I’ll be posting photos from Fashion and Finance later this week. In the meantime, I wanted to share this great TED talk.

In the video from the conference in Edmonton earlier this year, entrepreneur Cameron Herold argues schools are stifling, rather than nurturing, entrepreneurialism and offers some solutions.  Follow the discussion on this TED talk or share your opinions below.

I just heard from one of the presenters at our upcoming Fashion and Finance NYC retreat (there are a couple of open spots for the June 24-26 event, if you want to join us). Claire Meunier and her mother are going to do a joint session on the “Extreme Networking” it took for Claire to get established after earning an MBA from one of the top schools in the country. Their story is compelling and instructive. More than 16 percent of 20 to 24-year are unemployed and, short of a miracle, I am not feeling Pollyanna-ish about a big improvement anytime soon. The economy is undergoing a massive restructuring that no one wants to talk about. But more on that another day.

Not Enough:

At Fashion and Finance NYC (June 24-26) we about the "Extreme Social Networking" it takes to get great jobs now.

Claire and her mother are going to talk about what it took for Claire to land on her feet in a meaningful position, commensurate with her experience and education. It took Claire almost a year of relentless conversations, meetings, inquiries, reminders, letters, emails, more meetings, and outreach to everyone she had ever met in her life (You think I’m kidding; I’m not.) She understood she had to build a vast web of relationships—REAL relationships, not just Facebook friends or LinkedIn connections. She had to be relentlessly tenacious. She was and she succeeded. And her parents, used to a world in which hard work and a good track record are rewarded, had to adapt to the new environment their daughter faced.

Claire’s story is an important one because in many ways she had EVERYthing going for her: a great experience, top level education, supportive family, intellect, sense of humor, and social network that was already strong. Even with all those assets, her journey was challenging.

The implications for kids who don’t have such resources, or who are not prepared to attack the quest for meaningful, sustaining work are significant. Without Herculean effort, many young people will be left out of the pool for ‘great work’. And if they are counting on less challenging work where they can ‘get by’ they are still in trouble. Those entry-level jobs that used to soak up the energy of American kids are shrinking. Think of all the ticket booths, airline jobs, and retail functions once manned and womanned by actual people, now handled by bank ATMS, airline kiosks, self-service restaurants and electronic touch screens. The entry-level world that launched millions of boomers is vanishing.

Everyone coming to Fashion and Finance next week will enjoy the mother/daughter tale of how Claire got ‘launched.’ I plan to reprise my ‘Launch Webinar’ later this summer and will include stories from their presentation. This new economy requires that families manage their ‘human capital’ with a new attention to developing entrepreneurial kids with extreme networking skills and the capacity to build authentic relationships that will help them find a place in this new and changing economic web.

I’m just back from a family business conference in Istanbul. 70+ multi-generation families from across Turkey convened with the International Family Business Forum to discuss succession and wealth transfer. I gave a talk on preparing the next generation for these happenings and am still processing the the comments that were provoked by my session. I plan to report on it in a few days (when jet lag and brain function have sorted themselves out).

In the meantime, I thought I’d share this piece written by Paul Sullivan for the NYT last Saturday. He quoted me liberally and the piece has elicited strong response from families living through the issues he writes about and that I comment on, as well as from commentators who seem to think that helping ‘rich kids’ is an outrage.

Though I’m deeply concerned about the vast chasm between rich and poor in this country, scapegoating kids who are growing up with means doesn’t seem especially productive. Our job is to provide them with tools to deal with issues that are the unintended consequences of inheriting wealth, not to castigate them for their fate.

As always, I look forward to your comments.

I got an email from a reporter the other day I thought I’d share with you all! Because I am preparing for the webinar on “The Launch” coming up later this month (email me for more info), his email triggered a small rant (below). I’d love your comments.

Here’s what got me started:

The reporter, Steve Fox, writes for SPAN, a publication produced by the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi with the objective of explaining America to a high-end audience of Indians–lawyers, doctors, legislators, executives, etc. He’s working on a piece explaining why, as he puts it, “we in the U.S. put such a high value on working voluntarily at an early age—the paper route, the lemonade stand, clerking in a store, helping out on the family farm or in the family business, that kind of thing. I’ve explained,” Fox continued, “that things have changed in the U.S. and that, in the current environment, with high unemployment and the prevalence of illegal workers, many jobs that might have been done by teenagers or college students are being filled by someone else.” But they [SPAN] want an article nonetheless, partially because the value system in India is much different—middle-class kids there would not be encouraged to work. So I wonder if you would be wiling to give me your thoughts. Is it the Protestant work ethic, capitalism, or values of learning self-reliance that make a difference here?

Because of the webinar and the white paper we’re about to publish on “How Great Families Launch Twenty Somethings,” I have spent a lot of time thinking about this question. This is what I wrote back to him:

The values you describe (work ethic, early work for success) are still core and active across dominant US cultures. And there is still an equation linking work with worth here in the US. Across all income groups, the idea that you do nothing and pursue idleness is anathema, embarrassing somehow. Philanthropy in the United States is another genuine form of meaningful work. But you’re right that the game has changed.

The work we’re doing on ‘The Launch’ phase of family development emerged from families asking us for help getting twenty-somethings ‘launched’ into independent, self-sufficient lives. Subsidy of adult children is a rising problem in this country, across all income groups and the drive to ‘help kids get on track’ is a reflection of our sense that work and worth are connected.

As I first started to work on this issue, I admit to having leaned toward the bias that we were dealing with ’slacker kids’ and overly protective parents (my own work ethic writ large, front and center). But I was wrong. Even very well connected families with kids who are quite accomplished are finding that entry into the work world—and even the volunteer work world—is pretty challenging.

Here’s why: whole industries are shifting and collapsing. Publishing, which use to swallow up thousands of entry level kids hardly exists as we once knew it. It’s social media now and at the entry level it doesn’t pay. Finance has consolidated and replaced low level jobs with technology, law firms are parking associates in non-profits until things ‘pick up’, taking up non-profit slots entry level kids might have taken. And as manufacturing collapsed, ‘middle class’ and working class adults are moving into what would otherwise have been entry level jobs.

The work ethic is very much alive. How to exercise it is getting more challenging. Meanwhile the department of labor just issued guidelines on internships, making the unpaid route to your first job harder. They had to, abuses were rampant. But still, getting a foot in the door for kids who can AFFORD to work free and want to work is even harder.

Which takes us to my new mantra and the new cry you will be hearing more of (and that we’re working with families on): “You can’t assume your kids will be able to take a job; they will have to learn how to MAKE a job.” Slacker kids will in fact have an ever harder time getting established, but the worry is that kids with a driving work ethic will be struggling too. Everything we’re doing with young people these days is aimed at building their entrepreneurial skills, supporting their most tenacious drives, trying to buttress that connection between early work and experience and later engagement in purposeful, meaningful lives (this is not JUST about the money, it’s about building great lives).

It may be that out there in the future I cannot yet see there is a more laid back, less work driven vision of existence that the next generation will morph into. And maybe that’s a good thing. For the moment at least, the best I can say is that we are ‘in transition.’

What do you think? Is there a new work ethic? Is our thinking unique?

In the early days, Camp Start-Up was an experiment.

How, I wondered back then, could we give teenagers a taste of entrepreneurial life that would be as appealing as a summer of sailing, as much of an adventure as Outward Bound, and as memorable as trekking in Thailand? A tall order, but I knew that to get anyone to risk even a little slice of the idyll we dream of as summer it would take more than listening to geezers wax euphoric about the joys of a balance sheet in a stuffy classroom in July.

via Acukiki

That first summer the camp was for girls only and we held it at a spa in Palm Springs, CA. It was pretty cool (116 degrees on some days, but cool). Palm Springs was not, then, a hotbed of tech start-ups. But the owner of the spa (Sheila Cluff) was a founding member of the Committee of 200 (a club for women entrepreneurs) and getting a chance to be ‘backstage’ at a spa, was, a new kind of experience for these girls. Sheila was an ice skating star and on tour by the time she was 16, and her tales of making money by charging interest on loans to the older (and less frugal) skaters on the tour caught the attention of the campers.

The next year we moved the camp to the Sonoma Valley (looking for a slightly cooler summer climate). And that year, Margo Fraser, the owner of Birkenstocks USA, hosted the girls (and made them brand loyal forever by giving them all cute shoes at a discount so deep they each felt the triumph of a great steal). Once again, we had an entrepreneurial role model whose story was so interesting and accessible, the girls could all imagine themselves as successful entrepreneurs.

In the beginning, our biggest challenge was getting the girls to think big, to have a vision. The most common business start-up idea for girls then was a nail salon. Not a chain of salons, or the world’s biggest salon, just one cozy little salon, their own tiny empire. Thinking big takes practice and in those days (when even the idea of Take Our Daughters to Work Day sparked great controversy), girls were not encouraged to think big. Sometimes it broke my heart how pinched their visions were. How could they change the world if they could not imagine themselves as big players in the world?

But when those ‘aha’ moments arrived and the light went on, when yet another teenager saw herself truly as a mover/shaker, who could make an idea come to life, we could see a whole new path open up for herself. The confidence and self-awareness they went home with was so transformative that parents cried, watching their daughters present their first ‘business plan’ at the camp closing ceremony. So maybe camp wasn’t quite like a hike through Yosemite, but the kids did take home some pretty amazing memories.

These days the camps are co-ed (well, we do have one that’s ‘girls only’ in Florida) and focus has widened a bit. We no longer focus just on business start-ups. Kids who have a dream to be an actor, a teacher, a ‘green activist;’ or a writer need entrepreneurial skills every bit as much as the kid with an idea to replace Google. 21st Century kids need to know how to develop financial safety nets, no matter what their career or avocation, and knowing how to make a job will be more critical than just knowing how to ‘get a job.’

Camp is still fun—golf, swimming, tennis, vegging under big shady trees with friends on a warm summer afternoon are still part of the plan. But what we learned from those early days of Camp Start-Up has made the new camp a place for teenagers to become whoever they want to be. And that is an adventure that’s hard to top.

At our California location we’ll be going on a field trip to American Apparel, one of the largest and most innovative clothing companies in the United States.

Where Are We Going?
American Apparel is a vertically integrated garment company that’s known for hip clothes, racy ads, and viral growth. Since it opened its first store in 2003, they’ve opened 260 stores in 19 countries.

What Will We Learn?
While we visit the main factory in downtown Los Angeles (the largest garment factory in the United States, according to the New York Times), we’ll talk to managers about what it means to be publicly held and what it takes to run an operation that employs over 5,000 people. We’ll also explore American Apparel’s decision to pay all of its employees a living wage and talk about how companies can have a conscious.

Want to know more?
American Apparel has a five-minute introductory video that’s worth watching. If you want to know more about the company as an investment, look at the Google Finance page. If you just can’t wait for Camp and want to know more about vertical integration, the Wikpedia entry is pretty good.

Skirt! is a very cool online and print magazine that’s all about women, work, play, creativity, and style. Every month an expert shares advice in a section Skirt! calls “Girl’s First.” This month, they asked Joline to share her advice for aspiring entrepreneurs. Check out three of her tips below, or see full article in Skirt.

1. Be weird.
Before you start a project, pass your idea through the Ben & Jerry’s test. Ask yourself, is it weird enough? Don’t waste your valuable time on something someone else can do easily.

2. Take yourself seriously.
It’s the difference between “maybe someday” and “yesterday I did.” People who believe in themselves get things done. And not taking yourself seriously gives others license to do the same. Never say, “But, I’m a girl,” or “But, I’m too young.” Just do it.

3. Learn the language.
If you’re going to start a business you need to talk the talk. Read the business pages. Subscribe to Inc. and GOOD magazines. Take a business course. Intern for savvy businesswomen. In no time you’ll be fluent in profit, net income, assets, debt and a hundred other business words.

Read all of Joline’s Entrepreneurial Eight.

The headline was chilling to firms and families alike: “Growth of Unpaid Internships May Be Illegal, Officials Say.”

In a market offering fewer opportunities for high school and college-age students to acquire life skills once developed as part of a summer job experience, internships have become a significant source of experience and an important part of the launch process for the next generation. But abused by some employers who overuse kids as free summer labor, many companies will become wary of government oversight and may back away from offering internships altogether.

This will be bad for kids—and for companies. Young people will have fewer opportunities to observe and experience the culture of a variety of workplaces, and companies will have fewer low risk ways to vet potential employees.

But there’ s no cause to panic, for either intentional families or good companies. This is an easy—and an important—challenge to manage. The U.S. Department of Labor published [PDF] six criteria for determining if an internship is legitimate or just a thinly disguised means of getting free labor. And the internships we’ve been involved with at IMI meet all these requirements without a stretch.They are:

1. The training, even though it includes actual operation of the facilities of the employer, is similar to what would be given in a vocational school or academic educational institution. This means that the internship setting must treat the intern as a trainee and provide actual instruction. This is what you want anyway. Young people should be able to observe and try activities that are part of a real learning plan. The student can work with employers to create such a plan (much like an independent learning project). Companies can design these as well.
2. The training is for the benefit of the trainees—or intern. While companies certainly benefit from having a chance to observe potential future employees, MOST legitimate internships are too time consuming and expensive to be of much help to the intern host. Free labor is a lot less ‘free’ than most people understand but when the terms of the internship are explicit, this aspect of the criteria is easier to meet.
3. The trainees (interns) do not displace regular employees, but work under their close observation. Since most internships we’ve been involved with only last from two to eight weeks, there is little danger interns are displacing real employees. But this is a workplace accountability issue and one that can be clarified at the start of the internship.
4. The employer that provides the training derives no immediate advantage from the activities of the trainees, and on occasion the employer’s operations may actually be impeded. Indeed, most internships are done as an act of generosity on the part of the employer. Hosting an intern takes up valuable time and resources. Because an intern can hardly understand the environment in less than three months, let alone make a meaningful contribution to the workplace, employers are making an investment in the future when they offer an internship, not gaining immediate advantage.
5. Trainees are not necessarily entitled to a job at the conclusion of the training period. Particularly if an intern is still in school, this is not immediately relevant. But IF the intern goes back to school, or on to another internship and later returns to apply for a job independently, there is no foul.
6. The employer and the trainees understand that the trainees are not entitled to wages for the time spent in training. This is the easy one as most internships are established as free experiences. In some cases the family pays a third party or the employer for young people to gain exposure to industries, professions, and environments they have some interest in or curiosity about.

Internships are vital as vehicles for helping the next generation integrate into the social network of an entrepreneurial culture. Giving kids access to role models, specialized language, and industry knowledge is key to helping them launch into adulthood. Now is not the time to panic. It’s time for next gen members and their families to plan and propose an internship for the summer experience of choice.

Source: U.S. Department of Labor “ADVISORY: TRAINING AND EMPLOYMENT GUIDANCE LETTER NO. 12-09”

Green jobs are big this year. Campers at our Massachusetts location will head off to one green building materials company and meet the father-daughter team behind it.

Where are we going?
We’ll be checking out NuCedar Mills, the first company in the building materials industry to introduce factory pre-finished, premium grade, architectural siding, trim and millwork. It’s virtually indistinguishable from painted cedar siding and environmentally friendly.

What are we doing?
We’re going to tour their 52,000-square-foot plant and talk to founder and CEO Tom Roper and his daughter and supply chain manager, Kerry, about the challenges of founding and funding their company.

What will we learn?
We’ll learn about operations, manufacturing and patents and talk with Tom and Kerry about what it means to be a green company.

Want to know more?
Take a look at their website and be sure to take a look at their FAQ to learn more about their green credentials.

Don’t undertake a project unless it is manifestly important and nearly impossible.
Edwin Land, inventor, founder of Polaroid

Edwin Land challenged the laws of physics to invent instant photography, in the pre-dawn days of digital imaging. Land was still in his lab when I worked for Polaroid (I was very young) and to be in that environment in those days was to know what it meant to work for someone who believed in his bones that impossible is just a state of mind.

image via SavePolaroid

Friends and colleagues know that I carry Land’s conviction with me. Like a tube of lipstick in my purse, I am never without it. And three pieces of news in the last few days reinforced my adherence to Land’s directive.

The first is the passage of the Health Care Bill. Though still under siege, I know that families concerned about the safety of uninsured 20-somethings will rest easier as they understand the implications of what the bill means to them.

Fifty percent of all college grads under 25 are working at jobs that do not require a college degree. This suggests that millions of twenty-somethings work at jobs that don’t offer health insurance. And though you hope young adults are healthy, life happens, and an emergency appendectomy, an accident, or a virus picked up while traveling can undermine the economics of the most financially secure families.

As one dad said to me: “My son [23] doesn’t want to spend the money to get health insurance. But if anything happened to him I would of course spend whatever it takes to care for him. Of course, that has consequences for the rest of my family…” Giving kids a chance to ‘launch’ without the extra burden of hefty healthy insurance bills is a boon to family economics and peace of mind.

The second bit of news is the Impossible Project’s Announcement that the film made famous by the SX-70 camera) has in fact been recreated and is available to serious photo buffs. Read more about this improbable story. I love watching people challenge the notion of ‘impossible!’

And finally, some impossible news of my own. Going through old files this week, our editor came across an 2002 WSJ article profiling financial education firms. Of six companies mentioned, only two on are still operating. Building a company, any company, is an almost impossible task. And that our vision—‘financial education, it’s not JUST about the money’ still resonates with clients, friends, investors, and partners is encouragement enough for me to stay committed to the ‘impossible.’