Category: economy

economy, Obama, writer

My Year of Hopefulness – We are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For

Christa Avampato

We have been waiting for someone to save us. We have said,”Once Barack Obama becomes President, he will save us.” “Once the government gets us a stimulus package, we will be saved.” “My company will protect my job.”

Truthfully, no one is coming to save us. Not Barack Obama, not Ben Bernanke and a stimulus package, not corporate America. So stop waiting. We need to stop standing on our doorsteps, timid and scared to take a step outside to see how the world has changed. We need to stop waiting for our neighbors, our friends, our family members, our companies, our government to make a move only so we can follow suit.

We are the ones who must move. We must take action and change and grow and learn and be brave. Our world has changed. This is not a cycle. There is a fundamental shift, a step-change, that has occurred in our markets and it is not reversible.

We can only look forward. Don’t look back over your shoulder; there is nothing left to see. We have spent our time mourning, and now we must begin living again. As the author Alice Walker so beautifully, simply, and powerfully put it, “We are the ones we have been waiting for.”

In case you didn’t hear and see Ms. Walker deliver her beautiful letter to President Obama (just before his inauguration), and to the nation as a whole, click here.

The image above can be found here.

economy, entrepreneurship, New York Times, Oxo

My Year of Hopefulness – Tired of looking for work? Use your superpowers.

Christa Avampato

Yesterday the New York Times ran an article about how the frustrations of job searching have caused some unemployed Americans to stop looking altogether and start their own businesses. This news made me so happy that I literally jumped up and down in my apartment while reading the article. I know that entrepreneurship is the way forward in this country and I am so glad to hear reports that it is taking root.

So what if you are someone like my friend, Kelly, who has a corporate job that she’s not all that thrilled with though she isn’t quite sure what kind of business she’d like to start? You could follow Alex Lee’s example as the CEO of OXO. He has an entrepreneurial spirit, though didn’t want to start from scratch with his own idea. He wanted to find a small company that made good products, and use his skills, talents, and interests to grow the company. He found that at OXO.

You could also start by focusing on your superpowers rather than on an idea for a business. Seth Godin wrote a terrific blog post this morning about harnessing our superpowers – not anything a la X-Men but a superpower being something that we do very, very well. Maybe you are a great story teller. Perhaps you have a knack for translating numbers on a spreadsheet into a narrative that gets people excited about a business. You might be a whiz on Facebook and Twitter. Do you draw well? Do you have an eye for color or design? Perhaps you make the best melt-in-your mouth sugar cookies. You might be the best listener on the planet.

The point of Seth’s post is that we all do something exceptionally well. The key to success as an entrepreneur is to start with your strengths. Build a business or join a small business where the majority of your time is spent doing the things you do best. It sounds so simple and yet think about how often we beat ourselves up every day for things we don’t do well. Our so-called “areas of development” take over our entire career. Think about how destructive and devastating that is to our self-esteem, self-image, and confidence.

There is a young man featured in the New York Times article who got so frustrated and depressed looking for work that he just stopped doing it. Out of his house, he builds jellyfish tanks that allow the jellyfish to live longer, healthier lives in captivity than they do in traditional fish tanks. Huh? How successful could that venture possibly be? He recently sold a tank to a restaurant for $25,000. The time he spent building that tank for that restaurant was far more lucrative than the same amount of time he had spent looking for a job in a down economy.

We aren’t in just another economic cycle. What we are experiencing is a step-change in the way our global economy grows and operates. Stop thinking about when your 401K and your company’s stock price are going to bounce back up to their 2007 levels. Focus on the opportunity that’s in front of each of us to contribute to the economy on our own terms with our own strengths as the very basis of our work. This is the way of the future.

The photo above was taken by Jim Wilson for the The New York Times and depicts Alex Andon with one of the jellyfish tanks he builds. He started his business after he was laid off.

economy, friendship, neighbors, New York City

My Year of Hopefulness – Look Up

Christa Avampato

I was walking along Amsterdam Avenue recently, taking notice of all of the store fronts now covered with brown paper and masking tape. A large “retail space for rent” sign hangs prominently on too many doors these days. I kept wondering how we slipped so far so fast, how in a matter of days and weeks businesses are opening and then shuttering their days. Less than two years ago I moved to the Upper West Side, grateful for an apartment under $2000, no store front left unoccupied. On what used to be one of the busiest blocks, 5 spaces are now available.

Equal parts nervous and confused, I was preoccupied with the state of our economy. And then a man and a woman whom I had passed in a rush had a 10 second conversation that made me almost stop in my tracks. The man said, “Oh look at that! The stone work on that building is beautiful. Have you ever seen that before?” “No,” she replied. “In all the time I’ve lived here I’ve never noticed it.” I looked up. I’d never noticed it either. And it is beautiful – cerulean blue, grass green, sunny yellow, and bright orange. How could I have been missing that magnificent splash of color all this time? I guess I’ve been looking down too often.

Sometimes it takes people new to a situation to help us see clearly. We are in such a rush, so used to our surroundings, that we often don’t see the beauty right in front of us, or above us as the case may be. We become so lost in our thoughts and concerns, that we miss out on what’s happening all around us.

We’re exposed to so many signals and messages and images with every step, that our mind has to filter just to stay somewhat organized. This filtering sometimes causes us to miss out on things that could and should bring us some amount of joy and happiness. I am a firm believer that eventually we will always find what we’re looking for. The flip side of that is that if we aren’t looking for something, we may not find it on our own. It often takes someone else’s perspective and experience to wake us up to the life we’re walking through.

business, economy, Ethics, legal

My Year of Hopefulness – New Directions Caused by Unfortunate Circumstances

Christa Avampato

A friend of mine called me this evening to tell me about an extremely unfortunate incident at his place of work. It’s something that I imagine a lot of people are facing these days: bad behavior. We read stories in the newspaper about the desperation of people in this economy – violent crime is up, bank robberies are rising, and bad practices of good businesses are being uncovered every day. My friend uncovered today that his company has been inflating top line sales by purchasing their own goods and writing off the expense. And now he is faced with a very serious ethical and legal dilemma. Say something or move on? For him, sticking around while this is happening is not something that he can do.

His situation is complicated by the fact that he works for a public company (and a troubled one at that) and he has no solid proof of the transactions in writing. This piece of information was conveyed on a conference call that he had the misfortune to be on – everyone on the call was aware that this had been happening except for him. He had wondered how his company sales could be going along okay, far better than the competition, at a time like this. Curiosity can sometimes uncover truths we never dreamed of and never wanted.

A friend of his said that clearly the Universe is sending him this information for a reason. Bombshells like this don’t fall from the sky without a purpose. It is a moment of teaching. For some time, my friend has been considering whether or not the big corporate life is really for him. Originally he went into it for a lot of the same reasons many people went into it – to make a good living, good benefits, the chance to be promoted, the opportunity to work for a company with great influence on our society. Now with the fundamental shift in the marketplace that we are experiencing, the futures of those in corporate America may have shifted as well. Perhaps the days of easy living that so many experienced have passed us by. We have lived through and beyond the “good old days”. Bob Dylan’s most famous words never rang truer.

My friend is experiencing the hard, sad truth about some companies that we have admired for so long, held up as the gold standard in business: winning shows part of a company’s character and losing (or at least not winning as easily or as big as it used to) shows all of it. My friend has considered striking out on his own and I think this most recent incident at work may push him to finally take the plunge.

He’s been betting on his company for a long time – he’s invested many years of his life with them and has been moving through the system as a good clip. Today he realized that the system he thought he was a part of is really smoke and mirrors. After the hurt and disbelief subsides, there is a huge lesson in all of this for him, and for all of us. Tomorrow he’s cashing in his chips, walking away from the table, and making a new bet on himself and his own ideas. In a very serious tone he summed up the trade-off to me: “I may not get to win as big or as often as I imagined doing with this company, but at least I get to make the rules I live by and keep my integrity.”

career, economy, job

My Year of Hopefulness – My Best Investment

Christa Avampato

A lot of my friends and colleagues are talking about getting into the world of trading stocks for the first time in their lives. While they’ve invested in mutual funds, 401Ks, and IRAs, most of them have never actively traded stocks through a broker or services like e-trade or Sharebuilder. With the bargain basement prices on Wall Street, some of them are considering taking the plunge, at least in a small way. Heck, as of Friday, you could buy a share of GE for $7. That’s less than the cost of a pizza! Why not give it a shot and see how it goes?

I completely understand where they’re coming from. And their enthusiasm for this idea has had me thinking about doing the same thing over the last few days. I am in an extremely fortunate position during this recession, and I am grateful for it every day. So why not dip one toe in the turbulent waters of the stock market?

As I was cleaning my apartment this afternoon, I was having a monetary conversation with myself – this is what happens when you are the only source of both the income and expense in a household of 1. Should I pay off my student loans? (Much to my dismay I could not deduct a single penny of the interest I paid on them in 2008 from my taxes.) Should I save for a down payment on an apartment? (NYC real estate is going for historically low prices at the moment and unlikely to recover any time in the near-future thanks to the exodus of bankers and their salaries.) Should I just sock it away in cash for a to-be-determined investment? Should I consider the stock market? Should I continue to invest in my 401k since I no longer have a match by my employer? After a while I talk myself in circles during these conversations and I end up right back where I started, which is usually without an answer. And then, one bright, shining thought surfaced to the top so clearly that I surprised myself.

Yes, GE and other large blue chips are down to a point where I could actually afford to buy a block of shares. Real estate has always been at least a decent investment. However, the paradigm is shifting. While yes, we used to investment in big companies because of their stalwart nature, we are seeing them whither like never before. We are beginning to see the waste and excess that so many have taken as a given for decades. It is possible that there is a small business out there, a start-up, that would be a much better long-term bet in the new economy, and maybe that start-up is me. Let’s face it – that age-old assumption of compounding interest rates at 8% to 10% may no longer be valid and these stocks that are so far down may actually be not only down, but out.

What is critical is my freedom, and my freedom will always be my greatest asset. This means that my best investment is me, and that means reducing anything that reduces my ability to be flexible at every turn. End of monetary discussion with myself, once and for all.

The image above can be found at: http://farm1.static.flickr.com/101/314770566_1b1cb0f796_o.png

apple, business, economy, education, evolution, Google, history

My Year of Hopefulness – Measure what’s relevant

Christa Avampato

There is all kinds of advice out there in the media ether on how to survive this latest economic downturn. What to do with your retirement investments, how to manage stress, even how to talk to your kids about what’s happening. And it’s great advice on surviving, though very few people are talking about how to thrive in this current state of affairs. And why should they? I mean who thrives in a desert, right? 


Actually, a lot of life survives in a desert climate, and in this economic desert we would do well to think about how geographic deserts burgeon with life, mostly below ground and on a small scale. It involves taking a lesson from Darwin and adapting to change. And I don’t mean adapting for right now and then looking forward to going back to the way we were before. Survival of the fittest doesn’t mean changing for the short-term and going back to our same old ways somewhere down the line. The dinosaurs are not coming back. Ever. And neither are Lehman Brothers or Bear Stearns to name just a few. Investment banking has all but vanished from Lower Manhattan and if you don’t believe it go see for yourself – take the subway down to Wall Street and have a look around. It’s eerily quiet and desolate. There are a lot of cavernous, columned buildings standing empty. These are the modern day dinosaurs. The meteor has struck, and it changed everything. 

With the economy top of mind for nearly everyone, I hear a lot of people throwing around phrases like “the market is way down” or “the Dow is plunging”. I some times wonder if most people actually know what that means. The Dow is a set of 30 companies that are considered fairly stable, prosperous, large companies. Or at least they used to be stable and prosperous. Take a look at the list. It’s not a pretty picture of America: Caterpillar, General Motors, Citigroup. (Notice the absence of companies like Google and Apple.) Should we judge our economic future on these kinds of companies? Doesn’t sound like a wise idea to me.

I’m not an economist. I do have an MBA and I was an economics major in college. I was also a history major in college, and the one thing history shows consistently over time, as does biology, is that things change and in order to survive and thrive we need to adjust. Permanently. None of this “we just need to ride out this latest cycle until things get back to normal.” This is the new normal – change. Radical and rapid. And I think it may be time to dump the Dow as an indicator of our future. To keep it is analogous to judging the future of life on Earth by the fate of the dinosaurs. 

We need a new perspective. Going forward, it will be small businesses and entrepreneurs that drive innovation and prosperity in our country. And this is a reason to rejoice. For the past few years, we have talked about the rise of the individual and personalization. Little did we know at the time that this trend wasn’t just about ipods and Facebook. It will serve to underpin our entire economy in drastic and never-imagined ways. 

Change is never easy. There will be casualties in the process: big companies will go under, there will continue to be layoffs, and individuals will have to re-frame their lives. The longer we resist that re-framing, the worse off we will be. Rip off the band-aid and accept that change has arrived and will continue. It’s time to we get to work and figure out how we are going to adapt and learn how to survive and thrive in the new economy. Stop lamenting what was and look forward to what we can have a hand in building.       
career, economy, finance, hope, job

My Year of Hopefulness – What to do with that $18 billion bonus

Christa Avampato

There’s a lot of buzz about the $18 billion that financial firms paid out after requesting and receiving TARP funding. Both President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden were outraged and very vocal about their opinions on these bonuses – they don’t like them. My friend, Jon, has a close friend at one of these financial firms. She just received her bonus in her paycheck this week and has been grappling with a lot of guilt for having it. 


After months of watching her friends be escorted out of the building following round after round of layoffs, she’s not sure what to do with this money. She spoke to her boss about the ethical dilemma she’s having with this money and the conversation was met with confusion, anger, and frustration. She tried to ask some co-workers about it, and she found little support for her beliefs. At a recent company meeting, she raised her hand and asked about the justification of the bonuses when the company had asked for and taken so much taxpayer money in the past few months. Again, no fruitful conversation. No one had an answer to her question, and no one had any interest in even listening to her concerns. 

As always, Jon listened patiently to his friend and considered her options of what she might do with this bonus money:
a.) she could give it back, though given the lousy track record of the bank’s management in recent months that doesn’t sound like a good idea
b.) she could donate the money to a nonprofit
c.) she could just keep it and get over her guilt. This is unlikely – not her style
d.) she could invest it in her own future in a way that would help others 

D. – invest it in her own future was the choice that intrigued her the most. For quite some time, she has wanted to start her own company in the social entrepreneurship space. Her bonus check is large enough to be the seed money for this new venture. Of all the ways to use this money, she felt that one would have the greatest return for the largest number of people. 

This story was a great lesson for me. Jon’s friend was beating herself up over this money when a better use of her energy was right in front of her. She just needed Jon, with his outsider perspective, to point her in the right direction. There is always a way to do good.

business, economy

My Year of Hopefulness – Be Helpful and Keep Swimming

Christa Avampato

My former boss, Bob G., sent me a great article that recently appears in Business Week. Marshall Goldsmith writes with some advice on what to do at work to deal with all the bad behavior that is happening at companies all over the country. In a nutshell, he is encouraging us to be helpful. It reminds me of that idea that “whatever you seek for yourself, strive to provide for another.” So if you want to be happy, look to make someone else happy. If you want to be safe, provide safety for someone else. 


Goldsmith’s shortlist:
Help more, judge less
Go out of your way to help others who are down
Encourage people to focus on the future
Be aware of your own emotional reactions

If we thought 2008 was bad, just wait until we get through 2009. As Randy Bachman said, “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.” And I say this not as a threat or to scare anyone. The point is that we WILL get through this. We will be different people, a different nation on the opposite shore of 2010 and beyond. And in between there is this large, vast, and deep ocean, potentially without a bottom. 

My friend, Cindy, swam in the Hudson River as part of the New York Triathalon last fall. At one point in the swim, all of the participants found themselves surrounded by jellyfish. An odd, but very realistic, occurrence. And the fastest, clearest way out was through the mass of tentacles. No lifeline was coming. All they had was the support of the swimmers banning together and pushing ahead one stroke, one kick at a time. They all got stung but they all came out of the river okay. We’re in the economic equivalent of the Hudson on that day. Just keep going, and together we’ll make it.    
economy, finance, money, Oprah, Suze Orman

Suze Orman offers up a free financial guide for 2009

Christa Avampato

You’re panicked about 2009, and rightly so. The predictions for the economy are dire. We can’t hole up in our homes, under the bed, and wait for sunnier skies. We still need to get up and out into the world, no matter how gruesome it may be. So how exactly are we going to find the strength to do that? How are we going to squelch the anxiety all around us and within us?


Information is power. Suze Orman was on the Today Show this morning and has created a free guide for protecting your financial position in 2009. You don’t have to pay a penny for it and can download it in seconds right on to your desktop. But hurry – it’s only available until January 15, 2009. As usual it has a personable voice, straight-forward advice, and is well-organized. We’d expect nothing less from Suze. 

Get your guide, read every word, and follow her advice:  http://www.oprah.com/article/oprahshow/20081119_tows_bookdownload
career, economy, entrepreneurship, hope, Obama, work

Dreamers and Doers

Christa Avampato

Big companies are announcing layoffs right and left, and those who do keep their jobs are being asked to do evermore work without any pay increase, bonus, or title promotion. We have felt very secure at big companies because in large part they have taken good care of their people and rewarded loyalty. With this latest downturn, we are seeing people with 10+ years of service turned out, replaced by younger and less expensive employees. The game has changed.


Here is the reason for hope in all of this economic mess. Maybe, finally, people will begin working very hard for themselves and not for these large companies. Perhaps we will begin to place more trust and faith in ourselves than we do in these behemoth organizations. One observation my former boss, Bob, made about a year ago is that the difference between generations these days is that young people, by and large, will bet on themselves rather than bet on a corporation to make their careers. 

In today’s New York Times there is an article entitled “Dreamers and Doers” that discusses entrepreneurship programs and classes on college campuses. They have experienced double digit growth in the past few years, and some colleges like Babson have become known for their entrepreneurship programs.

It is my greatest wish for the economy of 2009 that all of this corporate downsizing sparks a surge in entrepreneurship and innovation by small companies. Will giant corporations that have long dominated the business landscape go the way of the dinosaurs? Maybe. Think of all the talented, capable, well-educated people that are now being laid off. If they banded together to create something new, leaving behind the saddle of corporate politics and bureaucracy, couldn’t they be more productive? 

Supporting small business may be President Obama’s shortest road to economic recovery, and we would all be better off for it.