Blogging Your Way Into a Business

We all know that online activities can backfire, à la John P. Mackey, the Whole Foods chief executive whose anonymous online postings to financial message boards attacking competitor Wild Oats caused even me, a diehard Whole Foods zealot, to question my thrice-weekly trips to the salad bar. But online activities, especially blogging, can just as easily be a career benefactor as a blemish. Consider these stories:
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Jeremy Blachman arrived at Harvard Law School, but like so many law students, he had little interest in practicing law. As an undergraduate in Princeton, he wrote musical comedy and songs. To keep up with his writing while in law school, he started playing with blogs.
In his second year, Mr. Blachman interviewed for a summer job with the prominent law firms that came to campus to recruit for summer associates. With summer jobs paying $2,400 a week, he was more than happy to earn big bucks while being reminded that big law firm work was not for him. On a lark, he started an anonymous blog inspired by the law firm partners he had met in those on-campus interviews. “I expected the whole thing to last a few weeks,” he said.
Thanks to some artful linking around the Web, Anonymous Lawyer took off. Mr. Blachman’s online persona was an over-the-top caricature — he blogged about a series of housekeepers he fired and mocked a young associate who sent a BlackBerry message about his availability from the hospital room where his wife had just given birth — yet readers believed that the writer was a real lawyer.

At the height of its popularity, Anonymous Lawyer averaged more than 3,500 readers a day. In this post, “Anonymous Lawyer: From Blog to Book,” Mr. Blachman tells the story of how his blog became a book.

He is now talking with NBC about a television version of Anonymous Lawyer and still regularly blogs, now at Jeremy Blachman’s Weblog. Typical posts include comic musings about chair placement, water bottles and parking at television studio meetings. More seriously, he even includes honest talk about his doubts about his writing future.


Bee Kim, 28, was a hobbyist blogger while running a vocational school in south central Los Angeles. Blogging about her personal life and issues relevant to Asian-Americans, Ms. Kim amassed a few hundred loyal readers over several years. When she became engaged and moved to New York, her blog began focusing on the details of her coming wedding. She worried that she was losing the interest of her male readers, so she moved all wedding-related posts to a new blog called Wedding Bee.

As other brides-to-be started hearing about Wedding Bee, Ms. Kim began receiving requests to plan other people’s weddings. That is when she knew she was onto something. Slowly, Wedding Bee evolved.

“I went from being a regular blogger that just loved to share ideas and research to more of a professional blogger, where I watched for tone, libel, and even language,” such as cursing, she said. Previously, “if I didn’t like a vendor, I’d vent away knowing they’d never read my post. Now when I review a vendor, I know the vendor is likely to stumble across my post. So I check the facts, make sure the tone is balanced, and basically pretend to be a real journalist.”
By inviting other women to become contributors, Ms. Kim spawned a group of about 20 other co-bloggers from around the country. Ms. Kim, now married, still blogs under the name Mrs. Bee. Her contributors each use a blogger handle; married bloggers tend to be insects (Mrs. Caterpiller, Mrs. Firefly), while the future brides are heavy on fruits and candies (Miss Butterscotch, Miss Licorice).

With each change to the business, she involved her readers. In this post, Wedding Bee Tweaks, she wrote about the decision to accept advertising, offering the proposed design up to her readers for comments.

After moving to New York to be with her new husband, Ms. Kim dedicated herself fully to the blog. Now with about a million page views a month (and nearly 500,000 unique visitors), according to the tracking service Sitemeter.com, Ms. Kim says, Wedding Bee is earning enough from advertisements to cover a salaried part-time editor and cover rent and living expenses in their West Village one-bedroom apartment.

Carmina Perez, 47, began her blog, Mogulettes-in-the-Making, about six months ago after a long career in finance and media. Over the years, she had taken a few stabs at starting various businesses, but she always returned to the security of a job.
When her last job came to an end in May 2006, she decided to get serious about entrepreneurship. But this time it would be different. She now had a considerable financial cushion so she could support herself while building a business.
In the past, Ms. Perez always started businesses on her own, and the isolation was part of the reason she never went far. Blogging seemed like the way to create an instant community of support.

Mogulettes-in-the-Making, the blog, is about helping other women build their businesses, the very business Ms. Perez is in the midst of building. Typical posts document meetings where she brings in an expert to teach her “mogulettes” something, like this post about a session on computer security, a lecture she organized with a guest speaker about public relations or a field trip to the Science, Industry and Business Library in New York City, which offers reference resources and free sessions with business counselors for entrepreneurs.
Though the blog has only about 300 page views a month, Ms. Perez has developed a small following among women who look to her for advice.

When Ellyssa Kroski, who is in her mid-30s, completed her master’s degree in library science in 2004, she could not find a full-time job. She was working part time in the Butler Library at Columbia University and in technology consulting, the work she did before she started her master’s program. She decided that blogging about her expertise might be a way to build connections in the field that could lead to a job.

Befitting a librarian, Ms. Kroski’s posts are well researched and well cited, the old-fashioned way, using properly formatted footnotes rather than hyperlinks.
And the blog did lead to a job, an adjunct faculty position at Long Island University’s Palmer School of Library and Information Science. But in the meantime, her interests have changed: while the job is not full time, because of her blog Ms. Kroski’s horizons have risen even further.
“As a new librarian, no one would publish me,” Ms. Kroski said. Yet, after publishing her first article, “Authority in the Age of the Amateur”, on her blog, Infotangle, and circulating it to bloggers in her field, she discovered that she was cited everywhere.
“It’s been a snowball effect ever since,” she said. “I started making all kinds of connections and getting invitations to speak at national conferences. And within eight months of starting the blog, I was approached by a publisher to write a book about Web 2.0 for librarians.”
A version of this article published earlier referred incorrectly to the anonymous online postings of John P. Mackey, the Whole Foods chief executive. They were on financial message boards, not in a blog.

Marci Alboher, a former lawyer, is a journalist/author/writing coach. She is the author of One Person/Multiple Careers: A New Model for Work/Life Success (Warner Business: 2007).

The 11 Best Foods You Aren’t Eating

The 11 Best Foods You Aren’t Eating

Maybe you should be eating more beets, left, or chopped cabbage. (Credit: Evan Sung for The New York Times, left

Nutritionist and author Jonny Bowden has created several lists of healthful foods people should be eating but aren’t. But some of his favorites, like purslane, guava and goji berries, aren’t always available at regular grocery stores. I asked Dr. Bowden, author of “The 150 Healthiest Foods on Earth,” to update his list with some favorite foods that are easy to find but don’t always find their way into our shopping carts. Here’s his advice.

Beets: Think of beets as red spinach, Dr. Bowden said, because they are a rich source of folate as well as natural red pigments that may be cancer fighters.How to eat: Fresh, raw and grated to make a salad. Heating decreases the antioxidant power.

Cabbage: Loaded with nutrients like sulforaphane, a chemical said to boost cancer-fighting enzymes.How to eat: Asian-style slaw or as a crunchy topping on burgers and sandwiches.

Swiss chard: A leafy green vegetable packed with carotenoids that protect aging eyes.How to eat it: Chop and saute in olive oil.

Cinnamon: May help control blood sugar and cholesterol.How to eat it: Sprinkle on coffee or oatmeal.

Pomegranate juice: Appears to lower blood pressure and loaded with antioxidants.How to eat: Just drink it.

Dried plums: Okay, so they are really prunes, but they are packed with antioxidants.How to eat: Wrapped in prosciutto and baked.

Pumpkin seeds: The most nutritious part of the pumpkin and packed with magnesium; high levels of the mineral are associated with lower risk for early death.How to eat: Roasted as a snack, or sprinkled on salad.

Sardines: Dr. Bowden calls them “health food in a can.'’ They are high in omega-3’s, contain virtually no mercury and are loaded with calcium. They also contain iron, magnesium, phosphorus, potassium, zinc, copper and manganese as well as a full complement of B vitamins.How to eat: Choose sardines packed in olive or sardine oil. Eat plain, mixed with salad, on toast, or mashed with dijon mustard and onions as a spread.

Turmeric: The “superstar of spices,'’ it may have anti-inflammatory and anti-cancer properties.How to eat: Mix with scrambled eggs or in any vegetable dish.

Frozen blueberries: Even though freezing can degrade some of the nutrients in fruits and vegetables, frozen blueberries are available year-round and don’t spoil; associated with better memory in animal studies.How to eat: Blended with yogurt or chocolate soy milk and sprinkled with crushed almonds.

Canned pumpkin: A low-calorie vegetable that is high in fiber and immune-stimulating vitamin A; fills you up on very few calories.How to eat: Mix with a little butter, cinnamon and nutmeg.

You can find more details and recipes on the Men’s Health Web site, which published the original version of the list last year

From NEW YORK TIMES

放缓脚步,你的未来会看得更清晰.

转眼08年已过了一半，您这半年过得还精彩吗？

括别多个月终于回到我的故乡<宜力>小休。早晨在一个被浓雾及环山围绕的露台享用一顿香亨的早餐，心情也很久没有这样的轻松自在及平静。每一次回到这里都能让我的心灵休息及充电。人

每一天都在为生活打拼，心灵是人的灵魂，累了也需适时休息。

忙碌的你们也该放缓脚步，相信我。。你的未来会看得更清晰。

“时间就是金钱”

相信每个人都知道“时间就是金钱”这句话是用来比喻时间的宝贵，以前的人应该很难想像及体会得到时间怎样能与钱扯上关系。

但对于现代都市人来说，每一分每一秒都是钱，由其现今油价高涨、通货膨胀的年代。怎么说呢？就以我做行销为例，我每一天都需要开车到不同的地点拜访客户，一天需行驶几百公里。如果拿油钱、里数和时间挂钩，那么每个小时大约花掉RM10，那么我的时间每小时价值RM10。每到一个地点都需交泊车费，如果泊车费每小时RM3，那么那个时段我的每一个小时价值RM3。那你说时间是不是金钱？

所以我们应该和时间赛跑，把每一个时段都运用到最好；珍惜当下，因为“时间真的就是金钱” 。

如果你可以把时间管理得当，你的时间还可以换成金钱。怎么换呢？那你要动动脑筋了，天下没有白吃的午餐。