Jessica L. Owens

On May 15, 2010, I graduated from Northwood University with my Bachelor degree with a double major in Advertising and Marketing, Management. I successfully completed my degree; something I have been working on for the past three years—or maybe you could argue—my whole life. Yes, I feel accomplished and proud, don’t get me wrong, but I feel far from successful like I thought I might feel at this point.

What is Success?

This led me to wonder what exactly “success” is and at what point have we reached success? As defined by the Webster dictionary, success is a favorable or desired outcome. As defined by humans and fate; we may not ever be successful in our own minds or have reached success in our lives.

Steve Medincea on Success

When I was in London, I visited a company called PRISM, an affiliate of JWT, a global advertising agency, one of the biggest in the world. Steve Medincea is the founder of PRISM and I had the honor of listening to him speak to our class and the ability to pick his brain on advertising, business, and success. Many students implied on the level of his success as they asked questions regarding how he reached this point. He showed gratification and honor that we felt that way about his accomplishments but he made a point to make it clear that he did not feelsuccessful. He had so much more on his “bucket list” that he needed to do before he even came close to consider himself successful.

In our eyes, Steve was at a level of success that we could only dream about. He founded a company in advertising with one of the largest companies in the world. He works and lives in one of the best cities we had ever been to. He had earned awards that we had only read about. He’s worked with companies that we study every day… And yet, he still does not yet consider himself successful.

Will Smith on Success

Will Smith was featured on Oprah shortly after I contemplated the theory and philosophy of success. I was inspired by many of his values and his philosophy on life. He mentioned how he is still stuck in the mindset of a poor man even after 20 years of financial success. Clearly, he does not see wealth as a sign of success. Later he touched on his beliefs of success by saying, “to be successful is to overcome death.” His philosophy of success is a level that many do not consider, including me. I have yet to truly understand this, but I have thought about it every day since, and how it impacts my views on success.

It is hard to say what will make me successful in my eyes throughout my life. Will my job define that? Will my family relationships define that? Will my experiences, knowledge, and network define that?

For me, it is a combination of all and the quality of my relationship with those things that will define success.

In the past century, we’ve seen some great new technology that allows others to maximize their use and efficiency of certain products and services. Consumers love this technology, and it tends to become a great hit. Manufacturers and suppliers of the old processes, products, and services really don’t like this new technology. It’s called the process of destructive technology.

We’ve seen examples of this happening over and over. Many times, the companies of the old products try to persuade government or the new technology owner to limit the use or ability of the new technology just so the old guys can stay in business.

A good leader will learn to respond to this new challenge, they’ll change their business plan, and they’ll come up with something better. Things like destructive technology and competition keep innovation pumping and consumers buying.

In recent years, we’ve seen a couple of great examples of destructive technology: Netflix & the Kindle.

Netflix

Netflix is interesting because they’re just putting a new process on something that was already well established: renting movies. Of course, the movie publishers don’t like Netflix’s new strategy and their ability to stream movies online. Warner Brothers (WB) has taken steps in 2009 to reach an agreement with Netflix so that they can only rent WB movies 28 days after they are available elsewhere on DVD.

Essentially, WB is leveraging their power to potentially damage Netflix market share because Netflix came up with an innovative new way to get people what they want in the most efficient way possible– and people love it. WB should reevaluate their business strategy to shift how money is made if this is damaging their profits instead of forcing other corporations to work in a way that WB feels is acceptable to their profits.

Kindle

You may have seen my recent post or have read in the news about Kindle’s recent fiasco. They were in a “price war” at the end of January and for the beginning portion of February over the price of their e-books. Amazon has built their Kindle brand by keeping bestsellers at $9.99. Beginning with publishing giant, Macmillan, Amazon was forced to raise their prices to up to $14.99 matching the rival iPad’s announcement on average book prices on their e-reader platform.

In economics, the first thing we learned was that price depends on supply and demand. When it comes to electronic products, supply is virtually unlimited! So the price depends on what the demand is… some more basic economics say that when a buyer is shopping for two identical products, they will tend to purchase the cheaper version, leaving competition in the hands of the manufactures in creating a competitive advantage for their product.

How do you get a competitive advantage if the PUBLISHER is influencing it all?! The publishers’ competitive advantage lies in the quality of their books and writers! If they aren’t making the profits, adjust the business plan of the affected company, not the ones who already have a successful one!

I returned from my trip on Sunday a little jet lagged and very renewed. I know, you’re thinking that is impossible, but I must interject my friend, it’s very possible. In London, I sat in a conference room with 30 of my classmates listening to Steve Madincea talk about his experiences, as a fellow Michigander, starting an international business in London.

I was incredibly enlightened and slightly intimidated by his courage to continue to tackle the massive feat of starting a company, literally on his wife’s credit card, in a country foreign to him. On top of that, he can continue to succeed in his industry and refuses to take a step down and coast through life. He constantly pushes against the grain to be the best and keep his team performing at their best.

I learned many valuable lessons in that short hour with Steve. The one lesson that I know I can and will apply in any aspect of my life, personal or professional, is to be open-minded. While we journeyed London, we shouldn’t notice that they drive on the wrong side of the road, we should notice that it is different and then find out why. (Back before there were cars, the folks of the UK would pass someone on the left side of the road or path because most were right-handed and could carry their sword in defense).

This is important internationally when working with many cultures. This is also important as a job-seeker looking to potentially adapt to a different corporate cultures. No matter where this skill is used, it is essential. As I continued on to Paris, I was sure to keep this idea in practice and I have certainly brought it home with me. It is good practice for all business people whether the work is local or international. It keeps our attitudes in check and helps adaptation and keeps good business with all types of people and cultures.

I’ve seriously applied to hundreds of jobs- maybe even pushing a thousand job applications within the past 6 months or so. I’ve uncovered what seems like every single stone I can to find new openings in my area of expertise. When I feel like I’m at a dead-end but need more to find, sometimes I just find myself Goggling “marketing jobs” or something similar. The results are always something like “MAKE MONEY ONLINE TODAY!” Even if I just search Monster.com the results are similar.

It’s a hard spot to be in because there are so many qualified people with experience that are applying for the same job as I am. It’s hard to even find a legit job to apply for let alone get hired by one.

But as I keep searching and applying, I set my standards low just for the chance of getting hired. I still only try to apply for a job at what seems like a legitimate  company, but when it comes down to it, I really only want to work for a “good” company.

I realized recently, that there are legitimate companies that aren’t “good.” Sometimes people create or run companies for their own benefit and don’t realize what the customer wants or needs. Some companies try to find ways to make their customer think that they need their product. Yes, that’s part of marketing, but the other half of running a sustainable business is after you get the consumer to buy the product, they should like it, and they should come back for more, because they know it’s a good product.

The founders of Google based their company on the customer versus the potential of making more revenue. They constantly sacrifice millions of dollars or more by doing things like no ads on the home page, etc. Their motto is “don’t be evil.” What they really mean is don’t fall into the typical business man’s mind by focusing more on how to make the income bigger and bigger. Google wants to be a company that is focused on what the consumer needs.

In my advertising class, my professor was talking about how TiVo and DVR is ruining the advertising business. I spoke up and explained that I’m going into advertising but I’d never give up my DVR. He thought there was something wrong with this picture and simply couldn’t believe it. TV ads are still relevant but there are obvious signs saying that TV ads could be nearing the end. But that’s not the end of advertising.

I want my job to be the one that finds what works for the company without interrupting what the customer wants. I want to compliment the needs of the customer by giving them what they need exactly when they need it. I want to be that company that consumers seek just as much as we seek them. I don’t want to find a way to push my product in the homes of people who don’t need them just to make a buck.

How many people can say they work for a good company? How many marketers find themselves pushing the product more than it’s getting received? I want to be more than a legit company. I want to be a “GOOD” company. I don’t want to reap benefits that I don’t deserve. I want the hard work to pay off for the consumer and my company.

In one of my recent courses, the professor explained how society needs to look at the meaning of the things we say and do. Individuals need to get to the root of the word and look at it in a literal sense to really understand why we do the things we do and in turn, make better decisions in our business and personal life. This was a 4 credit course so I’m not going to discuss everything we learned related to this, but one of the topics we discussed were the meaning of institutions.

For example, after people attend rituals, do they come out feeling renewed and fulfilled like they learned something new and that the institution ritual was truly beneficial to their wellbeing? Or do most people attend and practice rituals because that’s what they’ve always done? In reality, many people belong to institutions and attend institution rituals for what they stand for not for what they actually do.

Politics is a great example of practiced institutions. Some people call themselves a democrat or a republican. They will only vote for the democratic party no matter who the candidate is and no matter what he or she stands for. “The democratic party is right,” they say, “They’re always right!” Many times, people belong to an institution for what it means to them, not for what the positions the candidates stand for really are. These positions change from time to time and people just change with them instead of looking at what it really means and thinking for themselves.

Have people gotten so stuck in the beliefs of their institutions that they are hurting their institutions? Absolutely! It is okay to go to church and be close to God or whatever individual believers do when they go to their place of worship, but when practicing these rituals, it is important to understand what the ritual means to the religion and what the rituals mean to the individual.

As a citizen of the free world, we have the duty to vote for congressmen and other politicians who we believe will represent our beliefs in government, democracy, and whatever else we believe is right for our country and it goes the same for every institution we belong to, formal or informal.

By only conforming to what the institution condones, we are loosing control of what matters most within the institution. We are losing our voice and becoming robots. We are missing chances to create change and reformation within our institutions. We are missing opportunities to update the institution mission and goals.

As an institution member in many ways and in many institutions, I’m using this philosophy to be a leader in my work, my church, my community and anywhere else that institutions continue to form and exist. I will continue to ask ‘why?’ and learn what my institution means and how it conforms to my beliefs, and not how my beliefs conform to their current ways. I challenge you to do the same in your work and community.

Most people think of survival of the fittest as the person or species that is stronger or more fit, so to speak, than the rest of the species. Many see this as competing with each other to survive.
I’ve recently taken a class on language and the meaning of words. For me, survival of the fittest was one of the most interesting points we discussed. Our book explained this idea as cooperating with one another to survive. Let’s look at this point.

Developing societies depend on their neighbor or another specific individual or two. They need help hauling or planting. They need those that are close to them to survive. To me, that is an example of survival of the fittest by cooperating.

Also as a developed nation, we walk into a grocery store to buy our produce and other food that someone else grows. We purchase items every day that someone else makes. Most of us wouldn’t know how to survive if we had to make our own things and grow our own food. Each of us has or will specialize in trade to make someone elses’ life easier and so that we can all benefit from work. It’s the basics of how society grows.

So in a sense, survival of the fittest is cooperating with each other to survive. As a developed country, we depend on society, but not the man next door. We might depend on the work he does but not necessarily the particular person.

On the contrary, as a free market society, companies and individuals create natural competitions in order to create progress. For example, the computer was invented, IBM created and distributed a “personal computer” to the general public, some time after that, the PC competed with the Mac creating progress to advancements in technology such as the iPod that I’m writing on right now and the laptop that I use every day and even more.

It is important as a business person and future manager to understand this because on the smallest scale, this concept defines progress and how we get there. This concept essentially molds the thought process and actions of each individual who studies it.

So as I struggled with these two opposite concepts of survival of the fittest, I realized any natural competition is the healthiest form of competition for progress. The unhealthy competition is when it is forced into the workforce or any part of society such as personal incentives and goals in a sales community assigned by a manager verses a team goal for that group.

I’m a huge supporter of the free market system and competition that results of it. Therefore, as a future member of the working world and a potential manager, it is important to understand that forced competition is as unhealthy as regulation from the government. It hinders relationships, progress, self-esteem, and leisure time, either collectively or individually.

I don’t want to start this blog entry and sound like I’m overly self indulged or anything but I have always been an “over-achiever,” self starter, and ahead of the game when it came to my career and education. I was in the top 10% of my high school graduating class and I was very proud. I started college my senior year in high school because I was very bored with the simplicity of “senioritus.”

I continued to work at Dow Chemical though out college and managed anywhere from 17-20 credits while working 25 hour weeks. I was completely financially independent and living on my own in the small town of Midland. It shows in my transcript where times were rough with managing such a crazy schedule, but I did okay, I still had a social life, and I wouldn’t have changed a thing.

I’m graduating with my Bachelor’s degree a year early from Northwood this May (yaay!) and like every other soon-to-be-graduate, I’m starting my job search now. As I network and communicate with potential employers, though, I’m finding a lack in my credentials. I’m not even going to be 21 when I graduate. On paper, I could very well come off immature and not ready for the real world. On the contrary, some could read my age and work experience as more mature than my peers and it could help me stand out of the crowd. I feel like I’m doing everything I can to show how ready I am to help my employer succeed.

I hope my feelings of uneasiness are just insecurities due to being unsure of the future and maybe having something to do with the state of the economy.

Later,

-Jessica Owens

I was just surfing through my email a few minutes ago and a came upon my favorite statistical reporting newsletter from emarketer. Today’s big headline… behavioral targeting. God’s gift to Earth. The shocker was that the survey that was taken by Annenberg School for Communication at Berkeley Law suggested that users don’t want to see ads targeted to their interests. Not even half of the people surveyed wanted to get targeted discounts or coupons!

My question is why the concern? Are internet users so worried that people are stalking them that they don’t want to save money on their day-to-day purchases? Are users embarrassed at what they’re searching for while they’re online? When working in cyberspace you are your own judge because nobody knows who Joe Schmoe is in real life. So in this case- are users searching for less appropriate things that they don’t want other users to know about (for instance on a home computer)?

Even the young adults who are usually apt to newer ideas were more likely to say no to behavioral targeting according to emarketer. What gives?

Later,

-Jessica Owens

Working at a large corporation has given me great insight to many situations in business. I’ve been able to see different types of conflicts and how to handle it. I’ve also been placed in different conflicts through out my years here, and I’ve learned how to handle different personality types and different working types. I’ve also come upon a personal conflict and I have yet to understand how to handle it. Let me give you some insight.

I was hired into Dow in mid 2006. Times were turning tough for the US but little ol’ Midland and big ol’ Dow hardly felt the punch. Spending was being cut- at least that’s what we were told. I remember that by summer and fall 2007 travel was reduced to domestic and almost eliminated all together. By 2008, travel continued to get reduced and the word was simple: Don’t spend money.

By Christmas 2008, the K-Dow venture failed, travel was non existent and there were rumors that some departments were asked to bring their own pencils to work with them. Then in 2009, it literally felt like a bombshell; family members lost jobs, early retirements were handed out like Christmas bonuses and suicide was not unheard of as the job cuts continued. I still think Dow was better off than the rest of Michigan, but it still wasn’t easy.

As someone who hardly saw the best days of Dow, and someone who has absolutely seen the worst of times at Dow, I saw how many jobs were lost and I knew how to be frugal. We switched from Starbucks to Folgers. We packed a lunch if we had a lunch meeting. We reused note paper. Instead of sending our paper to the recycler, we cut it in quarters and used the back. We stoped printing in color unless someone at a higher level was going to see it. When managers had to travel, we stayed at a Holiday Inn instead of the Marriott Suites.

I almost felt like one of the women of the Great Depression. When you hear of the women who lived through the Great Depression, you hear how they still wash their Ziploc bags to reuse them instead of throwing them out. You see a wealthy family but they still wear their old shirts and patch the worn spots because it’s still wearable.

In 2009 I worked for a department that was “that wealthy family.” This department was the only department in Dow that was seeing decent money coming in from the budgets. A new director came in with a new plan. Upon many other changes was the changing in spending. “Buy a large, flat panel monitor, just in case,” they’d say. Or, “buy a few lunches today, I think the managers have meetings.” “Which color swatch for the walls looks better?” “This carpeting is horrible, I hope to replace it.” “Please buy a mini-refrigerator for each conference room and be sure they’re all stocked with pop and water at all times.” “Make sure my candy jar is well stocked, just put it on the company card.” “Please make sure there is always plenty of Starbucks coffee in the kitchen for everyone.”

My initial feeling was pleasant, I’m not going to lie. Seriously, I got a new monitor that I probably didn’t need. I got a new ergo-keyboard and I was taken care of. But after I got over my ridiculous ego gloat, I was concerned. Maybe some spending is okay or even necessary, but people who would never think to ask for lunch was now asking for a special trip… at least twice a week. Yes we were busy, but so is the rest of Dow. In fact, the rest of Dow may have been that much more busy because half of their co-workers had been cut in the May round up of lay-offs. I was continuously being asked to buy more water, order nicer table clothes for tours, order flowers, and more lunches. My job description my have looked something like, “Money spender…” or “Job stealer!” because that’s what I felt like. I spent thousands of dollars every month on little things like pop, water, and lunch. And another thousand on monitors and computers for people who had a second office in our building and outside of the building people were loosing their jobs, families were packing up camp and their house was probably being foreclosed. How was anything that I was doing right?

I tried to be conservative but got a slap on the wrist because they always needed a surplus, just in case. The times have not passed to where the rest of Dow could spend on extra office supplies let alone lunches and snacks for their employees. I felt like if we were awarded this great spending money from executives who believed in us, we should have been spending it on things like capital, employees, and production supplies. In the end, I moved on to a different department. My ethical compass was just too distorted for me to continue working like that. I had already begun to voice my concern and it would begin to cost me my job if it continued.

_____________

Is it okay to spend on luxuries when others are loosing their job in the same company? Maybe I was conditioned to not spending because I entered the professional workplace at a time when money was tight.

How does one even approach the situation to try and sooth the moral compass? Is the only way to fix it to get out? Am I wrong for wanting out or should I have tried to make it right? Do you need to be at a certain level to have the chance to make a difference? This is an ethical struggle so I understand that HR doesn’t have an opportunity in this equation. I still struggle with the thought, but I’ve moved on. It still doesn’t change that people are still loosing jobs.

Many college students go into college with no idea of what they want to be. Maybe they have an area of where they want to be in. I definitely knew I was at least going into marketing- and the more I learned about advertising, the more I said, “Oh I’m going to do that!” or “I can’t wait to be this person!”

CareerEco

After my first internship with CareerEco, I knew I was going to go into digital marketing (at least if I have any control over it– with job conditions, who knows). So as a sophomore in college with a great internship and a major drive to enter the advertising industry, I just wanted to get into the industry. I didn’t want to spend anymore time working for a chemical company in my home town. I wanted to really make a difference in my company- whatever company that is.
My theory was, in the mean time, to find a mindless job at a decent company just to pay the bills and get by. I thought I didn’t want to put my heart and soul into something that didn’t apply to me. I accepted a mindless job at a great company. I stayed focused to what was going on around me so I could still learn about business and get something out of the job, but the job and the work itself was simple and mindless. It was simply taking orders. I was happy for some time. What could be wrong?… The pay was good… I could take a few days off as needed… But as time went on, I realized there wasn’t a way for me to take my heart out of the job. It was a default thing that happened for me.
I became frustrated because I knew I had potential. I became frustrated when a decision was made that honestly didn’t make sense but my opinion was not welcome. I became frustrated because I couldn’t make a difference. I was the mindless job person. I had no responsibilities and no importance whatsoever. I asked for this to happen, thinking it would be the best and that I really could just take my heart out of the job. But I couldn’t.

I needed a job where I was a functioning piece of the puzzle. I didn’t need to be the cornerstone but I needed to be a stepping stone. I enjoy the challenge and responsiblity and whether I realize it or not, I had been actively seeking responsiblity and avoiding my mindless tasks.
My point is that the simple life is not necessarily the best life. I wanted to float until I could really be passionate about my job like I had been with my internships. I couldn’t take the route of the simple life to ‘just get by’ and I know that I never will. I could not and will not ever take a simple job at a simple company that just pays the simple bills while I marry a simple husband with a simple house in simple Midland. Not that any of these things are bad; I always saw that life as me before this moment. I just realized the simple life is not for me. Bring on that challenge, bring on the next big task. Bring on the world.

I can’t wait!