Alicia Morga's Blog

When I started Consorte Media I talked a lot about how Hispanic marketing relied on anecdotal evidence as opposed to actual data. Now I have a different story to tell.

I started Consorte Media in the closet of my one bedroom apartment in July 2005 and at the time I was solely focused on online lead generation. My first problem, however, was that my customers loved my leads and wanted more.

In the summer of 2005, if you entered a Spanish language search on Google in the U.S., more often than not, you got back English results. This meant that many people in the U.S. didn’t use search to find their Spanish media and instead went directly to Spanish language websites they knew of in the U.S. or Latin America. This also meant that the volume of Spanish language searches in the U.S. on Google at the time was low and therefore I was constrained in the number of leads I could generate via search. The alternative was to buy display media on the leading Spanish language publishers in the U.S., like Univision.com and AOL Latino, etc. The only problem was the cost of media on those sites was exorbitantly high. They were charging upwards of $25 CPMs at the time and I could not get the math to work to generate leads and not lose money on the deal. That’s what led me to uncover hundreds of websites in Spanish – from the very large to the very small – sites I had never heard of before I started my digging.

I started calling on these websites and would invariably end up on the phone with the CEOs or owners. These sites often did not have full-time web developers or webmasters much less ad sales teams. I started talking to these publishers about their problems.

This was the story they told: no one was calling on them to buy ads on their sites, their only monetization alternative was Google Ad Sense and that often resulted in English ads, their only alternative was large Latin American Ad Networks that only served ads to Latin American visitors and almost all CPA campaigns (remember those horrible flash smiley face ads? Then you know what they were contending with) or English Ad Networks in the U.S. who only served publishers with large amounts of traffic and of course, only served English language ads.

A lot has changed since those initial calls with publishers. First, a little history:

Two of the original ad networks in the Hispanic space were Click Diario (started in Guatemala in 2003) and Directa Networks. Both networks were focused on Latin America and mostly served CPA campaigns.
In September 2005, ClickDiario was acquired by Livedoor and in June 2007 sold to Fox International Channels. Shortly after, it was merged with the purchase of Click Diario by Fox to create Punto Fox.

At around the same time (2003), in the U.S., the Hispanic Digital Network (HDN) was formed. HDN started out as a web development company and built websites for leading publishers. As part of their web development agreement with publishers HDN acquired a publisher’s advertising inventory. HDN itself was acquired by PR Newswire in 2008.

Then in 2004, Hispanoclick came along. Started by a husband and wife team in Canada (the wife is a Latina), Hispanoclick was also primarily focused on performance campaigns. Hispanoclick was acquired by Batanga at the end of 2007.

In 2006, Consorte Media purchased ad inventory on Directa, Click Diario, HDN and Hispanoclick in an attempt to drive leads. Finally, necessity being the mother of invention: the Consorte Media Ad Network was born in the spring of 2007.

When we started calling on publishers to join our ad network we heard more stories. Publishers were often locked up in year-long exclusive ad network agreements with ad networks that either didn’t provide campaigns at all or only rarely. These publishers were then justifiably skeptical about “ad networks” in general.

When we hit the advertiser circuit, we learned exactly why many of the early Hispanic ad networks had trouble – the shift to online advertising dollars was only barely starting to happen in the Hispanic market. A situation made worse by the fact that many Hispanic agencies at the time had not developed digital expertise and were focused only on television, radio or print.

So at the beginning there was a lot to overcome and a lot to balance. Since then we’ve switched ad servers (from Zedo to Right Media to DFP). We’ve had reporting issues and had to finally build our own system. We’ve had to create our own payment processing solution, which, as any ad network (general market ad networks, too) will tell you is terribly manual and involves a lot of juggling. We’ve been paid late by advertisers or not at all and had to pay publishers anyway. You get the picture. We made a lot of mistakes but we also learned a tremendous amount.

Since our entry there have been some general market ad networks that announced they were entering the space: for example, Glam Media and Gorilla Nation – only to pretty much abandon the efforts a year later. And of course, many of the large U.S. general market ad networks like Advertising.com and ValueClick started yelling, “Me, too!” in the advertising marketplace only to turn around and ask companies like Consorte Media to fulfill their campaigns.

After the advent of Adify – a company that licenses a packaged ad network infrastructure platform – some of the big publishers have jumped on the Ad Network bandwagon, like Orange/StarMedia, Terra (EZ Target) and Univision.com – each now touting their own ad networks.

Fox is still in the Hispanic Ad Network market, too but primarily focused on Latin America as opposed to U.S. Hispanic, as is Jumba. More recently, newer, smaller players have entered the U.S. Hispanic field like Hola Networks, Alcance (started by an ex-Consorte employee) and PulpoMedia (staffed with ex-Consorte employees). I actually get a kick out of the fact that some of these competitors have Consorte alums.

So a lot has taken place in the past few years. In essence, the Hispanic Ad Network market has evolved in a very similar manner to the U.S. general market ad network industry. Today, we’re definitely facing some of the same issues the U.S. general market is including the problem of several ad networks that are hard to differentiate.

Joe Kutchera recently wrote an article on Hispanic Ad Networks and left us off the competitive matrix. To give you a sense, Comscore has our reach at 2MM monthly unique visitors, Quantcast and our own servers show ten times that amount. Reach, however, is not what matters to publishers. Publishers care about eCPM. And frankly, reach is often not what matters to advertisers. Advertisers care about brand safety and thus, transparency – where is their ad going to show up and will they be happy it did.

The reality is that all of us say the same thing to attract publishers: we promise high eCPMs and leading advertisers. We say the same things to attract advertisers: we work with great sites, can target anything and everything everywhere, and have great reach. It’s difficult to stand out from a marketing viewpoint when we’re all basically doing the same thing: matching advertisers with publishers.

How to truly differentiate Hispanic Ad Networks? The proof, you see, is in the pudding.

I drive Lizie, Consorte’s head of Publishers, crazy when I tell publishers, “You don’t have to choose Consorte Media and you shouldn’t only choose Consorte Media.”

I tell publishers, “You want to run as many ad tags as possible and you’ll soon discover how we’re all different. Some networks mainly serve CPA campaigns, others promise high CPMs but only have campaigns intermittently, some guarantee a CPM but it’s low and fixed and requires guaranteed inventory, others simply do media buys on websites when they have the need for traffic – whatever their goal.”

One publisher we were trying to recruit called to tell me he was going to sign an exclusive deal with another network. I said, “That’s great but why would you sign an exclusive deal?” He said another network could guarantee a $0.40 CPM for 6 months if he guaranteed X impressions.

“Wow,“ I said, “That sounds interesting, but is that a gamble you want to make? Especially when you don’t have to?”

He paused and let out a big sigh of relief.

Turns out the ad network story is not that different from my original story: actual results matter. There’s no need to rely on anecdotal when you can test the offerings available to you.

At the end of the day, we are happy to have competition because the growth of the Hispanic Ad Network industry is important. It means the content gap that existed a few years ago is being filled and that’s a good thing for everyone. Today, when you search in Spanish on Google in the U.S. you don’t get English results. The more ad networks make monetization possible for the content creators focused on the Hispanic market – the better. The eco-system grows and validates the Hispanic market and the Hispanic consumer – all I’ve ever wanted.

The End.

I’ve been trying to write this blog on Love for days. On Monday I was feeling so lovey-dovey.  I think I was ovulating. Tuesday, not so much. Today? I’m really loving kettle corn. Love, it seems, is complicated.

You may be thinking a blog on love is a natural progression from my blogs on sex but that isn’t really what instigated the topic choice. The Catholic Church (who I think is a proponent of love before sex) is really responsible.

I went to Mass this past Sunday (St. Vincent DePaul Church). I wasn’t really feeling up to it, but much like you have to do when you don’t feel like exercising, I made myself go. The homily, based on the Book of Luke, was on love. The message was essentially that we need to love one another. That Sunday, however, I was actively hating on people. Like the woman who wouldn’t let me get up and step outside the pew but insisted on crawling over me to get into the pew. Or the man behind me who decided to kneel and pray right into the back of my neck. I was not feeling the love, but it got me to thinking: Where is the love in my life?

Lately, it’s been coming up everywhere.

Love of Self
This past Friday night I was out on the town and a man, a photographer, presumably trying to get me to go out with him, started up conversation. He asked me why I didn’t like having my picture taken. I said, “Probably because growing up I rarely had my picture taken and it just isn’t anything that I am used to, blah, blah, blah.” I didn’t really say “blah, blah, blah.” I can’t remember now exactly what I said, but I sure remember his response.

He proceeded to tell me that the reason I didn’t like my picture being taken was because I didn’t love and accept myself. Mind you, this was a first meeting and we were in a bar. Really – not appropriate bar banter and not a way to this girl’s heart.

Still, I had to ask, do I love myself? Truth be told, I haven’t always been sure what that means. I have come to recognize that part of loving yourself is essentially having a sense of self worth. What is that? Respecting your feelings and wants enough to make them known and expect that they will be respected. To wit: setting boundaries.

So as luck would have it, the next morning, the universe posed the question directly to me. The universe’s messenger was a pocket-sized man who insisted on parking under a No Parking sign in my alleyway right outside my door. In fact, he does this often. Usually, I say nothing, feel pissed off, grumble to myself and leave it at that. This Saturday morning, however, I loved myself enough to stick up for myself. So I told him that if he didn’t move his car I’d have it towed.

Oh sure, like a toddler, he squirmed at my wish – precisely because it wasn’t his wish, but by holding firm I got what I wanted and he moved his car. I was a little nervous after – would he come back and extract some sort of revenge? But eventually I relaxed into an ease I didn’t think I could feel. So do I love myself? Let’s just say, it’s getting easier and maybe that’s why I am starting to see more love in my life.

Love of Mankind
Like the love I feel for Umberto, the old Italian man who has cut my hair for over 15 years. I am closer to him than my own father. He is the man who once swiveled me in his hair cutting chair to face the mirror, told me to look into it and said, “You have you and that’s all you will ever need.”

Or the love I feel for Eric. He’s my trainer. Eric challenges me not only physically, but also mentally. He’s helped me to open up as a person: to be myself when I’m pushing iron and feel really comfortable doing it; to stop when I’m tired; to complain when I need to, to laugh, to be proud. No matter my mood, emotion or reaction, he’s the man who gives me a big smile and says, “Don’t be weak!”

Umberto and Eric are two people who probably don’t even realize how much I love them and admittedly, I’m a bit shy about expressing it but they are regular reminders that the world is full of love.

Love of Family
Which is especially comforting now that my 3 ½ year-old nephew Isaac is in it.

Isaac

Saturday night I had a dinner date with Isaac. We played nerf guns, construction workers, and fire fighters. We paused only to eat a quick meal his mother made us. Then it was back to the skyscraper we were working on in his parent’s office. He was, of course, the foreman and I was his worker. He even made me wear a hard hat. He’s very concerned about workplace safety. Then we went to his room and I read him two stories. After which he said, “Tia Licia, let’s cuddle and talk.” So I climbed into his big boy bed with him, he put his little face right up to mine and he said, “Let’s talk about dangerous things.” So we talked about knives, swords, fire, etc. He wants to be a transformer when he grows up. (Don’t we all?)

Finally, it was time to sleep so I gave him a big squeeze, told him that I loved him and then I proceeded to plant besitos all over his face. Tia Love. It’s like getting to be a grandparent when you’re in your thirties. I get to just love him up. And the sillier and more expansive my demonstrations of love right now, the better. He just consumes it and it is wonderful.

Love of Friends
It’s the kind of freeing love that I also feel for my dear friends, like my friend Beth.

On Monday, I was brought low by an article, that like the return of 80s shoulder pads, recycled the Let’s Scare Women over 30 About Marriage trend. I hesitate to propagate this but here it is, Exhibit A.

Reading the article thoroughly depressed me. The author’s entire approach struck me as fear based and unfortunately, fear is contagious. She seems to be doing the inverse of what she cautions against. Her comment, don’t not go on a date with someone 5’7” is eerily similar to I only date someone who is 6’1”. Both statements are focused on the wrong thing. Where does love factor in?

I forwarded the article to Beth. She’s a very busy married woman with a toddler but she fired back an immediate response, steering me to another take on the topic that was decidedly more life affirming. She sent me this link.

My spirits were immediately lifted. She gave me hope – a more loving gesture, I cannot devise.

Love of a Man
What about romantic love, you ask? Well, I’m still working on that one. But in the meantime, I realize that love is all around me and it’s the various shapes, colors and forms of it (okay sometimes even in kernels) that make my life whole. While it’s complicated, this is simple: I love and am loved. And for that I thank God.

As you might imagine, my blog post last week received double the traffic it usually does.  Double. I believe I am proving my point: sex is the quick fix.  Um, at least when it comes to driving traffic.

I also received some great feedback.  One comment definitely deserves mentioning.  I received a note from a male engineer, in the amount of detail that only a male engineer can provide, that pointed out that the blonde was displaying “more advantages” than the brunette and therefore it was not truly an apples to apples, or should I say melons to melons test.

What’s funny is that our designer and trafficker are both men and they didn’t even realize the “true” differences between the women pictured.  As the engineer put it: the blonde is “showing more of her top part (maybe even the top she wears looks transparent, but not sure).  And her legs are also shown.  The brunette only shows her stomach.”

As I mentioned in my prior post, we do know that the fewer clothes these broads wear, the higher the click through.  So I went back through the stats and took a look at our banners.  The 300X250s, using the same women as in my prior post, displayed the women completely and the 728X90s only showed their heads  – no bodies.  The results were the same for both the 300X250s AND the 728X90s: blondes outperformed the brunettes.

To note, the best performing ad size here is the 300X250.  Which we find is usually the case, no matter the content of the ad – BTW.

The engineer’s point is a good one, however.  Even when testing the 728X90s, in an ideal world we’d use the same woman and just change her hair color.  There might be some difference in CTR based on the individual faces used, but based on additional testing (we ran a variety of blondes and brunettes) we think we have the winning combination:  Spanish ad + blonde woman + some flesh showing = a click.

Well, at least to get a man to an autos site.

I have a JD from Stanford Law School but last week I found myself outlining a banner ad strategy to test different images of women leaned over cars as a means of driving traffic to an auto site.

We launched an auto site, AutosAhora. It’s a little ugly at this stage because we’re just playing with it to test some of our hypotheses.

We’ve been advertisers – I started the business in online lead generation. We’ve enabled publishers – we run an ad network and service hundreds of publishers focused on the Hispanic market. But it wasn’t until last year that we took the plunge and became a publisher ourselves by launching some of our own sites. We know how to spend money to drive traffic to a site – paid media, search, affiliate marketing, even radio. Organic traffic, with no spend however, is a new area.

We’ve been doing a lot of experimentation. In general, we take a look at the whole funnel to understand the right combination of elements that results in the end goal whether that be a page view, lead or transaction. A good summary of our method is outlined here.

For our autos site, we have tested different sources of organic traffic: twitter, social networks, article postings (ala Digg, Reddit, etc.), and link exchanges. We have tested different article headlines, content types (video, photos, articles, tips) and content categories. We are also testing different website layouts and placements.

We’re slowly working through our hypotheses but one thing is clear, sex and autos go together. More specifically, women and cars go together. Were the Duryea brothers out to impress a girl when they created the first successful gas powered car? (Yeah, I had to look that up. I drive a 1996 Honda Civic for God’s sake!) What were Ford’s motives? I venture to guess that most men think it matters to women what type of car they drive and they think a hot car will attract a hot girl. And most auto shows, auto sites and auto magazines do nothing to disabuse them of the notion. I’ll reserve comment. Suffice it to say that most of the folks visiting auto sites are men and let’s face it, men like to look at women. And cars. So why not both?

Our testing shows that’s the combination that’s garnered the most traffic to our site thus far, by a wide margin. We don’t think this is a good long-term strategy, but if you want fast traffic to your autos site, women are the way to go. Which brings me back to my test.

Which ad below do you think won in the online U.S. Hispanic community? (By winning, I mean garnered the most clicks, highest CTR).

Do Blondes get more clicks?

Or Brunettes?

I decided on a blonde versus brunette test to see if hair color makes a difference in click through rates. We already know that the less clothing these women wear the higher the CTR, but the results here were pretty dramatic. The blonde ladies received a 0.34% CTR versus only 0.19% for brunettes. So U.S. Hispanic men prefer blondes. I could have told you that from personal experience but that’s a whole other blog.

In these very ambiguous times, there’s a lot to fear. Will I fail? Will I succeed? Will I be alright? From the generalized to the very particular. Did you know that Allodoxaphobia is the fear of opinions? If you have that, I suggest you stop reading here.

“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” I must admit, this popular quote never occurs to me when I’m afraid. It’s tough to face fear in all its interesting forms, everywhere it pops up. Facing fear takes courage – an ability to be aware and present no matter how uncomfortable. Not an easy task when the main sources of your fear, your thoughts, are taking you everywhere but here. It’s tough to grasp that when we are consumed by fear, what we think may be happening or will happen may not actually be happening or happen at all.

That’s what happened to me. A while back, my college boyfriend, a snowboarding instructor, decided he was going to teach me to snowboard. Tears (his) and recriminations (mine) prevented us from even getting down a bunny slope together.

Frankly, I was terrified of snowboarding. I never learned to ski as a child – we didn’t have the money and growing up no one I knew had even seen snow. All I knew about boarding was that I didn’t know anything about it. It was new and would require new things from me and that scared the bejeezus out me. I thought I would die getting off a chair lift or die from exposure. I thought that I didn’t have the right gear or was mistakenly on a black diamond run. I thought that Après was some sort of secret society that excluded brown girls from Los Angeles.

It took me years to get up the courage to try again and those attempts were equally terrible. Finally, I enrolled in a snowboarding school in Whistler. I had no idea what I was getting into. I went by myself and somehow landed in a house full of nine dudes (really – no better way to describe them). They were from all over the world, Japan, France, Italy, Australia – there to become certified snowboarding instructors.

Somehow I, the consummate beginner, had ended up in a house of near pros. Packed with all my gear were all my old fears: Tachophobia (the fear of speed), Atelophobia (the fear of imperfection), Atychiphobia (the fear of failure) and Catagelophobia (the fear of being ridiculed).

We snowboarded 5 hours a day every day for a week. When we were not riding, we worked on board maintenance or watched snowboarding footage. That’s it. It was monastic really.

I learned though. I discovered that the irrational fear, the fear that is important to face, first comes up in your mind and then makes its way to your body – tensing you up. And if there’s anything you cannot be while snowboarding – it’s tense. You have to get loose and bend your knees. A relaxed body is better able to respond to the dynamics of the terrain.

I also learned how to manage my fear by doing a few key things:

(1) get help: getting a lesson is a great way to have someone with you who is not invested in the outcome, just in teaching – boyfriend/girlfriend or parent/child skirmishes alleviated plus there’s a certain safety in numbers;

(2) be mindful and aware moment to moment: focusing in on the skills I learned in boarding school kept my mind from going off into the thoughts that fed my fear. As Rosa Parks once said, “Knowing what must be done does away with fear;” and

(3) accept my fear: it’s okay to feel fear. Just acknowledging that I was afraid allowed me to put it down and get focused on what I needed to do. As Lauren Ambrose puts it “The fear is the way through.” Or put another way: “The coward turns attention toward fighting fear; the warrior accommodates it.”

By the end of the week I was much better – hitting all the blues and a few blacks on Whistler. I finally knew what to do on a chair lift. I understood that everyone wipes out – even the best and sometimes even on exiting a chair lift. Shit happens out there. The fun is that it’s usually a soft landing.

Today, when fear, of any kind, is getting the best of me I go boarding. That’s why I headed to Tahoe last week. After a few missed seasons, I was a bit worried about how I’d do so I signed up for a lesson. Ironically, my teacher’s name was Travis. Travis and I got out on the first cable ride up the mountain and marveled at the sun peeking out from the clouds. The snow was perfect – fluffy, pristine. I snapped on my board and did the awkward shuffle to the lift line. That’s where it hit me: all my old fears came raging back. What if I wipe out trying to get off the chair lift? What if I make a fool of myself? Am I too old for this?

Yep, even though I knew what I was doing, I still had fear. It never seems to go away completely and that’s the challenge. Courage takes practice. Ever the good student, I turned towards Travis in the lift chair and said, “I’m afraid.” He said, “Okay.”

Not sure what else to say I focused on the upcoming chair lift exit and told myself, “Trust your body. Look where you want to go.” I exited smoothly and joined him at a perch above the run.

He turned to me and said, “Whenever you encounter anything steep you want to stop at the top and plan your route.”

I nodded my head, trying to appear confident but truth be told I was beginning to sweat. I was so sure I was going to flip butt over head in a matter of seconds. Travis, without additional preamble, started his descent. I watched him carve smooth S shapes across the snow. I focused on those shapes and before I knew it, I was riding in his wake.

And then – I caught an edge. Then some air and before I could gather my thoughts was thrown into a pillow soft heap of snow. It felt fantastic. I started laughing uncontrollably. I punched back up and continued riding down to Travis.

“Are you okay?” he asked?

“Oh yeah, “ I said, with a big grin on my face. “I had to get that out of the way.”

“Cool ,” he said. “See? Being afraid can be fun.” Then Travis zipped on down the mountain and I was not far behind.

There’s an old saying, “If you meet three assholes in a day, you’re the asshole.” Did you crack a knowing smile? You may agree that it’s very true. Yet underneath the laughter, was it a bit hard to accept? I’m going to venture to guess it was. Because no matter the problem, it’s hard to imagine you are the source of it. Just the very thought hits the ego right in the spot that smarts. And egos don’t like to be messed with.

Just ask Nikki. Last night I watched Bravo’s Tuesday night reality television show, Tabatha’s Salon Takeover. Tabatha, the salon expert, is a no-nonsense woman with years of experience in the hair salon industry. She regularly blows in to a new salon to dispense wisdom in black clothing. This week she arrived at Brownes & Co., a beauty salon in South Beach, Florida. The owner, Nikki, comes off as a pretty awful boss. Her staff is afraid of her, she doesn’t trust her staff and the business is suffering.

After the show I checked in online to see what others thought of the episode and Nikki. It was pretty universal. Most everyone hated Nikki and wished the salon would fail.

What I suspect about many of the comments is that most of them are from people who have never been the boss (and many who never will be). Nikki definitely represents the dark side of being the boss and is something I feel moved to shed some light on. This is in no way a defense of Nikki, but Nikki – I’ve been there.

Running a business can come about in many ways – you inherit it, you start it, you develop it, but no matter the start, at some point you find yourself at the helm. One day you were an employee and the next you have employees. Most small business owners or start-up founders have never gone to school for the job or received any training in how to be a boss. So everything that you were before becoming the boss is who you are when you are the boss. The big difference is that now the spotlight is on you. Every quirk, insecurity, mood, facial expression, style, choice, becomes the focus of a group of people. All eyes are on you. All the time.

The only thing I can analogize it to is being a parent – your baby or toddler absorbs everything you do, looks to you for guidance and tests the heck out of you. And that’s exactly what employees do.

Why? Because employees are human. What often gets forgotten in the mix is that so are bosses.

This is the point where people like Nikki can get stuck. How do I know this? Because it happened to me.

At first, being the boss is all newness and excitement. Gradually, though, the stress of daily choices, daily complaints, daily issues sets in and there is no one to turn to. It’s lonely. You don’t want to show uncertainty or fear, and more often than you care to admit you don’t know what you are doing. Add to that a board that wants results or economic difficulties in the business or industry and the stakes get even higher. An unorganized event, an unhappy client, an employee mistake all get horribly magnified. In the eyes of the boss. Why? Because the boss cares. I don’t know a single boss or owner that at some level does not. This caring, however, often manifests itself in some seriously screwed up ways.

For me, I became angry. Mind you, up until I became a boss (and this will be hard to believe for at least a few folks out there) I had a lot of difficulty even feeling anger and I had never yelled at anyone at work in my life. Then one day, in a small office crammed with employees, I yelled at a salesperson. A few days later at a meeting in a conference room I sneered at an employee. And then another day, over the phone, I said, “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” to a salesperson who told me his self-imposed sales goal for the month was $10,000. Was I right to express incredulity? Yes. Was it right to use the phrasing I did? No.

Next thing I knew I was regularly raging inside. I began to hate going to work. I began to hate my employees. And then I just plain didn’t trust them. The office culture was miserable and so was I.

Luckily (and I can only say this now, years later), my angry outburst at a salesperson actually made its way to my board. It pains me even now to write this. I was hugely embarrassed. On my board is a man named Yogen Dalal, who basically embodies the saying: the core of peace is calm. He acknowledged that employees are often tougher on aggressive female leaders and suggested a CEO coach. Through a friend in Silicon Valley I was referred to Carole Robin. She is a lecturer in Organizational Behavior and teaches the class referred to as “Touchy Feely” at the Stanford Business School. With Carole, I began to work. On what you ask? Myself.

Yes, that’s the kind of training people need to do to become good bosses: work on themselves. Because often the anger, distrust, ugly behaviors (and by the way the passive, disconnected, wishy-washy behaviors, too) stem from some unspoken depths of your soul. I had to learn that all my developmental and emotional issues were leaking out all over in the workplace. My inexperience in setting boundaries? My difficulty with direct communication? My lack of self-worth? Oh yeah – all had consequences at work (and so do they for employees, but I digress). What I had to learn was to separate my self and my self-worth from the outcome of the business. I discovered that I had a core belief that if the business failed I would be a failure and if I was a failure no one would value me or love me. How’s that for high stakes?

So you can imagine how when things started to look like they were going south, I began to white knuckle my grip on the company. And this grip started a vicious cycle. Suddenly all I saw were mistakes and seeing only mistakes (and not the good things) I began to distrust my employees and my employees picked up on this and then felt less capable and therefore became less capable, which led to more mistakes. You can see where I’m going with this. Man, it makes my stomach hurt just to write this. It truly was a terrible situation for all involved.

It took a lot of time with Carole and work in my personal life for me to grow into being a boss. At first I was defensive, then I played the victim, and then I learned I had a choice. I was the boss. If I didn’t want to be the boss, I could give up my role, but if I did want to be the boss, I had to accept the challenges of the role – like, yes, your facial expressions have an impact and that’s not going to change and no, you can’t control everything. I had to change some of my behaviors and ways of thinking (what Carole calls mental models). I also learned that your feelings and anger, in particular, are very wise. They are definitely pointing you to something that needs addressing. The trick is to identify the feeling/emotion, understand its root and then express it appropriately. Bosses are allowed to be angry.

Now, there’s another old saying that bears repeating: “With great power comes great responsibility.” I believe bosses do have a greater responsibility to clean up their side of the desk. They do, after all, carry the livelihoods of people in their hands. I understand that no one is going to feel sorry for the boss and nor should they. I don’t believe, however, that bosses should be demonized. No one ever tells the boss she’s doing a good job and let’s be real: bosses have a tougher job than employees: they carry the livelihoods of people in their hands. I also think that employees might feel just a bit more empowered if they stepped back and realized they are at the end of the day, dealing with another human across the desk. While the negotiation may seem lop-sided (“She can fire me!”) often times it is not (“I need him!”). Just something to think about.

I am now a boss in recovery. Do I still get stressed out and make mistakes with employees? Yep. I’m human. Today, my training with Carole and my shift in perspective in how to be a boss and run a company have helped me to be more relaxed and lead from a place that is calmer and more trusting. Consorte is better for it and frankly, I’m better for it. As I like to say, nothing teaches you more about yourself than starting and running a business.

Nikki does seem pretty resistant. She’s definitely not open to feedback. And if there’s anything Carole has taught me, it’s this: “Feedback is a gift – no matter how poorly given.”

Still, I understand Nikki’s tears at the beginning of the episode. She’s facing failure. That’s scary – no matter how you slice it. And the only thing scarier than that is realizing you are the problem. How do you get out of your own way? Well, if my example is worth anything, you do that by looking inwards. Because the ego has such a tight grip on most of us this is no easy task and it sometimes takes a death (a person or a business) or if you’re lucky, just a reality show, before you’re pushed to do the work.

I don’t hate Nikki. I don’t want her salon to fail. I hope Nikki has someone who can help her go slowly and carefully into that dark and confusing place – herself and find that there’s beauty in being a boss. That’s what this brown beauty did.

I didn’t realize I could become an entrepreneur until I met Steve Rafferty.  Steve is a friend who used to live near me in San Francisco.  When he left a full-time job and started his own company, it suddenly became possible for me.  I mean, if Steve could do it…

Sometimes all it takes is a chance to see yourself in someone else who is doing big things.  Knowing just that, an old friend from Wilson, Sonsini, Goodrich & Rosati, Jill Bowman, created Lookilulu, a website “Helping Girls See What They Can Do.”  Jill recently invited me to share my story on the site and interviewed me in my first podcast (also, unfortunately, while I had a terrible cold).

Check it out here.

Abrazos,

Alicia

Today is Travis’, or as he is lovingly referred to here at Consorte Media, Intern2, last day.   Travis’ story is not your typical story.  Nor is it, unfortunately, unusual.  Travis grew up on the Umatilla Indian reservation in Pendleton, Oregon.  He went to a community college for one year and then transferred to Eastern Oregon University.  He starts his third year this fall.  He will likely take 5 years or more to graduate.

He, despite being technologically savvy, doesn’t type well or fast, he’s new to Excel and Power Point (essential workplace tools these days), and he knows next to nothing about online advertising.  In fact, most of his work experience has been summer jobs in construction.  There are a lot of young men out there that I am sure can relate.

Travis got his internship with Consorte Media via his brother who knows me.  It’s this fortuitous connection that landed Travis in his first office job and his first technology start-up.   The reality is that had Travis not had this connection he probably would have been in construction jobs for some time.  I’m not knocking construction jobs, but trying to illuminate a point: it’s all about exposure.

Travis didn’t grow up exposed to business, technology or online advertising.  His parents didn’t run a business or don suits; they didn’t even go to college.  There are a lot of young people like Travis out there and his is very similar to my own story.  My mother didn’t make it past the eighth grade and my father only graduated high school.

Where does that leave people like Travis?  Behind.

In my last year of college at Stanford, I had the honor of being told by Jerry Porras, the author of Built to Last and a professor emeritus at the Stanford Business School, that I was behind and would always have to work harder than everybody else.  How was I behind exactly?  I could stand my ground, I was quick on my feet, and I was a loyal friend.  I hated him a little bit when he told me that.  But you know what?  He was right.

I was behind because my life and socio-economic status kept me in a pocket of limited options, not a bad life mind you, just a limited one.  I wouldn’t have even discovered Stanford University if my sister Maria hadn’t brought home a Seventeen Magazine one day.  In it she read an article that said Stanford was the best school in California.  She said, “You’re good at school.  Why don’t you apply there?”

Not knowing any better, I did and I’ve been playing catch up ever since.  Going to Stanford was my first exposure to a world that included terms like investment banking, entrepreneurship and Silicon Valley.   My college roommates had computers, I had an electric typewriter.   One had traveled to Africa; I had never been outside of California.  Another of my college roommates actually boarded her horse at the school’s stables.  “Man, what does your dad do?” I often thought but never ventured to ask.

When I got to Stanford I had a huge chip on my shoulder.  I didn’t realize I had stepped into a new game and resented having to play.  I only started wanting to play catch up when I finally got to see – what others have been fortunate to be exposed to from an early age:  that it’s a big world out there with huge possibilities; something really hard to see when you live next to a gas station in La Puente or on an Indian reservation.

I wonder what Travis will remember from his few weeks at Consorte.  It was short and definitely not enough time to relay everything about online advertising.  The time I spent with him I focused mainly on how to create and understand the elements of an income statement: the basics of building a business.

At the very least, I hope he will take with him a sense that there are people in the world that care about his success. That success requires hard work (no matter how talented you may be and if you don’t have a great talent ala Kobe Bryant – it takes a whole heck of a lot more hard work).  And that while Travis is capable, knows more about living off the land than most and has already surpassed his parents in education, he’s stepped into a new game and he’s behind.

But that’s not a bad thing.  As I have learned, you can come from nothing and build something.  That, to borrow an oft repeated saying by Maya Angelou, “When you know better, you do better.”  Consorte Media is only one glimpse of what’s out there.   I can’t wait to see if Travis plays.

One of the first houses I remember growing up in was located across the street from a drive-thru Winchell’s donut. You had to drive through a big brown stucco hole to pick up your doughnuts. Now that I think about it, this fortuitous locale perhaps foreshadowed my lifelong love of chocolate old-fashioned doughnuts. My love of all sugary drinks was no doubt foretold by the huge vats of Cherry Punch Kool-Aid I consumed until I shamelessly rocked a red mustache, thinking it a sort of pre-adolescent lipstick. And if I press further, I believe the roots of my fried chicken obsession were planted by frequent trips to Church’s Fried Chicken after church on Sundays.

So I guess it’s no big surprise that I have a terrible diet. If you were to look at me, you’d probably never guess it. I’m not over-weight and I’m pretty active so I am trim or in the parlance of online dating profiles everywhere: athletic.

Although I have been told that “athletic” can mean stocky, I am not fat. I am, however, what Cosmo magazine would refer to as an Apple. Most of my fat accumulates in my belly. Still, as I never saw much evidence of this on my body, I gave it nary a thought. That is until my mother died.

My mother died of a pulmonary embolism at the age of 63. In the aftermath of her death, I learned that my family has a history of heart disease and stroke. So half-heartedly, I got a referral to a cardiologist. My appointment was first thing in the morning and I was the youngest in the waiting room by decades. Long story short: a routine EKG came back abnormal. Next thing I knew I was being rushed into all sorts of tests. Three hours later my life was changed. I had a cardiologist and an electro physiologist, an arrhythmia, a diseased heart and high cholesterol.

My cardiologist gave me six months to get my cholesterol down to normal levels or he would have to put me on Lipitor, a statin. As I was already an avid exerciser, my doctor suspected the issue was genetic but challenged me to see what I could do to bring my numbers down via my diet. He outlined some ground rules: red meat no more than twice a month; no fried foods and no more than 8 grams of saturated fat a day.

The main way to radically reduce your cholesterol is to severely limit saturated fat in your diet. The TLC diet suggests limiting saturated fat to no more than 7% of your total calories. The American Heart Association recommends no more than 5% of your total calories. To calculate how much this means in terms of saturated fat you can consume, check out this handy dandy calculator.

BTW – your belly fat can tell you a lot about your risk for heart disease. Per Dr. Oz, you should regularly measure your waist at belly button level. Women with waists greater than 35 inches are at high risk for heart disease.

Shortly after my appointment with the cardiologist, I walked through my local Whole Foods and checked the saturated fat content on everything from cheese to chips. I learned quickly that Vegan or Organic does not necessarily mean low in saturated fat. That pretty much left me with fruit, vegetables and fish: a tall order for someone who thinks fast food is slow.

My diagnosis was two years ago and it is still a daily battle to choose the right foods. I get regular checkups and I have managed to bring my cholesterol down only to see it shoot up again when I got lax with my diet. It’s not easy. Friends often push food without realizing the struggle it is to decline it. There are days I want to cry I want something fatty so bad but hold out, and there are other days that I throw caution to the wind and consume whole bags of Hershey’s Almond Kisses.

I’m working on the balance. I still dive into the skin on a rotisserie chicken first but at least it’s not fried chicken anymore. And this Apple is finally eating more of them.

I had dinner a few weeks ago with a partner from Mayfield, a venture firm that invested in Consorte Media, down in Burlingame. I drove down and was meeting a work colleague there. When I arrived at the restaurant, my colleague was waiting outside. His first comment: “I saw what you drive.” “And?” I inquired. “It’s not what I expected,” he said.

He went on to say that my car didn’t suit me. I guess this is where I should tell you that I drive a 1996 Honda Civic Dx that has a manual transmission, manual steering and manual windows. There’s not an automatic anything about it. Except, of course, for automatic judgment: the driver is poor, uncool, or whatever. I guess the missing plastic side strips and extensive paint chipping don’t help. It’s clean but it’s a bit beat up.

At any rate, I felt a bit defensive about his comment but then I got reflective. What did he expect me to drive? What car is supposed to go with my personality? My career? My looks? Something to highlight my olive skin tone?

The reality is that I’m afraid to upgrade. I bought my car the summer before law school when I had no money. And it symbolizes a lot to me: where I came from, how hard I’ve worked. It can be embarrassing driving it from time to time, like when I pulled up in it at the Menlo Country Club for the Sutter Hill Ventures Christmas party. But other times it’s a good way to get around; I don’t have a car payment; and it has an uncanny ability to weed out superficial folks.

And sometimes the universe reminds me I’m blessed. One afternoon, I was picking up my Honda from a parking garage when a parking attendant ran up to me. “You own the black Honda?” he asked. “Yes, why?” I answered. “Can I buy it from you?” he asked. I was surprised. Why would anyone want to buy mi chatarra? “My Honda?” I replied incredulously. “Yeah, man,” he said, “Those things last forever.” I felt so proud. I smiled and said, “No way.”

Still, I know at some point I am going to have to buy a new car. I read an article by Suze Orman recently that said you shouldn’t buy a car unless you have the means to pay it off in three years. But what can I afford? There are different ideas out there. Consumer Reports suggests that your total debt should not exceed 36% of your gross income. You can use that as a guide to get to a monthly car payment. Other financial experts say your car expenses (car payment plus gas, insurance and maintenance) should not exceed 12-15% of your net monthly income. Or if you’re a bit lazy like me, you can calculate what you can afford with this handy dandy calculator.

Buying a new car is crazy expensive if you’re trying to live within your means (and we all do that, right? No? check out Tiene Dinero ) So what’s a girl to do? Well the Federal Car Allowance Rebate System program which is supposed to start this month gives car buyers cash for “clunkers” – cars that no longer meet environmental standards. You can check at www.fueleconomy.gov to see if your car qualifies. My 1996 Honda? Doesn’t qualify. Yet.