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At first you might flinch, but in the long run? Great stuff

The title is a quote from a movie. I could tell you which one if you don't know but it doesn't matter. The point is that negative stuff (more specifically, perceived negative stuff) that happens in the here and now can cause discomfort but in the long run almost inevitably causes the opposite.

On Tuesday I read an article in the Wall Street Journal titled From Ordering Steak and Lobster, to Serving It - it's about a guy who was working in a high-paying Wall Street job who got laid off and now works at the same restaurant (the Palm in New York) he used to frequent as a customer. I imagine it must be humiliating sometimes to run into former colleagues and discouraging to get a paycheck that is 80%+ lower than he used to get.

It's easy to be short-sighted and to not see the positives in such a story. But perhaps he sees his family more now. Maybe he wasn't meant to be a Wall Streeter and instead he's meant to open up one of the best restaurants in Manhattan someday. Possibly his job satisfaction is higher.

On the other side of the coin, if you have a corporate job in this economy you might be working harder than ever because you're short staffed. Everyone else has been laid off and even though there's not as much revenue coming in the door there's plenty of work to go around. You may even wish you had some of that free time that your friends on the unemployment rolls have. But you're probably learning more. And getting more responsibility. And you'll be better positioned to move up when things improve.

The stock market recently finished a long time going down. Now it's going up but it's still hard to buy. Why? Recent memory is still too recent and it's hard to think about where stocks will be one or two years from now. If you bought a bunch of stocks today and the market took a quick dive next week you might flinch, but in the long run you'd likely be doing great.

You may be getting ready for the CFA exam tomorrow. In fact, if you are you've (hopefully) been getting ready for the past several months. I've been down that road and I know that pain that causes - but if you prepared in the right way then good things will come.

You may be training or preparing for any number of things, or may be dealing with stuff that just isn't pleasant to deal with right now. Deal with it in the right way and focus on the long range outcome and you'll see great stuff on the horizon.

Rocking chair activities and a bunch of cliches

As you can tell from the dearth of posts lately, I've been jammed at work for three weeks. Jammed, slammed, crushed, crazed - whatever you want to call it. Just really damn busy. 

I'm running on the quintessential hamster wheel. Wrapped up in the proverbial rat race.

But you know what? I'm not so sure I've gotten anywhere meaningful despite my busy-ness. I've gotten older, that's for sure. I may get a gray hair in 6 months from the stress I'm enduring now which should make me look wiser. I've learned a thing or two, but will I ever apply it? I've produced and explained documents that others will read and probably draw some conclusions from. But at the end of the day I'm just a cog in the wheel.

Rocking chair activities

The girl who cuts my hair - who, by the way, seems to be an increasingly valuable source of fodder for writing posts - says her father used to tell her to be careful about rocking chair activities. "What are those?" I asked her. "It's when you engage in a bunch of activity, like rocking back and forth, but never actually go anywhere," she responded.

Is that the sort of thing I'm engaged in right now? Spinning my wheels for the past three weeks? When push comes to shove I want to be doing something meaningful that's adding value to me as well as to the firm. Right now I'm not sure about either one.

The light at the end of the tunnel

Looking down the road I think I can see a point at which I'll be able to discern what's been happening - whether I've been on the road to nowhere or on the right path. Hindsight is 20/20, after all. And then, once I've got it figured out, maybe I'll buy a rocking chair to relax. 

Not a Top 10 list, a list that happened to be 10

There are so many Top 10 lists out there that I just had to make my title that way so people wouldn't just dismiss this post as a pre-conceived list. It just worked out that way. If you believe me, read it here.

Children

I once worked for a firm where some of the key managers treated employees like they were children. People were yelled at, scolded (publicly sometimes) and micromanaged in all kinds of ways.

What was the result? Those employees acted like children. They only did the things they were told to do, and often grudgingly. They talked back. They engaged in behavior counter-productive to the goals of the firm.

Think about how you'd handle your kids. If you use baby talk with them all the time, or talk down to them and all govern all their activities, they will behave like children well beyond the point at which they should.

But if you talk to them like adults, even before they are adults, by encouraging them, reasoning through things with them and by providing productive criticism and positive reinforcement, they will act like adults, probably even before you expect them to.

The firm I mentioned above has allegedly changed its ways, but that's beside the point. Treating employees like children doesn't work.  

Bankers and actors

What works hard but has zero real-world skills, eagerly fetches flowers, bath soaps and Spanish language gossip magazines for their bosses, hangs out exclusively in clubby groups, is prone to cheesy social behavior and is subject to periodic unemployment?

Well, yes, you're right - actors. But investment bankers too. Or so suggests the latest episode of 30 Rock:

I only bother to write about it here because it's amusing, and kind of true, even if it is Alec Baldwin alleging such things.

Thinking of going into investment banking? Expect to work hard. Very hard. And if you're out to change the world, forget it. You won't be changing anything - not even your clothes because you'll be at the office so much.

Will you learn real-world skills? That's debatable. The reason many bankers stay bankers is because they don't. They can't operate and they can't manage and they can't teach. So they just sacrifice their lives to earn fees from deals and retire after 20 years or so. On the other hand, it can be a great way to launch a career, as long as you're smart and learn a few things and then get out before you're old. 

By old I mean 30 or so. You might look like you're 40 by then because of the hours but if you came from business school then you're an associate at that point, although if you went straight through from undergrad you might be in trouble because you could be a vice president or director. By then it's really too late. You won't be qualified for much and any position for which you're eligible will generate meager pay compared to what you're used to.

You'll fetch things. Believe me. You'll get coffee for your managing director at meetings. Books from the copy center. Toner cartridges. Taxis. Luggage. Other people. Anything you can think of.

The cheesy behavior is up to the individual. Bankers don't get that reputation for nothing. Many think they're they're the best thing since sliced bread and act that way to prove it. Some - usually those who've wanted to be bankers since the age of 2 - wear tasseled shoes, suspenders and multi-colored monogrammed shirts with white collars. They'll act obnoxiously at bars and get kicked out - that sort of thing. Others actually know how to act and dress properly and are pretty normal - aside from the fact their hours are twice as long as those of others.

And many are now unemployed, as the current Wall Street crisis ("caused by Nancy Pelosi," says Baldwin) would indicate. The industry is like a big accordion - it grows quickly and then contracts. In some industries labor is more of a fixed cost; in investment banking it is definitely variable. When things go bad, lots of bankers get fired.

In light of this it's worth considering the acting option for a moment. You can flunk out of school and move to Hollywood and wait tables until someone notices you. Like getting a job on Wall Street, getting "noticed" is a long shot but probably longer by a factor of 100 or even 1,000. Or you can know someone, which is how most stars do it, in which case you can be the laziest or dumbest person on earth. You can also know someone on Wall Street, but it's pretty hard to last in a bank if you're dumb and lazy. Most bankers have to go to very good schools and get excellent grades to get their jobs.

Unless Tracy Morgan runs the bank, that is. At the end of the 30 Rock episode he is so worn out by the bankers' antics that he reopens Lehman Brothers so they'll go away. (Dumb and lazy, anyone?) I guess that's the worst of both worlds - when actors and bankers become one and the same.

The kind truth

Patrick Lencioni writes today about how one can best manage her boss, concluding it's best to use the "kind truth" method, which is to empathize with - and praise, I might add - the manager before offering constructive criticism. True, and not only when it comes to a boss but also when it comes to dealing with people in general. One can read about this in How to Win Friends and Influence People, a book first written in 1936.

The real issue to me is simply the importance of managing upward. No matter what you think of your boss, you're stuck with her until something in the organization changes, she leaves or you leave. We tend to think of managing in terms of managing downward - that's what you're hired for after all - but surely it ought to be a two-way street if you're looking out for yourself. If you don't manage upward you're just a pawn and you lose out on any influence you could have on your own destiny.

I'll use my former industry as an example. If you're a banker, unless you're at the very top, the mentality tends to be: what the boss says goes. In early 2007, for instance, the head of JPMorgan's investment bank ordered the bank's proletariat to run LBO models on every publicly-traded company. Suddenly bankers were running around with LBO pitchbooks on everything from technology to consumer goods to utilities. Many hours were spent. Lots of time was wasted. And little was achieved, except for the large hits to the bank's balance sheet that we have witnessed as the market has turned south. Nobody suggested the market might turn. No one questioned the logic of running LBO models on companies that weren't "LBO-able." (If this makes no sense to you, it would take too long to explain here.) And it would have been simple to deliver such messages in a constructive way.

Many think they don't know enough relative to their boss to manage upward. Others believe they know more but are restrained by the fact they are subordinate. Others fret about job security. It boils down to a choice, because your boss has a big impact on how you spend your time. Do you want to influence and improve the work process via your own input, which is more satisfying, or would you like to take orders and give up any morsel of control you might otherwise have? Bosses aren't always right and most are open to the right kind of criticism - they may in fact know more or may know their way around the firm better, but an environment in which ideas are debated and guidance is given in both directions means better outcomes and a more satisfying experience for you. 

Don't be a 90-percenter

A question to ask yourself before taking a job out of school: Will the work you're going to be doing actually lead you where you want to go, or merely keep you busy? 

This question is important because the firm you work for will likely work you pretty hard for awhile, being fresh out of school and all. With such a significant investment of time and energy required, you want to get on a path that helps get you to the place you'd like to end up.

Unfortunately this can be a very difficult question to answer and you may just have to take a leap of faith. If you end up on a path X instead of desired path Y, as long as you keep asking yourself this question you'll know to switch. That's ok - it happens to many of us.

But you don't want to forget to ask yourself this question. You'll be lured by many distracting things. Take the quintessential examples of consulting and investment banking. As a business school student you'll see throngs of students attend every information session and sign up for every interview when these firms come to campus. If you're not doing the same thing you may feel left out and find yourself following the crowd. You may even find yourself getting an offer and accepting it and discover yourself getting good at what you don't want to do. 

Or you may be lured by the lucrative salaries they dangle in front of you. If money is the motivator for you, I'd suggest calculating the per hour wage rate for a consulting or investment banking job. It will change your perspective.

The work in both fields is very interesting and very challenging, but make sure it's helping you get to where you want to go. Otherwise you'll just be busy - to the tune of 80+ hours per week.

Another way to look at this? Don't be a 90-percenter. What does that mean? Don't just be busy. Don't spin your wheels. Avoid being the guy or gal who always gets 90 percent of the way there but never crosses the finish line. You might as well be zero percent of the way there.

How do you avoid being a 90 percenter? Ask yourself meaningful questions. Figure out what's true about you. Create and deliver value to yourself and to the firm your work for. Ask yourself, "Will the work I'm doing actually lead me to where I want to go, or merely keep me busy?"

Be a track star

Read to the end - there's a point.

If you're among the minority of people who hasn't seen Survivor before, host Jeff Probst is wrapping up the season tonight in typical fashion by interviewing the players in front of a Hollywood studio audience to address some of the most captivating questions on the minds of the fans.

Among the most popular questions: was Crystal really an Olympic gold medalist? Billed as an Olympic track star from the start of the show, Crystal stumbled through the game's challenges unable to climb hills, swim, balance on a log and even missed slam dunking a ball on a 5-toot tall hoop. She seemed uncoordinated, lacked a sense of direction and was a bit socially awkward. But despite these foibles and the doubts in people's minds all season long, she's an Olympic track star and tonight she brought her medal to prove it.

After establishing that the medal existed, Jeff asked Crystal how she could possibly be an athlete? Her answer: "Jeff, those challenges were hard for me. I'm designed to run circles around a track. That's what I do and that's what I love."

The point? Be a track star. Specialize. Understand what you love to do and figure out what you're good at. In many cases, the fact you love doing something will mean you're naturally good at it. Crystal happens to love running and became a track star and seemingly isn't much good at other things. She found that thing she excels at and leveraged it as much as she could to win Olympic gold.

For most of us our skill set isn't that lopsided - there are lots of things we are OK at and maybe one or two things we are really good at. Lots of people squander the latter things; they don't pay attention or don't try. But if you remain aware and apply yourself to the things you love and the things you are good at, you have little choice but to be a success.

The silver lining

Today the guy who sits next to me got laid off. He is one person among roughly 8% of our workforce who will now be out looking for a job. Last week my old firm, JPMorgan, provided pink slips to 10% of its bankers, many of them former colleagues, on top of a significant number of layoffs in late-2007 and mid-2008. So far in 2008 employers have dispatched with a total of 1.9 million jobs.

It's rough out there. As I've alluded to, it has happened to me twice. And whether you want to get laid off, as a friend of mine did (he worked for Vivendi Games and, Vivendi being a very employee-friendly French company, he is staring at a ridiculously generous full year of severance pay), or not, it always pinches the ego a bit. You can't help but wonder why it was you and not the other guy, even though it usually has nothing to do with that. And it's never fun to get called into that stark room with one table and two chairs to get the official news, whether or not you expected it, and then have to walk back out in front of colleagues who undoubtedly are wondering if that terrible thing just happened to you.

But there is always a silver lining. I got laid off in 2001 which was a terrible time to be without work. I vacillated around for a bit, feeling unsure about what was next and then seemingly compounded my troubles by turning down another job offer (I didn't have the heart to take it). But then that summer I met my wife while on a trip to a wedding that I never would have been able to attend otherwise. And then in the fall I found a job, which was admittedly another career stepping stone but taught me lots of things and helped get me to where I wanted to go next.

Fast forward to 2008. Laid off again. This time around I had a family who I had neglected for two years because of the lifestyle, or lack thereof, required to be an investment banker. Getting laid off wasn't fun at the time but, looking at what I have now versus what I had then, it was a blessing in disguise. Nothing confirms that more than when I email a former colleague about something and get a return email at 11pm and they are still at work. Needless to say, my personal happiness and family life are much improved. 

There is always a silver lining, although sometimes you have to look for it and sometimes you have to have patience for it and you may have to listen closely to your heart to find it. But it's out there.

Responsiveness

Today I recalled a conversation I had with a friend who is the head of a real private private equity concern. He's a very interesting guy to chat with because he is extremely successful but very nonchalant and downplays almost everything in conversation.

We happened to be talking about what has contributed to his success. He looked at the ceiling for a moment, squinting his eyes and thinking, and then said, "You know, I do things like pick up the phone and call people back. Email them back. Keep meetings. Show up on time. You know, that sort of stuff."

His answer struck me as both mundane and enlightening. Sure, he knows stuff and is an expert in his field, but often it really does boil down to simple things like this. It's called responsiveness. So many of us are lax about it and don't think it's important, but it is.

Someone I used to work for emphasized responsiveness all the time. In fact he often got pretty heated about it if someone didn't email or call back within the same day. While I didn't agree with his style, I do agree with his point.

If you're not going to be responsive, you don't deserve that next business opportunity - the competition does. That next customer won't do business with you - he'll pick someone else. Your suppliers may decide they'd rather have a more reliable relationship.

Be responsive - to a fault if you can. People will notice and appreciate it. 

Some writing tips

I just read an email from an employee of my firm to a prospective customer. It reads:

"Hello XXX and XXX,

I am so sorry for taking so long on this....I had to go in and [modify] the file before I could send it, this is everything from XXX I am still working with the guys up north to get there info...I will do my best to have it to you by COB Thursday Friday at the latest.

Thanks for your patients...."

Based on the last part you might think we work at a hospital, but that's not the case. It is my hope that you read this and easily noted the grammatical and punctuation errors, although I worry some of you probably didn't.

Here's a segment of another email, written to me by my former real estate agent who was apologizing for not sending me something:

"John,

I thought I sent it, Maybe because of the amendments it went into your spam folder? Or I could forgotten to hit send, sio I could do a spell check? The message the optehr way around is rude... Below is the original first message..."

(Ironically she didn't do a spell check here either, and unfortunately the above is a tame example of what she's capable of.) This agent helped us buy a home, we stayed in touch electronically, and even though I like her, when it came time to sell I hired someone else. Why? I just didn't think her approach was professional enough on email - these days, with so many things being done electronically, that was important to me.

I'm not saying I'm perfect or that others should be - there may very well be accidental spelling or grammatical errors in this post - but people are way too lax with their business writing, and that laziness for whatever reason is compounded on emails. When did it become proper to write in all lower case? Or to completely ignore punctuation? I think we all learned in 5th grade to proofread - how about giving your prose a quick read before sending it off ? The spelling and grammar checker might be a good idea as well if you accidentally spell the word "other" as "optehr" or don't know the difference between "there" and "their," or "patients" and "patience," or "its" and "it's," or "your" and you're." Maybe take a moment right now to understand the difference if you don't already.

Other common errors:

When one is writing about a company, say ABC Company, and he attributes some action to that company such as reviewing financials, almost inevitably he writes something like, "ABC Company reviews their financials once every quarter." It probably seems correct to many of you but the pronoun doesn't agree. Proper writing is, "ABC Company reviews its financials once every quarter."

Another one is "I" vs. "me." The former is used in the subject of the sentence (before the verb) while the latter is used in the predicate of sentence (after the verb). As in, "Joe and I went to the baseball game," and "Tina went to the baseball game with me and Joe."

A third one is commas - they are misplaced all the time. In business writing, when only two items are listed in a sentence, there is no comma. "She picked up the paper, and the stapler" just doesn't work. When there are three or more items listed, there is no comma preceding the last item: "She picked up the paper, stapler and pencil from the table."

People will respect you more if you take the time to write well, whether on paper or electronically. Emailing from BlackBerrys or iPhones is no excuse for mistakes either - it only takes a few extra seconds to fix errors.

Things not to do at work

Here is a short list of things not to do at work. I'll try to dispel what you might think as you start to read this first: the list may seem silly, or even incredulous, and you may think this stuff doesn't get noticed by anyone, but trust me, it does. And this stuff is present in every work environment I've been part of. You'll go further if you take heed.

1. Don't wear cologne. This one tops the list because it has long been a pet peeve of mine and frankly, why would you want to walk around wafting that scent all over the place? It stinks. It's offensive. It forces me to have to smell the scent that you, or your aunt, or your mother, or whoever gave you that noxious concoction as a gift for your birthday - think is pleasant to the olfactory neurons in my brain. Trust me - your sense of what smells pleasant isn't as good as you think. You have body odor, you say? Try wearing deodorant and practicing better hygiene. Problem solved.

2. Don't clip your nails. Picture this: you are working diligently at your desk when, like a flying superhero crashing back to earth, a fingernail flies through the air, narrowly misses your face, and lands on the page you're reading. Yep, it's happened. And then you hear that familiar clicking that can only mean one thing: your neighbor is cutting his nails. At work. Why not at home, in the bathroom, after a shower? Why not in the office bathroom? Why not outside? Think, McFly, think.

3. Don't get happy foot. I don't know what else to call this. I was typing the other day and suddenly felt the floor jiggle. Then it continued, as if the floor was dancing to a beat. Was it alive? No. Earthquake? Too subtle. Was a janitor moving heavy office equipment nearby? That's not a job for janitors. I stood up to investigate and around the corner was the answer: my neighbor's foot was bouncing around like a bunny on speed. The strange thing is the person doing this sort of thing rarely notices it themselves - it's a subconscious thing. My neighbor was working away, oblivious. Another former colleague of mine did this sort of thing too - he was very tall with big feet and would do a fairly thunderous tapping that could be felt 30 feet across the floor. I once mentioned it to him and he had no idea he was doing it. Most offices have raised floors, folks. They flex and bounce, and when you're doing this sort of thing it's probably being felt by others. Try to be conscious of it.

4. Don't throw your half-eaten food into your personal trash can. It may have tasted delectable, but it's not going to smell delectable in a couple hours. A junior staffer once left his half-eaten fish in his trash can and the rest of us had to endure the stench the entire following day. But even the mildest of foods will start to smell. Use the trash can in your cafeteria on in the small kitchen on your floor. That's what they're for: food waste.

5. Don't sleep at your chair. A guy I used to sit next to did this all the time. Granted we were in banking so I didn't blame him, but when the snoring started it really became distracting. How about grabbing an empty office? Or a closet? (A woman I know would actually use her sleeping bag and nap on the floor of an office closet.) Instead, if you sleep at your chair, co-workers' camera phones will come out and the snickering will start, and there you will sleep, gaping mouth and all.

6. Don't put everyone you talk to on speaker phone. This one applies mainly to those of you who don't have your own private office. Use the speaker rarely. If you want to be hands-free, use a headset. You may think the conversation you're having is quite interesting, but nobody else does. Your neighbor probably can't hear the conversation they are having and your other neighbor probably can't concentrate and wants to throw their heavy-duty Swingline stapler at you. It's just not courteous behavior.

7. Be discriminating in discussing your personal life. Granted, when the significant other comes calling you probably have to take it, but why continually invite those you work with into your personal life? I guess I can think of three reasons: you want to be the center of office gossip, you find it fun to distract those around you trying to do work, or you don't want others to take you seriously. I once sat next to someone who did this day in and day out, whether with co-workers or on the phone, and I can tell you pretty much anything you want to know about her. She's divorced, she lives in Marina, she fancies herself a skilled drinker, her boyfriend is named Pete, she has a credit card company who continually makes mistakes on her statements, she has high cholesterol, she takes the bus to work - and that's just a start. Now, I sat within earshot of at least 15 other people and couldn't tell you even a fraction of that about each of them. They seemed to get along just fine keeping their personal lives separate from work.

You may have read this and it sounds pet-peevish (it is), but so what? Nobody ever said your peers - or your bosses - aren't allowed to be sensitive or annoyed about things like the above. People you work with may not say it, but they harbor all kinds of prejudices and pass all kinds of judgments that you don't know about. If you just don't care where you wind up, then don't worry about this stuff. But if you do care, these things will just help you behave more professionally and improve your chances of advancing.

Dress for success

Sit in your firm's cafeteria at lunch time and look around at what the people you work with are wearing. Do their clothes inspire you? Do you want to trust them or emulate them because they look a certain way? My guess is in the majority of cases you will experience none of these things. The problem is, people don't dress for success.

When you look around - and I'll focus on the guys because this issue is much more weighted toward them vs. the gals - you'll probably see lots of faded polos from the days of yore and those comfortable, pleated khaki slacks - maybe even ones that have cuffs - that are a bit tight nowadays. Maybe the gentlemen sporting ties are donning that shirt that has a button-down collar that's been dry cleaned so many times that it's practically transparent and looks like it could choke them if the neck gets any tighter. Those dress pants might end three inches above the ankle and display patterned socks of some sort. And then there's the shoes! What you see runs the gamut, but my favorites are the shoes-with-no-stocks and the shoes with tassles. You also get the deck shoes the street-shoes-turned-dress-shoes wearers.

Most of this stuff is quite prevalent, dreadfully out of style and conveys that you don't much care care how others may perceive you. Here's a tip - regardless of what field you're in, learning how to dress decently can only help in terms of how people perceive you in a business setting. In other words, people are more inclined to look up to you if you're the guy wearing the cool threads.

I'm no fashion expert, but here's some advice to the fashionly clueless among you:

1. Stay simple. Buy dress pants with no pleats (can you say 1990s?) and no cuffs. Get dress shirts that have pointed collars with no button stays. Forget the embroidered initals and dual-colored shirt/collar combo (unless you want to look like a cheesy investment banker), and do away with the French collars and cufflinks (save those for weddings). And wear plain-colored socks.

2. Wear stuff that fits. Unless you're waiting for a flood, lose the pants that don't even touch your shoes. Get new pants and find a tailor who can make them the right length. Buy dress shirts that comfortably match your neck, chest and arm measurements (this has to be done periodically because unfortunately the dry cleaner take its toll on shirts), although that alone doesn't do the trick either. Unless you think the folks in Thailand or Indonesia making your shirts really know what size you are, you need a tailor for those shirts as well - most have way too much material around the midsection and balloon up when tucked in.

3. Wear socks and undershirts. This seems simple and I am amazed by those that don't do it. Most of us aren't working on a boat deck - in which case no socks might be ok. But unless you wear socks your feet will sweat causing odors and ruining your shoes, plus it doesn't look good! And an undershirt is key, at least with a dress shirt - the color of your shirt looks much sharper against the white background vs. your skin, and nobody wants to see your chest hair through the gaps between your shirt buttons (yes, I know, but I've seen it).

4. Shoes make the man. It may be a cliche but it's true. Shoes are noticed, and bad shoes can ruin an outfit. Invest in a nice-looking, comfortable pair of dress shoes. In my opinion you can't spend too much money here - go Italian if you have the means. People wear their shoes a long time and a sharp pair is a good investment.

5. Save the polo shirts and khakis for the golf course. If you want the junior staffers gossiping about you, by all means, wear this stuff. I guarantee they will be poking fun at the polo-wearing khaki brigade over lunch. But if you must wear them, buy polos that fit properly (refer to #2), tuck them in, and wear pleat-free, cuff-free khakis (refer to #1).

The list could go on, but you get the gist. Oh - if you work at one of those places that have casual Fridays, I imagine lots of you wear jeans. That's fine I think, but get some good jeans! I once attended a presentation where a start-up company was pitching a new jeans concept to a team of VCs. One of the older guys pondered the presentation and said , "I don't get it. I just throw on my $30 Levi's and get on with it. Why would someone spend $150 on a pair of jeans?" Don't listen to that guy - spend the $150 and get some jeans that look good. There's a whole bunch out there.

As The King says in American Beauty, "To be successful, one must always project an image of success." So go to work in threads that look good.