Reinventing You. Dorie Clark

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      One caveat is that, at this point in your reinvention, it’s often a good idea to keep a low profile. Later on, once you’ve solidified your brand, you’ll want to shout it from the rooftops (that’s how you can win clients for your new business or get a plum job offer where you can utilize your new skills). But at this early stage, you may not have a fully formed sense of where you’re going, and that uncertainty has the potential to confuse others.

      As San Francisco–based executive coach Rebecca Zucker notes, “if you’re not sure what’s next, you still need to come across in a way that inspires confidence and makes other people want to help you. You can’t go out into the world lost, because no one will want to spend social capital on your behalf.” The secret, instead, is to slow down and determine where you really want to invest your energy.

      In this chapter, we’ll talk about ways to crystallize your future direction. We’ll cover:

       Why you may need to take time off first

       How to conduct behind-the-scenes research

       How to win friends and not alienate people through informational interviews

      Take a Break

      If you’ve been suffering through an unsatisfying job or career, you may be eager to get on with the rest of your life. That was certainly the case for one woman who visited Phyllis Stein, the career counselor. “She’d been a solo veterinarian for fourteen years,” recalls Stein, “and she was on call seven days a week for those fourteen years. I literally had never met anyone in my life who had worked like that, not even doctors and lawyers.” The woman was miserable; when Stein asked about her career aspirations, her first words were, “I don’t ever want to see another animal again.” She wanted to start planning her next move, but Stein insisted she wait: “I said, ‘I don’t think you should even try to figure out what you’re going to do next. You should go away for nine months of vacation, to make up for the vacations you didn’t have in fourteen years, and you can come back next September.’ She was in a burned-out condition where creative thinking just wasn’t possible.”

      Sure enough, when the woman returned the following year, she was simultaneously more relaxed and more focused. “She very quickly found a new direction for herself that was incredibly creative,” says Stein, becoming an international public health veterinarian, which allowed her to travel the world helping animals.

      Your Behind-the-Scenes Research

      In the pre-internet dark ages, it was almost impossible to decipher nontraditional career trajectories. How did she get a job like that? What kind of training did he have? Unless you knew them personally or were a reporter and could badger someone for a bio and press kit, you’d never know. Needless to say, some of the most exciting jobs don’t have a clear path.

      But things are different these days. In the post-Google era, you can make massive research headway before even talking to a live person. I know one successful executive who’s made a habit of “stalking the biographies” of people he admires. The best way to get where they are, he decided, was to emulate them—exactly. From becoming a White House Fellow to developing a taste for marathons, he matched their regimen for success. Obsessive, yes, but he’s barely into his thirties, widely lauded in the media, and has already raised over $1 million for charity with his running.

      Reading is, of course, another main research channel. You can take a page from Bill Gates who, as described by Steven Johnson in his excellent Where Good Ideas Come From, takes two weeklong “reading vacations” each year, where he plunges into the stack he’s been collecting. So save up your list of titles (from friends’ recommendations, reviews in industry magazines, or Amazon’s algorithms) and make sure you’re conversant with the leading books in your field before you start networking with people.

      There are four immediate benefits. First, particularly if you’re diving into biographies or memoirs, you can get a better sense of whether or not a given field is for you (Michael Lewis’s Liar’s Poker, for instance, has given generations a taste of life on Wall Street). Second, your immersion will help you master the terminology; the jargon thicket can be dense in some fields, and you’ll want to sound credible. Third, you may pick up some fun anecdotes to share as you’re schmoozing, which can help you grease the wheels of social interaction.

      Finally, you’ll be able to ask better, more-informed questions once you start meeting with other professionals to talk about your goals. Stein tells her clients, “If one of the things they’re exploring is being a lawyer, I don’t want them going to a lawyer and asking a dumb question like ‘What’s it like to be a lawyer?’” Executive coach Michael Melcher agrees: “You want to show that you’ve done your homework—that you’ve taken it as far as possible before talking with the person,” and urges people to consider the “highest and best use” of the person they’re interviewing. In other words, if you can find out certain information online or through books, don’t waste a professional’s time with it. You want to ask the person more sophisticated, refined questions (instead of “Where can I go for training?” think “I’d like your advice on choosing between two different revenue models”).

      Try This

       Make a list of the people you think are doing the most interesting things (anyone from famous business leaders to your neighbor who lived in Bangkok for a year).

       Stalk their bios online. You can usually find them on the “about” page of their company’s website, but you may also have to do some detective work. If they’re well-known, read news articles to familiarize yourself with their career progression.

       Identify patterns. If every person you admire is a Rotarian, maybe you should think about joining. If they all raise money to fight breast cancer, you can build a solid network by pitching in.

       Brainstorm a tentative list of goals, based on your idols. You can refine them later (and we’ll work together to figure out the “how”). But now’s the time to think big: visiting at least fifty countries, getting your own radio talk show, raising a million dollars for charity, being named partner, or whatever most appeals to you.

      Informational Interviews

      Armed with your behind-the-scenes research, you’re finally ready to talk shop with actual experts. Informational interviews are an unbeatable opportunity to network with people who are doing what you want to do, to ask real-time questions about what their profession is like, and to weed out bad choices. (Friends of friends and your alumni network are usually the best starting places for people to meet with.)

      Karen Landolt, a corporate attorney who transitioned to running a university career services office, requires her students to conduct at least four informational interviews and report back on them. She recalls, “I’d have people come to me and say, ‘I want to work at Goldman Sachs,’ and I’d say, ‘Great, who have you talked to there?’ They’d say no one, but they make a lot of money. And I’d say ‘Yes, but they work 120 hours a week—and have you talked to anyone at 3 a.m.?’”

      There’s a risk to informational interviews, however, that most people don’t recognize: if you don’t know how to do them well, you can torpedo the relationship if you don’t make a good first impression. Here are six steps to follow.

      Step 1: Be Clear about the Help You’re Asking For

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