…Successful entrepreneurs decide to start a company and then think about it. They play with it in their mind. Maybe they talk about it, just a little. And then they make a commitment to the company, and you know what? Nothing changes. It still looks like a lot of nothing, because it’s mostly just thinking.

Penelope Trunk is a Boston Globe career columnist, and author of Brazen Careerist: The New Rules for Success. With help from Ryan Paugh and Ryan Healy of Employee Evolution, she has just launched the brand-spanking-new Brazen Careerist blog network, and I am lucky enough to be one of the first handful of Gen-Y bloggers chosen to be a part of the community!

As she describes it, BrazenCareerist.com is “a network of fifty bloggers who have agreed to participate in a community of people helping each other with careers.” This is an exciting new thing I’ve never seen before–a huge group of Gen-Y professionals all working together to talk about career and personal development, so I am proud to be a hand-picked member of the first fifty writers. You can read more about the launch and about Penelope’s interesting entrepreneurial experience starting up the network in her recent announcement.

Here’s just a few of the awesome Gen-Y blogs I’m proud to be listed alongside as part of the new Brazen Careerist network (click the image above for the full directory):

• Ben Casnocha
• Newly Corporate
• Personal Branding Blog
  
• Devin Reams
• Young Go Getter
• The Big Transition
• My Gen Y Life
• Twenty Set
• Modite
• Employee Evolution
• Personal PR

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Also, some of you may have noticed a recent overhaul of ThrillingHeroics.com. I’ve completely redesigned and optimized TH, so let me know what you think and what else you might like to see, design- and usability-wise. For those of you who miss the old look, don’t worry. I plan on making the old template, optimized for SEO and reader retention, available soon.

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: I’m Part of the Brand New Brazen Careerist Network!

Well, Tom is getting to be quite the old-timer. (Sorry, Tom.)

Penelope Trunk is his engaging, competent, young replacement. ‘Nuff said there. The Work Revolution Peters talks about is already transforming the office…and Penelope Trunk walks the walk. Penelope’s new book Brazen Careerist: The New Rules for Success picks up where Tom left off. The name not only describes Trunk’s bold approach to work, but it delivers on its promise to key readers in to the important ingredients in a recipe for delicious career success!

Big corporations hardly employ people long enough to stick around and climb the corporate ladder anymore. Instead, they hire strong individuals who lend their values and skills to the completion of the specific short-term goals at hand, and then move on to the next gig. Even when they’re called employees, these workers are really “consultants,” and Trunk says you better catch up because consulting will be the new norm. Businesses like and encourage consulting because it cuts salary costs; workers like it because it means more flexibility.

The fact is, job security is an artifact of another generation long past. In the workplace, generations X and Y must have a project focus rather than a job focus. There is no longer such thing as long-term loyalty to company brands–employees must have their own, personal brands (!) which they bring to the table for each project they work on.

This means you get to have more say in what you do. Younger people in the workforce are looking for work that they’re truly passionate about–not just a nine to five that will pay the bills. We want meaning, we want to learn marketable skills we can take with us to the next project, we want work-life balance, and we’re willing to trade a little purchasing power to have time at home to raise a family when the time comes! (Yes, even us guys want this!)

What does all of this mean? Penelope Trunk says it means the end of the stay-at-home parent, the end of the glass ceiling, the end of gender-based pay disparity. It makes office hierarchy irrelevant. Promotions are irrelevant. For young professionals wrestling with a boomer-dominated work world, Brazen Careerist is Trunk’s comprehensive manual for career success!

I recommend you read this primer early on, and keep it with you at ALL TIMES throughout your career as a quick-reference guide! Whatever you’re facing–resumes, interviews, the grad school question, starting your own business, your first management position–consult the index (Thank you, Penelope! That’s one thing too many biz books are missing!) and take her advice. Some of her most notable peices of wisdom:

• Relish the Path from Starter Job to Dream Job. Starting out, most of us have no idea what we really want in life! Trunk says that young professionals’ primary task is to figure out who they are and what they want. As she describes, the trick is to spend equal parts time discovering your goals as attaining them, and it’s alright to explore. “The good news is that this is what most people are doing in their twenties: wandering. Taking trips to Thailand, changing jobs every year, volunteering for unpaid work while living at their parents’ house, and starting businesses that fail. All these options are, surprisingly, right on track for making a good decision about what to do with yourself in adult life,” she says.
• Hunting for a Job Is Not a Task, It’s a Lifestyle. So get used to it. Research shows that Gen-X-ers and Y-ers will typically hold eight jobs before age 32! Career instability and holes in your work history are the new norm. And besides, you should always be on the lookout for what will make you happy–don’t settle if you’re in a job that’s a poor fit. “Concentrate your energy on finding the right manager as opposed to the right position. There is no reason to be limited by the job description–you can always pick up extra work that increases your experience and exposure. But a checked-out manager can limit you. So seek managers who will look out for you in the company and make sure you get on good projects … and develop new skills.”
• First-Time Managers Do Not Need to Suck. When you find yourself in a position to lead, don’t make the mistake of focusing on tasks. Your job is to work with people–to coach them. They’ll make sure the tasks get taken care of, as long as you coach them right. “…Show the people you manage how to see themselves differently so that they are able to produce at a higher level than they ever imagined. For one person, this will mean you need to teach organization skills. For another person, you will help her discover what she loves to do and then set her up doing it for you. Each person wants something, and you need to find out what that is. Then help them get it.”
• Authenticity Is the Buzzword of the New Millennium. Don’t be ashamed of your mistakes–be yourself. Many of the world’s most successful individuals have innumerable failures on their record, and like they say, if you wanna make a tasty office omelet you gotta break some eggs. The Harvard Business Review says that authenticity is what defines great leaders–so be real, be vulnerable, be sincerely passionate about your cause if you want others to give a damn. Trunk says to practice telling stories–”…If we get practice being our true self while telling a story, authenticity will come more naturally when talking about something more difficult.”
• You Only Need $40,000 a Year to Be Happy. Research is showing more and more that there is a limit to how much happiness money can buy (gasp!). That means many of us are chasing the wrong incentives! “The first $40,000 makes a big difference in a person’s level of happiness. Happiness is dependent on being able to meet basic needs for food, shelter, and clothing. After meeting those needs you have to turn to something other than consumerism, because additional money has negligible impact on how happy you are. Your level of happiness is instead largely dependent on your outlook.”

Penelope offers direction on dealing with office politics and improving your likability (pages 88 & 90), some controversial (but excellent!) thoughts on how to use an incident of sexual harassment to boost your career (121 & 125), and advice on some alternate incentives to seek instead of a promotion (hint: training and valuable experiences, 166).

Trunk gives her readers insightful, unconventional tips on how to build great, fulfilling careers for themselves. She’s got plenty of attention-grabbing ideas, and she relates interesting stories about her diverse career experience (among other things, she’s worked in technology AND journalism, started three of her own companies AND taken international corporations public, gone through bankruptcy, and played professional volleyball!).

Bravo, Penelope! If you’re a young professional in your 20s or 30s, you NEED this first book from up-and-coming career rockstar Penelope Trunk! Brazen Careerist: The New Rules for Success comes out May 25, and you can pre-order it on Amazon. Penelope is also a columnist for Yahoo! Finance and the Boston Globe, and I’d highly recommend you become a regular reader of her Brazen Careerist blog.

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: Book Review: Brazen Careerist by Penelope Trunk

1. They don’t honor contracts from the companies they’ve acquired. They have forced thousands of customers to purchase new equipment and pay new fees to join their network.

2. Their call center CSRs are very well-trained—at screwing you out of your money! No matter what problem I call with, they never fail to suggest I buy some new hardware or add-on service. And research shows that 2 out of 3 people have a difficult time saying no. Lord knows I hate having to say it, but I DO! ‘Cuz you ain’t getting another penny out of me!

3. Their customer service line is absolutely horrible, with one of those voice-recognition systems that doesn’t recognize voices very well. And you inevitably end up at the wrong office—the person on the other end of the line asks you for your damned account information all over again, and then wonders why the hell you ended up at their extension. And you are inevitably forwarded to another department. Can anyone say waste of your time and mine?

4. Anytime anything goes wrong with a piece of their hardware, they will NOT fix parts or offer you a replacement, they will try to make you buy brand new equipment. And if you still have a measly 2 months until your contract is up, you ain’t gettin’ a product discount! You’re paying retail. (Reason 4.5: those damned upgrades are just a method of getting you to sign your life over for another 2 years in exchange for a pitiful discount.)

5. They have a system of labeling customers by how profitable or unprofitable they are—and if you’re unprofitable, good luck getting any quality service, upgrades, or discounts. They actually are trying to force these individuals out of their contracts early.

6. When they “upgrade their technology” and their network no longer supports your 2- to 3-year-old phone (something I very firmly believe they do on purpose), they will NOT offer you a new phone that does work, so as to fulfill the remainder of their contract with you by providing satisfactory service. They will ask you to buy one from them.

7. Offices do not share information, thus if you call the emergency helpline on a Sunday, they will not give you a status update of what other offices are doing to fix your problem. Trust me—in essence, they are doing nothing.

8. Case specialists that the CEO’s office “assigns” to your account when you are experiencing difficulties with service may ignore your calls for weeks. (In case you want, here’s his address by the way so you can write and give Stan Sigman a piece of your mind.)

9. If you choose to leave the service because they are no longer providing it to you or any other issue where they have not held up their side of your contract (Cingular believes in one-sided contracts), they WILL try to charge you the $150 early-termination fee. Thanks!

10. They are part of the biggest telecommunications monopoly in the world—the whole AT&T/BellSouth/Cingular/SBC family of companies. Ever since the FCC broke up Bell for aggregating this exact same way, these telecoms have been merging and buying each other up again. You think a company that brings in a thousand new customers a day cares about your problems?

11. Bonus! This one’s a kicker. The ads I see everywhere that say “least dropped calls”? Pure BS marketing. I’ll just let Wikipedia explain:

During the first quarter of 2006, Telephia reported that during an extensive nationwide test of major wireless carriers, Cingular Wireless dropped the fewest number of calls across the country. Cingular in turn began advertising with more aggression the “Allover Network” citing Telephia as “the leading independent research company.” This was in stark contrast to the Consumer Unions published “Consumer Reports” which slammed Cingular for static and dropped calls and J.D. Power and Associates’ findings. (J.D. Power and Associates consistently puts Cingular in the bottom (or near the bottom) of their “overall customer satisfaction” list.)

Telephia initially refused to provide details on its study, and a spokesman for the company has said, according to the Boston Globe, that “Cingular shouldn’t have even mentioned the company’s name to a reporter.” The research company later stated that Cingular had a “statistically significant lower dropped-call rate than the competition across some market/time period groupings,” but that Telephia had “no knowledge of the specific methodology… Cingular used to reach the nationwide ‘lowest dropped call’ conclusion.” [Bold emphasis is mine]

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I’ve recently switched from Cingular to T-Mobile, back to Cingular, then to Verizon. I am paying more now for Verizon than I did for Cingular (I believe I was one of those unprofitable customers, because I still got a great plan at the same price I started with AT&T Wireless about 3 or 4 years ago on), but Verizon has given me excellent service so far. They have not dropped on me at all, with the exception of one or two calls as I was driving cross-country out in the absolute middle of nowhere (to be expected). And I really like their personal touch; I don’t mind paying for excellent customer service as opposed to horrible customer service.

Here is a little more from the Wireless Consumers Alliance on why wireless providers can (and do) control your phone and limit your choice of phones. This applies to all the wireless providers, but Cingular especially I have found to be unwilling to port over numbers or unlock their phones for customers to use on other networks. You paid for it, you should be able to use it on any network you want:

Even though most wireless phones have the capacity to operate over compatible systems, access is restricted by software in the phone that is programmed, and reprogrammed over the air, by your wireless provider.

This restriction forces your phone to use your home system and the systems of affiliates, without regard to which wireless provider offers the best service in the area where you are making or receiving a call. Furthermore, your phone is “locked” by your wireless provider to prevent any changes and to prevent you from taking your phone with you if you change to a wireless provider with a compatible system. The reason why your wireless provider effectively “own” your phone is early on, the industry obtained a waiver of the anti-trust laws from the FCC and the Department of Justice allowing them to sell phones and service as a package. This practice is known as “bundling” which was the reason why the telephone companies were able to limit consumers’ choice in phone instruments for so long. “Bundling” eventually lead to the break up of the Bell system.

Today, wireless providers use bundling to control the cellular telephone equipment market and the providers select a limited number of models from a limited number of manufacturers for sale/to consumers for use over their systems. An anti-trust complaint is now pending in U.S. Federal court which challenges the right of wireless providers to control the phone market.

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I am hoping that one of these days, the FCC breaks up the whole AT&T family of companies for good. And in the meantime, I’d definitely recommend steering clear of Cingular wireless, AT&T residential services, and any of their internet options through SBC or otherwise. Absolutely ALL of my experiences with these companies have been negative.

What experiences have you had with wireless or internet service providers?

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: 10 Reasons NOT to Do Business With Cingular