Making a Life, Making a Living: Reclaiming Your Purpose and Passion in Business and in Life (Paperback)

~ Mark Albion (Author) "The rainy morning of June 5, 1986, was the high point of my thirty-five-year-old life-or so it seemed at the time..." (more)
Key Phrases: walking costs, Judy George, United States, Judy Wicks (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Albion, who gave up a teaching post at Harvard Business School and now publishes a monthly newsletter called "Making a Life," has spent the last 11 years preaching that personal integrity is the real ticket to prosperity. He cites a study that tracked the careers of 1500 business school graduates. In 1960, the year they graduated, all but 255 said they wanted to make money first in order to do what they really wanted later on; the remainder decided to do what they loved in hopes that money would follow. Of the 101 who became millionaires by 1980, only one belonged to the former group. In chapters with titles such as "Don't Let Success Stand in the Way of Opportunity," "Bring Your Values to Work" and "Live a Life, Not a Resume," Albion profiles a range of entrepreneurs and high-level employees. His emphasis is on the disparate paths these people took to achieve a sense of purpose and meaning in work that carried over into their personal lives. There's Elliot Hoffman, who built the San Francisco-based cafe Just Desserts from a single birthday cake into one of the city's most profitable and socially responsible businesses. And there's Albion's most personal story, that of his mother, which frames the entire book. In 1986, she was diagnosed with cancer, and her doctor indicated she would be lucky to live six months. Now in her 70s, she continues to head the successful manufacturing company she began in 1978. Albion's book powerfully illustrates what can be accomplished when, in our work lives, we use our heads while following our hearts. (Jan.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist

Albion was a Harvard marketing professor for 20 years, and in the 1980s he consulted for big-name consumer brands and wrote several books on advertising. But he grew disillusioned with the quest for "money, power, and fame" and left Harvard. He founded You & Co., a recruiting firm that matches MBAs and socially responsible companies, and cofounded Students for Responsible Business, which now has branches at more than 100 business schools. Albion continues to consult; now his expertise is "humanistic marketing," and he commands fees of up to $6,000 a day. He also speaks regularly at major business schools and publishes an online newsletter devoted to business ethics, corporate responsibility, and finding meaning in work, which reaches 50,000 readers. Here, he sets down his philosophy by spelling out 12 guidelines that address four major questions: Who are you? What do you want? What can you do? and Where can you go? Albion answers those questions using dozens of inspirational stories and aphorisms from sages as diverse as Mother Teresa and Lily Tomlin. David Rouse --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Business Plus (December 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0446676519
• ISBN-13: 978-0446676519
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (70 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #527,125 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Inspiring stories; too much success, Harvard, busy-ness, August 20, 2000

By	S. A. Felton (southern OR USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Making a Life, Making a Living®: Reclaiming Your Purpose and Passion in Business and in Life (Audio Cassette)

First of all, I would like to compliment the writers of the 32 or so reviews I read of this book before I wrote mine. It was very interesting to read such a wide variety of mostly thoughtful reviews, mostly positive and a few negative. Honestly, I found the negative reviews more akin to some of my own thoughts, simply because I cannot agree with the "everything works out if you just have a positive attitude" slant of this book. I know of people who have refused to sell their ideals to the system, have tried to "follow their bliss," and have not succeeded, and I attribute this as much to the dog-eat-dog mentality of the business world as to their "negativity."

If you are a "mover and a shaker" who wants to find a meaningful way to channel your talents and energies, then I would highly recommend this book to you as inspiration. As other reviewers stated, the book does not delineate specific paths for finding meaning in your work. The author clearly assumes that the reader either has his/her own ideas on what work would be rewarding, and wrote the book to inspire the reader to "go for it" through many fine examples of both men and women who in some cases endured a lot of ups and downs to create the work environment they could love, and to their credit, an equitable work place for their employees. The stories in the book of people who sacrificed profit for employee benefits are very heartening, as are the stories of

people who sacrificed income for "spiritual" satisfaction in their work. And for those who do want help in finding such a path, the author has a web site and organization that might be useful, though it does appear that his service is limited to business leaders, not ordinary workers like most of us!

As others have written, I found myself very put off by the constant mention of what I will call the "H" word, Harvard. The author overuses it, along with the mention of other big name schools, as if he cannot give up the superiority of those institutions and those who attend them. If he had moderated his repetition of cases related to "big-name" schools, along with the glee over the "success" of the people depicted, I would have found the book much more likeable.

To write a book such as this an author would clearly have to question some of what constitutes "success" in the world, yet Mr. Albion neither questions nor seems to have a problem with some of the ridiculous excesses of capitalism, i.e., the compulsion to be "successful," along with the manic busy-ness of so many people, which somehow automatically equates to self-importance and self-worth. Over and over again the people depicted in the book are workaholics who probably have no time to question any of what I consider to be (at least partially) some of the fallacious underpinings of capitalism and busy-ness. However, to each is own, I get worth from questioning, and others derive it from being busy all the time.

I agree with the reviewers who found the quotes by famous, successful people, which are offset in bold on practically every page of the book, to be "too much" and distracting, yet what I found expedient was to ignore them as much as possible the first time I read the book, and then while skimming the book a second time concentrate on them. I found this quite rewarding and I even made a list of many pithy quotes I liked, and I appreciate the research the author did to compile such a useful list. Indeed these often inspiring quotes are as if a book within a book, and best of all, almost all of the people quoted themselves went against the tide to create their own meaning and "success" in life.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Condescending Dribble, September 19, 2004

By	T. Hiltbrand (Layton, UT United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I found this book to be very condescending in the way that it was written. I listened to the audio cassettes and stopped listening after the first cassette because I felt like I was being talked down to because I had not given up everything in life to go live in a eskimo community or in Africa figthing AIDS in some tribe that lives in the Nigeria.

I completely agree that the path to true happiness is not merely achieving success through becoming rich and famous, but I found it very interesting the examples that he chose for his success stories. For example, in his story of Judy and her business the "White Dog", he portrayed her as being so happy and having achieved such great success through her activism with regards to social issues, but just passed over the fact that she had two unsuccessful marriages and could keep her personal relationships successful.

I feel that the sense of the book is that you have to be involved in these major earth saving causes to find true happiness and I don't agree with that. I believe that you can find true happiness within the walls of your own home just as easily. I also believe that through small and simple things like being kind to others and volunteering in your community that great things are brought about.

I am glad the the author was able to come to some conclusions about how to find happiness in his own life but I felt that the book was very preachy in its approach.

If this book touched others' lives for the better, I think that the author was successful, but it didn't touch mine. In fact, it got on my nerves so much that I had to quit listening to it and felt the desire to write a review to let others know of the condescending airs that it portrays.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Great title, average book, May 6, 2001

By	Eamon O. Dowling (Silver Spring, MD USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I bought this book based on it's title. Unfortunately, it fails to meet the expectations. I'm sorry I paid for it in hardback.

What I liked about this book. Lots of interesting an inspiring quotes. So many infact, that this book might be improved by removing the remaining content, and turning this into a quote a day calendar. It's too much of a good thing, and often the quotes are included for no apparent reason.

To be fair, the stories are interesting, but the writing is not compelling. I could not identify with the author or the people who chose to write about, because they all seemed so priveledged.

Furthermore, although the author is supposedly trying to illustrate the ethical and humanistic evolution of the people he describes, he validates their experiences with the same values system. Money, status, prestige. He never transcends this.

Despite all this, there's something essential in this book, that makes me want to read it again, make some notes, and then give the book away. There is a certain noble spirit of possibility.

If I were the editor of this book, I would ask the author to remove over half the quotes, since less is more. I would also suggest that he reduce the number of stories, since by the end, the way he tells the stories is formula. In fact, I think that the strongest part of the book is "Judy Wick's Ministry," and perhaps this book could have used her as a single example.

I would suggest two other books, to people attracted to this book by the title. One is Zen and the art of making a living and the other is Think and Grow Rich