How to build a Reckless Resume.

Without one, you may be seriously underselling your skills.

After you’ve read, pass this along to: A Gen-zer whose in a spin, the parent’s of said Gen-zer, a friend thinking about a career pivot, a recent retiree whose discovered they’re not ready to stop, or anyone in a job or state of mind wondering “is this as good as it gets?”

I’m going to begin here with an excerpt from Almost Reckless. This will help frame the mindset behind this discussion:

I grew up in the 70s and 80s. We were like free-range chickens, allowed to wander, explore. Peck around at various opportunities. All ones that individually made no sense and were no indicator of my future. But totaled up, they told a far different story. No one asked me at age 12 what I wanted to be when I grew up, and they certainly didn’t craft my extra-curricular activities and align my tutors to ensure the right college so I could get the right advanced degree for the right job in the right corner. And somehow, at the same time, I wasn’t aimless. Somehow all of this added up to founding Tibi, what’s now America’s largest and longest standing independent designer fashion brand.

Jim, my brother-in-law, has his own law firm after spending 25 years as a prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney’s office. My sister called me recently, she was watching Jim in closing statements at trial. She said watching him pace in front of the jurors, every skill he’d honed teaching high-school history in between college and law school to earn money for tuition was brought to bear on a jury that had very complex information broken down for them as if they were 15 year old students. Couple that with Jim’s time spent coaching his son’s basketball leagues, the jury was fed this information with the enthusiasm of an NBA half-time locker room session. And yes, Jim went to Princeton undergrad, but so have thousands of other lawyers. Yet he’s one of the most successful lawyers in the country, while others are not.

A recent article in Harvard Business Review titled “Soft Skills Matter Now More Than Ever” articulates that companies prioritize this skill set when they’re hiring for long-term retention. Remember, companies, the great ones, are never stagnant. Truer now than ever. Because for someone to stay and thrive at a company, they have to be able to see the bigger picture, pivot, and grow.

If you look up the definition of “softskills” it’s presented as the non-technical, intangible personality traits that determine how someone interacts with others and behaves in a business situation.

I asked AI how I can acquire them:

Utter bullshit.

I wonder, is the specificity of this so enticing to people? The answer above wraps it up so neatly. Yet I’m 100% sure this is not where life happens. And softskills can only be acquired when you’re living your life, they can’t be preordained. They’re happening at you when you don’t even know it. But, in order to receive them, you have to be in the right state of mind. Present. Almost Reckless lays out a blueprint for how to get in the right frame of mind to collect, identify and codify your soft skills.

And think on this. If softskills are that important to a company, maybe you can understand how important they are for us in our lives? If you are the company of you, then being able to learn, grow, and pivot is an essential skill set. Especially with the acceleration of change. Clear-eyed and steady wins the race, simply because if you are those two things, you’ve already won.

If you love supporting independent booksellers (we do) then you can order the book BY CLICKING HERE:

Joking, but not really….