Lessons I Learned From “Shake the World”
James Marshall Reilly’s Book and The Road to Creating a Meaningful Life
I picked up “Shake the World” fresh out of college just as I was diving headfirst into the job search for the first time. The tagline written on the front of the cover read, It’s Not About Finding a Job, It’s About Creating a Life. Since that was exactly what I set out to do, I hoped that this book would inspire me to create my post-college dream life.
At first, I didn’t make it much farther than the first chapter. I was hoping for a step-by-step guidebook on what to do next and this wasn’t it. I felt discouraged as I read about how the 2008 recession had forced the new requirement of low-paying and unpaid internships on college grads, reserving full-time opportunities for an even higher tier of candidates, not to mention excluding those couldn’t afford to work for free — not that any of this information was new to me. Not to fret, it assured me, growing up in the internet age offered me a unique competitive advantage and endless opportunities for self-education.
Reilly goes on to describe the workforce as two subsets, one as navigating the “old corporate America in an effort to make its way in the traditional job market” and the other as a “group of hugely successful young people who have either started their own business or built careers at established companies and organizations in innovative ways.”
As a new college grad, I wasn’t ready to start my own business. I didn’t know the first thing about starting a business, nor did I have the moxie to figure it out. I wanted to dip my toes in the working world first. I knew I had a lot to learn, and I wanted to start out by learning the ins and outs from an established organization. Gathering that this book was better aimed at those who fell into the latter of the two subsets, I set the book down, intent on picking it up again at a later season in my life.
A few months later, I picked it up again. It still didn’t resonate with me. So I put it back on the shelf and forgot about it. Three years passed of working part-time jobs for experience and I was finally beginning my first real, full-time job. By now, I must have the real-world experience to glean a better understand of this book, I thought. So I gave it another try.
Still, I found that it fell flat.
Disappointed, I put the book back down, placed it in a drawer and forgot about it again until now, two and a half years after starting my first full-time job and five years after first purchasing the book.
By this point, you’re probably wondering why I was still making an effort to read it. I believed that it must have some nuggets of wisdom buried within that perhaps I just wasn’t ready for yet, and that a few years of work experience would help me to unlock. After all, it contained interviews with Blake Mycoskie of TOMS, Jessica Jackley of Kiva and the founders of Invisible Children, non-profit organizations that I had revered during my high school years.
Five years later, I have finally finished “Shake The World.” Was it worth it? Not exactly.
The book was published in 2011 and forecasted the rise of “philanthrocapitalism,” the idea that consumer dollars are redirected towards humanitarian causes at no additional cost to the consumer nor the business. For example, a business spends the same amount on a humanitarian cause that they would on advertising dollars, such as in the case of TOMS shoes, where a pair of shoes is given to a child in need for every shoe purchased, rather than on print advertising or billboard campaigns. Thus, the consumer is able to purchase the shoes at $49.95, a reasonable price for shoes, while receiving the invaluable satisfaction of knowing that they made a difference in a child’s life.
While the book illustrates that there are many opportunities out there for the new college grad that lie beyond the traditional job market, for the new grad with no capital and looming student loans, the concept of launching a business is too risky.
My favorite chapter of the book is the conclusion, where Reilly offers one final success story. It is the story of a young woman who couldn’t decide on a college major and ended up declaring International Studies by default. The major required learning a second language, and having studied French, she chose to spend a semester abroad in Paris where she discovered her love for perfume.
Desperate to earn some money to start her life upon graduation, she ended up in the wrong job. And then she left that job for another job that was a poor fit, this time with an impressive job title but where she “worked for minimum wage and suffered maximum boredom.” She didn’t give up and continued applying for jobs for almost a year, until finally, she landed an interview with a multinational fragrance house. The interview was nearly entirely in French and allowed her to demonstrate her full knowledge of the perfume industry. Thus, landing her the job of her dreams.
“Shake the World” may spark an idea that will lead you to your next dream job, but it will not tell you how to get there. At best, it is a poignant reminder to think outside of the box when so many of us get stuck in linear thinking patterns when it comes to the job search.
Its main takeaway is that we must maintain a dogged persistence and learn to expect failure as one of the many stepping stones to be expected on the non-linear road to success if we are to create a life of fulfillment for ourselves, and “Shake The World” while we’re at it.
