The Reinvention Coach

New Book, New Year, New You!

My new book The 10 Laws of Career Reinvention:  Essential Survival Skills for Any Economy hit bookstores on December 31st! 

The 10 Laws of Career Reinvention is the first book to give you all the necessary tools for navigating the full arc of career change between different fields. In the book I guide you through the process of identifying your skill sets, repackaging your experience and thinking outside the box in order to manifest the very real potential you have to start anew.  I reveal the secrets behind a successful reinvention, and give you valuable advice that answers all your tactical questions about navigating the roadblocks, getting traction in a new industry, and managing your fears.  Clear-headed, calming, practical and thorough, The 10 Laws of Career Reinvention is the ideal guidebook to transforming your career and finding your way to a life you love.

Praise for the book!

The book was named a Top Shelf Recommended pick in the current issue of the Harvard Business Review! 

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

"A sharp, smart, eye-opening book" says Book A Week with Jen blog.

The book has recently been featured in the Denver Post, the New York Post, and Kiplinger's Personal Finance!

Buy your copy today at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Borders and Indie-Bound!  Be sure to post a review after you have read the book. 

Save the date!

On Wednesday, January 27, 2010 at 7:30 p.m. in New York City I will host a free Reinvention Talk and Networking event to celebrate the publication of The 10 Laws of Career Reinvention.  Join me for drinks, get your book signed, and network with your fellow reinventors!  Details to come.

New friends online!

We’re online, so fan us, follow us and find us!  Keep up with The Reinvention Institute’s latest news and happenings.

 Facebook - http://bit.ly/FanReinvent
 Twitter - http://bit.ly/TweetReinvent
 LinkedIn - http://bit.ly/LinkReinvent

I wish you a successful start to the New Year!

Back from hiatus & big announcement!

My last newsletter post was February 19th, and it is now.... August!  What, you might ask, could have caused such a lengthy absence?  I wish I could say that I'd run off to Tibet to study enlightenment with the Dalai Lama, or at the very least was on a beach in the Bahamas sipping mango fruit shakes. No such luck, at least on the relaxation front. 

I've been off writing a book!  One week prior to my last post, I got a book deal with Dutton, an imprint of Penguin.  Given the timeliness of the topic-- everybody needs some career reinvention skills right now-- they wanted the book ASAP.  I am happy to report that I delivered the final manuscript last week, and that The 10 Laws of Career Reinvention: Essential Survival Skills for Any Economy will be out in January!

It has turned out to be a fabulous book-- inspiring stories of 10 people who used the laws in their own successful reinventions, combined with practical and detailed advice about how you can put each law into practice in your own life.  Stay tuned; more information to come over the next few months and pre-orders already available on Amazon.

I'll be blogging here regularly again. (Thanks to those who emailed asking where I was-- nice to be missed!) In other news, I have a new "Ask the Reinvention Coach" blog column over at More.com (website for More magazine). So if you're a 40+ woman who has a question about your reinvention, stop by and drop me a line!  If I pick your question for that week's column, you'll win a copy of our Career Reinvention 101: Getting Started audio program plus the companion Reinvention Workbook!

PSA: "The Open Book" on Broadway this Thursday, Jan 15th

One of the reinvention strategies I suggest is to adopt a 'media mentor'.  A media mentor is a famous person that you may not have met whose story inspires you.  One of my early media mentors is Terrie Williams, who wrote The Personal Touch, one of my favorite career strategy books (if you haven't read it, check it out). 

Long before I became a Reinvention Coach®, I loved Terrie's story about how she navigated from the field of social work to become a PR agent to the stars (so much so that I will be profiling her in my upcoming book).  In recent years Terrie sold her PR company and reinvented herself yet again as an activist.  “The Open Book” is a national campaign she started that explores the silent mental health epidemic of depression in minority communities. 

This Thursday, January 15th, The Open Book will hold a screening at Symphony Space on Broadway, in New York City.  Notables slated to speak include Mo'Nique, Ruby Dee, John Amos, Terry McMillan, and the Rev. Al Sharpton.  For more information about the event, go here.

The lesson of this blog post?  If life gives you an opportunity to do a favor for one of your media mentors, DO IT!

On holiday till January 5th!

I will be on vacation for the next two weeks getting my annual fix of Midwestern snow, so the blog will be quiet until the week of January 5th. 

Wishing you all a wonderful holiday season filled with much love, laughter and joy!

Credit to Jeanne Fox-Alston...

Last week we profiled Reinvention Success Story Helene Seligman.  In my rush to post I neglected to give credit to Jeanne Fox-Alston, who interviewed Helene and wrote the story.  My apologies, Jeanne-- and  thank you!

On Holiday!

I  will be taking a much needed break for the next two weeks, but before going wanted to wish you all a wonderful end-of-year season.  See you in 2008!

TV Show looking for reinvention candidates!

We interrupt our regularly scheduled newsletter programming for this bulletin…

I got a call yesterday from a casting director who’s looking for candidates for a new TV reality show called ‘Life Begins at 40’ (working title).  They’re looking for couples, ages 40-55, that are still working but want to get away from the rat race and live out their career reinvention dreams.

Have you put your dreams on hold due to the practical demands of life (i.e. kids)?  Do you both long to make a change, but disagree on the details of your reinvention (you dream of opening a B&B, but your spouse hates making beds)?  If so, this show might be your chance to make your dreams real!

Here’s the profile they’re looking for:

*Age: 40-55
*Relationship status:  Long-term couples, married or not (same-sex couples too!)
*Location:  The production company’s based in NYC so candidates should be located nearby (tri-state area of NY, CT, NJ, Philadelphia, etc.)

If you're interested, contact Susan Fried at RDF USA at 646-747-7947 or via email.  Tell her you heard about it from Pamela at The Reinvention Institute!

A New Year's resolution becomes reality...

Every January we hold a class called New Year, New You: From Resolutions to Reality.  This course teaches practical tools and tactics that people can use to make sure their New Year’s goals actually happen.  

 

I’ll let you in on a secret:  I not only teach this stuff, I actually take my own advice!  For 2007 one of the top resolutions on my list, business-wise, was ‘relaunch newsletter’.  So I recently pulled out the class notes to think about how I could apply some of the recommended strategies to this particular project and make our newsletter a reality.  

 

Well, the first tactic on the list was this: Make it easy! The truth is that unless something happens easily, we’re much less likely to keep up with it (this is the principle that explains why that 'hundred-exercises-in-one' Bowflex you ordered at midnight on January 2 is now gathering dust in your bedroom).  

 

So the issue on the table was this:  "How do I create a weekly newsletter to provide you with useful advice on reinventing your career, and how do I do it easily?"  Once I asked the question, the answer fortuitously arrived during a conversation with my coaching-school buddy Jaya Schillinger: Do a blog newsletter!  (Jaya writes an amazing blog newsletter for the holistic health & spa community; you can check it out at www.inspirationalbusiness.com)

 

The ‘blog newsletter’ format is much easier for me because it fits my communication style (one of the recommended strategies from our Career Reinvention BootCamp course is to tailor the tactics of your plan to your personal style).  Those of you who have attended one the seminars I’ve taught know that I prefer to have a conversation, whether there are two or 200 people in the room.  The blog gives us a chance to have a real dialogue where I can hear your feedback.  It also provides a forum where you can raise questions as topics for future blog postings.

 

This is how the newsletter will work: two to three times a week I’ll write short blog articles about all matters pertaining to career (and occasionally life!) reinvention.  Once a week our feeder will automatically send you all the new postings in an email ‘newsletter’.  If you can’t wait a week for new reinvention advice, you can always visit the blog directly at www.reinventioncoach.com. 

 

I’m very excited to have made this resolution a reality!  I promise you a blog filled with practical reinvention strategies, helpful links and thought-provoking concepts.  Most of all, I promise that you’ll come away with useful tips and tools that you can employ to reinvent your own career—or life!

 

So let’s get started.  If there’s a topic you’d like me to cover or a question you have about career reinvention that you'd like to see answered in this newsletter, email me!