For those of us who spend our days at tompeters.com or Tom Peters Company, a sentence like this jumps off the page: “He believes he always needs to reinvent himself, which is why he developed a cut fastball to go along with his high heat, split-fingered pitch …” I found it in this article about Jonathan Papelbon, where he describes his new pitch … the slutter.
Then I realized that it shouldn’t come as a surprise that a professional athlete lives with reinvention on his mind and in his repertoire. Any day could bring a trade, an injury, a slump. And, at the end of their careers—the ultimate reinvention. Sometime after the age of thirty(?), forty(?), fifty if they’re extremely lucky, they all must re-imagine themselves. And Tom’s message, for years, has been that the rest of us have to look at our careers the same way. Are your Brand You skills and reputation polished to the point where you could replace your livelihood overnight?