Erin Albert's Blog

Do you ever have those days or weeks where you wake up and have a song just stuck in your head?  Today, it wasn’t just a song.  It was for me a band instead – New Order.  The best reason I can conjure up why–is that a lot of my law school homies are taking that thing called the bar exam today and tomorrow.  My thoughts and prayers are with them….and with them as well comes a new order of leadership.

That also goes right at an assignment and idea I’ve been working on for the past 2 weeks.  That is, what makes education great?

When I say “great education” to you, what’s the first thing that comes to mind?  Is it a 4-year ivy-league education?  Or, is it an online learning experience on demand, while you’re home in bed in your jammies?  Is it reading a great book?  Or is it working on a team?  Really, just what is great education?

I’m not sure anymore.  I used to think that ivy-covered building thingy, where Socrates and Shakespeare were taught in its hallowed halls.  But seriously, does any of that really get someone a 6-figure job anymore?  Does ANY education at all secure a positive future anymore?  I don’t know.

What I do know is that along with new order, another quote rings in my head, by Derek Bok–lawyer, and former president of Harvard University.  He said, “If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.”  I get that we need to have an educated society in order to have social order and freedom to the greatest extent possible; however, I also know that not everyone has the privilege of going to college.  What intrigues me most of all is what “good” looks like when it comes to higher education, or any education for that matter.

Hopefully I’ll have a new order in my head soon on what “good” in education really is…

Last but certainly not least, to my law school homies with bar fever: one more day, peeps.  One more day – then you’re on your way! Rock on…whatever song is in your head!

You heard it here first: I’m human.  There are things I love, and although I’m not much of a hater, things I do really hate.  Some things I just hate to love; but I just can’t help myself.  Maybe if I put these things into the universe, I’ll break my bonds from them?  I don’t know…it could have the exact opposite effect.  Nonetheless, here we go – here are a few things I hate to love, darn it:

1. Potato Chips – the bane of my dieting existence is clearly carbohydrates.  I really do have a sweet tooth, primarily, but every once in awhile, I crave the potato.  This brand and flavor is my absolute favorite.  They have them in the vending machine at law school.  Ugh.  Whatever weight one gains in college, take that times 1.5 and that’s the weight I’ve gained in law school…due in part no doubt to the potatoes.

2. Harvard men – I’m really not much of a man chaser, but there’s something alluring about those Harvard men.  They’re smart, charming, and just a little cocky–but cocky in the sense that they can live up to that cockiness by bringing their A games.  The trifecta of my bane of existence.  Hate that.  Love that. Glad I don’t live in Boston.

3. Yoga pants – I have one pair of yoga pants.  I thought, however, they were pants for wearing to law class on Saturday mornings.  My yoga pants have never seen an actual yoga class; but, unclassy they may be in public, they are comfortable as all to wear.  (This is why I live in the burbs – all you city folk do NOT want to see me on the weekends.  Trust me, I’m doing you a favor.)

4. Craig’s List Missed Connections – I am such a sucker for romantic stranger-across-the-room-glancing-fate thing.  Shoot me.  Shoot me now.

5. Chick lit – I love to read.  The sign of a good writer is being a strong, frequent, voracious reader.  I try and read useful books whenever I get the chance to get away from law school texts…but every once in awhile, I crave those cheesey chick lit books….you know, the ones with the crazy covers that you can get sucked into during the first 5 pages?  Same plot, same story – but lord help me, every once in awhile, I need them.

So, you can guess every now and then (more often than I’d ever care to admit) – I’m in my yoga pants, reading chick lit starring a Harvard man posting on Craig’s list with a big old bag o’ Ruffles by my side.  Sometimes, folks, that’s just how I roll. Embarassing, but hey – if I can make myself laugh out loud with this post (and I have) – I hope that someone out there also gets a chuckle from my humanity.

Hate it.  Love it.  Hate to love it.

I’ve successfully avoided this question most of my adult life with the following response: “I’m not grown up yet, so no worries.” But now that I’m nearing the end of my law school career, not to mention that I’m getting “older,” I’m feeling the pressure of this question today.

Here’s what I’m doing to manage it.

First, I’m getting around people I love.  One of those things is getting around other healthcare and life science entrepreneurial educators in a couple of weeks at Oklahoma State University at the first and I hope annual OSU International Conference on Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Health.  But, in prepping with my 2 presentations, I’m also catching up on my reading, and just read the book, Life Entrepreneurs.  It’s good.  I got to a part in the book about about Cory Booker.  If you’re not familiar with him, follow him on Twitter.  Seriously.  He’s awesome.  Anyway, there’s a great quote that I’ll leave you with at the end of this post that the authors concluded Cory’s interview with – but it definitely has inspired me.

Second, I took the Strong Interest Inventory today.  While I can tell you certainly what I DO NOT love doing, the things I DO LOVE have been in hiding of late.  I’m not sure if that’s just a product of trying to stay ahead of the semester, or finish law school and get off the wheel that I’ve been on for 4 years or what…but I do know that it is my job to know me better than anyone else….so I pressed on to take the Strong.  I should have results sometime next week.  I hope it doesn’t demonstrate that I should have formed a career in organic farming or HVAC repair! (Not that there’s anything wrong with either, I just didn’t choose either path in undergrad…)  Hopefully it will merely reconfirm that I am on the right path.

Last, in my not-so-evil-plot to unearth my next grown up move, whatever that may be, I’m damning the torpedoes and going places  I love–even if it doesn’t fit nicely into my schedule.  Even if it costs me a lot of time and/or money.  Even if I shouldn’t.  I’m going to anyway (like…to Paris over spring break–when I should stay home, grade papers and start outlines for law final exams).  Sometimes it is good to chuck the daily for the extraordinarily unusual.  That is my plan for now.

I will leave you with this great quote, by none other than Henry David Thoreau.  Only problem with it?  It had the wrong gender in it.  So I’m going to take the liberty of swapping out the gender. It’s still a good quote, regardless:

“If one advances confidently in the direction of her dreams, and endeavors to live the life which she has imagined, she will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.  She will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within her; and she will live with the license of a higher order of beings.”

May you find your own imagination, success, and in a license of a higher order of beings.

Dude–can I be THAT when I grow up?!?

Sign me up!

This is the way my week has been going.

Got some fantastic press from Little Pink Book yesterday on Plan C.  Dig!  Talked to yet another reporter about this growing phenomenon today.  “Have a boss, be a boss.”  Love it!  Booked a gig this summer out of town to talk about it today too.  Double dig!

But, of course, as I began my 2 hour lecture in pharmacy law yesterday after an awesome guest speaker, I look down to my lecture notes only to see a sea of blood all over them.  Yes, hangnail on the thumb + 400 mg of IBU pre-class = bloody mess.  Literally.  Needed my stack of hello kitty band-aids; only they were nowhere in sight, and oh – yeah, I’ve got 100+ in the audience to start teaching the wonderful world of controlled substance law to, as the bloodshed begins….good thing the room was vampire free.

Then, this morning, I wake up, and usually I do have a random song in my head.  This morning?  Love is a Battlefield.  Pat Benatar. Why?  I have no idea. I posted it on Facebook that it was stuck in my head, hoping to get rid of it.  No such luck – I instead stuck it in the heads of my friends.

Right now I’m listening to the song on Spotify while I write this.  Hopefully THIS time it will get out.  I’m considering this the final eviction notice.

What does all this mean?  That sometimes, life and work can be synonymous with war.  Bloodshed.  Work.  Battle.  Conflict. Maybe that’s why it is called work?  I don’t know.  But I can tell you – that next time I go to class?  I’m sticking a hello kitty band-aid and some kleenex in my teaching bag along with the stacks of code, my computer and my textbook.

#BattlefieldOut

I was discussing the power of networking not just once, but several times this week, so thought it was worth a post.

So…many young professionals, college students, and people in general ask me “how” to network.  They get the concept of it, but they don’t understand what all a “good” networking meeting really looks like.  Trust me, if I can learn this skill, ANYONE can, simply because I’m an introvert, and not overly chatty Cathy about most things.

But, here are 5 questions you should be asking someone the first time you meet them in a networking meeting (I’m assuming here that you’ve already introduced yourself, and from whatever point of contact you approached the person, you’re now getting that first sit-down face-to-face coffee appt to talk to the other person.)

OK, here are 5-must have questions when networking:

1.  What are you passionate about?  Know that the first answer you get may have nothing to do with their professional lives.  That’s fine, but now, when you’re going through your mental Rolodex, maybe you know someone else you could connect them to who shares that passion?  There’s nothing better in networking than getting people passionate about a certain cause or topic together.  That is my personal networking holy grail.

2.  Who is your utopian client that you haven’t met yet?  Get them talking about who they’d love to have as a customer, but haven’t caught yet–their Great White Whale of a customer.  As they describe it, or name a company, again–go into your mental Rolodex and see if there’s anyone you already know at that firm or in that line of work you can connect them to.  If not today, then keep your eyes and ears open for them in the future.

3.  Who are your current favorite clients?  Sometimes, people can’t answer #2.  If that’s the case, have them describe their current favorite clients-that might give you ideas on who else you might connect them to who also fit that description.

4.  Where do you want to be 5 years from now?  Super future-oriented, I both love and hate this question.  But, in asking it, it gets me thinking about the future, and that’s a good thing.  A lot of networking people may not have an answer to this, but it is worth asking, because if you can help them get there?  You’re a certified rock star.

5.  How can I help you?  This is the catch all question that everyone should end with on their meetings.  It’s a catch all, but it can help bring to mind what others are shopping for in the universe at the time.  It’s one last shot at helping the other person across the table from you.  One never knows what or how they can help each other until they’re asked.

That’s it!  There are 5 questions you can ask pretty much every time in a networking appointment and walk away a rock star.  Even if you don’t have anyone for the person meeting you, tomorrow you may!  One never knows – until you try.

I’ve always tried to remedy the balance between being an entrepreneur, giving my time and talent away vs. charging for it.  It is a challenge.  One one hand, we’ve got articles like this one from Inc. today talking about the need to stretch yourself and many other positive attributes by giving away your services for free.

On the other hand, I read this article about Spotify, Adele and Coldplay of late.  I wondered why she and they weren’t on it for free with their new albums, now I know why: they don’t want to give the goods away for free.  They are artists, point taken.

One of my best classes of my entire law school career was Internet Law, where the professor said something that still sticks with me today: “Information likes to be free.  It also likes to be expensive.”  Which basically IS wise, but I struggle with how much to give away for free, how much to charge, and whom to charge.

Does anyone else struggle with this?  I do.  And I don’t honestly know if I’m ever going to totally figure this out.

One of my friends awhile ago turned me on to the “Word A Day” emails. I know, I know – too much email already to deal with; but, being a junkie of the written word, I couldn’t resist.

Today’s word of the day was “Junoesque.” It is an adjective, and it means, “Having a stately bearing and regal beauty; statuesque.” Dig. However, my boss at the day job nicknamed me “Juno” awhile ago (because of the character in the same named movie and my wit (similar to Juno’s in the movie), CERTAINLY NOT due to this word’s definition) so I sent it over to her. She replied that I needed among my 7 email accounts another with the term “Juno” in it. Ha!

That aside, today was a good day. I received my final character and fitness letter of 3 for the bar application (from my boss, and after reading it, thanked her profusely and told her I had to get back to work to attempt to live up to it), and after that, received a copy of my first galley draft of my law review note from the editor-in-chief of law review. It feels like I wrote it about 20 years ago now, but it was refreshing to see a galley of it for the first time. For my fellow writers out there – you understand this. It is one thing to write something up in Word, it is yet another to see a PDF file of your writing looking kind of “official.”

Last but certainly not least, I had the chance to speak to the very awesome Leadership United group here in Indy today about Finding Your Passions, Indy Style. I tack some of the slides below, just in case you’re interested (not all, but most). What did I dig about this? That it was a discussion and experiment, about a bunch of things I have thought about for a long time, but really didn’t have the opportunity to culminate into a presentation until today. It was fun, and I always always always love finding out what OTHER PEOPLE are passionate about. We had everything around the room from exotic animal trafficking to families and children, to philanthropy, to building a great community. Totally dug that conversation!

So, in conclusion, I’m certainly no junoesque creature myself, but I definitely DID have a junoesque day. I hope you did too–most importantly, in a way that YOU are personally passionate about. That is my junoesque wish for you!

Now, back to the not-so-wonderful world of PowerPoint and pharmacy law. Necessary, albeit not quite so junoesque…!

I’m not going to recognize that other thing that today is….hahaha.

And sorry I’ve been slacking on the old blog these days.  Many irons have been in the fire.  Here’s what I’m pondering/fretting over/studying and worrying about:

1.  Innovation in the pharmaceutical industry – top 50 most innovative companies list was out yesterday from Fast Company magazines.  Only ONE drug company on it.  That scares me, because this industry USED to be super innovative!  Where is the creative love in life sciences anymore?  I.  Don’t. Know.

2.  Textbook needs for pharmacy students – feel my pain, peeps.  Pharmacy Law needs a digital edition where the federal laws are on one side of the iPad and the 50 states’ laws can be loaded into the other side.  There’s TOO MUCH LAW for me to adequately cover EVERYTHING in the federal and state codes now.

Ditto on social media and how to harness it for maximization for college students entering the real world.  We, the adults of the world, need to get away from “quit showing us the kegger frat shots on Facebook” as our only conversation/advice with our college student instead to: “here’s how you can use Pinterest to find a job.  Or LinkedIn.  Or via QR code.”  We can either let social media own us, or we can harness the power of it and unleash it and make ourselves unique.

Rant. Over.  Here.

3.  How to Write & Publish – Working on collecting the writers’ thoughts on a few questions about writing and publishing for the upcoming March NAWBO Indy Writer’s Panel on 3/22/12.  This one is going to be good.

4.  Innovation, Entrepreneurship, Life Sciences and Health Care:  Working on my slides for this meeting coming up in Oklahoma on entrepreneurship life sciences and healthcare.

5.  Finding your passions – talk I’m giving this week to Leadership United’s class.  Uploaded some of the slides already – thoughts?

No. Wonder. I’m tired – I can’t catch up here!  But maybe it isn’t about catching up.  Maybe it instead is about finding your passions and maximizing the heck out of them, so others can get inspired too.  I don’t know.  But I’m trying up in here.  Hope you are too!

Happy Tuesday.  Oh, yeah, and that other thing that today is too…!

I’ll begin with a common quote from an uncommon woman, Madeleine Albright:

“There’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help other women.”

I like to say the following:

“There’s a special place in heaven for women who help other women.”

Take whichever quote you deem more appropriate, and use it as a lens for my current blog rant, in 3….2….1……!

Ladies, I was disturbed to read this article this week about the “pink ghetto” and women trashing other women not for having the audacity to start a business, but instead, JUDGE the women on WHAT TYPE of business they have.  Really?  This reminds me of a conversation I had not too long ago, about another woman business owner who was offended by other women businesses at a local event, because “all they did” was sell jewelry.  What they do apparently either wasn’t good enough, or wasn’t to be taken seriously enough to be worthy of praise for being entrepreneurial-enough.

We MUST, as women who dare to start businesses, SUPPORT EACH OTHER.  We’ve got to STOP JUDGING each other.  Lastly, NEVER judge someone who dared to dream and start a business.  BUSINESS IS BUSINESS, period.  If you don’t like their product?  Fine, don’t buy from them.  But to take it to another level and completely trash women because of their business idea…?  That just has to stop.

Women are a few thousand years behind men right now, and we’ve got some catching up to do.  Let’s celebrate our achievements and help each other when we can, rather than judging, being catty and just bashing each other based upon our NAICS codes and whether we deem them as “worthy” or “not worthy.”  I don’t really see men trashing each other over their NAICS codes, so why are we doing damage to our very own gender by allowing this?

Ladies, don’t get me wrong.  I don’t love each and every businessowner I run across in my career.  I can’t use every small business idea on the planet for myself and my businesses, either.  But–in my mind?  Business is business, and we must, must, must support each other as entrepreneurs, businessowners, and people who dare to dream.

I hope either Madeleine’s quote or my quote stuck with you.  Keep moving forward, ladies, with your business plans and ideas.  We need them–ALL OF THEM.  Daring to dream is the American Way, REGARDLESS of your company’s NAICS code.

I’m putting together slides for my 2.5 hour pharmacy law lecture on Monday right now, and I need a break.  (e-prescribing of controlled substance law, anyone?  In flux, and hot mess.  Stay tuned.)

That insane tediosity aside (yes, I made that word up), I thought I’d stop and write about something I think is SUPER DUPER important for ALL college students right now, and a good question I was asked today.  One of my students asked–what should be included on a business card?

For the college student, this really isn’t the easiest thing to answer, because: 1. they move a lot, 2. they don’t know where they’ll be.  Students at the college level are in a state of flux, and therefore must have a business card that is flexible BUT–most importantly, allows the recipient a shot at getting back in touch with that college student in a year or two when they’re out in the workforce and need a great employee to hire.

So, here is what I suggested to the student, and I think if you are a college student, you should consider in order to get a business card – 4 ways:

4 Style Suggestions for the College Student Business Card:

1.  Divide your two lives on one card – You can divide your “school” address, email and phone on one side of the card, and your “home” address email and phone on the other side of the card.  You can do this either left side/right side or front and back of the card.  (Much like CVs or resumes.)

2.  Home base stuff only – You can just include your home (or permanent) address and leave off the school locations if they change a lot.

3.  Permanent INFO only:  You can just have all your PERMANENT info on it like:
-personal email address
-personal cell phone address
-social media contacts (linkedin definitely, twitter maybe, and yes – even facebook if it is appropriate.  Klout score?  Only if you’re in tech and your score is higher…I cannot believe I put my own paltry 62 score on my own CV when last updating it-but I did. It may or may not go on my next b card…we’ll see…)

4.  Tecky, but cool flux route, the QR Code – If you’re tecky, you can create a QR code and put that on the card, which could lead someone to a webpage where you can change all your information and update it over time.  This one takes more work, but it also gives you the freedom to change info from time to time.  QR code making is free online – all you need is a web url and you can plug it into programs and turn it into a QR code.  I used this one for mine: http://qrcode.kaywa.com/.  Just be careful with this one and realize that anyone with that web url may have access to anything you put on your url page – !  (And that’s why my QR code is hidden on certain items only – and not my business card right now.)

Of course, you also want to include what school you’re at, what degree you’re working on (there’s debate if you get to use the word “candidate” only until your last year of a degree program, but I’ll defer you to your school’s guidelines for that), and the bottom line?  You want to give the power to the people you share your info with to be able to FIND YOU.  That’s really what business cards are all about.

Now – you DO have a business card as a college student, don’t you?  NO. MORE. EXCUSES!  It’s a competitive, crazy world out there – make it EASY for people to access and enjoy your professional awesomeness!