Personal Brands

Marketing Savvy Vital For Real Estate Agents Today

John Benson — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 16:20:56 -0400

Real estate agents constantly need to adjust to the changes in the real estate industry. With 83% of consumers with real estate needs starting their research online and an equal 80% or more of consumers working with the first agent that establishes contact, the competition to occupy online "real estate" for real estate agents has never been more important.

Timberland's Jeff Swartz on Corporate Responsibility

Mark Borden and Anya Kamenetz — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 19:30:45 -0400

Jeff Swartz likes to tell this story. It is a somewhat strange anecdote, with an unexpected moral -- but Swartz is nothing if not unexpected. He is sitting in his New Hampshire office, wearing jeans and a baseball cap, and talking about the summer he spent as an 11-year-old sweeping floors in his father's factory. "My dad said he'd forgotten something in the shipping room, so I took off at a run," recalls Swartz, who today heads the company, shoemaker Timberland.

Creativity is in the Detail, and Everywhere…

Margaret Heffernan — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 17:49:58 -0400

Creativity. Innovation. Originality. These are today’s buzzwords. Every few years, we get a few. It seems like only yesterday that globalization was top of everyone’s worry list. Before that of course it was all about networks and networking. But today every company with its eye on the ball is concerned about how to be -- or how to become -- an innovator. And so these companies start to look around for the imaginative people in their midst and to ask some serious questions about how to make everyone else creative.

Second Life

Anya Kamenetz — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 14:35:15 -0400

Five years ago this month, the SEC banned Internet-bubble-blower Henry Blodget from the securities industry for life. Today, he's back in the investing game as a writer. His work has run in Slate, The Atlantic, and The New York Times, and he's editor-in-chief of the multiauthor blog Silicon Alley Insider, which launched last year.

Why are you still covering investing?

Designs on Success

Tim McKeough — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 15:25:06 -0500

Patrick Robinson

Executive Vice President of Design
Gap Adult and Gap Body

After stints at Armani, Perry Ellis, and Paco Rabanne, Patrick Robinson is leading Gap's design team.

Straight to Video

Robert Scoble — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 18:35:14 -0500

When CEO Tom Dickson first fired up his low-cost camera to record what happens when you throw a wooden rake handle, among other things, into one of his Blendtec blenders, he had no idea that within days he'd be an Internet superstar. Between YouTube and the company's willitblend.com, viewers have watched these extreme experiments more than 75 million times. His blenders are the ones whirring at Starbucks, but Will It Blend? is what juiced online retail sales more than 500% in the last year.

Free Your Job and Your Mind Will Follow

John Hoult — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 08:43:46 -0500

Steve Mariotti knows a lot about the art of reinvention. He worked for Ford, a big-industry, old-economy giant, and left to build a one-man import-export business. He found meaning teaching business skills in some of New York City's roughest public schools, and took his curriculum national with a book and a foundation.

Diaries of a Downturn

Fast Company — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 08:39:32 -0500

Read the main story: 20 (More) Ways to Slow Down Smart

The degrees of separation between you and a pink-slip victim decrease every day the NASDAQ dips below 2000. So chances are you will have a story to share -- a tale of free lunches canceled, expense accounts squashed, or coworkers downsized -- before the summer ends. Like it or not.

What Counts in a Job Now

Jennifer Reingold — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 08:39:13 -0500

Hard to believe, but it's been only a year since people rejected jobs for reasons like "They won't let me bring my Chihuahua to the office" or "They said my piercings would have to go, so I left." But just because there are a lot fewer jobs around these days, doesn't mean that people are willing to accept any job. Sure, standards have changed, but they haven't gone away. What people want in a real job these days is not about perks. It's all about possibility.

The Reinvention(s) of Sophia Collier

Ron Lieber — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 08:39:12 -0500

Sophia Collier got a fast start in life -- and she's been picking up the pace ever since. By age 21, she had already published her autobiography with a major New York publisher. A few years later, the Rockefeller family gave her money to launch a soda company, which she later sold to Seagram for roughly $15 million. Then, with no place to park the proceeds, she bought a small money-market-fund company and used it as a platform to launch the largest group of socially responsible no-load mutual funds on the planet.

The Reinvention(s) of Sophia Collier, Part 2

Ron Lieber — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 08:39:07 -0500

Sophia Collier is a woman who just won't quit. In the first part of our story, Collier stormed Washington, DC to try and convince the FCC to allow her company, Broadwave, to share the broadcast spectrum -- despite howls from cable-TV and direct-broadcast-satellite industry giants.

That was only the latest wrinkle in a career ranging from a stint at an ashram to the top slot at a mutual-fund company. In the second part of the story, we circle back to trace the earlier triumphs in a remarkable career.

Memo to Self: Take a Hike!

Anni Layne — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 08:39:06 -0500

Perhaps the only thing worse than getting the ax is wielding the ax ... over your own head. Call it professional suicide, career masochism, or a gentleman's code of honor. Seven months ago, Chris Doyle called it a foregone conclusion. So during a make-it-or-break-it era for the company he helped develop, the vice president of public relations signed his own walking papers -- voluntarily and without spite.

Smart Ways to Land Your Next Gig

Jennifer Reingold — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 08:39:04 -0500

It's a Wednesday night late in May at New York hot spot Hush, and the place is jumping. Not because of the uneven "dot-comedy" performances taking place in the back room, or the band playing the top-10 layoff songs (People's Choice Award: "It's the End of the World As We Know It," by R.E.M.), or even the $3 beer specials.

10 Hard Truths About Layoffs

Linda Tischler — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 08:38:59 -0500

Many things about the dotcom boom were, in retrospect, obviously unsustainable: absurd stock-market valuations, 24-year-old CEOs, dogs in the office, investment bankers clad in khakis. But perhaps nothing was quite as surreal as the white-hot condition of the labor market. Talk about bargaining power!

How to Move Forward When You're Between Jobs

Anni Layne — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 08:38:58 -0500

Spin doctors call it a "forced sabbatical." Your ex-boss used the term "development hiatus." And you tell your folks that it's a "severance retreat." Whatever the euphemism, the time between jobs need not become a lost era of SportsCenter, classified ads, and Danielle Steel novels. In fact, an unexpected layoff could be the best thing that ever happened to your career -- if you value a pink slip's hidden opportunities.

Get Lost

Anni Layne and Christine Engelken — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 08:38:51 -0500

Eight years ago, Hope Dlugozima hit a wall. At age 33, the media professional was pinned between a comfortable job and an unrelenting itch for ... well, something more ... more challenging, more adventurous, more fulfilling.

Take-Home Test

Anni Layne — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 08:36:47 -0500

Adrian Savage doesn't deal in ink blots and brainteasers. He doesn't employ a leather couch or harbor an analyst's fixation on childhood memories. But he does know how to peel back psychological layers to reveal the values and habits that dictate our decisions and limit our potential.

(Re) Brand You

Cecilia Rothenberger — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 08:36:03 -0500

Late last year, as the tide of layoffs in the dotcom sector reached a groundswell, a certain bravado still characterized the newly unemployed. Pink-slip parties were all the rage in Manhattan and San Francisco. Internet castoffs were using their severance checks to travel or just to recover from a massive dotcom hangover.

Just Do It

Cecilia Rothenberger — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 08:35:14 -0500

Michael Forrest is a living testimonial to the power of career reinvention. Now president of JobOptions.com, an online recruitment-solutions provider, Forrest spent several years as a marketing director at Deloitte & Touche and eight years as dean of Pepperdine University's School of Business and Management before plunging into the new economy to found CareerPaths, an online recruitment resource.

Don't Hunt for a Job, Farm for It

Cecilia Rothenberger — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 08:34:49 -0500

Eunice Azzani is a "California-improved Texan" who dreams of eradicating résumés and leading the workers of the world to their dream jobs. She is also a self-described "head farmer" who aims to bring feeling and integrity to the realm of recruiting. And she'll stop at nothing short of revolution.

Free Your Job and Your Mind Will Follow

John Hoult — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 08:34:32 -0500

Aerosmith

Jen Grosso — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 08:32:49 -0500

Aerosmith has been around since the dawn of spandex. Or at least since the Seventies. But it hasn't always been a band of treacherous, lecherous rock & roll. Not, at least, when it lost guitarists Joe Perry and Brad Whitford, both of whom temporarily quit the Boston band to pursue other interests. What drove those two key members to leave during Aerosmith's heyday, and what favorable winds rose up to bring them back? Sit tight for rock history 101?

Big Shot Boomerangs

Fast Company — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 08:28:35 -0500

Call them comeback kids, second-wind superstars, born-again big wigs. We prefer billionaire boomerangers. Like so many corporate workers worldwide, these celebrities dissected their careers, found something amiss, and said goodbye. For some, the initial -- and very public -- departure was prompted by physical and mental health concerns. For others it was intense professional frustration or simply a nagging sense of stagnancy.

Al Gore Inc.

Fast Company Staff — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 08:22:29 -0500

Technology

Adviser to Google; on the board at Apple

Media

Chairman and cofounder of cable network Current TV, with 38 million subscribers

Financial Services

Chairman and cofounder of Generation Investment Management

Al Gore's $100 Million Makeover

Ellen McGirt — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 08:22:27 -0500

A l Gore is a funny guy. And, for his $175,000 speaking fee, he tells this story: after leaving the White House and heading back to Tennessee sans motorcade--"in a rented Ford Taurus," he sniffs--he and Tipper stop to get a bite to eat at a Shoney's, "which, as you may know, is a low-cost family restaurant." The people in the restaurant "made a huge fuss...over Tipper." Then, a man spies Gore and stage-whispers, "Didn't he used to be the Vice President? He's fallen so low." Peals of delight from the audience. Gore smiles back. It's a nice moment.

Personal Brands

Marketing Savvy Vital For Real Estate Agents Today

Timberland's Jeff Swartz on Corporate Responsibility

Creativity is in the Detail, and Everywhere…

Second Life

Designs on Success

Patrick Robinson

Executive Vice President of Design Gap Adult and Gap Body

Straight to Video

Free Your Job and Your Mind Will Follow

Diaries of a Downturn

Read the main story: 20 (More) Ways to Slow Down Smart

What Counts in a Job Now

The Reinvention(s) of Sophia Collier

The Reinvention(s) of Sophia Collier, Part 2

Memo to Self: Take a Hike!

Smart Ways to Land Your Next Gig

10 Hard Truths About Layoffs

How to Move Forward When You're Between Jobs

Get Lost

Take-Home Test

(Re) Brand You

Just Do It

Don't Hunt for a Job, Farm for It

Free Your Job and Your Mind Will Follow

Aerosmith

Big Shot Boomerangs

Al Gore Inc.

Al Gore's $100 Million Makeover

Executive Vice President of Design
Gap Adult and Gap Body