a writer? About a month ago, someone e-mailed me for advice on getting into journalism. She was older, had pursued another career for years, and was ready to make a switch. She was passionate. I did my best to support her with ideas and realistic expectations. She thanked me profusely. Yet, prospects just aren't fabulous out there even for experienced editors and writers.

When I started out in journalism many years ago, it was truly the best of times. I was in technology journalism at the very beginning of the public Internet, working for magazines, and making good coin for decent hours. Those days are over. Since my journalism career I've had corporate jobs and many freelance jobs. I'm now into my seventh year as an independent consultant-- writing, editing, blogging, and handling PR for a lot of different high-tech companies. I love my schedule, because it gives me the flexibility to work around my kids. I get paid well for what I do-- and I don't even work 40 hours.

There's no way I could earn what I do on strictly writing gigs or as a staff writer somewhere. At least half of my income comes from PR. I never thought I would do it (evil PR!) but now that I've been schilling stories for a while, I find it to be fun and rewarding. I still get to work with ideas and write articles and other content. My job is fast-paced and quite intellectual. I work with smart people and for the most part, I have fantastic clients. The journalists put up with me and some even like me.

If I were to do it all over, though, I'm not sure I would've gone into journalism. It's been a roller coaster over the years and even now, running my own business, I am always wondering what my income will be next month and in the month after and so on. Let's be clear: I do not have the benefit of a spouse with a lavish corporate job. We both work for ourselves and sometimes it's just a damn strain. Yet still, I consider myself very, very lucky.

What career would I have pursued otherwise? I haven't the slightest clue, to be honest. Like most writers, I harbor a deep-seated desire to write A Novel—or at the very least, a shallow, wildly successful thriller that's made into a blockbuster film.

Can you do what you love and the money will follow, as these guys always say? Occasionally— but not typically. No one’s paying me to play tennis, drink wine, read novels or play with my kids, inexplicably. Just as my parents did with me, I will steer my children toward the best-paying, intellectually-stimulating careers. Does that make me shallow? Not really. It makes me practical. “Do what you love" is mostly for off-hours, sorry. "Do what you can, do what you do well and try and make it fun," seems like a reasonable mantra to me. What do you think?

Are You Real, Virtual or Robotic?

As someone who writes for a living, I spend hours every week gathering information -- much of it online but definitely by talking to real, breathing human beings. Occasionally, I conduct e-mail interviews, such as when a source is traveling internationally or has laryngitis, as was the case recently. It's tempting, and sometimes quite painless to do all of my reporting and fact gathering through e-mail and social media. Why not?

Yet, this can be a trap. I worry about who’s actually on the other end of that stream of bits. Is it really the expert/executive or their assistant? Is it a bot? Have they said the same spiel to 10 other people in the last month?

I am a closet introvert and love working happily at my desk for hours, switching between different screens and message streams. It's fast, it's fun and better yet, I don't have to stumble over my own dumb words with a stranger on the line. I resist, however, and continue the old-fashioned but much safer method of dialing the phone and speaking English, just like they taught me in J school many years ago.

My husband, a work-at-home investment banker, is on the phone nearly the entire day. At times the constant drone of his voice below me in the basement office makes me batty.  He hates social media and won’t return my text messages unless they have to do with dinner. 

There's something to be said for his obsession with the phone. Live conversations are real, in the moment and active. They have innuendos and inflections of voice that indicate the real story. They promise an invigorating debate of raw, unedited ideas that texting and e-mail cannot replicate.

Can't we all use a little more of the real communication? I have one editor who always calls me before e-mailing. It's refreshing. Sometimes he uses the phone to tell me something that could have taken two seconds online. Yet, I like to hear his gentle Midwestern voice. I think sometimes, he enjoys hearing mine as well.

The human voice is beautiful. Please, people, let’s not forget how to use it.

Grow Up, Ye Small Business!

Social media, blah. Google Docs, blah. Cloud, blah blah. Mobile, blah blah BLAH! 


Do you ever wonder what it is that you actually need to grow your small business? Do you need a Facebook page? Maybe, but probably not. Do you have to belong to 100 circles on Google +? No. Must you hang out on Twitter for an hour every day? Definitely not. Should you buy all of your employees iPads? Quite possibly, yes. But first, let's get back to the basics.


What is the plan, Houston?
In the mad rush to acquire customers, put up the website, make the products or services better,  a startup may forget the value of a few operating principles: such as, creating an operations plan.


Say what?
Yes, this is the document that spells out your short and long-term strategy, core processes and systems: it's the guide for getting work done at your company. If you, as CEO and founder, die tomorrow, will people know how to renew your facilities contracts or what kind of insurance you have? What about information systems? Is there a special feature that only you know how to use? How about dealing with the Top 5 customers: what's the secret sauce to keeping them happy? How about hiring: what are the key personality traits your company needs from a candidate to succeed?


It's time to write it all down, people. I covered this topic recently for Business on Main, where I'm a regular contributor. Check out the article. I weave in the advice of two sharp operations and process consultants who know the pains of small businesses that don't pay attention to the fundamental activity of operations planning. Operations seems so, well, boring compared with updating your Pinterest page. Or, is it?

“Operations is an exciting place to be and it's just as critical as sales and R&D, “ says Jud Barr, CEO of JTB Sales and Operations Consulting in San Francisco. "The market is moving too fast to do business as usual. Companies need to continually probe and be prepared to shift with the times.”

Parenting: The American Way

I'm getting a little tired of reading how parents in (or from) other countries are superior to American parents. First, we had Tiger mom Amy Chua, the Yale professor who practically beat her children on the head with a stick if they didn't practice piano and violin for five hours straight every day. Now, we have Mademoiselle Mama, the American woman living in Paris who marvels at the angelic behavior of French children, in this recent Wall Street Journal article:

“Why was it, for example, that in the hundreds of hours I'd clocked at French playgrounds, I'd never seen a child (except my own) throw a temper tantrum? Why didn't my French friends ever need to rush off the phone because their kids were demanding something? Why hadn't their living rooms been taken over by teepees and toy kitchens, the way ours had?”

All right, I get the message about waiting. Americans, and especially their kids, don’t appear to value this skill as much as their European counterparts. Sorry, Parisians. Maybe this proclivity toward impatience is why we've had more success in business. However, whenever I hear a mom saying that her 18-month-old still wakes up for a bottle in the middle of the night, I cringe. That's just not good for anyone. Please, allow the baby to learn how to cry it out a little bit so that both of you can finally sleep through the night.

Later in the article, the author alludes to the fact that Americans spend way too much time playing with and attending to their kids: "For me, the evenings are for the parents," one Parisian mother told me. "My daughter can be with us if she wants, but it's adult time."

With all due respect, here is my rebuttal to this latest assault on American parenting:

1. Temper tantrums: what's wrong with these? Frankly, I'm glad my kids had tantrums, even in public places. Toddlers are wound-up balls of energy and if those emotions and erratic impulses don't come out now, they surely will later -- when they're teenagers driving your car and out of sight doing God-knows-what. There’s been plenty of research on the positive benefits of tantrums. I’d much rather my child learn how to express their emotions when they are little, rather than grow up to be a passive-aggressive adult with pent-up anger and self-destructive tendencies.

2. Children who interrupt. Yes, whenever I get the phone the kids invariably tug on my sleeve and ask any number of non-urgent questions. Do I get off the phone? No. I simply ask said child to wait until I'm done. And usually, they actually manage to do so, even if they aren’t quiet about it. It's just not normal for Americans to have conversations with no interruptions. I don't think it's normal for Italians nor Greeks either -- and I think that's okay. Can you imagine if it was unacceptable to interrupt people who cannot finish a thought?

3. Living rooms as forts. Kids should engage in free play. They do not understand that such activity is confined to their bedrooms. And really, do I care that they're building a play restaurant in the dining room? Or that every blanket in the house is on the couch, wrapped around various stuffed animals for the "animal hospital"? I love the creativity and it's worth the mess. My couch pillows aren't too nice to be used for "hot lava” obstacle courses on the kitchen floor. It is tiresome that the house is a disaster more than 50 percent of the time, but at least the kids are using their brain in a healthy fashion -- which is more than I can say about playing video games all afternoon.

4. Independent play. I'm a staunch believer that kids need to learn how to play independently. In the evenings, however, when my girls have been at school and in afterschool activities all day and I've been working, I'm ready to hang with them! If my six-year old asks me to play "Trouble" for the fifth night in a row, I'll do it. The older they get, the less time they're going to want to spend with me, so I’m taking it now. I'll get a lot more "adult time" when the girls are in high school.

Parenting is all about setting the right balance for you and your family. I disagree with the Tiger mom philosophy of relentlessly pushing your kids to excel and not allowing them to engage in trivial activities such as play dates, nor the French mother philosophy of pretending that children are mini-adults. We all have different cultures, economic backgrounds and societal challenges -- which means that there's no right way to parent. Most of us do the best we can. There are days when I know I've been an unpleasant, easy-to-anger mother. I try to move on and do better the next day.

Can Americans do better? Well, yes. Americans are often helicopter parents, for one. I'm not sure why -- perhaps from our in-bred colonial ambition but also because our public schools suck. If we don't stand up for our kids, who will? We Americans can be a loud, outspoken bunch, so naturally our kids may seem like out-of-control, spoiled brats to parents in other countries. But maybe, some of our kids are just, loud? Could we push our kids harder and make them more accountable? Well, yes.

A little of the French way and a bit of the Chinese way is fine, here and there. But I'm an American, and I'll be damned if I won't parent the American way-- whatever that is.

Angry Birds

My colleague, Kevin Wolf, just wrote some thoughts on his blog about high expectations from both journalists and clients. I think he has some excellent points here. Highlights:

"Before sending a pitch, I read what I can about the journalist I’m targeting. I have about five minutes to spend on this because, in case you didn’t know, we’re targeting about 50 journalists per client at any given time.The pitches I develop are clear and concise. The journalists I target should be interested.

Often times I get an email response, but many times I don’t.

Reporters don’t like to be called, so when a reporter doesn’t respond to an email, I basically have no idea why the story I pitched isn’t a fit. Which means I have zero valuable feedback to share with my clients.  Oh, and by the way, clients don’t want to hear our feeble excuses. They pay for coverage, not empty analysis, and many have very high expectations. As a PR rep I’m always trying to “manage” expectations, but usually it comes off as sandbagging. I explain that PR is a process, exactly like sales. It takes time to woo a reporter."

Mending the Angry Rift between Journalists and PR

Journalists love to rant about PR people. I know -- because when I was a hard-core journalist I did the same. But usually, it was because I was too busy and I kept getting pitches that were totally irrelevant or simply lame and not well-articulated. This was back in the dot-com boom days when the hype factor was at an all-time high and there were way too many highly paid, inexperienced and untrained 23 year-olds doing PR. But lately, I've been reading a few rants of prominent technology journalists that have rubbed me the wrong way. Full disclosure: yes, I do media relations work in addition to my freelance writing work.

One young reporter mentioned in her rant that she wanted PR people to "entertain me!”

Another, more senior reporter, said that he would appreciate it if PR people would take some time to learn about his interests, such as his love of running, travel and cooking. If they couldn't be bothered with that, then maybe the publicity wasn't that important, he added.

Excuse me?

Since when is it the job of the source to entertain and/or comment about the reporter's recent triathlon or vacation on the Cape? When I worked as a technology reporter, my expectations were fairly simple: send me a storyline which is fresh and relevant to my beat, and be clear in the e-mail. That's it. I didn't expect anything else. Why do reporters today expect the royal treatment? I don't know. I suppose they are especially overworked and underpaid today, with editorial staffs and budgets remaining dangerously slim. They want to be treated extra special, in order to reply to an e-mail. But sorry, I refuse to play that game.

Here's what I do think is imperative:

1. Research reporters’ beats before pitching, because these days they do change frequently. Check out their latest links—and this doesn't mean you have to mention them in your e-mail, but understand where the guy/gal is coming from so you can align your pitch appropriately.

2. Don't assume that because a reporter covered something two months ago they still care. Mention the earlier story but share how your story is different and/or adds to the previous story.

3. Be polite and succinct in your communications and do a little extra work -- such as throwing in a few research statistics or quote from an industry expert that relate to the pitch.

4. Be careful about re-sending e-mails. Many reporters hate this although some don’t mind. If you're confident that the pitch relates and you know that the reporter was just at a conference or on vacation, go ahead and re-send it. But otherwise, tread lightly lest you become the "annoying PR person from hell."

5. Understand where the journos are coming from: Yes, you are being paid to get publicity but journalists are fiercely independent, enterprising and curious people. Deep down, they want to find the story on their own, not have it delivered to them from PR and marketing people. So instead of suggesting a specific story to write, suggest some angles and how your source can help.

5. Consider the value of objective, bylined articles from one of your company experts. Send a short paragraph abstract. Do not advertise your company's products, services or benefits. Stay neutral. Websites need content these days, and if you have something new to say that is non-promotional and if you have someone on staff who can write well, go for it. Quick advice: Editors often say that they hate "Top 5" list stories but frankly, they sell with readers because they make for a quick, entertaining scan.

6. Phone calls: many reporters won't pick up the phone but some do. If there's a need to call someone (and make sure there is a good reason), start your call pleasantly with "Hi this is Sam with Widgets, Inc. Do you have a minute or are you on a deadline?" If they say go ahead, then don't spend more than a minute. Quickly state what the company does and what's the news or reason for your call. If they reject your pitch, ask if you can stay in touch about (XYZ topics). This gives them an out to say no thank you, or provides a tip as to when you can reasonably contact them again.

There are many other useful media relations tips, but I believe that these above are the ones that matter most.

Now, a few words for journalists:

1. I know that it's all about page views, but at least in the tech world, journalists frequently cover the same handful of big, name-brand companies. I don't need to list them -- but it seems to me that many small and midsize companies out there deserve a bit more attention. Journalists are surely pushed by editors to continue covering the same story lines, but I wish that writers today could be a bit more enterprising in their coverage.

2. Don't be a jerk just because you can. If you're going to pick up your phone, and give someone a minute or two, don't hang up on them or butt in every 2 seconds. Be decent and respectful. There are, in fact, many smart PR folks out there!

3. If you want to be entertained, cajoled, or pampered-- please, just go to a movie or book a spa appointment. There's really not that many funny marketing people in the world and like you, they’re too busy and budget-constrained to research every journalist’s personal interests and twitter posts.

4. Reply, occasionally. If you receive a pitch from a PR person that is smart, well-crafted and relates to your beat, but you don't have time to cover it, send a quick note back with "thanks but no thanks right now." I know you get a ton of e-mail, but sometimes it's worthwhile to write back. You never know what that person can bring you later.

5. Give feedback. Take a minute to tell a PR person exactly what you want or don't want, if he or she is someone that you'd like to continue to hear from down the road. That way, the next e-mail will be more targeted to your needs. You might say: I wouldn't cover your company nor its products outright, but I might cover one of their customers if they can demonstrate (XYZ characteristics/trends)

PR and journalism will always have an antagonistic relationship-- and that's good. But managing expectations on both sides of the fence can help us all be more productive.

I'm Still Here

I know I haven't blogged for a while, but I will, soon. #holidays, #sick, #overworked.

P.S. Did you know that Moms DO get sick sometimes? But unlike when our precious children blow their nose for the first time, we ignore it for two weeks before dragging our tail to the family doc at which point a simple virus has progressed into a full-blown bacterial infection requiring two expensive pharmaceuticals and ample rest time. As if.