Rothacker Reviews

The Encore Career Handbook

The Encore Career Handbook by Marci Alboher

Are you a Gen-Yer looking to stand out, looking for an edge, looking to grow? Then The Encore Career Handbook, designed for older people looking to make a difference in the second half of their lives, is the perfect road map for you!

Are you one of those folks who grew up with What Color is Your Parachute? The Encore Career Handbook is the What Color is Your Parachute for the 21st century. Although I wouldn't replace the Parachute book with it, just use it to supplement your knowledge.

 

Back to Gen-Y, my most favorite generation. What do you suppose the odds are that sometime in your life you'll work for or with a Baby Boomer (people 49-67)? Do you think it might be to your advantage to get to understand thoughts, beliefs and ideas from this age group have?

To be real, I've moved away from forming hard fast opinions on people because of the generation they belong to. If it weren't for my bald head and the fact I look every bit of my fifty plus years on this planet, I'd say I'm a Gen-Yer - because I feel that way. But generalities are useful, particularly when they come to this subject.

I recommend reading The Encore Career Handbook because it will help you learn about some of the underlying motivations that Boomers take to work everyday. Did you know that Suzy, the fifty-one year old manager of your office, secretly desires to work with wounded animals? No. But engage her in exploratory conversations and you'll probably learn a whole lot more when it comes to your personal development.

I once told Penelope Trunk, author of Brazen Careerist, a book on career advice targeted to Gen-X & Y, that I bought and read her book so I could learn more about those generations and be a better manager. I believe the words I used were I was using her intel to go undercover. 

This is precisely what I recommend Gen-Yers do. Buy and read The Encore Career Handbook in order to learn more about Baby Boomers.

Update 8/14/2013 - I was a bit hasty in declaring The Encore Career Handbook the new What Color is Your Parachute? Dick Bolles has published a fresh and new copy of Parachute for thirty-nine straight years. And that doesn't include the two editions he published before 1975. That's just crazy man! I believe however, that Marci captures both the spirit and detail of what Mr. Bolles has been providing for nearly four decades. 

A Computing Infrastructure for Distributing Information?

Give you a hint: it's black, white and not so much read all over.

Interesting article by Gabe Stein on why Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post. I can't wait to see what Jeff has up his sleeve!

Agile Time Management Strategies by Ariane Benefit

Check out some really simple and doable time management strategies from my friend Ariane Benefit. I for one really dig adaptive resiliency!

New Tampa / Wesley Chapel: Sola Salon Studios

 

Yesterday I had the most excellent and pleasurable of conversations with Rich and Mary Saltzman, owners of Sola Salon Studios serving the the Tampa Bay New Tampa and Wesley Chapel neighborhoods. There's much I'd like to tell you (and much more for me to learn), about the unique business concept that Rich and Mary deploy, their business philosophy, their story and the salon owners who are open to sharing their individual stories as they relate to business and perhaps most of all, their ability and freedom to express who they are through their work.

My interest in Rich, Mary and the salon owners relates to the freedom that is now part of their lives. This is what my future writing will focus on, not the promotion of their individual businesses per se. Before I move on from the thought of promoting the salon owner's however, I'd like you to think about one thing. 

Would I want a stylist working on me who works in a shop laden with the pressures of drama, competition, inattentive / unreasonable owners, overall shop helter-skelter and messiness? Or would I want a stylist working on me who is free to express his or her artistic license?

There is a chance I put the cart ahead of the horse here. Rich and Mary are on board with my project. As are two of the salon owners. But as yet, I have not approached the others (I'm working on it. To be real, I was just so excited about what I witnessed yesterday that I had no choice but to write today). With this in mind, I'd like to tell you something about Rich and Mary. 

Rich and Mary understand that the more positive stuff written about both their operation and those of the salon owners, the better it is for their business. They could easily pass out a memo encouraging salon owners to talk with me. But they will not. It's important to them that the salon owners have the autonomy to do their own thing. Perhaps the salon owner might be insanely busy or have other things going on in their life or maybe they just don't feel like participating; no worries, Rich and Mary are totally cool with it. This speaks volumes about these two engaging entrepreneurs.

More to come. Stay tuned. By the way, Rich and Mary have owned a Sola Salon Studios, which is located on N. Dale Mabry in Carrollwood, since 2009. 

I Don't Eat Junk Food

Check out the confident and determined "I don't" look. It works.

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How to be an Explorer of the World

How to be an Explorer of the World by Keri Smith

Does the idea of bringing value to another person's life intrigue you? Where do you get the stuff value is made of? Grade school? High School? College? Sure. 

Let's say you have a small bottle filled with marbles. Let's say a marble is the equivalent of a good deed. Let's say each time you do a good deed one marble is removed from the bottle. What happens when all of the marbles are gone? Do you run out of good deeds?

In order to give value, one must ingest the type of stuff value is made of. When marbles are taken out, new ones must go in. Conventional learning is a fine place to begin. School, seminar and websites provide knowledge that can be turned into value. But take a look around you. Isn't everyone trying to take their education and turn it into a value supplying machine? Sure. That's the world of work.

I don't know about you, but when I see sheep standing in line to walk off the cliff because the sheep in front of them are, I'm thinking twice before getting in that line. The key is to turbo charge and enhance your education. And you don't have to go to school to do it. Increase your value by providing something that no other person in the world can. How? By being an explorer of the world.

 If you take basic math in school and your job requires this knowledge to produce results, the outcome that you produce will be identical to everyone else who works in your field and who took the same math. Think sheep. Think cliff. Think splat. But if you go out and explore the world, download what she has to offer onto your internal hard drive, letting it permeate your existing education, knowledge and wisdom, then what comes out will most likely be unique to anything in the universe. 

In How to be an Explorer of the World, Keri Smith provides a creative medium that will help transfer what the world has to offer onto your own personal hard drive. 

Check out the following book photos:

Selling Your Book: To Sell is Human

As a member of Dan Pink's pre-launch / launch book team, I've enjoyed a sort of behind the curtain look into a portion of the process. The thing that is most noticeable to me is the exhaustive effort he's placed into birthing this book. The folks in this video do a superb job in bringing clarity to some of the book's main themes.

 

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Seth Godin Assures: I Artist

By participating in Seth Godin's The Icarus Deception: Why Make Art? Kickstarter project, I secured a limited edition, BIG ASS book titled This Might Work. The twenty pound behemoth is a collection of Seth's online posts. This is not the kind of book that one grabs and flies off to the bathroom with. I had to put some thought and care into how I was going to tackle reading it. If I placed it on my lap while sitting in my reading chair, it would cut off circulation to my lower extremities. And overall, I'm not very comfortable sitting at my writing desk to read books. 

So I placed it on our kitchen table and propped it up with a cookie tin. I began to read, make notes and highlight text. As the western sun made its way across the pond, through the window and down upon my face, I began to feel like, well, like an artist. 

Now truth be told, I already felt like an artist. Especially as Seth outlines in We Are All Artists Now, a Change This manifesto. I feel my writing is an attitude, it's human, it (and I) strive to connect with those who matter and it's very personal. But sitting at the kitchen table I felt like the bloke who is in front of a blank canvass with a paint brush and paint. My inscriptions and markings into the behemoth reflected the backsplash of Seth's wisdom. I was feeling wise, spiritual and inspired. And I was really looking forward to sitting down once more to paint. 

Pick up a copy of Seth's new book The Icarus Deception: How High Will You Fly? today.

Yes. I artist.

Thanks Seth.

 

 

 

Morrie: Lessons On Living (with Ted Koppel) -1

I am rereading Mitch Albom's Tuesdays With Morrie and thought I'd like to collect Ted Koppel's interviews with Morrie here at Rothacker Reviews. When nearly twenty-four hundred people take the time to write a Amazon review, you pretty much know the book is special. It is.  

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The Icarus Deception: How High Will You Fly?

The Icarus Deception: How High Will You Fly? by Seth Godin

I participated in the Kickstarter campaign for Seth and his team. This is a picture of all the stuff that my donation included. That large book weighs twenty pounds and you can see by the ruler below how large it actually is. I'll probably review the book in the not so distant future but I just wanted to pass the word along on the book and show you these pictures.

Should you buy the book? Yes. I've already made that determination after reading about thirty pages. But here's another reason. I first began to read Seth's books in the late nineties. I've seen improvement in each book. Seth has sharpened his awareness, increased his resources and enhanced his writing skills (I have twenty pounds of proof of this). That's why I'll continue to buy Seth books, provided he's not writing on some uninteresting topic, for years to come.

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