One of the earliest principles of economics that I learned in Econ 101 is the idea of “comparative advantage.” This idea holds that if someone else can do something more efficiently than you can, it makes economic sense for you to pay them to do it. I recently decided to hire a snow removal service to plow our driveway. They charge $40 and it takes them about 20 minutes to do the work. Normally I would be reluctant to pay someone to plow my driveway. After all, I’m young, I’m in good health – I’m perfectly capable of shoveling my own snow. (We don’t have a...

Sometimes the hardest thing to do is to ask for what you want. For example, every year, job seekers give up hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost income because they fail to negotiate their starting salary. I know – in “this economy” we should all be grateful just to have a job. But if you have a job offer from a new employer, don’t accept it until you’ve asked them the following 5-word question: “Can you go any higher?” If you’re being offered a job with a certain salary, before you say “Yes,” say: “Can you go any higher?” What...

Every market has its “barriers to entry.” You can’t be a dentist without going to dental school. You can’t be a lawyer without passing the bar exam. You can’t get a job at a big-name consulting firm without having an MBA from Stanford or Wharton or Northwestern, etc. You can’t launch a best-selling book without going on morning talk shows and getting a great review in the New York Times. But here’s the thing – with the Internet, it’s increasingly possible to get a following – and make a perfectly good living – in whatever your area of...

“Do what you love, and the money will follow.” I’m not sure if I entirely agree with this old adage. After all, a lot of people try to do what they love, only to find that there’s no market for what they offer. Every year, restaurants, boutiques, art galleries and quirky coffee shops go out of business (despite the passion and high hopes of the founders), cupcake bakeries and scrapbooking stores and other once-trendy business ideas fall out of favor (despite the “love” that went into their creation). So what’s the answer? Maybe we shouldn’t think of it in...

One of my biggest frustrations with corporate culture is the tendency for companies to treat everyone like interchangeable parts. That is such an outmoded, out-dated, obsolete way of thinking! People are not widgets. We’re not meant to sit in boxes all day under bad lighting in a gray office. We’re not meant to kowtow to petty authority and avoid asking tough questions for fear of reprisal. This is not the 1920s – we’re not working on assembly lines anymore. We’re not all doing the same, repetitive task over and over again – and companies that treat their employees...

A lot of people have given me advice over the years. Sometimes it’s helpful, sometimes it’s not. Most of the “bad” advice I’ve been given was very well-intentioned and I don’t hold it against the people who gave the advice, but I think it’s interesting to reflect on why this advice was “wrong” for me. So here it is: some of the worst career advice I was ever given. “Be a teacher.” One of my college advisers told me that he thought I’d be a good teacher. And I was, for awhile – I taught English in Japan for a year on the JET...