By John Y. Brown III, on Fri Jul 18, 2014 at 12:00 PM ET  When I was 14 and staying with my father for the summer, I was in a hurry one day about something and knocked hard on the aging condo door and hit a spot of deteriorated wood and immediately got about a half dozen splinters in two of my fingers.
Thee door was flung open by my father’s lady friend who informed me my father wasn’t back yet and then noticing me holding my fingers while trying to hold back tears asked me what was wrong. I explained about knocking into some dead wood on the door and getting splinters to which she paused momentarily and then mustered the response, “If I were you, I wouldn’t have done that.”
I looked up at her in disbelief that she really said something so completely unhelpful. I decided she just really didn’t care that much and it was probably a hassle for her to come up even with that lame response.
They didn’t date for very long but ever since then when I find myself in a situation that catches me off guard and I have no desire to help with or feign concern about another person’s misfortune, I think to myself (and sometimes even say out loud, “If I were you, I wouldn’t have done that.”
So last week when the car dealer where we recently bought a car called me to check up on how we liked our car so far I told him we were very pleased. But when he then explained the salesperson had forgotten to charge sales tax on our car and I was going to need to pay them an extra $1300, I paused dumbly and then had a ready answer for him.
By Julie Rath, on Fri Jul 18, 2014 at 8:30 AM ET It’s never too late to pick up a gift for your pops (or to make pointed suggestions to your loved ones). From token to total splurge, below are 6 Rath-approved gifts for you to choose from.
 Black and Tan Beer Utensil $10 – There’s nothing like a good black and tan, and with this, your dad doesn’t need bartender skills to make one.
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 Leather Key Fob $35 – A nice key chain is a small pleasure he might not actually purchase for himself. I love the rugged leather combined with brass hardware.
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 Luxury Toys Volume 2 $41 – He can dream big as he flips through this gorgeous coffee table book reading about underwater motorcycles and personal spaceships.
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 Garmin Approach S1 GPS Watch $140 – Pro or no, if your dad’s a golfer, he’ll love this watch, which will allow him to measure individual shot distances and track how far he walks on the course.
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 Hartmann Garment Bag $445 – With travel, it’s key to keep your clothes neat so you don’t create extra work for yourself (or the hotel laundry) when you arrive at your destination. A bag like this is a frequent traveler’s best friend, as it keeps your hanging clothes in tact, and has pockets for shoes and toiletrees. It also fits nicely in an overhead airplane compartment.
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 Hermes Croc Clock (call for price) – For the Dad who has everything: an Art Deco crocodile clock by Paul Dupré-Lafon for Hermès, circa 1930.
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And for the new dad, here are my tips on keeping stylish while keeping your cool.
By Will Meyerhofer, on Thu Jul 17, 2014 at 1:30 PM ET  Here’s what you never hear anyone say at a Biglaw firm – followed by a discussion of why you never hear anyone say it.
Here we go…
Let’s work on this together. It’ll be more fun.
People write me all the time, complaining I’m too down on Biglaw. Nothing new there, but one guy, recently, expanded on the topic, adding that he works at a firm where everyone, so far as he knows, is happy – enjoying a rewarding career in a supportive, non-exploitative environment.
Perhaps you can see this coming: It turns out this guy owns the firm – and specializes in oral arguments before federal appellate courts. Prior to becoming managing partner, he attended top Ivy League schools.
By way of a reply, I opined: “Your experience might be considered atypical.”
In reality, his experience should be considered ridiculously atypical. Redonkulouslyatypical. Yet this presumably brilliant legal mind couldn’t manage to grasp that reality from where he was standing – at the top of the heap.
This man claims, without irony, that every lawyer at his firm is happy. But, that little voice in the back of your head begins to counter, before you’re even aware of having the thought: it’s your firm.
They work for you. Of course they act happy, just as the maid cleaning your hotel room – the one without a green card, with a family to feed, smiles and acts delighted to see you when you pop in to grab your extra iPad mini and she’s on her knees scrubbing the shower.
Presumably, someone else, some possibly unhappy little person at this guy’s law firm, is doing the work he would rather not think about – the work that has to be done. Maybe it’s a junior he’s never met. And I’d bet good money that other guy’s doing it all by himself, probably late at night or on a weekend.
Read the rest of…
Will Meyerhofer: What You Never Hear
By John Y. Brown III, on Thu Jul 17, 2014 at 12:00 PM ET  Has this ever happened to you?
“Unbelievable!” is all you can say.
You walk out of a coffee shop back to your car and notice a new and severe crack down the rear right side that wasn’t there when you parked. You utter in frustration, “Oh… man! How did this happen?” startling a women walking in with heels so high the break in concentration almost causes here to fall.
Not wanting to cause any injuries you stop talking out loud to yourself as your mind starts racing about how much this is going to cost you to fix and how unfair it is since you just got your car fixed less than a month ago for something else that wasn’t your fault (even though it really was your fault).
And then you realize your car is actually in the space behind the car you are fixated on and is just as you left it 20 minutes earlier.
And you pull out feeling the universe is, after all, a pretty fair place. And like you got your first good break of the day already and it’s not even 730am.
By Josh Bowen, on Thu Jul 17, 2014 at 8:30 AM ET
The hardest thing to do in life is to be yourself when everything around you wants you to be someone else. I struggle with the status quo. I struggle with being like other people. I have to be me. Like it or not. Arnold was a polarizing figure. A bodybuilder, with perhaps the best physique ever, turned mega movie star, turned Governor of California turned back to move star. He defines success, perhaps when success shouldn’t have been attained. A guy with a lisp from Austria, new to the United States takes the world by storm.
Because of the following 6 rules that we can all live by…
1. Trust yourself
At the end of the day we can only rely on ourselves. No one can care about our success or failure more than us. We must trust ourselves and go with our gut feelings. Continue to strive for personal greatness and always remember nothing is fatal or final.
2. Break the rules…
To hell with the rules. Your not suppose to do this or do that. Screw them. We don’t need them. We set the rules. We are the measuring sticks by which all are judged and we didn’t get there by playing it easy and playing by the rules. Break them and break them often.
3. Never be afraid to fail
You will fail. I will fail. However, we must not be afraid to fail because where there is failure there is success. The only way to succeed is to fail. If you have never failed you have never tried. Push the envelope of what you think is possible. You will learn a lot about what it takes to succeed.
4. Don’t listen to the naysayers
Nothing is impossible. With a strategic game plan and a hellacious work ethic, anything is possible. Don’t listen to people who say you can’t do it. They are only feeding your drive to do it. Haters will hate, do not listen to them. Follow your heart an your gut.
5. Work your butt off
Hard work is a given. Nothing will be given to you. You want it bad enough you will go get it. Work your ass off every day with your goals in mind. When you take off remember there is someone out there working towards what you want. Keep pushing and never let up.
6. Give back
Pay it forward. Give back to what has given to you. When you succeed teach others your ways. Mentor young minds to stimulate greatness in them. Leave a legacy no one can match. Be the measuring stick.
All things are possible through fitness. The above list, if followed, will produce success in any field or endeavor. This is short, simple and easily applied. Go toward your greatness.
By Brooke Masters, on Wed Jul 16, 2014 at 1:30 PM ET  When most US investors do not like the way a company is heading, they vote with their feet and sell their shares. But a new generation of activist investors is challenging that tradition by opting to amass shares and demand board representation and strategic change instead.
Hertz, the car rental group, became the latest US company to come under such pressure. It is now said to be considering selling or spinning off its equipment hire business after stakebuilding by investors including Dan Loeb and Carl Icahn.
While activists have been around for decades, the scale appears unprecedented. Such hedge funds were managing $90bn as of last year’s fourth quarter, almost triple the total five years ago, according to Hedge Fund Research.
By John Y. Brown III, on Wed Jul 16, 2014 at 12:00 PM ET
  So, I got a haircut.
And I lost 23 lbs.
(Jan 2nd 2014 vs July 2nd 2014)
I’m calling it the “Facebook Diet” because a key motivator is regular Facebook updates on my progress.
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Out with the old –and too big.
21 months ago I bought a pair of jeans that are 34w as an incentive to fit into them 2 months later.
21 months –and 21 lbs– later I fit into them. Not what I would call “a comfortable fit” but I am wearing them anyway.
And got rid of all my 38w pants today along with a few other (now) oversized clothes.
Off to Evolve consignment store and Goodwill.
And 19 months late is still better than never. Or even 20 months later.
By Lauren Mayer, on Wed Jul 16, 2014 at 8:30 AM ET
Politics and pop culture have always been strange allies, from campaign songs (“Tippecanoe & Tyler Too,” William Henry Harrison’s 1840 theme) to actors-turned-politicians (Arnold Schwarzenegger, Ronald Reagan, and I hope someone reading this knows who George Murphy is – I am NOT that old but I am a buff of old movie musicals and learned about him through a Tom Lehrer song . . . but I digress). Presidents have even joined in the fun, including Clinton’s famous sax solo on Arsenio Hall and Obama’s appearance on “Between The Ferns,” although nothing can top Richard Nixon uncomfortably saying “Sock it to me?” on Laugh-In. (And yes, I AM that old . . . )
However, this alliance can sometimes be not only awkward but cause friction when politicians use songs without permission – Jackson Browne successfully sued McCain for using his “Running On Empty” to attack Obama in ads, and Ann & Nancy Wilson formally complained when Sarah Palin used “Barracuda” as her theme song. Those objections are understandable, since repeated use of a song implies the artist endorses that candidate. On the other hand, I sympathize with conservatives who have a much harder time finding good anthems by rock stars who support them – not much to choose from besides Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless America,” which might explain Ted Nugent’s recent resurgence . . .
The other time rock & politics make uncomfortable bedfellows is when pundits jump into the fray, like Bill O’Reilly’s near-obsessive complaints about Beyoncé being a bad role model – although as Jon Stewart pointed out, the video he was most upset about involved sex with her husband in an expensive limousine, so O’Reilly should have been thrilled that she was glorifying both marital passion and conspicuous capitalism. Unfortunately, other Fox news hosts must have missed Stewart’s ridicule of what he termed O’Reilly’s ‘disapproval boners,’ because last week Jesse Watters claimed that Democrats like Hillary Clinton relied on “Beyonce voters,” single women who “depend on government because they’re not depending on their husbands. They need things like contraception, health care, and they love to talk about equal pay.” This foot-in-mouth moment inspired endless internet analysis, a wildly popular Tumblr account, and at least one suburban mom to squeeze into a leotard and take advantage of a rock/political moment too tempting to resist:
By David Goldberg, on Tue Jul 15, 2014 at 1:30 PM ET “But if you never try, you’ll never know”—Fix You, Coldplay
 Ten years ago, before I was a husband and father, I learned that giving flexible work hours to your best people is a great way to keep them. I was running Yahoo Music, and my senior business development leader, Karin, was doing a terrific job but needed some time at home after the birth of her first child. She asked me if she could work four days a week and get paid 80 percent of her full-time salary. Because she was a star performer, I agreed, though we hadn’t allowed people to work part-time before. Karin did a great job, and we never really noticed that she was out on Fridays. When her second child was born, she wanted to travel less. We switched her into a product development job, still at 80 percent time. She not only flourished but was eventually able to take on a general manager role at Yahoo in another group because she had experience in both business and product development. Karin has continued to progress in her career as a successful leader, and managed to keep her 80 percent schedule until her kids were in school full time.
When I became CEO of SurveyMonkey four years ago, I used this lesson in flexibility to help attract outstanding senior executives. Today, 40 percent of our senior executives are women with children, an unusually high number in the technology industry. I was able to hire Selina, our senior vice president of product and engineering, by having this elastic approach to hiring great people. At the time, Selina was four months pregnant with her first child. She had many opportunities to start or run her own company (she founded Evite when she was at Stanford), but I was able to persuade her that she could have both a huge impact and more flexibility by joining us than she would have by doing her own start up.
Minna, whom I hired early on to run SurveyMonkey’s international business, had taken a year off after her second child was born and was hesitant to commit to full-time work. I convinced her that she could work four days a week, like Karin, and I was confident that 80 percent of Minna was more than 100 percent of most people we could have hired. Brad, our head of user experience, was very interested in joining us, but he and his wife were expecting their first child and were concerned about his hours, wondering if it made sense for him to jump to a smaller company. Selina and I took Brad and his wife out to dinner and convinced both of them that it could work better—that if he joined our team, Brad would be able to be around more for his family by working a day a week from home.
Too often we focus on titles, compensation and perks to attract great people. I have learned that giving talented men and women flexibility and trusting them to excel has been key to hiring and retaining a great team.
The author is the Founder and CEO of Survey Monkey. Read his full bio here.
By John Y. Brown III, on Tue Jul 15, 2014 at 12:00 PM ET  Young people –especially young men in their 20s, 30s and even 40s– like to think they know it all.And it is embarrassing but critical as they get older to re-evaluate and correct long-held but wrong assumptions.
For example, in your 50s you start to realize that the blow dryer on the wall in men’s restrooms that you have been using to dry your hands for decades is actually for drying your pants.
Or maybe it is just practical creativity and innovation that comes with age.
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