Reinvention Specialist

Confession: I live a double life. Half the time I’m a brand strategist to major corporations. The other half of my life I write books, blog and give speeches. In Los Angeles (the land of double lives) I know a lot of people who split their time between two careers. By day they wait on tables, pick-up someone else’s dry cleaning (and sometimes their kids), answer phones, lick envelopes and make you a latte just the way you like it. At night, they do stand-up at a local comedy club or sing at open mic night at a funky little bar.

Last week, I was guiding a bio-medical company toward unearthing the soul of their brand --when suddenly the CEO realized that his company wasn’t in the pain relief business – it was actually in the patient empowerment business. This aha moment led us down a path to expansion that previously was unimagined.

What would you rescue if your home suddenly caught fire? It could hold the key to your true career destiny.

I’m passionate about television. I have been since I was a little girl. When I was five years old our house caught on fire, and when my mother came in my room to rescue me, I rescued my little white portable Sony TV. I didn’t have a favorite doll that I lavished love on. I adored my Sony instead.

When I was at Turner Broadcasting, I would have lunch with the heads of each network on a monthly basis. Although they were presidents and I was just a director, they were interested in how I was leveraging the local power of our affiliates to increase ratings.

The lunches were productive, fun and lively, something to look forward to. I gained insight on what was important to them and supported their goals with my marketing programs.

There’s really no substitute for healthy self-esteem, but many of us try to find it outside of ourselves. Instead of doing good work for our own satisfaction, we do it for the approval of others.

Last week I wrote about the internal dilemma of deciding when to say it, how to say it and when to just stuff it. But this week, I realized that we often foul things up because most of us have an underlying need to react to everything that comes across our desk or computer screen with immediacy. We’re in a deliver-it-fast, quick-as-lightening work world where reacting immediately is expected, but at what price?

Last weekend, I ate Dim Sum in San Francisco with my brilliant 23-year-old nephew. He’s less than a year out of Northwestern with a sweet job as a software engineer at a top Internet Company. Over barbeque pork buns and shrimp dumplings I asked him to tell me his single biggest challenge of 2012. He was quick to say, “Knowing when to share my opinions and when to shut up.” Ah, yes. In that moment I knew he was kin to me in more ways than one.

Every great brand needs a squad of brand cheerleaders. This is why companies spend millions of dollars on public relations and social media firms, and entertainers hire agents and publicists—and career-conscious professionals look for mentors and coaches to help spread the word about their brands. In fact, we all need people whom we can talk to about serious things in all areas of living, not just work—friends and business people, with shared interests and understandings.

At business school, they teach a class called “Organizational Behavior.” During this class, you learn that there are two different kinds of people in business: Clock Builders and Time Tellers.

To run -- the world needs both kinds of people – those who create the vision (Clock Builders) and those that implement it (Time Tellers). Knowing which role you play best is essential to career fulfillment and happiness. You can’t squeeze yourself into being something you’re not.

I used to be so sure I knew the next right step. But, now there is so much uncertainty in business, politics, the environment, the economy, how to parent, the right way to eat -- even a positive, self-directed person like myself can feel out of sorts and well, a bit insane.

It’s a fact that one in four adults -- approximately 57.7 million Americans -- experience a mental health disorder in a given year. And I don’t have to tell you how scary it is to watch loved ones and co-workers stop being able to deal with the uncertainty.