Synopsis

Throughout my 14-year journey through 5 careers, repeated failures and massive setbacks including a child with cancer, homelessness and unemployment with $250K in law school debt, plus carrying the baggage of impossible expectations in a single-parent family, the one major life skill that has helped me create and convert opportunity to success has been mastering the art and science of actionable conversation.

The two elements of Mastering the Talk I've perfected and applied successfully since childhood -- for myself and for hundreds of clients -- are mastering my own language and psychology, then the psychology and language of each audience. 

The methodology I've created and taught to thousands of Fortune 500 and startup executives to help them find dream jobs, switch careers and build successful businesses goes well beyond just listening and sweet-talking. 

Mastering one's own language and psychology starts with Fundamental Alignment for oneself based on one's 4 Pillars -- Life Mission, Values, Outcomes and Role. It proceeds to cutting away "unaligned" thoughts, speech, actions, people and content from one's life through a consistently healthy morning and daily routine and by creating boundaries to build oneself up as a human and professional. 

Next, it involves learning to control time and focusing on fulfilling one's Life Mission and consistently applying the 80/20 Pareto Principle, which prioritizes "done" over "perfect."

To create opportunity, one must see success as a game of numbers, focus, consistently delivering value up front and practicing gratitude, plus constant re-alignment, re-calibration and refinement of oneself and one's messaging. Equally important, one must consistently work to minimize the fear of failure, mistakes, lack of control over timing and audience reception. 

One must do prep work before every outreach and encounter through detailed research, alignment with the specific audience's mission, values and business need, adding massive value before asking for anything, as well as always asking the right questions and listening twice as much as one speaks. 

Next, one must create automated, easily replicable, trackable and adjustable systems and processes in one's business.  

As such, the book details anecdotes from my journey -- and that of certain clients -- through the deep forest of failure, self-doubt and lack of opportunity on the way to success as professionals and humans. 

It provides an actionable roadmap and homework exercises, plus concrete milestones to help the reader to overcome their negative scripts and backstory to become aligned on their 4 Pillars and help them get well on the way to becoming the best version of him- or her-self as a human and professional. 

To create opportunity and convert it successfully for oneself and one's business, boss, client, investor or strategic partner, one must start by mastering his or her internal language and psychology, just as much as the language and psychology of his or her audience. 

The three main takeaways from this book for leaders are:

1. How to Understand, Learn and Use the Language and Psychology of Your Audience to Create Opportunity for Yourself and Others and Build a Successful Career, Business and Life  

2. How to Find, Pursue and Monetize Your Life Mission.

3. How to Leverage Your Story as Your Greatest Asset

Outline

Chapter 1: Debunking Your Own Mythology About Yourself - you're not a fuck-up, you're just another human figuring it out and trying to become the best version of yourself (proven by you reading this book). 

Chapter 2: Into, Then Out of the Depths - My Personal Story - author's story and how it's uniquely emblematic of the Millennial experience of growing up with hype about myself (special butterfly syndrome), impossible standards and lack of empowerment, dependence, lack of real life skills, changing careers and being reactive due to stress/anxiety, rather than planning, falling into massive debt for schooling I didn't end up using, living beyond my means, etc. 

Chapter 3: Odysseus Tied Up: Learning not to react to the sirens in your head and in your life.   

Chapter 4: Creating Alignment - Four Pillars in Your Life and In Your Work. Determine your Life Mission, Values, Outcomes and Role. Then dive into your Negative Scripts and Founding Stories. Get clear on who you are, then where you're going. Working backwards, look critically at what you've already done to make progress toward owning a company of your own 10-15 years from now. 

Chapter 5: Implementing Alignment Everywhere in Life: Once aligned internally, start creating opportunities for yourself and others that align with your 4 Pillars and help you along your chosen trajectory.  

Chapter 6: Monetizing Your Life Mission By Creating Opportunity, Massive Value and Success for Others -- and Yourself: Create massive value for people, especially using skills and experiences that are second-nature to you, that use your best skills and greatest motivation and product the best results, quickly (examples).  

Chapter 7: Creating Systems in Life to Automate, Outsource, and Simplify: You must create automated, easily replicable, trackable and adjustable processes around research and outreach, pitching, discovery and sales calls, proposal creation, payments and enrollment, on-boarding, execution and follow-up. 

Chapter 8: Tasting, Institutionalizing, Then Leveraging Success: Success is a game of goal-setting and execution, as much as a game of numbers, focus, consistently delivering value up front and practicing gratitude, plus constant re-alignment, re-calibration and refinement of oneself and one's messaging.  

Chapter 9: Mastering Your Own and Your Org's Continued Growth Through Professional and Personal Development: Always be looking to escape an echo chamber by working with people who challenge you to be better, whom you challenge to be better, who are not just innovative, but focused on a larger mission. 

Chapter 10: Mastering Your PR/Media: Best practices for a sustainable, long-term PR strategy to train people in-house (rather than strictly hire PR agencies) to tell your company's and employees' stories effectively and genuinely, helping establish and build a premium, relatable, consistent brand. Ensuring alignment of your PR/Media strategy to your internal communications strategy.

Chapter 11: Ensuring Ongoing Success Through an Effective and Always Evolving and Improving Personal Brand: Bringing others along with you on your journey through your career, business, coaching, etc. 

Appendix: Roadmap to Success, Self-Assessments, Homework assignments, worksheets, including for 4 Pillars work, Ideal Client Profile Creation, Premium Package Creation, Personal Brand Creation, PR Strategy, Internal Communications Strategy, Personal Development Plan, among others.

Audience

My ideal audience, like my ideal client profile, is early- and mid-career corporate professionals feeling stuck in their jobs, who know they have something much greater inside them that's burning to get out into the world (a business, a more fulfilling and meaningful career), but don't know how to put it into words or how to transform into better versions of themselves. 

Millennials will peak at 75M in 2020. Of those, more than half (37.5M) will already be in their mid-career by the publication date. With employee engagement at 65%, this means at least 35% of Millennials (13.1M) are unengaged and looking to change jobs and/or careers and/or to start businesses. 

550,000 people become entrepreneurs each month (and 6.6 million each year) in the U.S. (https://www.entrepreneur.com/a...), the vast majority of them doing it for the first time and having little clue as to how to create opportunity through language and psychology. 

Detailed ideal client profile:

Name: Stacy

Age: late 20’s/early-mid-30’s

Gender: F

Marital Status: Single or Married w/o kids

Company Size: In corporate, looking to go to a startup or smaller company

Experience: Senior Associate, Director or VP level

Education: BA, maybe MBA

Income Level: $100K+/year

Location: New York, San Fran, Dallas, Chicago, Miami, Philadelphia

Job Description: Corporate Director or VP in Financial Services, Healthcare, Consulting, Marketing/Advertising or one of the other major industries, right at the cusp of moving between a more quantitative/technical role and one that's managerial, more geared toward coaching, sales/BizDev and more client-facing 

Duties: lots of spreadsheets, some managing of others, worked on many deals, knows the business (but not human) mechanics inside and out.

Pain Points: Dazed and confused about what they’re good at, how to transition to a more managerial role with more responsibilities, how to fix their messaging (resume/LinkedIN), how to prepare for the interviews, how to negotiate, how to find the companies and how to match their personalities and founding stories with what they do next

Perceived barriers to pain points: Don’t know where to start, fear of failure, fear of success, negative scripts in the head, unsure of self, possibly unemployed (although want to stay away from customers like this)

Actions taken to solve pain points: read some career sites, asked family and friends for career advice, maybe hired another coach and had a bad experience

Who they report to/anyone else involved in purchasing decisions: None (self is responsible)

Promotion

• A "Call to Arms" to my personal network and email list to prepare them well before the book launch, get them engaged in feedback and of course to acquire the initial readership subsequently through pre-orders to the same people. 
• Relationships (personal, professional, familial, or otherwise) - starting with my own personal network of several hundred (crowd-funded my first book successfully a few years ago on Kickstarter); Email list of 10K, 12.7K 1st degree connections on LinkedIN, 2K on Facebook (very large proportions are VIPs, pre-VIPs or otherwise influencers, PR/Media people, successful entrepreneurs, people from my alumni networks (UPenn, Cardozo, NYU, etc.). A number of top podcast hosts who've had me on the show would be happy to promote me on their sites and through their networks.

• Leveraging existing content and platforms - where I'm a contributor (Forbes, Entrepreneur, Business.com, Influencive, plus 15 others where I write), have been published and many others where I've been mentioned or where I have a solid connection to an editor, the publisher, contributor or the like.

• Media contacts - connected to hundreds of PR/media professionals, editors and publishers through my own personal network (LinkedIN, Facebook, Slack groups where I've cultivated hundreds of pre-VIPs, top podcast hosts, fellow writers for top publications and top bloggers)

• Research or information from past launches of similar products (what worked, what didn’t, what to do, what not to do).

• Favors you’re owed (if nobody owes you favors then you should pause your launch and go help other people. Build up debt you can call in to help promote your stuff. Adam Grant’s book Give and Take describes this well.). There are hundreds of people whom I've helped directly for free through my content and tens of thousands of others who've consumed my content.

• Potential advertising budget

• Resources or allies in niche Facebook and LinkedIN and in-person groups

• Focus on what’s unique and special — Focus on my insane story of overcoming massive setbacks and challenges on the way to building a successful business, no fluff, getting raw and controversial with my advice and guidance, but always human and looking to help others through my story and insights.

• Don’t be afraid of controversy — plan to leverage my faith and other not popular elements of my story that helped me get where I am today.

• Take advantage of the cycle — timely and time-sensitive content.

• Start small — Go on every relevant podcast with the relevant audience where invited or accepted, be a guest blogger where the right audience hangs out.

• Footwork - learned from doing my own top notch PR (and PR strategy consulting work for others); scheduled all my own book readings (Columbia, UPenn, NYU, Barnes and Nobles, etc.) for both previous books 

Competition

The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good LifeHardcover – September 13, 2016 - Mark Manson - In this generation-defining self-help guide, a superstar blogger cuts through the crap to show us how to stop trying to be "positive" all the time so that we can truly become better, happier people. For decades, we’ve been told that positive thinking is the key to a happy, rich life. "F**k positivity," Mark Manson says. "Let’s be honest, shit is f**ked and we have to live with it." In his wildly popular Internet blog, Manson doesn’t sugarcoat or equivocate. He tells it like it is—a dose of raw, refreshing, honest truth that is sorely lacking today. The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F**k is his antidote to the coddling, let’s-all-feel-good mindset that has infected modern society and spoiled a generation, rewarding them with gold medals just for showing up. Manson makes the argument, backed both by academic research and well-timed poop jokes, that improving our lives hinges not on our ability to turn lemons into lemonade, but on learning to stomach lemons better. Human beings are flawed and limited—"not everybody can be extraordinary, there are winners and losers in society, and some of it is not fair or your fault." Manson advises us to get to know our limitations and accept them. Once we embrace our fears, faults, and uncertainties, once we stop running and avoiding and start confronting painful truths, we can begin to find the courage, perseverance, honesty, responsibility, curiosity, and forgiveness we seek. There are only so many things we can give a f**k about so we need to figure out which ones really matter, Manson makes clear. While money is nice, caring about what you do with your life is better, because true wealth is about experience. A much-needed grab-you-by-the-shoulders-and-look-you-in-the-eye moment of real-talk, filled with entertaining stories and profane, ruthless humor, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F**k is a refreshing slap for a generation to help them lead contented, grounded lives.

You Are a Badass®: How to Stop Doubting Your Greatness and Start Living an Awesome Life Paperback – April 23, 2013 by Jen Sincero - YOU ARE A BADASS IS THE SELF-HELP BOOK FOR PEOPLE WHO DESPERATELY WANT TO IMPROVE THEIR LIVES BUT DON'T WANT TO GET BUSTED DOING IT. In this refreshingly entertaining how-to guide, bestselling author and world-traveling success coach, Jen Sincero, serves up 27 bitesized chapters full of hilariously inspiring stories, sage advice, easy exercises, and the occasional swear word, helping you to: Identify and change the self-sabotaging beliefs and behaviors that stop you from getting what you want, Create a life you totally love. And create it NOW, Make some damn money already. The kind you've never made before. By the end of You Are a Badass, you'll understand why you are how you are, how to love what you can't change, how to change what you don't love, and how to use The Force to kick some serious ass. 

Unfu*k Yourself: Get Out of Your Head and into Your Life Hardcover – August 1, 2017 by Gary John Bishop - Joining the ranks of The Life-Changing Magic of Not Giving a F*ck, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, You Are a Badas*, and F*ck Feelings comes this refreshing, BS-free, self-empowerment guide that offers an honest, no-nonsense, tough-love approach to help you move past self-imposed limitations. Are you tired of feeling fu*ked up? If you are, Gary John Bishop has the answer. In this straightforward handbook, he gives you the tools and advice you need to demolish the slag weighing you down and become the truly unfu*ked version of yourself. ''Wake up to the miracle you are,'' he directs. ''Here's what you've forgotten: You're a fu*king miracle of being.'' It isn't other people that are standing in your way, it isn't even your circumstances that are blocking your ability to thrive, it's yourself and the negative self-talk you keep telling yourself. 

How to Make Sh*t Happen: Make more money, get in better shape, create epic relationships and control your life! Paperback – February 1, 2018 by Sean Whalen - Is your daily life chaotic and out of control? Do you struggle with work/life balance? Does it feel like there are never enough hours in the day to accomplish all your goals? Does it feel like no matter how hard you try it's never good enough? Are you looking for a simple yet executable roadmap to create the life you've always desired? If you answered "yes" to any of these questions, then you need... HOW TO MAKE SH*T HAPPEN. "Core 4 has brought order to chaos. Every time I veer off from it, the shit storms appear" - Ed Eisenbeck "CORE 4 has opened up my mind more than anything I have done in my life. It has shown me that I control my time, my relationships, my body, business, and altogether my life. I'm no longer just along for the ride. In any aspect of life." - Bryan Hooley

The Third Door: The Wild Quest to Uncover How the World's Most Successful People Launched Their Careers Hardcover – June 5, 2018 by Alex Banayan - THE NATIONAL BESTSELLER The larger-than-life journey of an 18-year-old college freshman who set out from his dorm room to track down Bill Gates, Lady Gaga, and dozens more of the world's most successful people to uncover how they broke through and launched their careers.The Third Door takes readers on an unprecedented adventure--from hacking Warren Buffett's shareholders meeting to chasing Larry King through a grocery store to celebrating in a nightclub with Lady Gaga--as Alex Banayan travels from icon to icon, decoding their success. After remarkable one-on-one interviews with Bill Gates, Maya Angelou, Steve Wozniak, Jane Goodall, Larry King, Jessica Alba, Pitbull, Tim Ferriss, Quincy Jones, and many more, Alex discovered the one key they have in common: they all took the Third Door. Life, business, success . . . it's just like a nightclub. There are always three ways in. There's the First Door: the main entrance, where 99 percent of people wait in line, hoping to get in. The Second Door: the VIP entrance, where the billionaires and celebrities slip through. But what no one tells you is that there is always, always . . . the Third Door. It's the entrance where you have to jump out of line, run down the alley, bang on the door a hundred times, crack open the window, sneak through the kitchen--there's always a way.   Whether it's how Bill Gates sold his first piece of software or how Steven Spielberg became the youngest studio director in Hollywood history, they all took the Third Door.

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HOW "MASTERING THE TALK TO MASTER YOUR LIFE" is different: 

This book takes tells the story of my own Third Door in a way that's both humorous and unsparing, while remaining human and forgiving. The book is only part tough love, more of it being focused on the habits and routine I used to unf*ck my own mindset, get unstuck in life after a long series of horribles and massive challenges and setbacks (see outline and bio), figure out my life mission, how to pursue it and monetize it, then execute relentlessly, always looking for the Third Door (growth hacking, in tech parlance) into top publications, strategic partnerships, finding clients and generating revenue, while always looking to automate, outsource, simplify and just focus on delivering massive value. I'm not a celebrity, but I've gone from being broken by massive expectations to hopeless failure and to being one of the best in my chosen field and some modest successful by several measures. This book is packed with not just insights and stories, humor and real-world advice, but also with an abundance of success roadmaps, worksheets, self-assessments, tools, strategies, assignments and practical guides for everything from finding one's Life Mission, Values, Outcomes and Role (plus Negative Scripts and Founding Stories) to building a Successful Coaching/Consulting Business, a Kick-Ass Personal and Professional Brand, Premium Package Creation, PR Strategy, Personal Development Plan, among others.

In short, the book is not leading with irreverence, but with human care (my motto is, "Human First, Resource Second.") and provides a depth of storytelling, insights, tools and strategies, plus always practical takeaways to help the reader not just leave with the story, but with practical takeaways for how to "find themselves," change their career, start a successful business, promote themselves correctly, plus a guide for how to continue building and improving themselves, their company and their audience, creating an ever-widening virtuous circle.