Monica O'Brien is the author of the book Social Pollination: Escape the Hype of Social Media and Join the Companies Winning At It. Social Pollination provides a strategic blueprint that helps businesses leverage social media for crazy growth! For a limited time, purchase Social Pollination and get a free membership to Monica's private coaching forum.

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Jun Loayza Shares All

By Monica O'Brien | September 5th in Uncategorized

6 comments

I recently had the opportunity to do an interview with Jun Loayza, a fellow entrepreneur and chief marketing officer of his startup, Future Delivery. In the interview, Jun answers the tough questions: his misconceptions on entrepreneurship, how he copes with being broke, and how he plans to take over the world with career-advancing video games.

The entrepreneur’s life sounds exciting to many people, but having made the transition from corporate life to a startup myself, I must say that being an entrepreneur is a tough life! What do you think are the most common misconceptions about entrepreneurship, and what are the corresponding realities?

Before I embarked on my journey as a young entrepreneur, I really had no idea what it took to start a company. I thought one had to go through some formal process or that there were some set rules and guidelines that you had to follow in order to start a company. Many of my friends still ask me, “Jun, how did you start your own company?” The truth is, you become an entrepreneur once you find that mentality and mindset. Your company is born the moment you decide that it is born. You have the idea in your head, all that is left is for you to refine the idea and execute.

The biggest misconception I had is that as an entrepreneur, all you will be doing is high-level work. People become entrepreneurs because they want to be their own boss and don’t want to do grunt work. The truth is, you will wear every single hat in your company, so you will be doing the high-level work and all of the grunt work. You will also have to do a tremendous amount of research and validation before you actually get started on executing your startup dream. I have met a lot of investors who say that the biggest mistake that most startup companies make is that they don’t do enough primary research that validates their idea and concept.

Money is a huge issue for aspiring entrepreneurs. How do you handle the personal financial crunch of starting a company?

It’s all about the cash flow when it comes to running a startup. That’s why a majority of startups fail – they just run out of money to operate. So how do I personally deal with it? I cut costs in every possible way that I can and I make short-term cash in every possible way that I can.

Before stepping aside from my corporate life, I saved up enough money to last me 6 months without making an income. I moved back home with the family so that I don’t have to pay rent. It was actually great moving back home: dinner is also ready at 6:30pm, my clothes are washed every Sunday, and there is always food in the fridge (hahaha, I just noticed 2 out of the 3 perks have to deal with food). I cut costs on gas by carpooling with my girlfriend as much as possible when I have to drive to LA (it also helps save the environment).

I don’t feel that moving back home is a HUGE sacrifice. My family and I are very close, so it’s so fun being able to hang out with my brother at home again. The biggest sacrifices that I’ve had to make are “time” sacrifices. I just don’t have enough time to allocate to everyone that I want to. I rarely see my friends from high school or UCLA, and I’m only able to take out my girlfriend one night out of the week. My night life has been put on hold because I pretty much work until 3am every night.

So how do I handle the financial crunch? The answer is pretty much summed up in these three steps:

  1. Move back home (check)
  2. Don’t spend money on movies, expensive dinners, and alcohol (check, minus the alcohol) (Jun grins)
  3. Don’t have a girlfriend/boyfriend (failed… hahaha)

I definitely failed on the relationship front too. So what advice would you give to someone who wants to start a company but can’t afford to quit his/her job?

If you want to start a company but you can’t afford to quit your job, then become a part-time entrepreneur. Work on your startup when you get home from work and on the weekends. This can at times be even more stressful than being a full-time entrepreneur because now you’re even more tired, more stressed, and since you’re not full-time on your startup, it won’t really pick up and start growing.

The best thing for you to do is build your team before you iron out your idea. Once your team is built, work together to create your company vision. If your team of part-time entrepreneurs works hard enough, then you may be able to reach a point where you have bootstrapped enough funding to quit your job, or you start making some revenue which will allow you to step aside from your full-time job.

You work at a company that you’ve basically started with your friends. How does the team cope when the company puts strain on those friendships, and how do you eventually moved past it all?

I love our company culture because we have a “genius/garbage” model. Every time someone offers an idea or input, we all feel comfortable enough to say that it is a “garbage” idea or it is a “genius” idea. This saves us A LOT of time because we don’t have to beat around the bush when there is a bad idea. We can immediately say it’s “trash” and move on.

We love bashing each other in the company because it only makes us stronger. This is why our company culture is so strong and why I believe our company has a great chance for success.

Give me a brief overview of your newest product, FDCareer. Who is the target audience? What is the main goal behind the site?

FD Career is career development with a gaming touch; we make personal and professional development actually fun! Our core principle is unique, yet simple: Live your life as if it were a video game.

Every time you gain an internship, get a high GPA, or become a leader of an organization, you gain experience points and level-up. As you level-up, you gain prestige, access to new areas of the site, new features, and eventually the ability to recruit with more prestigious firms.

Our target audience are students and young professionals. If you have been productive in your life, then FD Career is a great way for you to show off your accomplishments and get recognized. If you have an expertise, then you’re able to create a Quest about your expertise. For example, an SEO expert can create an SEO Quest that other users can take.

If you don’t know what you want to do with your career, FD Career can help you find out what you want to do career-wise. If you want to learn more about Management Consulting, you can choose the path of business and take on business analysis quests that will test your quantitative and strategic thinking abilities. For example, the Rock Harder Quest will challenge you to solve why a company is losing profits and give you the opportunity to provide your solutions.

Monster helps people by giving them a platform to apply for jobs.

Vault helps people by providing company information.

FD Career helps people by helping them find out what they want to do career-wise and how to get there.

You already have an impressive number of users on FDCareer. What online and offline outlets are you using to market FDCareer? How are you recruiting users to your venture?

This is my area of expertise and what I absolutely love doing. We have been using every single form of online social media possible. We’re on Facebook, Twitter, Plurk, Digg, Stumble, and everything else. I do want to highlight three unique strategies that I feel we are using:

  1. Living the Startup Life – For the longest time, I was thinking about what kind of YouTube video we can make that will brand the company. We thought about making commercials, video tutorials about how to interview, and interviews with career coaches. It finally hit me when I saw Startup.com (a movie about the rise and fall of a startup company). I decided to make a video documentary of Future Delivery, documenting our successes, struggles, and hardships as young entrepreneurs. It’s entitled Living the Startup Life and you can watch it on YouTube right now.
  2. Google Alert and Twitter Track – I am using Google Alert to track certain keywords that are very relevant to Future Delivery: career development, self development, “Future Delivery”, “FD Career”, and many others. Every time someone writes anything with my target keywords in it, I will be immediately be notified. If you have a company, you should at least be following your company name on Google Alert. If you’re a blogger, you should definitely be following your name so that you know when someone is talking about you.
    I am also using Twitter Track to follow the same keywords as the ones I am following on Google. Whenever someone tweets one of my keywords, I can immediately respond to them and hopefully make a new connection that I can introduce to FD Career.
  3. Connect with my friends on Brazen Careerist – Although this may not be unique to you Monica, I feel there are a lot of people in our generation who have still not tapped into the Brazen Careerist community. I feel that we are definitely a strong, influential community that is growing everyday. Because of BC, I was able to meet you Monica.

Yes, and you’re a great connection to have. The Brazen Careerist team will be ecstatic to hear our network is a key part of your marketing strategy to young professionals.

Entrepreneurs can definitely tap into this network to promote their startups. Of course, they have to do it the right way. If they start spamming us, we’ll know about it and warn everyone else.

You once described FDCareer as a mashup of Second Life and Facebook for young professionals, yet the product as it stands today looks quite different from both SL and FB. At Brazen, idea transformation happens all the time as we get nearer to launch. How would you describe FDCareer now?

FD Career is the first product for Future Delivery. The product that you’re referring to as the fusion between Second Life and LinkedIn is FD World. FD Career is the first step to toward FD World.

Ahh, that makes sense now. What does the future of FDCareer look like?

Our goal with FD Career is to establish Future Delivery as the leader in career and personal development. When users reach a certain Social Level, they will be rewarded an avatar on the FD Career website. When FD World launches during the Summer of 2009, users will be able to transfer their accounts and avatars from FD Career to FD World.

In the next few months, we’re going to release Competitions for FD Career. Teams of 3-5 people will be able to participate in online business, engineering, or social media case competitions where they compete against other teams from across the nation. Our goal is to create more user participation and support on the site through the competitions.

Many people don’t understand what the business model for Web 2.0 companies are. What is your general business model for FDCareer, and how do you get funding for a Web 2.0 product such as FDCareer?

Our funding has come from bootstrapping from our personal network. It is very difficult to raise money from professional investors without having a launched product that has proven traction. We have spent a lot of time earlier this year building relationships with investors, but not necessarily looking for money. Now that our product has launched, we are speaking with the investors we have built relationships with and are now formally setting up pitches. We hope to raise a round of seed funding this Fall.

Our business model consists of company sponsorships and advertisement. If we can establish the FD Career system as a great tool to find the best talents in the nation, then companies will use our site to better hire these talents. Instead of sifting through the hundreds of thousands of resumes that companies receive every year, they can use our leveling system as a measure of a person’s experience, motivation, and potential value that he or she can bring to the company. Companies will pay to use a platform that helps them find talents more efficiently than the tools that they use now.

As a young, twentysomething professional, what can I get out of using FDCareer that I can’t get from other social media such as Second Life, Facebook, Linked In, Brazen Careerist, or blogging?

We do not want people to stop using other social networks or social media. FD Career is created to be the platform that gives you prestige for everything productive that you are doing in your life.

One of our future quests will be to become a blogger on Brazen Careerist. Why would we create a quest that leads people away from our site? BC is an amazing community that helps Gen Y meet others with similar goals and interests. Being a member of BC is both productive and extremely fun.

That’s awesome. We’re always looking for new faces in the community.

We also have quests that encourage people to use Digg or Twitter: a series of quests that we currently have challenge the user to get more followers on Twitter.

Within 2 months, we will launch our Blogging Community where we rank users’ blogs. We will rank them in terms of visitors, subscribers, and comments. All blogs in our community must be a personal blog and cannot be a company blog. We’re building this so that people who have had great success in promoting their blog and who have amazing content gain prestige and get rewarded. More importantly, users who have no idea how to get people to come to their blog have the opportunity to learn from those who have been very successful with their blog.

As far as battling it out with Second Life, it will be a fierce battle. Second Life is not scalable because it is a community based around fantasy personas. In contrast, FD World will be a community of people representing their true identities. Our hope is that people will use FD World to further expand their network and develop their personal and professional lives.

Sounds like FD Career is going to be a great addition to the social media world.

Thank you so much for interview!

If you’d like to get in touch with Jun, here’s how:

Your Major is Not What's Holding You Back

By Monica O'Brien | August 19th in Careers

11 comments

I’ve been acquainted with a girl a few years younger than me since she was a freshman in college, studying earth science of all things.

From the beginning, I told her it was not a great idea and she would have a hard time finding a job when she graduated.

This advice fell on deaf ears.

Fast-forward to four years later, she has graduated. In late July, three months after graduation, we sit down for a chat, which is dominated by her telling me about how she can’t get a job because all the decent jobs in her field require ten years of experience.

“I told you so” does not slip out, though it whispers to my lips from the back of my mind. Instead, I tell her to stop worrying about getting a job, and to take a trip to South America and study rain forests or something. An only child in an upper-middle class family, she does not have to worry about money; her parents have paid her entire way through a private college with their debit cards. Surely they’d be happy to loan some funds for a trip abroad for some cool, real world experience – the kind she needs to get the job she wants.

She says she’s thinking about becoming a nurse instead, because there is better job security. I’m shocked. I explain to her that job security is not useful unless you like your job, and nurses only like their jobs if they like caring for people. Even then, most nurses work long and strange shifts and can end up exhausted, frustrated, and underpaid.

But the fact that nurses are only in high demand because the job is difficult and energy draining seems to elude her.

So I attempt a different angle. I go on to tell her that, in general, it is stupid to think that more school is the solution to one’s career problems, and unless she has a good reason to switch careers without even trying her current career, she should not spend two more years in school only to discover that she has sold out for the sake of job security.

She is not very receptive to this argument, and it becomes clear to me that she does not care much about being happy or getting useful and interesting experience – right now she just wants a real adult job.

So I turn my efforts to her resume, and offer to connect her with Kristen Fischer, the author of Ramen Noodles, Rent and Resumes, who has some of the best advice for new college graduates on writing a resume. I tell her that if she really wants a job she should broaden her search criteria and apply for jobs outside her major, and I talk about my friend at Chicago GSB who was an English major but got her first job in downtown Chicago as an underwriter for Harley Davidson, despite having no financial background, and is loving it.

Still, nothing. She does not want coaching and my patience is thinning. I grow irritated as the conversation wears on, because I work at a company that helps young professionals advance their careers and I write advice for aspiring twenty-setters. I think she should give my advice more consideration.

Finally, I conclude she is maybe not interested in a solution to her career woes, but instead just wants to complain to someone about her lack of job prospects. Then I decide I don’t have any more time to listen to complaints, so I leave her with one last piece of wisdom.

I tell her to read career advice on a daily basis. Any career advice – it doesn’t have to be mine (though I should be on the list).

Because, really, if you do not have a job and you want to get a job and nothing you’ve tried is working, you are in no position to refuse perfectly good and reasonable (and free) advice from someone whose only intention is to help you. The advice may not be what you need or want to hear, but just attempting to make progress might be good enough to propel you into motion.

I doubt she is reading right now. And that is why she still doesn’t have a job.

How Do I Get a Job at a Startup?

By Monica O'Brien | July 30th in Entrepreneurship

8 comments

I received an email from a reader named Michael:

Do you have any tips on finding a startup that’s hiring? At this point I would almost be willing to volunteer if it meant I could be a part of the excitement and energy that comes along with working at a startup.

Having recently taken a full-time job at Brazen Careerist, this question seemed right up my alley. So if you aren’t sure where to start when it comes to startups, answer these seven questions:

Can You Handle the Job?

Startups are every millennial’s dream – but dreams can turn to nightmares pretty quickly. Before considering a startup lifestyle, ask yourself the question, “Do I have what it takes?” Joel on Software sums it up well in his description of what his company looks for in a job applicant: “smart, and gets things done.” (Read why.)

Realistically, you need high levels of both talent and stamina in your area of profession, and many people lack aptitude in one or the other. But at a startup, you will be expected to get things done quickly, take ownership of many tasks (some that you may not even be qualified for), and help out with many other tasks that you’re definitely not qualified for. It’s a lot of pressure, and the stress can build quickly as you get inundated with work.

Don’t think you have it? Nonsense. Even if this doesn’t sound like you yet, you can get there. If you are serious about working for a startup, try honing these skills in your current job. Whatever you do now, go all out and become a superstar at your job – because superstars are more likely to get hired by startups.

Do You Know Why You are Needed?

Startups hire people for one reason and one reason only – they have a large need, and you can fill it. This is different from larger companies that sometimes hire people for their small needs. Startups don’t have that luxury because money is tight and often they need one person to wear many hats.

Instead of thinking about the one area you are good at, you must find a broader set of complimentary skills. For me, my specialties are software development, web development, business, blogging, and social media. This makes me an excellent candidate for managing changes on the Brazen Careerist site.

The good news is that at a startup “specialities” are easier to find, because you don’t have to be an expert in anything to be one of the best people at it in the company. For example, I’m not nearly as into social media as many of my peers, but within the company I have a pretty firm grasp on it.

Overall, the “fit” has to be incredible at a startup. And finding where you fit starts with defining a broader skill set for yourself.

What Do You Want to Learn?

Fit is important for the startup, but it should also be important to you. Start with narrowing the industry you want to work in, then come up with a sample description of your dream job. Can you get a job similar to your sample description at a regular company? If so, why would you work for a startup? Sure, startups are fun and exciting, but many people do startups because they want to gain a specific skill that a regular job can’t meet.

Some of the things I wanted to learn at a startup were how to start a company and how to get funding for my own venture. I also wanted a very unique job that blended social media and community building with my current software development skill set so I could eventually transition out of technical jobs. Finally, I wanted a flexible schedule so I could work on my personal life with friends and family, which suffered greatly when I was working the 9-5 and attending graduate school 3 nights a week.

These are all questions that a startup would ask you, so think about them now and be ready to make your case when the time comes. What do you want?

Can you Afford the Startup Lifestyle?

You should start answering this question by looking at your finances. Some startups pay in stock options, some pay regular salaries, and some do both. What do you need to live?

Also, job security is almost non-existent at a startup, so you have to make sure your bank account can handle a date with unemployment. Do you have enough savings to make it by for a few months? Enough connections to get another job quickly?

Moving on from finances, consider other aspects of your personal life. Do you have kids and a responsibility to provide them with health insurance? Do you have time to work 50-60+ hour weeks, or do you have other commitments? Is everyone in your family healthy, or could you be torn from work to take care of a sick loved one?

A startup will need to know that you know what you’re getting into and your personal life is in order before hiring you.

Are You Friends with Entrepreneurs?

The only way to get hired at a startup is to become friends with entrepreneurs who have startups. This is because startups only hire their friends, which make sense when you think about the intimacy of coworker relationships in a startup.

When stress levels start to soar (and they are always soaring) nobody wants to work with someone they don’t like or don’t get along with. It’s counterproductive to the startup goals.

They say don’t go into business with your friends, but the reality is you can’t have a successful startup without your coworkers becoming your friends. There are some days when I don’t enjoy working with my coworkers, or when we  strain ourselves to be nice to each other even though we’re all stressed out and ready to snap. Only friendships can survive this kind of tension.

So start developing friendships with entrepreneurs you would trust enough to work for.

Do You Hang Out at the Watering Hole?

I’ve answered why you need friendships with entrepreneurs, but you might also be wondering how to make friendships with entrepreneurs.

The internet is by far the largest watering hole for entrepreneurs to congregate. You can network on the internet many ways, but the way I got my job was by maintaining this blog and writing content that stood out and was relevant to my desired career.

Start a blog in your areas of expertise, and find a way to make your ideas stand out. Follow the blogs of entrepreneurs you want to connect with and leave comments or email them to introduce yourself. Ask for help. Write well and often. And most importantly, meet your online friends in person.

Do You Talk About Your Goals?

Working for a startup is a lofty goal, but the best way to find the right startup for you is through your network. So start telling everyone you know about your goal to do a startup, what kind of startup you want to work for, what your areas of expertise are, and why you would be good at your job.

You will eventually meet the right people and get the right job. Good luck!

What You Should Do Next, Based on Lessons from my Blog

By Monica O'Brien | July 13th in Blogging

13 comments

Image Source: pigotta08 via FlickR

Over the past few months I’ve been trying to figure out why I’ve mostly stopped writing in my blog. It’s become apparent to me that not writing is a reflection of how lost I am, at least in this aspect of my life. So I’m sharing the answers I’ve come up with, because the lessons I’m learning are much broader and could be applied to other people in other situations.

I’ve Turned a Hobby into a Job

The old cliché is that you should find what you love and then try to make money off of it. I definitely bought into this when I first entered the working world, but the more experience I gain, the more I take a different point of view.

The problem is the thing you love to do will start out as a hobby. Once you begin making money from your hobby, it will become more and more like a job until you quit your actual job. This is everyone’s dream – but what they don’t realize is that before they had a job and a hobby and now they just have a job.

My blog is a big part of my job these days – not just the writing part, but the commenting, emailing, speaking, and reading that goes along with it. It’s no surprise that when I want to unwind, one of the last places I look is my blog. Instead, I’ve gone back to my old hobby – singing, jamming out, and writing poetry that later gets set to the music in my head.

Maybe you have turned a hobby into a job unknowingly. It happens to the best of us, and it doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy the things you used to – but it does mean you need a new hobby.

I Need a New Outlet for Expression

In the early days of my blog I got most of my material from the people I was around all the time. For example, my husband. Or my coworkers. As some of my articles were a little unflattering, it was nice that none of these people are a part of the blogosphere.

Now, as you know, everyone I work with has a blog, and is likely to read my blog on occasion. So when I get in a fight with one of them the only material that comes to mind is stuff like “12 Reasons Why I Can’t Stand My Coworkers” or “It is So Lame that the People I Work with Can’t Remember I’m a Vegetarian and invited me to a Brazilian Steakhouse for Lunch.” (I made those up by the way :-) .)

My blog used to be an outlet for me to express myself when I was angry with the way the world worked. Now that I have the ability to potentially hurt people and their reputations, I’ve made the conscious choice to pick a different, less public outlet.

And maybe you need a new outlet too. Dealing with your emotions is not hard; dealing with them appropriately is. But it’s worth it to try your best to deal with them appropriately; and in the end, you will feel much better having done the right thing.

My Audience is Overwhelming

My blog subscriber count is by no means huge, but I have a large enough readership to where I think thrice before publishing these days, and get a second opinion from BC’s resident editor.

As a creative person, I’ve noticed that my work suffers most when it stops being about me and starts becoming about what people expect from me. Like anyone in a creative industry, I want people to pay attention to my work – until the pressure from the masses starts to dictate my work.

Maybe you need a break from what everyone wants you to do, so you can figure out what you want to do. The Mona Lisa wasn’t painted by committee, and Sophocles didn’t call a vote when he decided Oedipus would marry his own mother. Sometimes the best work is done outside of teams. It’s scary to make all the creative decisions by yourself, but if you stop valuing your work by what others think of it then you have a better chance of creating something truly unique, innovative, and special.

I’m Tired, and Focused Elsewhere

When I first started my blog, I sacrificed so much to get to the top – sleep, friends, work, family, and time with my husband. I wrote 4-5 times a week and did lots of guest posting, and I was relentless in the fight for attention throughout the blogosphere.

But now I’m at the top (of the smaller Gen Y niche). I’ve arrived. And from here on out the journey of this blog in its present form sounds a lot like a decrescendo, winding down, fading away slowly until it reaches dead, crisp silence. The high notes have passed, but the song didn’t end. Quite frankly, my husband and new puppy seem far more interesting than my blog tune these days.

Maybe you are burnt out in your quest to achieve something. Research shows that a person only has so much energy and willpower to focus – in order to more adequately focus on one portion of your life; you must take focus away from another portion. Maybe smooth sailing in some areas of your life is good enough for now, because maybe your relationships with others and/or yourself are tanking and need more of your time and energy.

It’s not that you can’t have multiple goals concurrently, but rather that you can’t give 100% to every portion of your life at every moment. At this point, my blog is surviving just fine, even with less attention from me than before. Try maintaining the status quo for awhile. You’ll be surprised how well things run without you.

I Don’t Know Where I’m Going

I’ve received advice before that just before you hit a big goal, you should set a new one in order to keep from stagnating. My biggest (and at the time, wildly unachievable) goal when I started my blog was to make a career change. 4.5 months later, I was there – but it happened so fast, I forgot to set the next goal for my blog.

Now, my blog is stagnating. I have known this for months, yet I still struggle with where my blog should go next. What I’m finding is that my blog may have already served its purpose for now, until the next big thing I need to do comes along. All that’s left is accepting and allowing this to be true without guilt.

Don’t feel like you have to continue doing something just because you’ve been doing it. It’s a silly way to live, when you think about it, because then you never have an opportunity to try something new without adding to your workload. Maybe you need to take a break from what you are currently doing, especially if it isn’t working anymore. Take a detour. A balanced life is one in which every time you add something you take away something else; and I’m certainly not going to feel guilty about living a balanced life.

Put a Powerful Woman in the White House – Vote Obama

By Monica O'Brien | June 27th in Activism

11 comments

With a background in computer science and dreams of entrepreneurship, I am reminded every day that in my career I am a woman playing in a man’s world. So I am constantly looking for powerful female role models that have succeeded in a male-dominated environment.

Which is why I was extremely disappointed when Hillary Clinton lost the nomination for the United States presidency.

Don’t get me wrong – there was plenty I didn’t like about Hillary. Just like there was plenty I didn’t like about Obama. But with the two having similar platforms I mostly agreed with, I picked the woman.

Yes, I admit it. I desperately wanted the woman to win, because in my field the women who win are few and far between because there are hardly any women to begin with.

But I may still get my wish for having a powerful female role model in the White House in Michelle Obama, which is one reason I’m now wholeheartedly throwing all my support behind her husband Barack. Here’s why:

Michelle Obama is Authentic

Michelle Obama speaks openly about her husband and their family life. She admits she never wanted Barack in politics and discusses the sacrifice she has made for this country – allowing her family to undergo scrutiny in order to support her husband’s presidential campaign. Women can relate to this sacrifice she makes – as a wife and as a mother – and Michelle rallies them around her.

Michelle’s authenticity wouldn’t be possible if she was running for presidency, because her words would be considered weak rather than heartening. But with no pressure to make promises to her audience, Michelle Obama is nearly unstoppable in her efforts to gain a following of passionate citizens.

Michelle Obama is Educated

Michelle Obama has the same impressive educational background as Hilary Clinton – she graduated from Harvard Law school in 1988 and has been a practicing lawyer since, serving at universities, for firms, and in politics with Mayor Daley of Chicago.

Michelle Obama has a strong career history in politics and law and is clearly a close adviser to her husband. I believe her ability to balance femininity with power is what the women in this country need to take the next step into leadership and eventually into a female presidency. Being an alpha female is no longer about joining the Good ‘Ol Boys club, which is the perception Hillary Clinton gave many of us. Instead, it’s about taking the natural abilities and strengths that women are blessed with and using them to change the world in a different way than a man could.

Michelle Obama is the new Jackie Kennedy

The elegance, grace, and personal aesthetic of Jackie Kennedy has made her one of the most beloved first ladies in United States history. As I watch Michelle Obama, I notice similarities between the two women.

For example, the White House Black Market dress Michelle Obama wore on The View last week is flying off dress racks at nearly every store in the country. Michelle Obama is not even First Lady and she is already set to become an iconic woman of the 21st century. After all, when was the last time you bought something Laura Bush wore?

Perhaps you think the power to sell dresses is a frivolous Paris Hilton trait, but just think what Michelle Obama could sell if she used that power to support a charity. The position of First Lady is perfect for a woman interested in making a real difference in the world. While her husband runs the country, Michelle can put her influence to use in other, complimentary ways.

What do you think of Michelle Obama? Is she the female role model the United States needs right now?