Making a Life, Making a Living(r): Reclaiming Your Purpose and Passion in Business and in Life

"Former professor at Harvard Business School, highly successful Fortune 500 consultant, and part owner of lucrative businesses, Mark Albion had it all--but the "it" he had wasn't what his body and soul needed to thrive. So he did the unthinkable. He gave up what he did so well and started over.
Drawing on intimate interviews with a dozen fast-trackers he met on his search for happiness, Mark shares how these men and women found the courage and motivation to re-create successful professional lives guided by passion.
You'll meet, among others, Judy George, who went from a crushing job termination--to establishing her own home furnishings company based on the same treasured ideas that guide her family...Ira Jackson, who left his public sector job--and put his social conscience to work rebuilding a bank's reputation...and Tom Reis, who found the climb up the corporate ladder unfulfilling--and now works at a nonprofit organization for a cause that truly matters to him.
Making a Life, Making a Living proves that you can change horses in midstream and find work you really love. Inspiring, eye-opening, and sprinkled with insightful quotes from such diverse sources as Mother Teresa, W. C. Fields, Maya Angelou, Marilyn Monroe, Warren Buffett, and Martin Luther King, Jr., this personal In Search of Excellence for the new millennium will help you combine your ambition and passions to create a livelihood that enriches both the world and yourself."
I received my 15-minutes of fame in the mid-80s, started my own businesses as well, and found out, as the great philosopher Lily Tomlin once said, "The problem with the rat race is that even if you win, you are still a rat."
My search for meaning continued as a professor and entrepreneur at Harvard Business School until I finally realized that life may have no meaning. Or worse yet, it may have a meaning of which I disapprove. The 1980s had values that what counted is what could be counted. I was part of that, too, but it didn't work after awhile. So I exited in 1988, looking to bring my values to work.
By this time, my family was growing, with my wife, Joy, since 1981, and two daughters Amanda (12) and Nicolette (8). They were happy when Dad was happy "What does Daddy do?"..."I think he types." I had some business successes, some failures; we bought a big house, almost lost the big house, but somehow I just kept climbing that ladder of success, wrong by wron (thanks, Mae West). I realized, as another great philosopher, Sophie Tucker, knew, "I've been rich. I've been poor. Rich is better."
In this search for significance, I learned that the shortest distance between two points is always under construction. Through socially responsible business networks like Social Venture Network, Businesses for Social Responsibility and one I co-founded, Students for Responsible Business, I began to make a life my family and I were proud of. I just couldn't figure out how to make a living at it.
Experience is a marvelous thing that enables you to recognize a mistake when you make it again. I was now leading two separate lives as businessman and social contributor. E. B. White said it perfectly: "I arise in the morning torn between the desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day."Fortunately, all of this led to an official speech on socially responsible business at the United Nations in June 1996 and a follow-up "hug" from Mother Teresa, who attended the speech. (She would fall ill two weeks later.) It is said that we do not remember days; we remember moments. That was my moment.
In 1997 I began the book I first tried to write when I was backpacking around the world: "Making a Life, Making a Living," which will be published by Time-Warner in January. It is based on my 3.5-year-old electronic MBA newsletter that currently is read by over one million students and executives in 87 countries. My company, You&Company(r) implements these ideas.
I can now integrate my passion -- writing, speaking and challenging young people to lead business lives of service -- with making a living.
With the support of my CEO mother (happy she is not the only breadwinner), my wife (happy I am out of her hair so she can focus on tennis), and my daughters, I am living a life I only dreamed of through the accomplishment of others. Today, the answer to my 25 year-old question is clear: "We are all angels with one wing, able to fly only when we embrace each other."