A Flair for the Unconventional

WHEN I was a teenager living in New Delhi, I read "The Fountainhead" by Ayn Rand and decided I wanted to be an architect. My parents wanted me to be a doctor, but I stood my ground and took the entrance exam to study architecture.

Admission to college is very competitive in India, especially for a professional degree. At the time, there were about 2,000 students competing for about 28 openings in the School of Planning and Architecture. I was one of six women admitted.

I have a history of doing unconventional things. After I graduated from college, I saw an ad for a beauty contest and entered it for fun. I had no expectations. I grew up in a family where girls were encouraged not to attract attention to themselves, so this was more a rebellious act than any desire to win. To my surprise, I came in second. I was offered a modeling contract, but I had bigger plans. I left for the United States two months later.

I had worked in architecture for a year in India, and I wanted to get a master's in my field here. The semester had already started in that program, however, so I got a master's in management information systems instead. I also got married. It was an arranged marriage.

My last salaried job was working in information technology for Edward Jones, the investment firm. They had a program where I could work at home, which seemed attractive because I had two small children. But when they told me the hourly rate compared to my annual salary, I thought, "Is that all, for my qualifications?"

My husband tried to talk me out of starting a business. "Why do you need to do something different?" he asked. I had seen my parents struggle, and I wanted a better life. "I have to," I told him. I was ready to fail. I started cold-calling and attending networking breakfasts. I wrote a business plan with the help of the Small Business Administration. I was lucky to get a few contracts and felt I owed nothing but outstanding service to these clients for putting their trust in me.

The early years weren't easy. I was always trying to keep costs down, so I'd take late-night flights and look for the cheapest rental cars. Once I took a late-night flight to Arizona and couldn't find my way around. I ended up in the desert and it was pitch black. I wanted to put my head on the steering wheel and cry. Another time, in Washington, I hailed a cab to take me to a meeting. The cab driver, who had just arrived in the country, drove around for two hours. I was afraid I was being kidnapped. This was before cellphones and I was late to the meeting.

It was sheer luck that we were able to survive when the technology bubble burst. A majority of our clients have always been government organizations. A few people said that wasn't too smart, but it saved us. We saw a lot of our competitors go under. I never understood the dot-com hype, and the business model just didn't make sense. I see the same thing now with the overvaluation of offshore companies.

The lessons I learned early in life helped me immensely in making a company grow. My mother used to teach night school and wasn't there when I got home from school, so I learned how to fend for myself. When I was 12, she visited the United States for several months, leaving the household responsibilities to me. I had to learn how to use my time and energy wisely. I learned survival, which is what business is all about. I've also learned that as a leader, how kind you are is more important than how much you know.

Two years ago we put a great deal of time and money into landing a new client in Texas, but the company chose three large multinational companies instead. I said fine, remember us. I got busy with other ways to strengthen the company. The client called recently and said one of its suppliers was not performing. They gave us the contract instead. Persistence pays.

Today's Tip

Advice from the experts-

Economist.com

September 13, 2005

Break Bread with Your Banker

I'm a banker by training, and I always say you really need a quality banking relationship. And if you don't have a relationship you're comfortable with, you need to change. Banks are critical. They can be one of the best partners you can possibly have -- but you need to be comfortable with the people you deal with. You need to know more than one person.

Ken Yancey
CEO
SCORE
Washington, D.C.

05:00 AM | | Comments (0)

September 12, 2005

Put People First

I think the absolute key to running any business is having the capability to look after people -- to inspire people, motivate people, and to put people first. And if you can collect around you a great group people who passionately believe in what you're trying to achieve, and if look after them, you will succeed.

Sir Richard Branson
CEO
Virgin Group
London

05:00 AM | Management & HR | Comments (0)

September 09, 2005

Acknowledge Mistakes Sooner, Not Later

Successful companies take calculated chances when launching new products or beginning new ventures. Many times new ideas are successful and contribute to a company's increase in revenues and profits. However, mistakes are also a part of the process, and knowing when to admit defeat can save valuable time and money.

For the most part, you and your managers know when a mistake has been made. Stepping up to take responsibility shows real leadership. The faster you fix problems, the less mistakes cost. It also leads to greater respect from the organization. Hiding from the truth is like a cancer that can spread quickly and disenfranchise a company's greatest assets -- its employees.

Chris Indelicato
Owner and CEO
Delicato Family Vineyards
Napa, Calif.

05:00 AM | Management & HR | Comments (0)

September 08, 2005

Identify Organic Growth -- and Build Upon It

Look at what end of your business is growing organically. Find out where things are flowing naturally, and then veer in that direction. Don't push the side of the company that's not moving quickly or not what you expected it to be. If you follow the natural growth of your company, you'll be successful even if it's not in the way you originally envisioned success.

Elise Okrend
Co-Founder
Mixed Blessing
Raleigh, N.C.

05:00 AM | Sales & Marketing | Comments (0)

September 07, 2005

Let Work Guide Your Life

For entrepreneurs and small-business owners, balancing work and nonwork roles can be a heightened challenge. Starting up and running one's own business can at times seem to be an all-consuming activity. Prioritizing and clarifying what's important to you in both work and nonwork roles is critical for achieving balance.

Moreover, instead of getting mired in work/life conflict, using these conflicts to identify inefficiencies in the way work is done can be very important. Finally, achieving work/life balance isn't only about avoiding conflict but also about recognizing opportunities for synergy between work and nonwork roles, such as identifying key knowledge, skills, and social connections that can be transferred from one role to the other.

Nancy Rothbard
Assistant Professor of Management
The Wharton School
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia

05:00 AM | Management & HR | Comments (0)

September 06, 2005

Explore Your Neighborhood

The success or failure of a new specialty retail store is the result of how much time the new store owner spends on developing creative ways to build their business, rather than building out their store. Hire qualified professionals to build out your store and then get out of the way. There is no money to be made overseeing construction and physically getting the store up and running.

Your startup time should be spent doing all the things necessary to let people in your neighborhood know who you are and what you do. You should also study successful businesses in your neighborhood and figure out what they're doing right. You might also want to consider introducing yourself to successful owners of retail stores in your neighborhood. You'll be pleasantly surprised at how helpful they can be. If you think that all you have to do is open your door and then stand behind your cash register to succeed, you're doomed to fail.

Bruce Olans
Principal
Total Resource Group
Lincolnwood, Ill.

05:00 AM | Getting Started | Comments (0)

September 02, 2005

Form Your Own Kitchen Cabinet

It's never too early for an entrepreneurial board of advisers, if you think of them as a small circle of experts from whom you gain guidance and mentorship that's relevant to your major business questions. Please note, these people are not to be primarily considered as sources of free consulting to help you with your business tactics, but more as strategic guides and mentors. They can help you think through your direction and also help you connect with people who might provide more tactical types of assistance.

Selecting the right folks is one of the first challenges. For example, if your accountant or your attorney is on your board, it instantly becomes difficult to talk through strategic issues that might result in a change in professional providers. A second challenge is to be prepared to change advisers as you and your company change. If you build an understanding of timing into board membership when you first approach potential advisers, it makes changing members easier to deal with graciously as you grow.

Patricia Greene
Dean, Undergraduate School
President's Endowed Chair in Entrepreneurship
Babson College
Wellesley, Mass.

05:00 AM | Management & HR | Comments (0)

September 01, 2005

Convince Customers to Preach Your Gospel

There are only three ways to increase sales. Increase the average transaction amount. Get your customers to purchase more frequently. Or get more customers. But if you can create a truly remarkable experience that builds a base of fiercely loyal customers, who act like apostles for your brand, you increase sales all three ways at the same time.

Jack Mackey
Vice-President
Service Management Group
Kansas City, Mo.

05:00 AM | Sales & Marketing | Comments (0)

August 31, 2005

Always Guard Your Front Door

Today's security threats require more than a "plug and play" firewall system. To properly protect your networks, IT staff must not only deploy the firewall, but monitor and manage it as well. A properly installed firewall should be monitored 24/7 for threats and attacks, and be capable of handling virus definitions and content management.

Lonnie Helgerson
CEO
Expetec Technology Services
Aberdeen, S.D.

05:00 AM | Operations & Technology | Comments (0)

August 30, 2005

It's O.K. To Start Small

You don't need a lot of money to start a business. I see a lot of people not venturing forth because they think they have to get big-time financing. I really believe in the start-in-your-garage philosophy.

Linda Phillips-Jones
Co-Founder and Principal Consultant
The Mentoring Group
Grass Valley, Calif.

05:00 AM | Getting Started | Comments (3)

August 29, 2005

Solve a Problem... Or Find a New One

When generating ideas for a new venture, you may take one of the following two strategies:

Start with the problem to be addressed and brainstorm potential solutions. Generate a new approach to an old problem.

Or you could start with the solution or technology to be used and brainstorm potential applications. In other words, take an old approach to a new problem.

Make relatively small investments in sequential entrepreneurial "experiments," creating the opportunity (but not obligation) to commercialize or proceed with the result.

David Hsu
Management Professor
The Wharton School
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia

05:00 AM | | Comments (1)

August 26, 2005

Opportunity Doesn't Knock -- It Answers

You have to go out and find opportunity. If you're an entrepreneur, it's not going to knock on your door. Opportunity doesn't even know where you live, it doesn't know your wife and kids, it doesn't know what a great person you are. As an entrepreneur you have to get up from behind your desk, go down the street, and knock on every door, and maybe opportunity will answer.

That's the biggest thing that I tell folks. If you want to be successful in business, you have to go out and find opportunity, because opportunity will not find you. Again, its all about relationships. The old adage "it's who you know and not what you know" is so true. It really is, because those relationships are the ones that bring you the opportunities.

Tim Knox
Co-Founder
eLab Ventures
Huntsville, Ala.

05:00 AM | Getting Started | Comments (0)

August 25, 2005

Sometimes You Have to Work for Free

Give away your services for free and do pro bono work in the community. For me, I've found it's one of the best ways of marketing your business -- it demonstrates your prowess and expertise. People don't always know your work, and you think just cold calling them will get them to hire you. But people like to work with people they know.

On our Web site, we offer a free media training guide. Most people aren't going to do that themselves. They'll read it, and when it's time for them, they'll call and hire me. It does come back to you.

David Landis
President
Landis Communications
San Francisco

05:00 AM | Sales & Marketing | Comments (0)

August 24, 2005

Rent Before You Buy

If you're an entrepreneur looking into office space for the first time, don't even think of buying. You want to rent. Make sure you get a "good guy" clause in the lease. It allows you to get out of the lease if your business venture doesn't work out. And you and the landlord can still remain friends.

Faith Hope Consolo
Chairman
Retail Leasing and Sales Division
Prudential Douglas Elliman
New York

05:00 AM | Getting Started | Comments (0)

August 23, 2005

Stand Out from the Crowd

The most important thing is to get your positioning as "right" as possible. You want to be perceived by your target market as better than the competition on some attributes that leverage your firm's distinctive competence, so as to have some durable competitive advantage. Every marketing activity then has to strengthen this perception.

Tactically, don't let anyone tell you that you can't measure the impact of your advertising and promotion. Especially for small businesses, it's relatively easy and inexpensive to keep track of the data you need to make these evaluations. They won't be as precise as other accounting entities, but they will be precise enough to make very productive decisions on which campaigns to do more of and which to stop.

Last hint -- don't be afraid to be different and innovative. Those are the concepts that are typically most successful. (Advertising on the backs of the Chinese fortune cookies, which serial entrepreneur Josh Kopelman introduced, is just one example.)

Leonard M. Lodish
Marketing Professor
Vice Dean, Wharton West
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia

the most highly compensated HR (human resources) manager ever.......

Google's ex-Microsoft exec can recruit in China

By Elinor Mills, CNET News.com
Published on ZDNet News: September 13, 2005, 11:52 AM PT

A former Microsoft executive can immediately begin recruiting staff for a Google development center in China, rather than waiting until after a January trial, a Washington state judge ruled Tuesday.

Microsoft had asked the King County Superior Court to extend a temporary order banning Kai-Fu Lee from starting the work he was hired to do at Google, arguing that it would violate a one-year noncompete agreement he signed when he became a Microsoft vice president in 2000. Google argued that the contract does not prevent him from doing recruiting work in China.

In his 13-page ruling, Judge Steven Gonzalez restricted Lee to recruiting for Google in China and to talking to government officials about getting a license to do business there but said Lee cannot work on technologies such as search or speech. Lee also cannot set budgets or salaries, or decide what research Google will do in China, according to the order.

Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft sued Google in July, when the search company announced plans to hire Lee to help lead the launch of a China research and development center. Microsoft claimed that Lee should be prohibited from doing any work at Google similar to what he did at the software giant and that he was privy to Microsoft company secrets that could give Google an unfair advantage.

Mountain View, Calif.-based Google contended that the work Lee will do for it is not the same as what he did for Microsoft in China and that the noncompete agreement he signed is not valid in California or in China.

"We are really pleased with the judge's order," Tom Burt, deputy general counsel for Microsoft, said Tuesday. "For $10 million, (Lee) can interview students and be a leasing agent," he said, referring to Lee's purported salary at Google. The order "reduces him to being, at least until the outcome of trial, the most highly compensated HR (human resources) manager ever."

Google did not return an e-mail seeking comment. (Google representatives have instituted a policy of not talking with CNET News.com reporters until July 2006 in response to privacy issues raised by a previous story.)

Universities

How Europe fails its young

The state of Europe's higher education is a long-term threat to its competitiveness

THOSE Europeans who are tempted, in the light of the dismal scenes in New Orleans this fortnight, to downgrade the American challenge should meditate on one word: universities. Five years ago in Lisbon European officials proclaimed their intention to become the world's premier “knowledge economy” by 2010. The thinking behind this grand declaration made sense of a sort: Europe's only chance of preserving its living standards lies in working smarter than its competitors rather than harder or cheaper. But Europe's failing higher-education system poses a lethal threat to this ambition.

Europe created the modern university. Scholars were gathering in Paris and Bologna before America was on the map. Oxford and Cambridge invented the residential university: the idea of a community of scholars living together to pursue higher learning. Germany created the research university. A century ago European universities were a magnet for scholars and a model for academic administrators the world over.

But, as our survey of higher education explains, since the second world war Europe has progressively surrendered its lead in higher education to the United States. America boasts 17 of the world's top 20 universities, according to a widely used global ranking by the Shanghai Jiao Tong University. American universities currently employ 70% of the world's Nobel prize-winners, 30% of the world's output of articles on science and engineering, and 44% of the most frequently cited articles. No wonder developing countries now look to America rather than Europe for a model for higher education.

Why have European universities declined so precipitously in recent decades? And what can be done to restore them to their former glory? The answer to the first question lies in the role of the state. American universities get their funding from a variety of different sources, not just government but also philanthropists, businesses and, of course, the students themselves. European ones are largely state-funded. The constraints on state funding mean that European governments force universities to “process” more and more students without giving them the necessary cash—and respond to the universities' complaints by trying to micromanage them. Inevitably, quality has eroded. Yet, as the American model shows, people are prepared to pay for good higher education, because they know they will benefit from it: that's why America spends twice as much of its GDP on higher education as Europe does.

The answer to the second question is to set universities free from the state. Free universities to run their internal affairs: how can French universities, for example, compete for talent with their American rivals when professors are civil servants? And free them to charge fees for their services—including, most importantly, student fees.

The standard European retort is that if people have to pay for higher education, it will become the monopoly of the rich. But spending on higher education in Europe is highly regressive (more middle-class students go to university than working-class ones). And higher education is hardly a monopoly of the rich in America: a third of undergraduates come from racial minorities, and about a quarter come from families with incomes below the poverty line. The government certainly has a responsibility to help students to borrow against their future incomes. But student fees offer the best chance of pumping more resources into higher education. They also offer the best chance of combining equity with excellence.

Europe still boasts some of the world's best universities, and there are some signs that policymakers have realised that their system is failing. Britain, the pacemaker in university reform in Europe, is raising fees. The Germans are trying to create a Teutonic Ivy League. European universities are aggressively wooing foreign students. Pan-European plans are encouraging student mobility and forcing the more eccentric European countries (notably Germany) to reform their degree structures. But the reforms have been too tentative.

America is not the only competition Europe faces in the knowledge economy. Emerging countries have cottoned on to the idea of working smarter as well as harder. Singapore is determined to turn itself into a “knowledge island”. India is sprucing up its institutes of technology. In the past decade China has doubled the size of its student population while pouring vast resources into elite universities. Forget about catching up with America; unless Europeans reform their universities, they will soon be left in the dust by Asia as well.

Flat income tax

A dip in the middle

Sep 8th 2005
From The Economist print edition

The Conservatives toy with a politically risky idea

INCOME tax has been paid in Britain for more than two centuries. First introduced by William Pitt the Younger to finance the war against Napoleonic France, it is the Treasury's biggest source of revenue, raising 30% of tax receipts. It arouses strong political emotions, regarded as fair by some because it makes the rich pay a bigger share of their income than the poor, but unfair by others because it penalises enterprise and hard work.

During the past 30 years, income tax has been subject to sweeping changes, notably the cut in the top rate from 98% to 40% under Margaret Thatcher between 1979 and 1988. Now another Conservative politician, George Osborne, is floating a radical reform to match that earlier exploit. The shadow chancellor announced on September 7th that he was setting up a commission to explore the possible introduction of a flat tax in Britain.

Mr Osborne's big new idea stems in part from frustration at the Conservative party's failure to win votes on tax in the past two elections. Their proposal to cut taxes by £4 billion ($7.4 billion) a year did them few favours at the polls in May. Such a paltry reduction in a trillion-pound economy seemed an apology of a policy.

By contrast, the introduction of a flat tax would be a radical step. The reform is already being tried elsewhere. Mr Osborne first expressed interest in the flat tax after a visit in June to Estonia, which introduced it in 1994. Since then eight other countries in eastern and central Europe have followed suit. Poland appears likely to adopt a flat income tax. Even Germany is flirting with the idea (see article).

Introducing a flat income tax into Britain would involve two main changes. At present, there are three marginal tax rates. The first £2,090 of taxable income is taxed at 10%; the next £30,310 is taxed at the basic rate of 22%; and income above that is taxed at the higher rate of 40%. These three rates would be replaced by a single rate, which would be considerably lower than the current top rate. At the same time there would be an increase in the tax-free personal allowance, currently worth £4,895.

Flat-tax proponents say that the reform would yield many economic benefits. If it were combined with an assault on other tax reliefs, then it would simplify a tax system that is groaning with complexity. The latest edition of “Tolley's Yellow Tax Handbook”, which contains all direct-tax legislation for 2005-06, runs to four weighty volumes and has roughly doubled in length since Gordon Brown became chancellor of the exchequer in 1997. Only this week, Mr Brown was upbraided by a parliamentary committee for the complex “nightmare” of his system of tax credits, designed to help poorer families.

Another advantage is that reform could sweep a lot of low-paid people out of income tax altogether. In the past eight years under Labour, the number of income-tax payers has risen from 26.2m to 30.5m. Over the same period, the number of higher-rate taxpayers has risen from 2.1m to 3.6m.

Flat-tax fans also think that it could trigger a new economic dynamism, as people respond to the enhanced incentive to work harder. The more this happens, the more the reform could pay for itself as a bigger economy generates more tax revenues.

So much for the economic case for a flat tax. What of its politics? One obvious objection is that the reform would be unfair, since the richer would pay less tax than they do at present. Advocates of a flat tax make two rejoinders. First, an income-tax system with a single rate remains progressive—the rich pay a higher proportion of their income than the poor—as long as it is combined with a tax-free allowance. Second, the rich can exploit current complexities to avoid taxes in ways that could be curtailed in a flat-tax system.

But could a flat tax be introduced without there being losers? A recent paper from the Adam Smith Institute suggested that this would indeed be possible. Richard Teather, its author, proposed a flat-rate tax of 22%, the present basic rate, with a tax-free personal allowance of £12,000, more than double the current one. “All taxpayers would be better off under the reform,” he argued.

However, the proposal has an obvious flaw. As Mr Teather himself admits, it would result in an initial loss in revenue of £50 billion a year. That is over a third of the total income-tax receipts of £138 billion that the Treasury expects this year; and a tenth of all government revenues.

Unless public spending were slashed, other taxes would have to rise to meet this shortfall. So a more realistic simulation of the impact of a flat tax is to make it revenue-neutral. The Economist asked John Hawksworth, an economist at PricewaterhouseCoopers, an accountancy firm, to calculate what that might involve. He said the current yield of income tax could be preserved with a flat rate of 30% and a personal allowance of £10,000. We also asked Mr Hawksworth to estimate what impact such a reform would have on income-tax payers. Under this revenue-neutral approach, there would be losers as well as winners compared with current tax bills (see chart).

Those who would gain are low-earners as well as high-fliers. For example, someone on £10,000 would gain 8.7% of their income; someone on £100,000 would gain 5% of their income. Those who would lose are in the middle, with losses peaking at 3.5% of income at the current higher-rate threshold of £37,295. In all, more than 10m income-tax payers—a third of the present number—would lose from such a reform.

Clearly, different combinations of allowance and tax rate would generate different results. But the general pattern would remain the same. “If you raise the same revenue but increase the allowance, then it is the people in the middle of the income tax paying population that lose from a flat tax,” says Christopher Heady, head of tax policy at the OECD.

This finding is politically awkward for the Tories. Unless a flat income tax were financed by big increases in other taxes, it is difficult to see how it could realistically be introduced without exacting a lot of pain among middling earners. Yet their votes will be crucial if the Conservatives are to stand any chance at the next election.

The flat tax is an arresting idea—and politically attractive because it gives the Tories a platform to attack Labour's itch to meddle with the tax code—but it does not get the Conservatives off the hook. Mr Osborne wants lower and simpler taxes. However, he will be able to achieve that goal only if he can work out a convincing set of proposals to cut public spending.

Ms. Dolly Lenz - Real Estate Queen of New York - Economist.com Read

Face Value

New York's real-estate queen

At the top of the market with Dolly Lenz

AT $31.5m for 500 square metres of living space, the penthouse at 502 Park Avenue is a pricey bit of property even by the exalted standards of Manhattan. But what the heck. It has two terraces overlooking Central Park, you can see for miles, and when Dolly Lenz is showing it the view in every direction is one of boundless optimism. Let others manage without a 42-windowed Italianate drawing room, a heart-shaped double staircase, white-oak floors sawn from trees personally selected in the Allegheny mountains by Donald Trump Jr and a choice of three elevators—one for the servants, one that you share with the other billionaires in the building and one that is yours alone. But you deserve these things, and to get them you go to Ms Lenz, the top real-estate agent in a city that is obsessed by real estate to the point of derangement.

The average selling price of all apartments in Manhattan passed $1m last year, and is now around $1.3m. At the top end of the market, where Ms Lenz and three or four rivals hold sway, the surge has been more spectacular still—or alarming, if you happen to be out of the market. Apartments with four bedrooms or more, the sort of thing found mainly on the posh Upper East Side or Upper West Side of the city, more than doubled in price between the second quarter of last year and the second quarter of this year, according to Miller Samuel, a property-valuation firm. Across the United States, house prices have been rising at their fastest rate in 26 years, thanks to cheap mortgages (see article). The willingness of homeowners to borrow and spend against this paper wealth has helped America's economy to go on growing briskly, at least until now, despite rising interest rates and record-high petrol prices.

Ms Lenz is an engagingly chatty and precise New Yorker of 47, an accountant by training, born with a Blackberry in one hand and a Chanel bag in the other. She reckons to have sold more than $4 billion worth of property in her 20-year career, and to be selling now at the rate of $400m-450m a year. Her firm, Prudential Douglas Elliman, part of the Prudential Real Estate network, vies for leadership of the Manhattan market with Corcoran, part of the Cendant group. Steven Gaines, author of “The Sky's the Limit”, a gossipy new history of the New York property market, calls her “a powerhouse that no one [can] touch”. She sold almost $400m worth of apartments in the Time Warner Centre on Columbus Circle, which opened last year, and where record prices pushed up the whole top end of the market. Late last year she sold an estate on Long Island for $45m, the highest price ever paid for a New York residence.

Ms Lenz credits the current boom to a mood swing among the rich after the attacks on the World Trade Centre four years ago this week. The market sagged briefly along with the rest of the local economy, she says, but then came roaring back, especially at the top end, when people with money decided that they should enjoy life while it lasted, and that if New York could survive 9/11, it could survive anything.

Another big change in the market, says Ms Lenz, has been the arrival of the “hedge-fund guys”. Fifteen years ago she was selling to doctors and lawyers as well as bankers, most of them wanting an eight-room apartment for life somewhere on the Upper East Side. Now, along with international investors and a few celebrities, her biggest customers are hedge-fund managers and other Wall Street lions who expect to change properties after two or three years like other people change cars. She tells of one hedge-fund manager, 33 years old, who bought a $24m apartment in an hour, explaining that he had “just bought a $19m painting at Christie's, and he was not going to put it up on a $2m wall”. The potential buyers for the Park Avenue penthouse include another “hedge-fund guy” she says, and a “royal-family-type person”.

The developer at Park Avenue, Donald Trump, whose grandiose buildings bestride New York, has played a big part in Ms Lenz's success. He backed a road show that she took to Hong Kong in 1991, selling apartments in an earlier Trump building. She found that Asia's new rich would buy four or five New York apartments at a time, for investment, much as they did with property at home, and she was happy to oblige. Bulk buyers—many from overseas—now make up roughly half her business, usually seeking condominium apartments that they can buy outright. The collectively-owned “co-op” apartment buildings more common in New York are prone to reject absentee landlords as buyers, and anybody else who might ruffle their composure. A few years ago Ms Lenz sold Barbara Streisand's apartment on Central Park West to Mariah Carey, another popular singer, only to have the deal blocked by a residents' committee which balked at the team of bodyguards accompanying Ms Carey to her interview.

Ms Lenz sounds as bullish as you might expect when she talks of the prospects for the New York market now. She sees some froth, but no bubble. Another point on interest rates is not going to worry many of her buyers, she says, although a crisis in the hedge-fund industry would certainly hurt. With so much money heading downtown into loft conversions in Chelsea and Tribeca, she says, the Upper East Side is even looking relatively cheap these days. It is all a matter of supply and demand, and she sees the right amount of both.

She may be right. And yet when a particularly grand townhouse on Fifth Avenue is on the market for $50m, and when every able-bodied New Yorker seems to be retraining as a real-estate agent in the hope of emulating Ms Lenz, it is hard to avoid the sense of a market at its peak. The view from the penthouse at 502 Park Avenue is indeed spectacular, but it is a long way down.

10 Year Stock Market Performance around the world

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Stockmarkets

Sep 8th 2005
From The Economist print edition

Economic freedom

Sep 8th 2005
From The Economist print edition

Hong Kong enjoys the most economic freedom of any of the 127 countries or territories in the Economic Freedom of the World Index, created by the Fraser Institute, a Canadian think-tank. The index measures how far a country's policies and institutions support property rights, personal choice and competition. The index also favours sound money and small government. Plucky Estonia ranks ninth, while Venezuela ranks only a few places above the trammelled economy of Myanmar.