“PEOPLE ALWAYS TRAVEL,” says Larry Yu, professor of hospitality management at George Washington University. “Travel is such a part of American culture.”

Yu and his colleagues in hospitality training programs across the country are noticing the same thing: Stocks are tanking, factories are shuttering, businesses are imploding — yet the hotel industry soldiers on.

This is true both on paper (the industry grows about 3 percent annually, notwithstanding minor bumps) and in practice: For those working at a hotel, the world literally never sleeps.

“Operating in that environment is very different from an organization that can shut down on weekends. Try a hotel shutdown for a couple of months and see what happens,” says professor A. Kobina Armoo, who teaches in Strayer University’s hospitality management program. Even when hotels are renovating, they remain open because, he says, starting up again is so difficult. So, though it may make sense to close when rooms are sitting empty, the lights stay on. And for the people who run the hotels of the world, therein lies the challenge and the excitement.

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Washington Post Express

February 11, 2009

HEY, DUMMY. Get over here and stop ruining your life.

Larry Winget, the Pitbull of Personal Development and star of A&E’s short-lived reality show, “Big Spender,” says in his new book that you – yes, you – are an idiot. “People Are Idiots And I Can Prove It” is no less abrasive and obnoxious than Winget’s previous books, but he may be the hard dose of reality needed by people who don’t react well to “The Power of Positive Thinking.” Winget spoke to us about personal finance, career development, and why life sucks.

» EXPRESS: So, is everyone an idiot?

» WINGET: Everyone is an idiot. No one is exempt. We all make mistakes. The key is to learn from it and don’t make the same mistake more than once.

The only way you learn from your mistakes is to feel the pain of your mistakes and realize you don’t want to feel [that]. Most people don’t recognize when they’re being an idiot. The last thing anyone wants to do is take responsibility.

I’m a big believer in remorse. That’s a step too many people leave out of the process. I want people to hurt. I want them to tie emotion to their stupidity.

» EXPRESS: Some people would call that negative reinforcement.

» WINGET: I think negativity is the most powerful thing we could use in our society. Instead, we have all those motivational gurus saying we have to think positive. Positive thinking is not a plan for success. You need to get negative about your life. You need to get negative about your situations. You need to say, “I can do better, and I’m sick of living like this.” When you get negative about your situation, you can get positive to change yourself.

» EXPRESS: That’s unconventional.

» WINGET: [Laughs] Well, I’m right; they’re all wrong. As long as you’re happy, you won’t take responsibility for your life. You won’t feel bad about it. You have to say, “I know I can do better.” All of those things are negative. And only then you can start to make a change.

» EXPRESS: OK. Somebody says, “I want a promotion at work,” but doesn’t put in extra hours. Idiot?

» WINGET: Absolute idiot. I would fire that person.

» EXPRESS: And your advice for this person would be what?

» WINGET: Go to work and do everything you were hired to do. Don’t complain because you don’t like the silly hat you were hired to wear. Do the job. Don’t complain, especially in this economic environment. Just do what you are paid to do.

Stop worrying about the economy. The point is, you have an opportunity right now. It’s not the economy that matters, its your economy. It doesn’t matter that someone else is out of a job; it matters that you have a job and you’d better bust your ass to keep it.

» EXPRESS: You’re really into turning to personal development books for advice. How do you tell the good ones from the bad?

» WINGET: My goal is to read for intent. Even the worst books have one good idea. If you get one good idea from a book and you paid $15 to $20 for it, isn’t a great idea worth $20?

» EXPRESS: Can you recommend some good titles?

» WINGET: I think all of [my books] are amazing. And believe it or not, I’m a big reader of Wayne Dyer. There’s a fine line between [expletive] and guru, and he walks it every day.

» EXPRESS: What kind of person trademarks his or her moniker?

» WINGET: A guy who has had their stuff stolen so many times that you learn quickly.

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DECEPTIVELY TRICKY: That could be the best description of djembe drumming. The West African drum has only, “like, six tones [to] learn,” says student Meredith Dalton, yet combining hand movements to make complicated rhythms — while someone else is drumming a different beat — requires coordination and concentration. In Jaqui MacMillan’s six-week Drum for Joy class, students start as beginners and end able to play a song from start to finish.

The Basics
MacMillan starts students off with simple rhythms, but soon they’re full-speed ahead. And it is Drum for Joy, (“not Drum for Talent,” student William Winston cracks), so, sometimes students just pick a beat and run with it, filling the classroom with a sound strong enough to shake light fixtures.

What You’ll Learn
MacMillan has honed her curriculum over 15 years: She chooses a “performance”-style African song (traditional songs can last for hours) and takes her students through it, line by line. She’ll call out the next rhythm, and its up to students to follow along. “It doesn’t take a lot to learn how to do a drum,” Dalton says, but “it’s also kind of hard [to master].”

What’s the Deal?
MacMillan’s class is offered at the House of Musical Traditions’ teaching studio in Takoma Park. Six one-hour classes cost $120. Most students buy a drum, but loaners are available.

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BLACKJACK DEALING. Resume writing. Improve your life. Make more money. Become more attractive. Turn that great invention idea into reality. Heck, is that Sudoku puzzle too hard for you? There’s a class for that, too.

Washington’s source for educational seminars both serious and off-the-wall is First Class Inc., that business whose brochures are usually nestled between real estate flyers and job fair leaflets. But unlike buying a home or finding a new job, a class at First Class can change your life for a minimal investment — or, at least, that’s the angle Debra Leopold’s banking on.

Leopold, 52, has helmed First Class Inc., since she founded it in 1984. She’s led her business through its fledgling stages (convincing former Washington Post columnist Bob Levey to hold a seminar) to its glory days (a former CIA agent’s class attracted worldwide press attention) and, most recently, a serious challenge (the Internet and free information). She’s watched her industry evolve and flounder, as independent learning centers across the country have folded and even many of industry giant Learning Annex’s schools have closed. And, the cynic says, why should it be any different? When the Web can teach you how to buy a house, start a business or fold an origami crane, why shell out for a class, even one that costs as little as $25 and two hours of time?

“It’s so hard to replicate the energy that happens in a live seminar,” Leopold says. She wears pink eye shadow and a rhinestone-speckled dress, and is almost unconscionably perky. She bakes chocolate chip cookies for her students to munch on before class. “You can get all the information from the Internet, but [the teacher] motivates you to do it. How would you get that on the Internet?”

It seems that at least some Washingtonians agree that in-person learning is still tops. Take one of First Class’ perennial favorites, the Passion Test. It’s based on a book, but some clearly prefer to listen to a lecture rather than buy (or borrow) the book: The class sells out every time it’s offered.

Other popular courses include anything hands-on: “Massage for Partners” is always popular. And in this economic climate, classes that promise wealth from a new career or side business fill the First Class course catalogs. “For a minimal investment of time and a minimal investment of money, you could really come away with a skill that will change your life,” she says, and then backtracks. “Could you find the skills needed to give you an edge? …I think so. For adults, it [one session] is usually enough. They don’t really need any more.”

» Beginnings
In 1984, Leopold was working for an adult-education center called Open University, doing marketing, HR and design work, and taking their classes — break dancing, bagel-making and so on. The school, like its contemporaries, was informal; a way to socialize rather than pick up a new skill. “It was very grassroots … very few people had an outline.” Classes were held in teachers’ basements. When Learning Annex bought Open U, Leopold realized she didn’t like the new owners, so she founded her own school.

Business grew. Classes as wide-ranging as How to Play 3-D Chess (a flop) and Making $100,000 a Year as a Private Eye (a success) peppered the course catalogs. Competitor the Learning Annex shut down in 1990, made a second attempt at breaking into the D.C. market in 1995, and shut down again in 1997. There was an incident when some of Leopold’s information boxes went missing. The Post reported Leopold said she had seen her boxes in use, with Learning Annex stickers on them, in New York City. The Learning Annex retaliated by claiming Leopold “took a box with her [to New York], took a picture and went home.”

» Entrepreneurial Life
Days begin at 10 a.m. answering e-mails and taking registrations, and end at 9 p.m. when the night’s class ends. Since she’s there to let students in before and lock up afterward, Leopold ends up sitting in on the class, whatever it is. Recently she’s been auditing her more tech-y courses: “Make $100 a Day Using Your Blog and Free Internet Tools” was a recent one. That got her into social networking as a way to advertise her business.

“The challenge to me is marketing. …I don’t know when to stop,” Leopold said. “Every time I think I’ve caught up on every site out there to get the word out, two more crop up. … Maybe I don’t fully understand how the sites work.” It does sound like information overload, especially for a self-described poor delegator: She spends an hour and a half daily updating various sites. She’s registered on LinkedIn, MySpace, Facebook and Twitter and blogs on Blogspot. She posts on Craigslist and also uses Kijiji and Plurk, two sites of dubious value as yet. And her strategy of posting personal updates (“Digging Project Runway … was I a fashion designer in another life?”) and only sporadic class announcements is questionable, though for now it seems to be working. “My understanding is you’re not really supposed to market or advertise [on social network sites], but if it happens subliminally it’s OK,” she says. And “all of a sudden, new students were coming in the door. … All my classes last week were sold out, [and] they’re sold out this week.”

» Business Tips
Say what you will about a cookie-baking, Facebook-doting woman; running a company almost single-handedly for a quarter-century requires some business savvy. One tip, free of charge: Master as much as you can, “so you’re not outsourcing all these things that just add to your overhead.” In addition to doing her own Internet marketing, Leopold is her own accountant, Webmaster, brochure designer and tech support line.

And, for now, business is good. Enrollment is bouncing back, Leopold has no local competitors, and her students, it seems, love her. When she e-mailed her student mailing list asking for success stories, responses flooded in. “First Class has changed my life.” “I’m doing exactly what I have always dreamed of.” “I could not be happier.” “First Class rocks!!!” It’s unclear how much of this goodwill was attributed to the $5 coupon code included in the mass mailing — but, then again, isn’t that good business sense, too?

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Eric Kimball is writing. He knows how his story ends and he knows how it begins, but the middle is muddled. His outline so far says “stuff happens” — shorthand for “I’ll figure out what happens here later.”

He stands, sighs and goes for a walk around the block to clear his head.

Kimball, 33, isn’t a novelist or a writer of short stories. He doesn’t fit the stereotype of the lone wolf sitting in a dusty study, banging away at the keys of a laptop or scribbling with a favorite pen, praying the mail will bring checks, not rejection letters. Kimball writes comics.

“I like dialogue, I like well-turned phrases,” he says, “and I don’t like description that much. I’ve never enjoyed the sort of, ‘His hair was like a summer stream.’ I can never get it to work right. I like listening to people talk.” So, Kimball decided not to fight his tin ear for description and let an artist draw his stuff.

Christiana Trenum is writing. She’s pulled out one of the three notebooks she keeps with her, jotting journal entries that will someday become music. The 23-year-old singer-songwriter from Gainesville, Va., wants to go full time with music in the next year and a half, but not necessarily as an artist. “My plan of attack is I will be pitching music to some publishing companies … just selling my material.” Until then, she’s working in marketing while penning her songs.

David Eskola is writing. Coffee cup by his keyboard, stacks of reference books on his desk — Strunk and White, Stedman’s Medical Dictionary, a well-worn thesaurus. By the end of the day, he’ll need to have a speech written for the president of the American Medical Association. That’s a tight deadline, considering the old adage: “It usually takes more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech.” So, he types away, hoping to get a draft done before lunch.

So, if you write it, they will come. Good news for linguaphiles who don’t like traditional writing careers laid out in MFA programs — poet, novelist, what have you — but who want to put their word-slinging skills into something a little more in-depth than composing an e-mail.

But you have to pay your bills, too.

“There’s money in comics — but there are very few people with an extremely comfortable career,” says Jason Rodriguez, a local comic writer and editor whose anthology “Postcards: True Stories That Never Happened” scooped two Harvey nominations and one Eisner nomination. Rodriguez and Chris Piers, another D.C. comics scene notable, teach a Writing for Comics workshop at the Writer’s Center in Bethesda, covering both the craft of writing and the business of pitching scripts to publishers.

Rodriguez — who still has a day job, despite spending hours most nights working on his comic projects — explains that most of the money a comic book writer sees is from the extras: selling T-shirts, movie rights and so on. “Just look at the people who work on one book — with ‘Postcards,’ there were 32 people working on that book — and they all get their cut.”

Same with the music biz. When that guidance counselor told you there was no money in your high school band, she wasn’t just commenting on your musical ability.

Jen and Scott Smith of Baltimore-based Naked Blue led a workshop in Alexandria on the craft of song writing — to be successful, they said, a writer has to juggle artistic integrity with commercial appeal, going as far as to track song trends from week to week. They release their own music (up to five albums now), but they supplement their income by producing records for other bands and doing marketing work. “They’re little side things that are in the [music] business but not strumming a guitar,” says Scott Smith. Still, the duo has been remarkably successful by music-world standards: They’ve toured the United States, the United Kingdom and Germany; sold their songs to other musicians; and seen their work appear in film and TV.
Others in the music biz may not be so lucky: according to BMI, a music rights organization, a songwriter may earn only $500 in his lifetime unless he manages to score a top-of-the-charts hit. (More detailed salary information was not available from BMI at the time of publication.)
Speech writing is a bit different, as many here are employed full time. But according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the competition for these jobs, as with any career that welcomes wordsmiths and English majors, is fierce.
David Eskola, 46, got into speech writing after he won a fellowship to study telecommunications policy on Capitol Hill. “I liked it so much I decided to stay,” he said. So, he started doing press work first for Rep. Jim Chapman, D- and then Sen. Dale Bumpers, D-Ark. Both were “very skilled public speakers … was considered one of the best orators in the Senate.” That pushed him in the direction of speech writing, and Eskola finally moved to the American Medical Association in 2001.
Does none of these careers sound appealing? “Being able to just write a sentence in English, to communicate a thought clearly, puts you ahead of 90 percent of the people out there,” says Eskola. Writers can put their pens to work on greeting cards, slogans, blogs, even catalog copy. (Somebody has to describe Skymall’s nose-hair trimmers and automatic tie-rollers, after all, and by all accounts, it’s a fun place to work. “I totally have a ton of our junk, and I love it,” says Joey O’Donnell, who works in the marketing department of the Phoenix, Ariz.-based company. “Where else can you get an upside-down tomato garden or a garden yeti?”)
The money does vary; blogging, for example, isn’t known for paying much (yet), but commercial writing can be very lucrative, with a nationwide median hourly wage of $35.
Of course, plenty write for love, not for cash. Kimball, for example, took Rodriguez and Piers’ class to “get better at what I’m doing.” Kimball’s online comics (Exiern.com, for one) are making “a little bit of extra spending money” through an online donation system. He writes the dialogue, pays a freelance artist to illustrate the pages, and pockets a little more on the side — which he then reinvests in his fledgling business, out of what he says is a sense of duty. “It would be like if you love to go on the water slide, and people came up and said, ‘Here’s some money; go play on the water slide.’ I love it.

“People are reading my comic and people are paying me to make a comic I love. … I feel an obligation to do it as best I can.”

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» OVERHEARD IN THE OFFICE
$13, Perigee Trade
The “Overheard In …” blog folks have built a veritable empire on recounting non-sequiturs and funny bon mots on the streets of New York, D.C. and elsewhere. For this book, their “spies” infiltrated the corporate world, compiling 240 pages of quotes. The musings range from nonsensical (clueless cube-dweller insisting that “dust comes from sunlight) to groan-worthy (“That’s not Harry Potter, that’s John Lennon“). Best read in small doses, a little at a time, not in one, overwhelming sitting, “Overheard” could provide final, irrefutable proof that all your co-workers really are as weird as you think. Unless, of course, you see yourself quoted.

» WATER COOLER DIARIES
$16, Da Capo
This huge volume spends 320 pages covering one question: “What’s your workday like?” To find out, editors Joni B. Cole and B. K. Rakhra asked for diaries from hundreds of people employed in all kinds of fields, from trad (teachers, doctors, government employees) to rad (racecar drivers, boxing promoters). Each subject recorded their every move on the same day: March 27, 2007. The result is — surprise! — even people with so-called glamorous jobs don’t have totally “Cashmere Mafia” lives, and cubicle life kind of sucks no matter what your job is or where you live. The book’s biggest flaw? Since the editors chose only women to participate in this project, it seems almost too much like an estrogen-fest. Don’t guys have jobs worth reading about too?

» CAREERS IN CRIME
$13, Andrews McNeel Publishing
Oh, this book had so much going for it. The gimmick alone is priceless: Compile an “applicant’s guide” treating criminal occupations of all types with the same gravitas as the Department of Labor treats any other job, using measures like annual salary, predicted job growth and job satisfaction to rank 50 careers from hitman to counterfeiter to cigarette smuggler. The problem? Even wannabe Tony Sopranos and Nathan Detroits will probably find this book’s endless pages just as dull as reading zillions of pages of career information at Monster.com. Anyone forced to read this book cover-to-cover would most likely want to turn criminal afterward — so hey, at least the info in this book is good for something!

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