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Jennifer Meyer always knew she wanted to work in fashion. It probably comes, she says, from the hours she spent in her grandmother’s Santa Monica, California, apartment, playing with art supplies, and the small kiln her grandmother kept on the kitchen counter. She did a lot of enameling, says Meyer, an LA-based jewelry designer. She had all of these colors and plaques to put things on; wiring. I would design things with her for fun; I have this love of design from her. Still, as the daughter of an entertainment executive, Meyer didnt really have a road map for a career in design. She completed her education on the East Coast, studying child and family psychology, and landed her first job in magazines, which she ultimately parlayed to PR jobs at Giorgio Armani and Ralph Lauren. I wanted to start my own thing, says Meyer. I had this idea for jewelry, but I had no idea how to do it. In 2005, Meyer made some basic sketchesher first a riff on a leaf designand began knocking on doors, armed with equal parts curiosity and tenacity. So began the launch of her line, Jennifer Meyer Jewelry. Now, 20 years later, Meyer describes herself as self-taught. She’s leveraged her love of the natural world and her instincts for a simple, unfussy aesthetic to guide a business thats become as popular with Jennifer Aniston and Meghan Markle as millennials and suburban fortysomethings. If the door said jeweler, I knocked on it. I knew nothing. It was trial and error. I had a bad sketch of a leaf on paper. I had no clue what I was doingwhich, by the way, as I look back was the best way to learn. I made a few pieces, and thats how I understood what I was doing. There is a Star Wars quote, Do or do not; there is no try. I started in 2005. My boyfriend at the time, who became my husband, said, What do you want to do? I said, I dont know. He said, Thats a lie; Everybody wants a thing and were embarrassed to say it. You think youre too old, or too young. What do you want to do? Act? Write? Work for NASA? It can be anything. He said, You have to say it out loud. I said, I want to design jewelry. I dont know how to do it. When I started, I was doing everything from designing to FedEx. I was alone, and I did it all. I have such an amazing group of people I work with now. Now its shorthand: We can have one quick conversation and say, Hey do you remember the leaf with the baguette diamonds? I like when things feel organized. When I walk into a room and I know where everything is . . . organization is inspiring to me. As a business owner, Im available 24/7. I dont care what time you text me, I dont care what time you call or email me. If its 11 p.m. on a Saturday and you work with me and you said, Jen, do you have five minutes? I have five minutes. Unless Im sound asleep, other than that I am available. I do, though, [I] still think its important to set boundaries to make you feel good, but I dont have a boundary with my time. I love a reminder. When someone says, Just bumping this to the top of your emails. Or, hey, making sure you did this. You cannot bug me. It is the greatest feeling in the world. Bother me until its finished. I always get up by 7 a.m. I always make sure my kids are fed and out the door. They drive now, which is such a weird thing. I love to work out and I go to bed thinking about my coffee. I drink decaf. I used to have really bad panic attacks. They were debilitating. If Im drinking caffeine first thing, thats not good for anybody. I always have a book with me. Everything is written down. I have to write it down and I have to take a highlighter to it. That is it for me. Thats how I do things. When people have notes on their phones, it gives me hives. Being creative is throwing it all out there, making mistakes and making it your own. How many times have you looked at something and thought, I would never wear that, what is that? No. And then, somehow six months later youre around it enough and you see that woman whose aesthetic you love and youre like, I get it now. Hard work pays off. You have got to develop those relationships; you have to sit with people and get to know their wives and children and husbands. You have to get in there and spend the time and energy and the focus and you have to develop the same aesthetic, which is really challenging. Everyone has their own idea of how things should be made. It’s a lot of working together and explaining yourself and being clear. You talk about boundaries. Those that are the boundaries that are important. Clarity is kindness. I grew up going to art galleries with my dad. He loved going to galleries. I remember I was like 8 years old and he bought this art and it was on our wall. It was literally a green and blue trianglenothing else. Half was blue and half was green. I remember saying to him, What is that? I could have done that. He looked at me and said, But you didnt. It never left my head. That artist did it and thought of it and created it. It was easy for me to have a 10-minute opinion, but I didnt do it. I was like, Hes damn right.
Category:
E-Commerce
Memorial Day Weekend is upon us, marking the unofficial start of the summer vacation season in America. Yet, a recent Bankrate survey from late April found that only 46% of Americans plan to travel domestically or internationally this summer, with costs cited as the primary concern. Dwindling U.S. consumer confidence may lead some individuals to reconsider spending their precious discretionary dollars on travel. Still, you may have more travel options within your budget than you thought. For those determined to get away, theres an excellent Google Flights hack that reveals options within a certain budget. Some Google Flights aficionados know this as the anywhere hack. Heres how to use it. The Google Flights anywhere hack Google Flights is one of the best aggregators out there for finding airline tickets between any two cities on Earth. It works very simply: visit www.google.com/travel/flights, enter your departure and destination cities along with your desired departure and return dates, and click the search button. Google Flights will then reveal the best options for your selected destination across numerous airlines. However, if youre trying to stay within a certain budget, this traditional method of using Google Flights can be exhausting, because you have to check individual cities manually. For example, if your airline ticket budget is $1200, it can be tedious to enter cities one by one on Google Flights (So Paulo, then Paris, then Osaka) only to find that tickets dont fit within your budget anyway. Sticking to this method may also mean you completely overlook interesting destinations youd never considered before. Thats where the excellent Google Flights anywhere hack comes in. Its perfect for people who are more flexible in terms of their destination and put a greater priority on staying within a certain budget. Heres how it works: Go to Google Flights as normal and enter your departure city in the Where from? field. Fill out your departure and return dates, as well, in the respective fields. But then, instead of entering a specific destination in the Where to? field, type in anywhere and click the search button. Now, on the results screen, you will see a global map displaying all the options available to you from your departure city to destinations around the world for the selected dates. By default, these options will cover all price ranges. However, you can narrow the results to show only tickets that fit within your budget by clicking the price filter dropdown menu and dragging the slider to your maximum preferred price. The results will then show you where in the world you can fly while staying within your budget. And keep in mind that the Google Flights results map is as interactive as regular Google Mapsso be sure to zoom in and pan around on the map, and youll see additional flight options appear. Click on any one of them to get more details about the selected itinerary. Find even more options with the flexible date hack The anywhere Google Flights hack can help you quickly discover destinations you can travel to within your budget. But another simple hack may reveal even more destinations you can afford. Thats because you may actually be able to discover more locations within your budget if your dates are flexible, too. Route prices arent set in stone, and they vary wildly depending on the date you want to fly. To reveal these potential new options, click on the date field from the search results screen. In the drop-down menu that appears, click on the Flexible Dates tab, select any one or all of the next six months, and indicate how long you want your trip to be: for the weekend, or for one or two weeks. Google Flights will then scour the internet to find you the destinations you can go to within your budget and across the periods you selected. This flexible date hack frequently yields even more results than the anywhere hack alone because there are often significant savings to be had on routes flown during periods of lower travel demand. Just one final thing to keep in mind: While you may be able to find new destinations you can afford to explore using these Google Flights hacks, remember that once you arrive, Google Maps may not actually be the best way to navigateso be sure to pack your phone with the apps that are.
Category:
E-Commerce
The concept of advancement is baked into the way we think about workalmost like it’s a video game. Just like you dont want to stay at a particular level of that game for too long, it sometimes doesnt feel like youre succeeding at work if your title doesnt change, and you dont get a significant raise. Getting a promotion isnt just a matter of wanting it or playing the game long enough. There are several factors at playonly some of which are under your control. First, the organization needs to have a position for you to move into. If there is no role for you to play, then there isnt much you can do to get promoted this year. Second, you have to decide whether the job you would be promoted into is one you really want. Third, you have to be ready for that new set of responsibilities. So, if you want to get promoted this year, you need to get information related to all three of those issues. Is there room for me? Before you get your hopes up for a promotion, you need to know whether there is a role for you. Early on in your career, the answer to that question is probably yes. Often, the first few promotions reflect your ability to do your role with less oversight and to take on additional responsibility in your initial role. Before long, though, promotions start to involve either oversight of an entire project or supervision of people. At that point, there are fewer potential roles available than when the promotion involves more technical expertise. Once youre on that people management track, the number of potential positions above the one you have go down. You may eventually reach a point when you may be completely qualified for a future role, but there may not be a position available. What does the next role really entail? As attractive as a promotion may sound in theory, you also have to ask yourself whether you would enjoy the job in practice. This question is particularly relevant when considering the people management track. Being a supervisor of other people is a very different role than the individual contributor roles that usually precede it. Just because you enjoy the work of your organization does not mean that you will enjoy having to manage others. As you rise in the organization, the work you do goes from being focused on the tactics for achieving particular goals to formulating the strategy that will guide the path of the organization. This strategic oversight comes with additional responsibility for the success and health of the organization. The job can be exciting, but also stressful. Talking with supervisors to find out the true responsibilities you will be taking on is important. Work and life need to be integrated. If your new role requires different hours or more engagement on nights and weekends, you should think through whether your lifestyle and responsibilities will support those changes. Be sure to talk with people in your life, such as a significant other. Their life might be affected by a change in your work requirements, so you’ll need their support. What do I need to learn? When you are approaching a promotion, youll never be completely ready. There is always a lot to learn on the job. That said, there is often work you can do to prepare. Your organization may offer technical or leadership classes that you can take to begin to develop the next set of skills. Talk with your supervisor, the HR team, and any learning and development professionals in your organization to find out what options there are for you to get a jump on the next round of skills. Look at job ads that your company or others put out for similar roles and get a sense of whether your current qualifications fit. If companies prefer advanced degrees for applicants to a position, it might be time to think about going back to school. Being proactive wont guarantee you the promotion you want, but it can help speed you on your way. And if a promotion in your current organization isnt in the cards, it will also get you ready to move on when the time is right. Finally, be aware that promotions dont always happen on your timeline. It can be frustrating to feel like you have languished in a role longer than you should. But, use the time to learn, to develop your social network, and to be ready to hit the ground running when a new opportunity does open up.
Category:
E-Commerce
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