A journey through the Odyssey Years

There is an excellent article originally published in last weeks New York Times, titled The Odyssey Years. Five people sent me an email with a link to the article, so I'm sure it will strike a chord with most of you.

The author, David Brooks, claims that the decade from age 20 to 30 is actually a new life stage.

Brooks says The Odyssey years are,

The decade of wandering that frequently occurs between adolescence and adulthood. During this decade, 20-somethings go to school and take breaks from school. They live with friends and they live at home. They fall in and out of love. They try one career and then try another.

Whether you want to call this new life stage Emerging Adulthood, Odyssey Years or any other name that sociologists will inevitably invent, the fact is, they have a point. Your twenties are not the time to start work at a large company, slowly work your way up the ladder, find a spouse and have a kid. That's an old paradigm, and it's one you are more than welcome to embrace if you want to live with boredom and regret for the next 50 years.

Your twenties are a time to explore. It started with baby boomers like my mother who openly rejected mainstream conformities. She bounced from a state school to FIT to a waitress job before taking off to Europe for six months to explore the world. To this day, she speaks about that six month journey as the single biggest life altering event of her youth.

However, this was a fringe movement back then. The quickest way to the top was still to conform and blindly follow the pack up the proverbial ladder to success. Today this is not the case. Twentysomethings now understand that new and interesting life experiences are not only fun, but they are actually a key to becoming a well rounded and successful individual.

If someone asked me who my most successful friends are, I would respond by telling them about my buddies taking the road less traveled. I would tell them about Keith who just returned from teaching English in Japan, Scott who just arrived in Korea to do the same, Matt, Cole and Adam who run a sandwich shop in Oklahoma, and even Dave who just joined the Israeli Army. I would not talk about my friends on Wall Street, or the management consultants making big money.

Success is relative and today's young people leading the way recognize that success in your twenties stems from experiencing life, not just a job. So take advantage of your Odyssey Years. Join the Peace Corps, travel Europe, start a business, work for Teach for America. If not now, then when?

Email Etiquette: "Forward" at your own risk

I once got an email from my boss that seemed no different from any other. She asked me to follow up (push for results) with a team that was working on one of her projects. The email faintly hinted that one of the team's leaders was an absolute idiot.

Apparently, I didn't pick up on this. So I clicked "forward," wrote a quick note to the team to "see below" and played my role as the middle man. The next day there was a note from my boss in my cube. "See me when you get in," it read.

She wasn't thrilled that a high-level team manager might read her email and be offended. After re-reading the email, I wasn't surprised. I just should've read a little closer before I clicked "send."

Think of it this way, the "forward" button is like a chainsaw. It's a damn great tool when you know how to use it. But if you don't, it's dangerous to you and everyone around you.

A lot of companies preach good "email etiquette." Don't write too long, know the difference between "reply" and "reply to all" and of course, spell check! Everyone mentions the responsibility you have to your own writing, but what about the responsibility you have to everyone else's?

Face it, as an entry-level employee it's your job to watch people's asses. "Goes with the territory," a coworker once told me. If you're planning on passing on an email that someone else wrote, do a quick sweep to make sure you're not unknowingly soiling anyone's spotless image.

More than often now, I don't forward anything that's part of a long chain letter. There's too many "what ifs" associated with it.

You're not perfect. Even if you examine that email thoroughly, there's a dicey chance that you'll miss something. Or, you could fail to "read between the lines" like I did.

Start with a clean slate. As long as you're skillful in writing for results you should have no problem restating what the next employee in the chain needs to know. But that's a topic for another post.

Talking business at the bar – We all need a casual pitch

Anyone interested in entrepreneurship has heard of the elevator pitch. It's the infamous 15 to 30 second pitch of a product or service to a potential investor of some sort. The "elevator" part comes from the fact that it should be delivered in the time span of an elevator ride.

Of course, I have practiced and written down many different elevator pitches for Brazen Careerist. Including pitches to potential investors, human resource professionals, recruiters, potential advertisers or sponsors and I'm sure there are others I'm forgetting.

I won't bore you with the details because this post is not about an elevator pitch. This post is about your casual pitch. The one that you tell people at the bar, the one that you tell your parents friends and the one that, in reality, creates "brand you."

When someone asks what you do, do you have the right answer? I suspect you don't.

Most people do not have a decent casual pitch. I know this, because, for one, I don't think I have a decent one. And secondly, when someone tells me what they do, I usually nod and say "that's cool." But in reality, I have no idea what they really do, their casual pitch doesn't stick.

No matter what profession you are in, everyone needs a casual pitch. In fact, everyone needs multiple casual pitches. There will inevitably be times when you need to explain to someone what you do for a living. And even in the most social or "non business" situations, you never know how the person you are speaking with can help in the future.

You're casual pitch must be short and succinct, while still explaining what you do in a way that peeks the interest of the person you are speaking to. Depending on the audience, the pitch should never be exactly the same.

I never gave much thought to my day-to-day pitches until starting a company, moving to a new city and having to explain my job to every person I meet. But now I discuss them with Ryan Paugh all the time. So here is a list of what I typically say to four different types of audiences:

1. My pitch to old friends
I'm taking Employee Evolution full time and offering new features so we can make some money. I definitely miss the East Coast, but nothing beats working in my living room!

2. My pitch to "adults" (anyone not in Gen-Y)
I'm creating a website that is similar to Monster.com for people in their twenties. We recently partnered with an extremely popular career advice blog and we plan to introduce new features and leverage our traffic to generate revenue.

3. My pitch to girls at the bar
I'm creating a website to help people our age figure out what they want to do with their careers, and hopefully I can help you get a good job!

4. My pitch to a young person in a "non social" setting
I'm starting my own business and creating a career website for Gen-Y. The site will consist of a network of bloggers our age and a bunch of other features to help you get control of your career.

Of course, whatever actually spews from my mouth in a given situation is some variation of one of these pitches. And truthfully, I'm not totally impressed with any of them. Luckily, if you're talking to someone worth your while, a casual pitch will turn into a casual conversation and you can then explain everything in detail.

The four pitches described above are for different social situations and different audiences where the only sale I'm really trying to make is the sale of "brand me" (and hopefully spark their interest to go to my website). The point is not to write down and memorize these casual pitches. The point is to recognize the difference between a casual pitch situation and an elevator pitch situation, to know the audience you are speaking with and to adjust your casual pitch accordingly.

If you're serious about your career, you'll always be aware of your surroundings, especially the casual ones, because life's a stage.

So, what do you do?

How important is your career when talking to the opposite sex?

Warning: This is a brief, random rambling that somehow made its way onto the page as I was writing a post about "casual pitches." Stay tuned for that post tomorrow morning.

What do you do? It's the infamous question that is just bound to come out during the first five minutes of meeting someone for the first time. It's funny, because admittedly so or not, people all too often judge others, especially men, based on their profession.

Maybe I'm being naïve by saying this, but I believe that guys really don't care what a woman does for work. I react the same way whether a woman tells me she is a teacher, a yoga instructor, a lawyer or an aspiring house mom. As long as we get along and we can have some type of intellectually stimulating conversation, a woman's choice of career does not effect how I converse with her.

As I have written about before, women really do care what a guy does for a living. When I used to tell girls at the bar that I worked as a consultant for a Fortune 500 company they seemed satisfied. Of course, they weren't blown away, but nobody stopped talking to me because of it. However, when I tell women that I run a website, or that I am starting a company, their eyes often perk up and I can sense a change in tone.

On the other hand, I suspect that women judge other women by their occupations, just like men judge other men. But what do I know? I'm a guy. Ladies, what do you think?

My cami walk of work shame: Tips for wiggling your way out of awkward work situations

I wore an unnecessary camisole/tank to work today. I'd planned on wearing a different shirt – one that required a little extra coverage over my bra – and in finding that it wasn't as clean as I'd thought, I put it aside and threw on another shirt. I kept the cami on and made my way into work.

Around 10 a.m. the cami was riding up and getting caught on the shirt I'd had on top; it was just being overall annoying. So during a trip to the bathroom I took the cami off. And then I tried to figure out how to carry it from the bathroom to my desk without looking like I'd just stepped out for a quickie.

The funny part about this is that I've done this before – the cami take-off, not the quickie. Every time I've done it I've been overcome with awkwardness. How do I get this obviously scant piece of clothing to my desk and into my bag? Should I start carrying my purse with me to the bathroom just in case I need to remove an article of clothing? Should I always wear pants with big pockets?

I don't know. What I do know is that everyone runs into awkward workplace issues and not many people know how to get out of them with style and grace. Therefore, I bring you my top 5 list of workplace mishaps and how I wiggle out of them.

1. Oops, my shoe farted. Come on, we've all had a pair of shoes that didn't fit perfectly against our dainty feet. Inevitably you'll be walking around the cubicle farm and hear a "pfttttt" coming from way below your behind. Assuming it's not a real fart – shame on you if you do that outside of the bathroom – you've just had a shoe fart. I get these from time to time. I like to cover them up by announcing, loudly, "darn shoe!" Sometimes if I'm feeling a little witty I'll say something like "Guess my shoes shouldn't have had the burrito for lunch." I don't know how many people believe me or even hear it, but it makes me laugh.

2. Did I really just pick my drawers in front of someone? Again, we've all encountered this. Your skivvies felt like getting a little closer and you wanted to keep 'em separated. From society's perspective, men can get away with a scratch and no one thinks anything of it; women have had to perfect the panty pick. For most, a simple trip to the bathroom will suffice; however, sometimes you can't find a bathroom when you need it and have to improvise. I personally like the "back in a corner and pretend like you're smoothing out your pants or skirt" approach myself.

3. I was talking, but no one was listening. There are two ways of looking at this – either you've been talking to yourself and didn't know anyone was there or you thought someone was there and started talking. In my office, we talk over the cube walls a lot. Sometimes I'll say something funny and think the folks around me are there to listen; then I turn around and see they're not. I feel like a real ass when I do this. There are other times when I'll be talking to myself, "oh my god you moron," and find the VP of operations standing right beside me. Again, I feel like an ass when I do this. I suppose I can get over this by always checking around me before I talk. That's not as much fun though. Sometimes wit just happens.

4. I can't come in today because I'm hungover or have the runs. I know, I'm being crude. How many people have been too "sick" to go into work but not sure how to leave the message with their boss? I'm comfortable telling my boss I've been really sick and praying to the porcelain gods even when it was Jack and Coke that brought me there. I just don't tell him about Jack or Coke. Same with the other "ailment." The closest I've come is telling my boss I think I had food poisoning. No need to get into details.

5. You're doing or have done something the Conservative Right would deem appalling, but you're excited to share. For me, it's my pole dancing class. At first I was nervous and hesitant to share with all of my coworkers the kind of dance class I was taking. I would say I had a dance class. But then I realized I'm not ashamed that I'm doing it; in fact, taking the class has made me feel more confident so why not share? Go ahead and share. If it puts a smile on your face who cares what people think.

While some might consider this list vile and crude, let's face it — we all have moments of non-brilliance. Does anyone have other awkward moments like these and how do you execute them without drawing too much attention to the problem?