This post is part of a virtual book tour organized by Goddess Fish Promotions. The author will be awarding a $25 Amazon/BN GC to a randomly drawn winner via Rafflecopter. Click on the tour banner to see the other stops on the tour.
In one word, the central message of my memoir Shining Brightly is:
Hope.
Wherever life takes you, even to a death sentence like the one I received twice in my life with advanced stage IV cancer, there’s always the possibility of a surprise around the corner. After a lifetime of such surprises, I’m so full hope that I now work with others on a daily basis in encouraging a similar resilience in their lives.
Here are five of the many surprises I have discovered in my life:
First: Like fans of the movie Dirty Dancing, I learned a lot about life and about loving family relationships at those classic summer resorts in the Catskills that today mainly live in nostalgic memories for countless families.
As you’ll read in the book, I explored those resorts with my sister and cousins as children, hosted by our grandparents. For us, those trips modeled the central importance of spending family time together every year.
Second: I love the Atlantic shoreline, but not where you would expect. As the Catskills faded, the annual cross-generational outings in our family transitioned to the Atlantic shoreline. There are many spots along the ocean that are popular to millions of Americans—and are jam packed as a result. Instead, our family found a favorite resort area way up in Maine that we claimed as our family home away from home for decades.
In my book, I risk letting readers in on our little slice of Atlantic heaven. As a result, I realize I may be adding to the crowds along our favorite stretch of shoreline. I’m risking it to spread a little joy into readers’ lives.
Third: Everything I needed to know about working with customers in my career as a successful entrepreneur, I learned from a traveling shoe salesman. That’s my father, who supported us by loading up old-fashioned carrying cases of shoes and boots and then crisscrossing New England to sell his wares. In my memoir, I write about my love of my father and his marketing adventures. There’s a lot we all can learn about the power of personal networking from those independent entrepreneurs who tirelessly build loyal customers nationwide.
In fact, as my book is launched, Dad still is out there beating a path to some of his oldest customers like many other salespeople who form a backbone of our country’s economy. In the pages of my memoir, you’ll likely gain a whole new appreciation for these daring entrepreneurs. Fourth: My brother Ian was never supposed to be my real brother.
Let me explain that puzzling line: In this memoir you will learn how I agreed to a carefully monitored mentoring arrangement with little Ian through a program that was known as Jewish Big Brothers.
Then, all of us were surprised at the solid relationships that formed between Ian, his mother and my existing family through the years. If you want a true testament to hope that lies just around the corner for all of us, then read the story of my relationship with Ian.
But a word of warning: After reading those stories in my book, you may decide to become a mentor yourself.
Fifth: Basketball is my happy place.
Again, I need to explain that line. Part of successfully building up your resilience is becoming aware of the places that sap your strength and raise anxiety, as well as those places that are guaranteed to make you happy and rebuild your energy. I discovered basketball as a child and play it to this day.
In fact, as you will discover in the pages of Shining Brightly, I even promote interfaith peacemaking on the basketball court.
How do I do that?
Well, you’ll just have to discover this and other surprises in the pages of Shining Brightly.
In Shining Brightly, Silicon Valley pioneer, cancer survivor and interfaith peacemaker Howard Brown shares keys to resilience for successful entrepreneurs, patient advocates and community leaders. He shows us how to reach out through our families, our communities and around the world to form truly supportive connections and friendships. From Howard’s career as a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, to his conquering metastatic stage IV cancer twice, to his compassionate outreach as a peacemaker, to his love of sports—this ultimately is not one man’s story. Shining Brightly is a story shared by countless men and women—and may wind up changing your life as well. With each true story he tells in the pages, Howard invites readers to picture how they might join him in shining more light in our world.
Read an Excerpt
When I landed in Silicon Valley in 1997, people told me: “The math is crazy here. Two plus two equals 200.” As a top salesman for more than a decade, I was used to the roller-coaster ride of chasing big deals. I’d had my share of setbacks as well as breathtaking commission checks when great deals finally were signed. But moving into Silicon Valley was climbing to a whole new altitude. At the same time, I also was evolving from strictly sales to becoming a serial entrepreneur, a life whose ups and downs are less like a roller coaster and more like scaling the Himalayas. Silicon Valley in the 1990s was as disorienting as Alice in Wonderland or The Matrix.
With each passing quarter of the year, old assumptions were turned head over heels. I had come of age when aspiring salespeople, executives and entrepreneurs could develop their skills along comfortable on ramps like NCR’s lavish training programs. There was no Sugar Camp with the implicit promise of a successful career. In Silicon Valley, it was learn fast, move fast and earn faster. Everything was new and speculative. There was no safety net. We were scrambling to find toe holds in startups operating out of borrowed garages, cramped cubicles, dusty attics—wherever we could pitch our tents. We were competing for seats at flimsy card tables where people were hunched over their plans to build the future. I was among thousands who were hooked on this adrenaline rush. I sweated toward my first big success in a claustrophobic basement startup that was overwhelmed with the odor of frying onions every day as the vents of the next-door Mexican restaurant turned on for the lunch and dinner rush.
When people first told me about Silicon Valley’s crazy math, I laughed at the exaggeration. When I landed in the scrambler myself, I realized they weren’t kidding. Within just a few years, Lisa and I were able to buy a beautiful, newly built home and increase our charitable giving significantly with our “found money.” I earned big money via large commissions and stock options originally worth pennies working around the clock to build and sell a revolutionary product in the music industry that wound up failing not too long after it went public. We were ahead of our time in that basement, so our concept quickly fizzled. But in Silicon Valley? We still took money home. And, as surprising as it may seem, most of the investors weren’t complaining. For the most part, they were clear-eyed venture capitalists pouring money into startups that sounded promising, hoping to strike gold on just a few of the many bets they were placing.
What about all that money? That’s the first myth about the heyday of Silicon Valley that I need to bust. Many of us weren’t in this for the money. Sure, we all hoped to strike it rich and make a better life for ourselves. Some of us made big money, often for an all-too-brief time. I know that I personally wanted to become a philanthropist and give back. But the money was not what drove us to work insane hours and to nearly abandon our families along the way. No, what drove us through each day was the heady dream of reinventing the way the world works—the way we all connect and move and interrelate—the way we do our work and the way we enjoy ourselves after work. We were the generation that firmly believed we could make the most fantastic tech dreams come true. And, if that sounds like the plot for a sci-fi movie, then so be it.
About the Author:
Website: http://www.shiningbrightly.com
Link to buy: https://www.amazon.com/Shining-Brightly-resilience-entrepreneur-interfaith/dp/1641801476/ref=sr_1_1
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ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing this! It sounds and looks good.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed the excerpt
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