EDITORIAL FEATURE
Flip Sides, Second Acts
and Successful Careers
By Hank MooreCorporate Strategist™
I
t used to be said that people have three careers in them. Those who are particularly
successful have many more. It’s all about
evolving. What we start out as is different
from what we progress into, both for companies
and individuals.
Have you ever had reunion business relationships? It’s amazing how the circumstances
change things the next time around. The people
who denied your friend requests on Linkedin
are now pursuing you as a celebrity on Facebook. As they know and trust you, they want to
associate with you. It’s all perspective and the
building of a multi-tiered Body of Work, stellar
reputation and track record.
One of the great music figures was Burt
Bacharach. His role model was George Gershwin. Bacharach started his music writing career
by taking “work for hire,” tailoring songs to particular performers. He wrote a lot of flip sides to
hit records and was recognized as a consistent
hit maker. The Bacharach repertoire expanded,
and he developed his signature musical style,
along with lyricists such as Hal David.
That is the way that I am with business wisdom. I continually dust off old chestnuts and
reapply them for clients, in my books, through
my speeches and in sharing with mentees. The
case studies become the substance of what we
provide future clients. We benefit from going
back and learning from our own early Body of
Work, assuming that we stratregized our career
to be a long-term thing, as Burt Bacharach did.
One of my favorite movies of all-time is “Laura.” It starred Dana Andrews and Gene Tierney.
It was a stylized 1940’s film noir mystery, the
epitome of style and glamour. Their reunion
movie was ”Iron Curtain,” a gritty documentary-style portrait of Cold War Europe. They
14 SMALL BUSINESS TODAY MAGAZINE [ OCTOBER 2015 ]
played spouses in the come-back drama of an
unsettled post-war European world. The two
movies could not have been so different. They
included two A-list Hollywood actors, appearing against type and image.
Some of the most creative professionals work
behind the scenes and then later get accorded
star status. Many character actors who subsequently became stars included Humphrey Bogart, Edmond O’Brien, Anne Bancroft, Anthony Hopkins, Angela Lansbury, Jack Elam, Ruth
Gordon, Wallace Beery, Christopher Walken,
Cloris Leachman, Karl Malden, William Conrad, Madeline