Reinventing You: What Future Can You Imagine for Yourself?

The bad news is time flies. The good news is you're the pilot.

By Rodger Dean Duncan

My friend Tom Pulliam was a modern-day Renaissance man. He had multiple careers, sometimes overlapping, because he learned how to shape his gifts to match the needs of others.

For many years, Tom worked as a manager at a food manufacturing company in Oklahoma City. He made lunch meat. In his off-hours he liked to do crossword puzzles. He got very good at it. So good, in fact, that when he ran out of puzzles to solve he started creating his own. Then he got so skilled at creating new puzzles that he began to sell them. That was decades ago. Today, if you want one of the best books on the subject, pick up a copy of The New York Times Crossword Puzzle Dictionary—by Tom Pulliam.

Oh, yes, Tom also made a name (and a fortune) for himself as an actor, doing voiceovers for a wide range of TV and radio commercials. Tom would insist that he was no smarter than the next guy. Maybe not, but he definitely took a cue from Albert Einstein, who advised that we should live out of our imagination rather than out of our memory. Tom’s sound thinking enabled him to discover opportunities enriched both his life and his bank account.

That kind of thinking is at the heart of Dorie Clark’s book Re-inventing You: Define Your Brand, Imagine Your Future. Dorie, who teaches at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business and consults on marketing strategy, was described by the New York Times as “an expert at self-reinvention and helping others make changes in their lives.” She’s also author of Stand Out: How to Find Your Breakthrough Idea and Build a Following Around It.

I visited with Dorie about a number of issues faced by people considering work and career changes.