It's often said that most people would rather talk about their sex lives than their bank accounts. Not so for Chatelaine's senior editor and money section planner Rebecca Caldwell! From managing a budget to savvy shopping to making sense of a daunting economic climate, Rebecca gets personal about her finances -- and yours!
Did you know that companies actually perform better when there are more women employed at senior levels? It’s true, and journalists Claire Shipman and Katty Kay invented the phrase “asset-to-estrogen ratio” to help describe the how the proportion of a company’s profits relates to the number of women it employs.
Shipman and Kay also wrote the book Womenomics: Write Your Own Rules for Success, a feminist workplace manual which encourages women to be aware of their innate bargaining power and negotiate for the best deal possible – be it more money or flex time.
Kay has been talking the book up a storm, with serious interviews (such as this one at Salon) and more tongue-in-cheek appearances (such as her segment on The Colbert Report, where host Stephen Colbert initially confuses women’s empowerment in the workplace with “women showering in the workplace.”)
Many thanks to my pal Guy Spurrier for sending me the Colbert link.
I have a confession to make: I’ve only ever purchased one item on eBay (hey, I didn’t say it was an earth-shattering confession). It was a retro tin toy of a man on a motorbike and it was meant to be a gift for a guy I was dating at the time; by the time it arrived in the mail, the relationship was over. Toy motorbike dude? Just as disappointing: cheap joints, disintegrating cardboard box, “made in India” sticker.
And so went my relationship with eBay.
Oh sure, I’ve flirted with the online auction site every now and then, but never worked up the nerve to put in a bid. Sure, that Danish modern credenza looks pretty and is a steal t twice the price, but how do I know what’s going to arrive in the mail? Besides, isn’t eBay old news? Aren’t we all shopping on craigslist nowadays?
Thankfully, tech genius and Slate blogger Farhad Manjoo provides a succinct lowdown on what’s still worth buying on eBay: mostly computers and electronics, but also, surprise, clothing.
I think I may finally be over my online shopping heartache.
Arlene Dickinson
A recent article in the Toronto Star noted that “The economy created 36,000 net positions [in April 2009], leaving the unemployment rate unchanged at 8 per cent, a seven-year high. The positive job number shocked economists, who had anticipated, on average, a loss of about 50,000 jobs.”
Keeping up with the times, then, what better expert to speak to than Arlene Dickinson? The renowned head of Venture Communications, one of Canada’s most successful marketing agencies (clients include Unilever, Toyota and Encana), Dickinson is also the sole female adviser, or “Dragon”, on CBC’s Dragons’ Den, the reality-TV show pitting budding entrepreneurs against each other giving budding Canadian entrepreneurs some much-needed advice from veteran business-types.
Q: Can you tell me and our readers a bit about your career trajectory? How did you make it to the top as a self-made woman?
A: Worked my butt off [laughs]. It’s been 20 odd years of working in a variety of different fields. A lot of it has been hard work and effort and perseverance through a variety of different recessions.
I joined Venture 21 years ago this August, and took it over about 9 years ago. We had had partners in the business, and I had been through the pain of trying to get everyone together and working in the same direction, and someone needed to be in charge and the vision that I had was uniquely different than what my partner had at the time — I was more risk-friendly. And I thought that if I wanted to take the risk, I needed to be 100 percent accountable and not risk someone else’s future. We had different paths that we wanted to take; it was the right time, and it was a combination of all those things happening at the same point in time.
Q: What attracted you to marketing?
A: I was one of those junkie people who love to look at marketing and advertising and always feel that I could do better. While I was attracted to the creativity of the industry – I love art – I also had a really practical thought that marketing should be more about how it helps business as opposed to just being highly creative without being accountable to the business.
Q: Right now, you’re right in the middle of taping the fourth season of Dragons’ Den, which starts airing again on September 30. Can you tell me anything about the batch of hopefuls this year?
A: We’ve had a lot of businesses that are much further along in their business life, because capital is so difficult to get this year, so we’re seeing some really advanced ideas in the Den. It’s been fascinating. I’m really excited, actually.
Q: A recent Toronto Star article noted that while many people have been laid off, unemployment rates are not as high as they could be because a lot of people have gone into business for themselves. Is there any basic advice you can give people who are hoping to launch a business right now?
A: Recessions are business cycles where innovation really comes to the forefront, people start to be inventive and think about what they could do differently with their time because they are forced to, so it’s a great time to start a business. But you do have to start with a business model that’s going to make money, and you also have to have a good idea – don’t just become a consultant because you think the world needs more consultants, you have to be able to consult on something that’s unique.
Q: A lot of new businesses tend to fail. What’s your advice to people to keep their spirits up when their businesses are just crawling along?
A: Make sure you are practical and ask someone who’s been in business for a while if your projections are really reasonable. You want to take risks, but you don’t want to take so much risk that you put your family and your livelihood in danger. It’s a very fine line, and most entrepreneurs start businesses under-funded and under-resourced.
The number one thing to remember is that your job as an entrepreneur is not to run out of money. It sounds so simple, but it’s fundamental, and money is a hard commodity to come by right now. If you’re not well-funded, you need to understand the realities of what it’s really going to take to build the business, and make sure you have the financial wherewithal and ability to weather some tough months. Frankly, I worked the first few years taking hardly any money out of the firm. I was able to manage through that, but not everybody can.
Q: Do you have any advice for people who want to set up a home-based office?
A: If you’re creating a home-based business, your affiliations and your associations aside of your home base are going to become even more incredibly important. You need to be in the world as well as be in the office, and they’ll let you get outside the home office so you’re not sitting at home going stir crazy. When you find yourself talking to your cat and your baby, you know it’s time to go out.
Q: Is there a business idea you wished you’d had?
A: Yes, I wish I’d created the BlackBerry! I hate to say that I’m an addict, but because I travel so much, I can’t imagine being able to function the way I do without the access that it gives me. It’s a tool that’s become incredibly important to allow me to be on the road as much as I am and still be accessible to my clients and my team. I wouldn’t ever want to give it up.
If you’re even only slightly interested in personal financial and have been within 50 metres of a television within the past 10 years, you’ve no doubt heard of Suze Orman. The tough but practical, 57-year-old blonde has become the trusted name in financial advising in America (and to a lesser extent, Canada) through dishing out smart, simple advice in seven books (my fave: Women and Money: Owning the Power to Control Your Destiny), two weekly TV shows and a column in Oprah Winfrey’s O magazine. Because of Orman, I know what a FICO score is, and I found the courage to find out what mine is. This weekend’s The New York Times Magazine has a fantastic profile of Orman, full of stunning and inspiring revelations about her personal life, Cartier watches, Taco Bell and father. You can check it out yourself here.
But if you’re looking for a little lighter reading in advance of the long weekend, I’d suggest checking out this short feature about the plight of America’s loan sharks, a truly dying breed.
After graduating from university, I was not the only one of my friends who joked about declaring personal bankruptcy to get out of paying back our student loans. Okay, so maybe it doesn’t sound all that funny, but at the time I was looking at a debtload of more than $23,000 – pretty daunting for some green kid out of school looking for a job.
Today, I’m a mere three grand or so shy of paying that sucker off, although I’ve noted with interest that personal bankruptcies are on the rise. As the Toronto Star notes in a piece from yesterday’s paper:
There were 10,578 personal bankruptcies across the country in March, up 17.3 per cent from the month before, and up a staggering 57 per cent from March 2008.
But what actually happens when you declare bankruptcy? Richard Blackwell at The Globe and Mail has a nice, if brief, explainer on the finer points of bankruptcy – for those of us in dire need, and those of us who are just daydreaming.
