Blog Profile / Brazen Careerist
| URL : | http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/ | |
|---|---|---|
| Filed Under: | Career & Jobs / Career Advice | |
| Posts on Regator: | 542 | |
| Posts / Week: | 2 | |
| Archived Since: | February 12, 2008 | |
Blog Post Archive
How to get the guts to buck a trend
For the last three months I’ve been working in my garden about six hours a day. I dug up an acre of land.
The first thing I did was plant a vegetable garden that is 50 yards long and 10 yards wide. I planted everything I had ever seen people grow in my area. Next I added...
Best advice to twentysomethings: trust yourself
During my twenties I played in beach volleyball tournaments with Olympic contenders all the time. You’d think this would mean that I love watching beach volleyball in the Olympics. But actually, watching makes me sad.
After college, I moved to Los Angeles, determined to play on the professional beach volleyball tour. People thought I had completely...
Marissa Mayer becomes CEO of Yahoo, and proves women cannot have it all
Today’s news: Marissa Mayer was just appointed CEO at Yahoo. She is a very early employee at Google, Silicon Valley icon, and she’s six months pregnant. She has announced she’ll take only two weeks maternity leave.
My reaction: I’m so sick of people saying that women like Marissa Mayer are trailblazers when they take on huge corporate responsibility...
How I got a big advance from a big publisher and self-published anyway
I have a new book out today. It’s called The New American Dream: A Blueprint for a New Path to Success. You will notice that the link goes to Hyperink. They are an independent publisher.
I sold this same book, two years ago, to a mainstream publisher.
I have been reporting on research about on how to...
How to choose a new career
It was a big decision whether we should do reality TV. Since mostly only people with crazy, falling-apart lives do reality TV, I realized that to feel good about doing the show, I’d have to think about it as a job. Otherwise I couldn’t justify spending so much time on it. So I evaluated the...
Get pregnant at 25 if you want a high-powered career
Every once in a while a high-profile woman will divulge the dirty underbelly of trying to be a woman in the work world. I remember the first time I saw it. It was when Brenda Barnes stepped down from a huge career at Pepsi to be with her kids. And she announced that she felt...
Time management tips that’ll work for your life
Most of the time management advice that’s out there sucks. It’s all written by men who write about time management while their wives are at home taking care of their kids, or by men who don’t have kids. We need time management advice for people who have a real life.
See that photo? It’s me, in...
5 Tips for gaining self-confidence
I think I am finally going to have a reality TV show. I have had maybe ten production companies tell me they want to do some kind of TV show with me. And all ten have backed out at various stages of making the show. So I have learned that dealing with TV people is like dealing with...
Essential advice for new college grads
One of the things I love most about the advice-to-grads motif is that you learn a lot about the advice giver from the advice. When you force yourself to give short, smart advice, you end up focusing on the stuff that matters most to you. Sheryl Sandberg, for example, gives amazing graduation speeches, but she...
How to decide when to work for free
High performers work for free. The difference between working for free because you’re a loser and working for free because you’re a high performer is what you get from the deal.
People often ask me how to become a writer. The answer is to write for free. You won’t get paid for years. I wrote for...
5 Reasons you should specialize right now
We are in a drought. Not a metaphorical drought. That’s for city people. We are in a drought that is crop failure.
I have read a lot about the dust bowl during the depression. My favorite book is a children’s book. And, let me just say that I mostly read children’s books. It makes sense, because...
We are in the age of personal responsibility
When I moved to the farmhouse, I first replaced myself with a new CEO for my company, and then started reading enough about interior design to get a degree in the subject, if I believed in graduate degrees. I became enthralled with Steampunk as a way to blend the rustic nature of my surroundings with my...
Attention to problems matters more than solutions to problems
Fortune magazine has started reporting about family in corporate life.
We all know corporate jobs are messed up. Fortune magazine is a monument to how messed up corporate life really is. In November, Fortune wrote that the company that Sheryl Sandberg, a working mom, runs, has employees “on lockdown” and their kids come to the office...
How to choose a career if your interests are wide
I’ve spent the last five years learning about farming. At first I couldn’t even tell the difference between a hay field and an oat field. Now I can tell when a planting is late. I have learned enough about cattle to sort them for breeding. I don’t do as good a job as the Farmer of...
What we can learn from the lies people tell
I love watching people lie. I know that I probably have the same feelings the liars do, the feeling of being stuck. I like to think about what I do when I have that feelings, how people cope with it, and how much pain we can handle before we become our worst selves.
Lately, I’ve been...
How to make amends for bad behavior
Photo by Roz Joseph c. 1970
It used to be that the reason people hated me was because I offended them. Poor social skills. I’m sure you can imagine, but if you can’t, here’s the post about how I spoke at a women in business blogging event and I offended everyone by telling them that their...
How to travel for business if you travel a lot
In the airport a fight attendant said to my six-year-old son, “Where are you going today?”
He said, “California.”
She said, “You’re a lucky boy!”
He said, “Actually, I’m really tired of going to airports with my mom.”
This is because I’ve been taking him on all my business trips. And he is learning something important about business travel: [...]
How to take ownership of what you really want
The novel Fifty Shades of Grey is selling faster than a Harry Potter book right now. The book is about sexual domination in a contemporary setting, including the career woman who has everything, including a hot, successful boyfriend.
The big news is that we have enough data to show that the majority of women buying Fifty [...]
Your biggest barrier to starting your own business
Last month I gave a speech at the Natural Products Expo in California, and I took my son with me. Everyone’s an entrepreneur in my family, and my son’s first thought was that this would be a good way to expand his egg business. He knows the eggs he gets from our chicken coop garner [...]
Five tactics for finding a spouse
Sheryl Sandberg has said that the most important career choice you’ll make is who you marry.
I have to agree with this statement. Here’s why:
If you marry someone with a big career and you want to have a big career you have to find that rare mate who can treat you as an equal, even when [...]