Unsinkable: Find a Job, Create a Career, Build a Business

By Molly Mahoney Matthews

Ever feel like typing HELP ME into your search engine?

If you are discouraged, downhearted or need support, Molly knows how you feel. From down-and-out college bride to multi-million dollar health care communications company CEO, Molly Mahoney Matthews chronicles how she kept her head above water, even when the undercurrent of the having it all myth threatened to bring her down.

How can you create less stress, more time to enjoy family and friends, and a good paycheck? Molly uses "Irish Story Telling" to give readers spirited advice on how to stay afloat during job interviews and swim upstream through office fiascos and business blunders. She has made the mistakes so you don't have too!

Molly's stories are your hot toddy and warm blanket so you can JUMP in with both feet and swim for what you want in life!

One reader said:
I instinctively turned to Molly's blog and read a couple of her posts before facing a career challenge -- reading her blog gives me just the dose of inspiration I need.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Molly Mahoney Matthews
• Release date: Feb 4, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301439737

Molly Mahoney Matthews

Molly Mahoney Matthews began her career as a single parent swimming for her life and the security of her children. From meager beginnings she built a company of 150 employees and $10M in revenue. According to Molly, “Work acts as ballast, undergirds you with purpose, distracts you from pain, and brings you back to your most creative self.” In each chapter, Molly describes her business foibles and accomplishments with humor and savvy. She has made the mistakes so you don’t have to and offers guidance so you can: Find the Right Job Even in Stormy Seas, Navigate Challenges to Move Up in your Career, and Become Captain of Your Own Ship and Build Your Own Enterprise!

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UNSINKABLE:

Find a Job, Create a Career, Build a Business

Molly Mahoney Matthews

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2013 Molly Mahoney Matthews

License Notes: This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this ebook with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

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For my family

Never forget who you are, for surely the world won't. Make it your strength. Then it can never be your weakness. Armor yourself in it, and it will never be used to hurt you.

George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Letter to Readers

About the Book

Author's Note

Prologue: The Luck of the Irish

Find a Job

Chapter One: The Chair

Chapter Two: The Interview

Chapter Three: The Hardest Word

Chapter Four: The Nemesis

Create a Career

Chapter Five: The Moving Walkway

Chapter Six: The Haircut

Chapter Seven: The Pink Slip

Build a Business

Chapter Eight: The Kidnapping

Chapter Nine: The Money

Chapter Ten: The Misfit Toys

Chapter Eleven: The Clinic

Chapter Twelve: The Coffee Pot

Chapter Thirteen: The Piano

Epilogue: The Sweaters

About the Author

Recommended Book List

Acknowledgements

Dear Readers,

This book is your life preserver. It is your hot toddy and your warm blanket. The lessons ahead are based on my experiences: from showing up, slightly waterlogged, for my first job interview, to growing my company, Matthews Media Group, to 150 employees and $20 million in annual revenue. There were many days I felt lost at sea. Not to mention the awful jobs where I treaded water with little hope of sighting land. I made lots of mistakes so you don't have to—and so you can become savvy, smart, and successful.

I began my career as a single parent swimming for my life and struggling for the security of my children. Many days I wanted to give up. My education was limited, and I lacked the worldliness I assumed necessary to be successful. In those early years, my self-confidence fell below the waterline on a regular basis. But after splashing and thrashing my way through the working world, I eventually developed the practical skills I needed to build the business that would become my life preserver. I became the captain of my own ship. I swallowed a lot of water along the way, but I'm still here to tell the tale.

I believe everyone has the strength and ability to navigate rough seas and discover their life's work, whether it's creating a career, building a business, or some other noble pursuit. Whether you are a new graduate or a recent retiree—no matter what your age and circumstance—you need to find meaningful work. Meaningful work acts as ballast, undergirds you with purpose, distracts you from pain, and returns you to your most creative self. A life's work that defines you will bring you challenges and keep you safe and dry.

I hope Unsinkable will support you in banishing doubt and fear, and that it will build your faith in yourself and in the synergies of the Universe. Even on the darkest nights, I believe that anyone can find that one ounce of strength that can become a fulcrum for a whole new life. I was able to do this, and so can you. As my sister once told me, If I'd known I had to rescue myself, I would have done it a lot sooner.

If you have this book in your hands, I officially christen you Unsinkable—because, if you haven't already, you are about to rescue yourself. Remember, if your heart is in your dreams, no request is too extreme.

- Molly Mahoney Matthews

P.S. There is more survive and thrive information on my website. If Unsinkable motivates you to revitalize, stimulate, boost, energize, and fire up to that next step in your life, share your triumphs at www.IMunsinkable.com.

About the Book

This book can either be read chronologically, or you can skip ahead if you have a particular reason for reading. For example, if you are looking to start a business, you may want to jump directly to the book's third section, Build a Business.

Each chapter covers an episode from my life from which I later drew insights. I then share those insights as Lessons Learned at the end of each chapter, and I further distill those lessons to a final, fundamental concept called Lifesaver.

Author's Note

When I use a last name, I am writing about an individual who gave me permission to tell their story. In all other cases, the people I write about are composites and not related to specific individuals, living or dead.

I hope these stories are helpful, but you don't have to agree with or follow all of my advice—just take what is useful and let the rest float away.

Prologue: The Luck of the Irish

My great-grandmother, Johanna, who died sixteen years before I was born, missed the boat. The narrative of her life got me thinking about persistence, courage and luck. Johanna was remembered in my family for being strong-willed, charismatic and independent, and for her sharp sense of humor. When she passed away, she left a thick braid of her hair to my mother. The braid turned out to be the same texture and color as my own hair. As children, my sister and I played dress-up, and my mother would carefully remove the braid from its tissue in her dresser drawer, and weave it into fancy hairstyles for me. I'll never forget the pleasure of swishing around in my mother's old evening gowns, wearing her lipstick and eye shadow—the pain of her bobby pins poking at my scalp was a small price to pay for the strange delight of having my ancestor's hair affixed to my head. It was thrilling to reach up and touch Johanna's braid intertwined with my own hair.

Perhaps that was when the Unsinkable legacy transferred to me. A heritage that included a mother who encouraged her children to play with a family heirloom because she valued exuberant creativity over keeping treasures locked in drawers.

My mother often told me that I had the Luck of the Irish and it was because of my great grandmother Johanna. I wasn't clear what this meant, but I believed her. My mother's doctrine was based on family lore about both my great-grandparents, Johanna and John Kennedy, who certainly had been lucky. In 1881, having left County Cork, Ireland some years earlier, they bustled together their two small boys and raced for the dock in Liverpool, England. The family was full of hope about starting a new life in Australia. When they arrived at the dock, however, the ship had already sailed. It was Friday the 13th.

A few days later, they heard the news: the ship had sunk. All the passengers and crew had drowned.

Johanna and John Kennedy and their children (including my grandfather, John, who was five years old at the time) were safe on dry land. Thus Friday the 13th became our family's lucky day.

My great-grandparents were not going to let a little thing like missing a doomed boat stop them. Another vessel was leaving soon, this one headed west instead of south. They got on that boat and sailed to New York Harbor, joining the flood of Irish immigrants who were processed at Castle Gardens, where 11 million people, those "huddled masses yearning to breathe free, entered the country from 1820 until 1892, the year Ellis Island opened. My great grandparents set the tone for generations of my family: whenever bad things happen, we just see it as a temporary detour."

In other words: If you miss one boat, get on the next.

The irony, of course, is that we weren't all that lucky by some standards (Historically speaking, neither were the rest of the Irish and, in my mother's family four of her seven of her siblings succumbed to infectious diseases before their 22nd birthday.) It comes down to what you do with tragedy. And I do recognize that my ancestor's luck getting to the golden shores of America made even greater luck possible for subsequent generations.

You make your own luck - so jump in with both feet!

Find a Job

Chapter One: The Chair

You'd be surprised where you could go from here.

Dream

The chair called to me.

I could see the chair from my windowless office directly across the hall. It came in and out of view, blocked by a passing secretary one moment, by a junior executive the next. I longed for what that chair represented: power, prestige, respect. It all seemed so far away; much farther away than the few steps it took to cross the great divide between where I was and where I wanted to be. Only twelve feet separated me from the chair.

But one evening I decided to chance it—it was an instinctive, impulsive motion. I let go of fear. I let go of self-imposed limits. I crossed the hall.

The chair belonged to Bill Novelli, my boss at the Porter, Novelli & Associates, a distinguished public relations firm. Bill was (and is) an advertising visionary. He had moved from Madison Avenue to Washington, DC to promote social causes the way he had once sold toothpaste and soap. I admired him greatly as one of the first to combine Mad-Men creative ideas and cause-related marketing that has become so common today.

Bill had gone home for the night. So had the others senior rainmakers decamping for their well-tended suburban homes outside of Washington, DC. Those who, like me, were trying to break in (the types Helen Gurley Brown called mouseburgers in her book, Sex and the Single Girl) had retreated to their studio apartments off Dupont Circle. I would go home to a cramped house with my two preschool-aged children, but I wasn't there tonight. I was still working, and I was the only one left in the office.

The hierarchy where I worked was clear, even if it wasn't openly articulated. The company culture was less hierarchal than most but still the big shots got the big offices and the big accounts. The little people got the little offices and the little accounts. As one of the little people—doing the Xeroxing instead of working on the Xerox account— although I would later feel quite comfortable with Bill, early on I got tongue-tied if ran into him while grabbing a cup of coffee in the kitchenette. Would he be upset if I wasn't at my desk every second of the day?

You would think that would have made me keep my distance from Bill's office this evening. But fear didn't stop me. Before stepping across the threshold, I glanced around. Empty office suites, abandoned desks. Just me and the faint hum of office machines. Jumpy flickers of light popping through the windows from the brick-capped streets of Georgetown.

I summoned courage and tiptoed across the hall, pretending this forbidden province was my own. I wanted to experience the world as Mr. Novelli saw it. I walked behind his desk. I pulled out his chair and sat down. Then I rolled myself forward in the chair until my arms rested on his desk.

I expected to feel like I was on a throne, or on the bridge of a big ocean liner. But it only took a second for me to realize that Bill's chair was simply an Office Depot model—black faux leather. Not pretentious, but comfortable and modest. Mundane even.

I bounced on the seat as I searched for details, storing them away, not so much to copy his sense of interior design, which was almost nonexistent, but to catalog the aura of the place. The top of the desk was almost empty. The furniture was modern. Glass met concrete. Exposed brick projected a funky, hip