The Leap: How 3 Simple Changes Can Propel Your Career From Good to Great Book

At age thirty-five, Rick Smith was stuck in a career rut. He was doing okay as an executive recruiter, but the passion was gone. He felt totally average, with no special talents or resources. Yet in the next few years, he transitioned to an exciting, lucrative, and deeply rewarding new career. And he discovered that many other average Joes and Janes were making the same kind of leap.

Smith has interviewed hundreds of people who felt stuck on an endless trajectory of ordinary, but then tapped into their hidden strengths for the first time. He sums up their transformations in three counterintuitive principles:
To unlock your potential, you don t need to change who you are. Instead, match up what you do with what you love to do your greatest strengths and passions.
You don t need to go it alone. Big, selfless, simple ideas attract a supportive team and multiply your success.
You don t need to make dramatic and risky changes. There are ways to stack the deck in your favor gradually, with little or no risk.

Smith includes inspiring true stories like those of a door-to-door fax machine saleswoman who became a global fashion mogul, and a frustrated band manager who became an internationally renowned benefit organizer.

Publishers Weekly

Smith (The Five Patterns of Extraordinary Careers) examines the commonalities among individuals who transcended their dull day jobs to launch truly extraordinary careers. He is most taken with identifying what precipitated their “leap” into authentic and meaningful work, interviewing hundreds of people to craft replicable steps that everyone can use to initiate a personal and professional evolution and achieve remarkable success without taking reckless and unnecessary risks. His examples of highly profitable “leaps” include Sara Blakely, who went from a fax machine sales person to the owner of SPANX, a highly successful women's clothing line; Frances Hesselbein, who went from a stay-at-home mom to the executive director of Girl Scouts of America; and Brad Margus, who channeled his feelings of futility over the rare and terminal disease his two sons inherited to become a genetics expert on the National Advisory Neurological Disorders and Stroke Council. Smith's book—a lively readable romp—motivates without preaching and gently coaxes readers to overcome innate fears and to use their greatest passions to bring about fulfillment. (Sept.)