Category: Business

Investing in Detroit – Jamie Dimon of Chase on 60 Minutes

The failure of Detroit’s neighborhoods was a personal tragedy for me.  I grew up in a vibrant working class neighborhood on the Northeast side of the city.  My family home was sold in the 70s after my parents retired from their UAW jobs in the auto industry  and moved to Florida. The area gradually deteriorated and was bulldozed.

So it was heartening to watch a segment of 60 Minutes last weekend hosted by Leslie Stahl on how JP Morgan Chase is using data to invest more efficiently, helping entrepreneurs open businesses in parts of Detroit that most need their services.  She interviewed Jamie Dimon, the CEO of Chase, who told her that the idea grew out of his interest in changing the way the bank was engaging in philanthropy.  He wanted to try and tackle a major national issue, and focused on Detroit first.

Dimon explained that the Chase program (launched in 2014) is currently helping young Detroit entrepreneurs by building a database just for Detroit that identifies neighborhoods in the city ripe for redevelopment.  JP Morgan’s program also steers funds to minority businesses that wouldn’t otherwise qualify for them.  And now Chase is getting ready to commit half a billion dollars to take what it has learned in Detroit and export it to other cities like Chicago and Washington D.C.

Stahl pointed out that the financial crisis of 2008 decimated fragile economies like Detroit’s and Dimon acknowledged that “we owe back to society.”  For a summary of the 60 Minutes interview, visit this link at https://www.cbsnews.com/news/jamie-dimon-jp-morgan-chase-ceo-makes-data-focused-investment-in-detroit-60-minutes-2019-11-10/

A HIGH ENERGY SECRET – WORKING IN 90 MINUTE CYCLES

I recently became interested in how to better manage my stress and productivity and became aware of the work of a thought leader in high performance.

Tony Schwartz, chief executive officer of The Energy Project (www.theenergyproject.com) has studied stress and what keeps us at peak energy and concludes that most of us have it all wrong.  Less is more.

We actually have more energy and get more done when we take more breaks and, yes, even more vacations.  In fact, Schwartz cites studies that revealed we move from a state of alertness progressively into physiological fatigue approximately every 90 minutes.  As he puts it, “Our bodies regularly tell us to take a break, but we often override these signals and instead stoke ourselves up with caffeine, sugar and our own emergency reserves – the stress hormones adrenaline, noradrenaline and cortisol.”

Schwarz recommends working in 90-minute intervals as a prescription for maximizing productivity.  A study of elite performers, including musicians, athletes, actors and chess players, found the best performers typically practice in uninterrupted sessions that last no more than 90 minutes.  They begin in the morning, take a break between sessions, and rarely work for more than four and a half hours in any given day.  Schwartz does his writing in three uninterrupted 90-minute sessions – beginning first thing in the morning, with breaks between.  “I learned,” he said, “that it’s not how long, but how well, you renew that matters most in terms of performance. “   The more rapidly and deeply he learned to quiet his mind and relax his body, the more restored he felt afterwards.  For more inspiration, try reading his blogs at http://www.theenergyproject.com/blog/author/tony-schwartz

 

 

Tackling the Future One Leap at a Time

“Sometimes you just have to jump off the cliff and trust in yourself,” my late husband Tim Robinson lectured me when  I balked at a career opportunity because it seemed such a leap of faith.   Tim had blazed an incredible career in journalism by never questioning his talent – and it took him forward in amazing, ground-breaking ways.  I call it “living life ahead of the curve.”

I recently joined a BNI (Business Networking International) chapter in Michigan and we are constantly asked to share our business goals.  Mine is to continue those leaps of faith in my life to find the new paths that will keep me energized and productive.

I’ve admired  the amazing pioneers I’ve met in many fields on my own journey.  That includes those in journalism, publishing, public relations and food coops (I was on the first Board of the amazing Flatbush Food Coop).  During my time in Silicon Valley, I admired the internet entrepreneurs I met  during the dotcom boom. I also have known so many talented women entrepreneurs throughout the years from my involvement in Women in Communications and Women in Business in California, and the National Association of Women Business Owners in both California and New York.  They all shared a passion for their chosen work and a fearlessness in taking on challenges.  Continue reading →

The Cure for Entrepreneurial Burnout – Try the Sleep Revolution

Arianna Huffington,the high-energy founder and editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post, knows all about entrepreneurial burnout.  Until recently, she was famous for carrying four cell phones, and jumping into waiting cars for up to 17 appointments each day on her global business trips.  Now she is hoping to become famous as a guru on the health crisis being caused by such non-stop ambition.  As she warns, “we are in the midst of a sleep-deprivation crisis.”  Her new book is The Sleep Revolution, inspired by her own professional meltdown, which culminated with her collapse, breaking a cheek bone on her desk as she fell down.  She was later diagnosed with sleep deprivation and burnout.

During a recent CNN interview with Fareed Zakaria, Huffington now declares that everything in your life gets better if you just get enough sleep – your health, creativity and capacity to lead all get better, and you are less stressed.  In fact, she cites that earlier civilizations revered  the power of dreams so much, they had sleep temples to ensure the population was rested and creative. Huffington decided to study history to find out how we started devaluing sleep and found that it traced back to the first industrial revolution, when workers started being treated like machines.  She added that it escalated with the 2nd industrial revolution with Thomas Edison’s invention of the light bulb.  And now the 3rd industrial revolution is digital, making us all addicts to our devices, as she puts it. Continue reading →

Study shows Death Rates Rising for Middle-Aged White Americans

I grew up in a working class family in a vibrant neighborhood in northeast Detroit .  I took it for granted  that my parents would live long, healthy lives, since my grandparents on both sides—maternal and paternal– lived well into their 80s–and one grandfather lived to be 94.  They were farmers and lived in the country, in upstate Michigan and Canada.

Yet a headline recently in the New York Times made me very sad. “Death Rates Rising for Middle-Aged White Americans, Study Finds”.   The study’s results were were reported in early November by two Princeton economists who analyzed health and mortality data from the Centers for disease Control and Prevention and from other sources.  According to the article, they concluded that rising annual death rates among this group are being driven not by the big killers like heart disease and diabetes but by an epidemic of suicides and afflictions stemming from substance abuse, alcoholic liver disease and overdoses of heroin and prescription opioids. The economists concluded that taken together, suicides, drugs and alcohol explained the overall increase in deaths. The effect was largely confined to people with a high school education or less. In that group, death rates rose by 22 percent while they actually fell for those with a college education.

I remember my parents again.  My dad was forced to go to work after 8th grade but was a self-educated man who loved to read history books at night and took my brothers and I to see Shakespearean dramas.  He not only made it to retirement from his trade job at Chrysler’s but got to enjoy several years of retirement in Florida before he died at 71. I was shocked – that was much too young – but at least it wasn’t middle age. My mother, who retired from the assembly line at GM, lived until 81. No, they didn’t live as long as their parents, but they also didn’t collapse at 45. Something is very wrong today in the working class and as a nation we should be very concerned about this group — as we expect America to hold opportunity for all.  I grew up in a family that felt the working class life was a noble and healthy one, even as they encouraged us to get college educations.  Clearly something is now wrong.  And clearly the study shows it is only affecting white Americans so severely. Is this the legacy of the de-industrialization of America?  Are there even more Americans than before who feel shut out of the economy and discouraged?  The entire article can be read at this link:   http://www.nytimes.com/2www15/11/03/health/death-rates-rising-for-middle-aged-white-americans-study-finds.html?_r=1

Chrysler Super Bowl Ads go from “Made in Detroit” to Global Impact

Since I returned to my hometown Detroit area a few years ago, I’ve fallen in love with the Chrysler 200, first introduced to me by my brother Bill, who retired from Chrysler Engineering, the second generation to work there after my Dad.  So it made me especially proud that Chrysler brightened the Super Bowl each year with a spectacular ad that saluted my hometown and featured super stars Eminem, Clint Eastwood and Bob Dylan.

This year’s Super Bowl reflected the company’s transition into a global firm, FCA – and the ads for Fiat, Chrysler and Dodge took on an international theme, instead of the Detroit pride emphasis of the past.

Still, the quality and audience appeal was clearly still there.  In particular, the 60 second Fiat video ad drew overwhelming crowd approval and laughter as it followed the journey of a Viagra-like blue pill accidentally thrown out of a bedroom window on its flight throughout an Italian landscape.  When it finally lands in the gas tank of a Fiat 500, the red car is transformed into the new 500X crossover.  In an NBC analysis, it was rated one of the top ads because the audience loved the sexy inuendos portrayed in such a funny and classy way.

A second 60 second ad, “Wisdom” was another short video that starred 11 centenarians thoughtfully giving advice for living life to the fullest before sinister laughter and burning rubber in a 2015 Dodge Challenger.

The finale for Fiat Chrysler was a scenic, 90-second spot for the  Jeep Renegade – and,  according to the Detroit News,  the automaker used this ad to make Jeep a significant international brand by  taking viewers on a world-wide journey through lyrics of “This Land Is Your Land”sung by Marc Scibilia — spanning the globe to locations across the U.S., Italy, Brazil, China, Spain, United Kingdom, Japan, Australia, Thailand and United Arab Emirates.  Data provided by the music discovery app Shazam showed that the Nashville singer-songwriter’s version of Woody Guthrie’s  classic anthem was the top  searched musical moment of the game, outside of the half-time show.

According to a statement from Fiat Chrysler Chief Marketin g Officer Olivier Francios, “FCA US always strives to do something different, something unexpected yet with a purpose, for the largest television audience of the year and this year’s Super Bowl videos are no exception.”  While I had been hoping for another spectacular salute to my hometown, I also like to think that Detroit after the bankruptcy will take on the new cosmopolitan and international tone set by FCA – my hometown, for sure, deserves to laugh and celebrate its very real global impact.