The 10 Laws of Career Reinvention: Essential Survival Skills for Any Economy [Hardcover]

Pamela Mitchell (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 31, 2009

Reinvention is the key to success in these volatile times-and Pamela Mitchell holds the key to reinvention!

In The 10 Laws of Career Reinvention, America's Reinvention Coach(r) Pamela Mitchell offers every tool readers need to navigate the full arc of career change. Part I introduces the Reinvention Mindset, with what you need to know to be prepared mentally to get started. In Part II, you read the real-life stories of ten individuals who successfully made the leap to new and unexpected careers, using the 10 laws:

The 1st Law: It Starts With a Vision for Your Life
The 2nd Law: Your Body Is Your Best Guide
The 3rd Law: Progress Begins When You Stop Making Excuses
The 4th Law: What You Seek is on the Road Less Traveled
The 5th Law: You've Got the Tools in Your Toolbox
The 6th Law: Your Reinvention Board is Your Lifeline
The 7th Law: Only a Native Can Give You the Inside Scoop
The 8th Law: They Won't "Get" You Until You Speak Their Language
The 9th Law: It Takes the Time That it Takes
The 10th Law: The World Buys Into an Aura of Success

Each story is followed by an in-depth lesson that explains how to adapt these laws to your own career goals, and what actions and precautions to take. The lessons answer all your tactical concerns about navigating the roadblocks, getting traction and managing your fears. The final section provides workbook exercises for fine-tuning your reinvention strategies for maximum results. Clear-headed, calming, practical, and thorough, this is the ideal action plan for getting through any career crisis and ending up securely in the lifestyle you've always dreamed of having.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"We constantly hear that each of us will have multiple careers in a lifetime. The trick is to know how to switch from one to another. No one understands the process better than Pamela Mitchell, and she shares her secrets here in the The 10 Laws of Career Reinvention"
-Fast Company, "The Best Books for Business Owners 2010" "Use Mitchell's 10 makes-sense laws as your guide to opportunity..."
-Palm Beach Post

"Mitchell's advice is spot on."
-Dallas Morning News

"Pamela Mitchell, CEO of the Reinvention Institute, expertly pairs personal stories of career 180s with practical advice for how you, too, can veer off course-and still be OK. She doesn't promise it'll be easy, but of all the useful tools she offers, her honesty is the best."
-Harvard Business Review

"After reading Pamela Mitchell's book, I am left with an overwhelming feeling that anyone can reinvent their careers and their lives by following this simple step-by-step instruction manual. Easy to Read, Easy to Follow, Easy to Succeed..."
-Norm Brodsky, Senior Contributing Editor INC. Magazine, author of The Knack

"Pamela Mitchell's book is like having your own personal reinvention coach! She takes you on as a client, fully engaging you with fascinating examples of real-life career transformations and outlining, step-by-step, how you can recreate their success for yourself. Without pulling punches, she shines a light on the fears that block your reinvention and powerfully challenges you to give up the excuses that get in your way. She gives you the information you need to start on your journey, and cheers you on every step of the way. Move over What Color is Your Parachute?--this book is the new go-to-guide for career changers!"
-Lauren Doliva, Managing Partner, Chief Advisor Network, Heidrick & Struggles

"In The 10 Laws of Career Reinvention, Pamela Mitchell shares the secret strategies that successful reinventors use to land on their feet, even in turbulent times. If you want a practical plan for a richer career and life--in any kind of job market--read this book."
-Barbara Stanny, bestselling author of Secrets of Six Figure Women and Overcoming Underearning(r).

"It's never too late to re-write your script...and Pamela Mitchell is the perfect person to show you how. If The 10 Laws of Career Reinvention doesn't make you stop worrying about the future and start taking action to create your dream, nothing will."
-Lois P. Frankel, Ph.D., author of Stop Sabotaging Your Career and Nice Girls Don't Get the Corner Office

About the Author

Pamela Mitchell, CLC, is a coach, public speaker, and media personality who has reinvented her own career several times and codified the laws that can help anyone through the process. She's the founder and CEO of The Reinvention Institute, a dynamic organization devoted to helping successful professionals transform their careers. She has appeared on the Today Show and been profiled or quoted in the Wall Street Journal, More, BusinessWeek, Men's Health, Good Housekeeping and Black Enterprise.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Dutton Adult (December 31, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0525951466
• ISBN-13: 978-0525951469
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #730,159 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Former entertainment exec turned coach Pamela Mitchell is founder and CEO of The Reinvention Institute, a dynamic organization devoted to individual transformation. She is a popular and in-demand speaker who gives talks around the country to individuals, corporations and industry groups who are interested in learning fresh strategies for navigating in the midst of change. As the nation's premier career reinvention expert, she has appeared on the Today Show and been profiled and quoted in top media publications including The Wall Street Journal, BusinessWeek, More, Men's Health, Good Housekeeping and Black Enterprise. She is the author of The 10 Laws of Career Reinvention: Essential Survival Skills for Any Economy (Dutton, January 2010).

Prior to founding The Reinvention Institute, Ms. Mitchell spent nearly fifteen years in senior-level positions leading international business development and relationship management for high-profile media and entertainment companies. Her roles included serving as Vice President of International for Playboy.com, and Director of Sales and Marketing for Europe, Latin America, Africa/Middle East for Discovery Channel's consumer products group. Prior to Discovery she spent five years on Wall Street, where she managed international partnerships for the financial information division of Knight-Ridder.

In addition to being a certified coach, Ms. Mitchell has a BA from Harvard University and an MBA from the top international business school, Thunderbird. She is a member of the International Coach Federation (ICF), the coaching industry's top professional organization.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The career book we've been waiting for, February 10, 2010

By 

Dr Cathy Goodwin (Seattle, WA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The 10 Laws of Career Reinvention: Essential Survival Skills for Any Economy (Hardcover)

So far I've found two career books to recommend: Working Identity (Herminia Ibarra) and Finding Your Own North Star (Martha Beck). Now I'm adding this one to the list. Beck focuses mostly on choosing what you want; Ibarra talks about the search process. This book is somewhere in between. Beck has more exercises for choosing a career and Ibarra goes into the process differently. I'd work with all three.

The title is unwieldy and the book takes a serious, no-nonsense approach. Mitchell focuses on exploring options. Much of her advice seems based on taking a sales approach; she even refers to "career reinvention materials."

Mitchell doesn't have a lot of soul-searching exercises, like "What should be on my tombstone." She invites readers to heed their intuition. Like Martha Beck, she believes the body knows more than the mind: if you find yourself feeling ill when you contemplate a type of work, it's time for a move.

Nor does she spend a lot of time on the trappings of a career search, such as resumes. In fact, if you need to write a resume, she invites you to download samples from her company's website.

Some useful points:

Career reinvention takes chronological time. She points out that many career-changers think "six weeks" when they should be thinking "six months." I would agree more with Ibarra in Working Identity, who says three years is not unusual.

Besides chronological time, you need time during your week. One of my own clients said she could talk to me on Sunday evenings at 6 PM Eastern. Her weekdays were completely taken. She was too busy to change careers; she needed to take an interim job that would free up her hours.

Functional fear versus dysfunctional fear. Functional fear is based on realistic situations that you have to deal with.

Real qualifications versus negotiable qualifications. To be a doctor, you need an MD. For other careers, you may be able to substitute experience for academics.

My only quibble is that Mitchell can be a little too strong on some points. The term "laws" in the title sets the tone. For instance, on page 27, Mitchell suggests that "Patty" who dislikes a marketing job will not find happiness by moving to Google, which is after all an online advertising company. Yet in fact the culture of a high-tech company will be so different that a job with the same title might be transformed. I've seen people change their whole attitude to a career when they switched companies or even moved to a new geographic location. It's not always easy to pinpoint the source of discomfort.

Similarly, researchers find that serendipity plays a key role in both career change and career success. By staying active and following the steps Mitchell lays out, you are more likely to experience the kind of serendipity that propels you forward. But I've met few people who logically chose a career and then took a linear path to get a job in that field. Mitchell undoubtedly understands the zig-zag pattern of career change, but she doesn't highlight it the way Herminia Ibarra does in Working Identity.

Still, this book is one of the best career books I've seen in a long time. I'm surprised it hasn't gotten more publicity. The long, awkward name and bland cover might have something to do with it. The blurbs on the back cover don't really convey excitement and the subtitle is a yawn that doesn't even describe the book.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A gem full of wisdom and wit, April 2, 2010

By 

Diane (Palo Alto, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The 10 Laws of Career Reinvention: Essential Survival Skills for Any Economy (Hardcover)

I picked up this book expecting to scan it for a few helpful ideas, but I found the writing to be quite compelling and ended up reading the book carefully in full. The writer has a wide variety of experiences which have given her fresh perspectives on what it takes to be satisfied with, and therefore successful in, a career. She asks us to look at who we are, what we want, and why we want it, and challenges us to question certain assumptions about ourselves. She also gives the reader very useful tools to help assess abilities and develop strategies. Throughout it all, she makes the book real by sharing her own ups and downs in her careers and reinventions. This is a well-written, carefully organized book. I think that it would be helpful not only to those thinking of career reinvention, but also to young people who are choosing majors, selecting graduate schools, or in other ways making early career decisions.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fantastic Book!, May 12, 2010

By 

Diana Fletcher (Pennsylvania) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The 10 Laws of Career Reinvention: Essential Survival Skills for Any Economy (Hardcover)

I started reading this book and could not put it down. Pamela Mitchell has an amazing sense of what people are really going through in their search for true fulfillment in their work and in their lives. She offers so many practical strategies and in a do-able order. Her "extras" at the back of the book and available on her website offer huge value to the reader. I would recommend this book to anyone who is "searching" and is ready to work with a powerful plan.