My review of Jonathan Field’s new book, “Career Renegade”.
Thursday, January 15th, 2009
I have been a huge fan of Jonathan Fields as a blogger for a while now…. his posts are motivating, inspirational while still being informative. He speaks lovingly of his beautiful daughter and his wonderful wife. Without having yet met Jonathan I know he is a great person. When he asked me to review his book, Career Renegade, I couldn’t wait to get my hands on it. And, I have to say… I was not disappointed.
Jonathan’s first chapter blew me away. I knew he was a lawyer before he was a blogger… and I knew he was into Yoga too. But, what I didn’t realize is that all the adventures Jonathan had been on before he landed where he is today.
He begins his book explaining how he was once a very stressed out lawyer… working way too many hours and missing his family. And, like many people who work way too many hours and live a very stressed out life…. he got very sick. This was Jonathan’s wake up call. This is when he began a quest for something more. Not more money…. more life.
Jonathan did get there and he is loving life. And, in his book Career Renegade he shows you the steps to take to get there too.
Some people don’t know what their passion is. They’ve worked so hard professionally that they can’t even think about what it is they love doing. Jonathan understands that and even has a section of questions to answer to help you determine what it is you will love doing on a daily basis. For many, this part is simple…. for others it might be a little more difficult. But, he lays the questions out beautifully….with a bit of thought this section should be no problem.
Throughout the book you will see motivating true life stories from some amazing business professionals…. people who have left powerful full-time jobs to do something they love. People like, Brian Clark of Copy Blogger, John Jantsch of Duct Tape Marketing, Liz Strauss of Succesful-Blog, Anita Campbell of SmalBizTrends, Leo Babauta of ZenHabits, and many others. True stories of their travels…. each coming up successful. I found the stories to be very motivating and an exciting part of the book.
I love Jonathan’s Gap theory. He shows you how to look for gaps or limitations in things…. the gaps are where your niche should be. This is where there is a need for something such as a product or service. Jonathan says,
"Sometimes those gaps are in the way gear is being provided; other times, they revolve around limitations in selections; and sometimes, you’ll even find a gap where either no product yet exists or what does exist can be greatly improved upon. Exploiting these gaps and bundling them with service or community often provides fertile ground for economic opportunity…."
He doesn’t stop there. He takes you right from discovering your niche to what you should do next. From prototypes to business plans to market research all the way to marketing your company and your product. He explains every process from beginning to end… at no part did I feel that the reader was left to figure it out themselves. He gives you the tools, the resources and the confidence to do it. He motivates you to want to get started right away.
He even takes you through the steps of gaining knowledge, building a following and gaining authority. In great detail Jonathan explains many methods of Social Media activities that will create the buzz needed to get the word out about your product. He shows you that you don’t need to spend a lot of money to do this… through certain social media activities you will be able to spread the word without spending a ton of money. He talks about social media activities such as:
- Blogging
- Guest posts on popular blogs
- microblogging
- social networking
- social bookmarking
Jonathan goes into quite a bit of detail on each and offers tons of websites, books and other resources so that you can get all the information you need to have great success.
He also understands how difficult it can be sometimes to get your inner circle to understand why you are doing this. Because Jonathan has gone through this himself he knows that sometimes people will question your reasoning behind making a major change like this. Changing careers can be scary for all involved and Jonathan gets that. In this book he goes through 4 steps to help this process be easier for you. He calls it "Prepare Your Pitch" and he helps you do just that. He goes into great detail with the following steps…
- Identifying the problem
- Point to research and examples
- Present your Solution
- Anticipate and respond to objections
Career Renegade is a must read. It is chock full of amazing information for anyone unhappy in their career. If you are looking for the steps needed to make the change to something you love then this book is for you!! His detail to everything is perfect and he writes it in such a way that is easy to read even for someone that doesn’t have much business and computer experience.
This is what a good book looks like after I read it. Not too pretty, huh?! But, proof that I loved it!!
Buy a copy of Career Renegade today…. you won’t be disappointed!!
