The higher purpose of a solo journey

Wild, From Lost To Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

By Cheryl Strayed, published by Vintage Books, A Division of Random House, Inc. (2012)

In 1982 (aged 23), I embarked on a solo bike trip through England, France and Spain. What compelled me to take this impulsive adventure I can't say for sure. I was neither an athlete nor a cyclist. I flew from Toronto to London, England, bought a road bike and began my journey. It just seemed like the right thing to do at that time in my life.

Memories of that youthful trip came flooding back to me as I read Cheryl Strayed's "Wild," a non-fiction memoir of her three-month solo hike through the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT) in 1995, when she was 26. A solo journey is something many young men and women do for deeply personal reasons; for some it’s a spiritual quest, for others a physical challenge and a test of character. Strayed makes no  bones about the fact that she needed this trip to help her heal from the death of her mother, a recent divorce, a heroin addiction and other demons.

In "Wild," Strayed recounts the highs and lows of her long hike: her brushes with wild animals, encounters with fellow hikers and the daily challenges in keeping herself alive. She writes with tremendous conviction and honesty, and her tone is both humbling and lyrical. I particularly enjoyed her many descriptions of the beauty and majesty of the PCT, including this one:

"It had only to do with how it felt to be in the wild. With that it was like to walk for miles for no reason other than to witness the accumulation of trees and meadows, mountains and deserts, streams and rocks, rivers and grasses, sunrises and sunsets. The experience was powerful and fundamental. It seemed to me that it had always felt like this to be a human in the wild, and as long as the wild existed it would always feel this way... It was what I knew before I even really did, before I could have known how truly hard and glorious the PCT would be, how profoundly the trail would both shatter and shelter me."

"Wild" moves more or less chronologically from the start of the trip in the Mojave Desert until the end at the Bridge of the Gods at the Oregon-Washington border. But the narration is punctuated by flashbacks from Strayed's past (conversations with friends, family members and acquaintances), which adds depth and poignancy to her tale.

Strayed's PCT hike was undertaken almost on a whim, but as her story progresses, there almost seems to be a higher power at work - guiding her, testing her and protecting her. Throughout her many trials and tribulations, she never loses faith. Readers of any age will feel moved, inspired and elevated by her story.

If you've never experienced an extended solo journey, the idea might seems odd, exotic, or pointless. But for those who have undertaken such a journey, the exercise is far from pointless. For many (including myself), it provides a kind of necessary escape and a rebirth. It offers closure, perspective, adventure, and a reaffirmation of life. 

Some personal journeys are fascinating, educational and entertaining in and of themselves. Others manage to transcend those defined boundaries to become something more resonant and lasting. "Wild" easily falls into the latter category, a life-affirming story that will live in my memory and imagination for years to come, a story that I'm pleased to recommend to anyone who has ever taken (or contemplated) a solo journey.

Mitch Joel connects the digital dots in Control Alt Delete

Control Alt Delete: Reboot Your Business. Reboot Your Life. Your Future Depends on It.

By Mitch Joel

Published by Grand Central Publishing - Hachette Book Group (2013)

Two years ago, a 15 year-old Brit named Nick D'Aloisio developed a mobile news app called Summly. This past March, his story made headlines when he sold his startup to Yahoo for a reported $30 million.

After reading that story, words like 'fast,' 'bright,' 'nimble,' and 'simplify' popped into my head. These are the same words that appear throughout Mitch Joel's instructive new book, entitled Control Alt Delete: Reboot Your Business. Reboot Your Life. Your Future Depends on It.

These are words that could also describe many of today's hottest new technologies, businesses and movements. In Control Alt Delete, Mitch delivers a passionate plea for businesses and individuals to re-think how they are using digital tools and platforms. He argues that many companies exist in a digital Purgatory: they may claim to have thousands of followers on social media, but if they aren't actively engaging those followers with good, useful content, opportunities are being squandered.

For savvy businesses like Zappos, Apple and Salesforce.com, it's all about being authentic, transparent, and adding value. When companies focus on providing a great user experience, they will be rewarded with increased attention and relevance. Companies that continue to 'push' stale messages into the marketplace using traditional (or new) media will not connect with their customers, and they will lose business.

In learning how to connect with customers, Mitch uses the apt term 'utilitarianism' as it applies to the end user:

"What is 'utilitarianism marketing? It's not about advertising, it's not about messaging, and it's not about immediate conversions. It's about providing a true value and utilizing something consumers not only would want to use - constantly and consistently - but would derive so much value from it that is would be given front-and-centre attention in their lives."

Control Alt Delete is divided into two parts: the first part examines how businesses are utilizing new technologies to leverage their messages and brands; the second part focuses on the power of the individual to connect with the wider online community. The book reads quickly, but it contains treasure trove of anecdotes, ideas, and advice on harnessing new digital tools and technologies.

Today, it's never been easier to start a business or to deliver a message. If you've got a great idea, and the skills to bring that idea to market, there are countless resources available online that can help you to fund, develop, promote and distribute your products/services not just locally, but globally. Mitch talks about the so-called gatekeepers (talent scouts, agents, publishing  houses, et. all) who once controlled the destinations of aspiring artists and businesspeople.

Nowadays business owners and artists of all stripes don't need gatekeepers to achieve success. They can launch their own products and careers using digital platforms (many of which are free). They research new ideas and explore new markets with relative ease and for nominal costs. Indeed, the phrase 'fail quick and fail often' has become something of a catchphrase for a new generation of risk takers and entrepreneurs in today's digital universe.  

Mitch's tone is personal and disarming (meaning it's free of digibabble). Control Alt Delete is a handy guide that will appeal to anyone who is interested in learning how to better understand and use digital tools and platforms to increase their reach and relevance. That  means large corporations, small and medium sized businesses, solopreneurs, artists, philanthropists, students, administrators, working professionals - in short, anyone who wants to gain a foothold and an advantage in the online world.

In addition to reading Control Alt Delete, readers would be wise to check out Mitch's Twist Image blog and his weekly Twist Image podcast. Mitch is a thought leader who continues to inspire and dazzle audiences with his insights, observations, and his incredible knack for connecting the digital dots.  

The First World War illuminated through the lens of Follett's fiction

Fall of Giants, by Ken Follett

Book One of the Century Trilogy

Published by Dutton, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. 2010

Ken Follett’s Fall of Giants is the first of a trilogy of novels covering major political events of the 20 century. This first installment begins in 1911 and finishes as the dust clouds are settling across Europe and Russia after the First World War.

The hardcover edition is a hefty 985 pages, which isn’t surprising considering the extraordinary range of historical events and characters that Follett brings to life in this story. By all accounts, this is an epic narrative achievement that will keep readers riveted from start to finish.

The novel begins inside the home of David Williams, who is employed by the Miner’s Federation Union of South Wales. David’s son, Billy, is about to begin his working life as a collier at the age of 13 (not unusual for the time). His elder sister, Ethel, has just arrived home to wish him well in his new career. Ethel works as a housekeeper for Earl Fitzherbert and his wife, Russian-born Princess Bea.

Being poor and working class, Billy and Ethel inhabit a vastly different world than Fitzherbert and Princess Bea. But with Follett’s deft storytelling skills, all of these lives collide against the backdrop of socio-economic and political events between 1911 and 1924. In addition to the escalating tensions among the superpowers, Follett introduces other seminal events that were just as weighty as the war itself, including the Suffragette movement and the sharp class divisions between rich and poor in England, and the grinding poverty and desperation among the peasantry that sowed the seeds of the Russian revolution.

Fall of Giants is a populated mostly by fictional characters, although some real historical characters make cameo appearances – Winston Churchill, Woodrow Wilson, King George V, Paul von Hindenburg – which gives the story a sense of heightened drama and authenticity. My favourite character is Grigori, a street-smart Russian who starts out working in a locomotive factory and winds up working alongside Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky during the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917.

As the First World War unfolds, Follett does a great job shifting scenes quickly and effortlessly – it almost feels as though he’s performing a magic trick. We move from the cramped, dusty mines of South Wales to the wood-panelled drawing rooms of Fitzherbert’s country estate to the squalid streets of St. Petersburg, without missing a beat. Follett keeps the action moving swiftly at all times, and he cleverly avoids the temptation of over-analyzing situations and bombarding readers with descriptions of weaponry and battles.

To get a sense of how precise and succinct Follett’s writing is, here’s a passage describing the thoughts of one of the central characters, Walter von Ulrich, a military attaché who is present at a meeting of the German Emperor, Kaiser Wilhelm and his generals at the beginning of 1917. The war is at a stalemate, and Germany is trying to figure out its next big move.

They waited two hours, then Kaiser Wilhelm came in, wearing a general’s uniform. Everyone sprang to their feet. His Majesty looked pale and ill-tempered. He was a few days shy of his fifty-eighth birthday. As ever, he held his withered left arm motionless at his side, attempting to make it inconspicuous. Walter found it difficult to summon up that emotion of joyous loyalty that had come so easily to him as a boy. Wilhelm II was too obviously an unexceptional man completely overwhelmed by events. Incompetent, bewildered, and miserably unhappy, he was a standing argument against hereditary monarchy.

The First World War claimed the lives of eight million men and left most of Europe in ruins. One cannot comprehend that type of human loss and the suffering and hardship that many more millions of people endured throughout Europe, Russia and the Commonwealth. With Fall of Giants, readers may not be able to comprehend the horrors of that war, but they will certainly better understand the complex network of alliances, events, personalities and decisions that led up to it.

Donny Deutsch’s brash account of a life spent in advertising

Often Wrong, Never in Doubt – Unleash the Business Rebel Within

By Donny Deutsch, written with Peter Knobler

Published by HarperCollins Publishers in 2005

Often Wrong, Never in Doubt is the inspirational story of adman Donny Deutsch. It’s a candid, pull-no-punches story about a life spent in the trenches of the advertising business, not to mention being a fun and entertaining read.

Donny goes into detail about his early years growing up in Queens, New York, his indifference to schooling and the educational system, his years searching for a career, his relationship with his father, and his prime years working in advertising.

Donny’s career starts in earnest, when he accepts a job working at a boutique ad agency owned by his father. His brash style, swagger and personality were a perfect fit for the advertising business. Over a 20-year span, starting in 1989 when he finally took over his father’s agency, Donny helped to build the company into one of the most successful and celebrated ad agencies in the U.S.

From early on in his career, Donny eschewed orthodox thinking. He knew how traditional ad agencies worked and he wanted no part of it at his agency. The status quo dictated that art directors, copywriters and account managers had clearly-defined roles, and there was no working outside of those parameters. Donny believed in the cross-pollination of ideas and talent; if a junior account manager had a great idea, then the idea was given equal consideration with ideas generated from seasoned veterans.

There is no mistaking Donny’s sense of pride and confidence. This is clearly evident when he describes some of the many successful campaigns that his agency produced, for clients ranging from drug companies (Pfizer) and automakers (General Motors) to retailing giants (Ikea) and telecommunications firms (Verizon).

By his own admission, Donny’s personality is part intellectual and part goofball. That’s part of his charm. He can be extremely insightful about any subject under the sun – such as when describing the current, sad state of political advertising in the U.S., or quite funny, when describing the sexual morays of past presidents (“Despite the stern appearances of the President and the First Lady, you knew that Ronald and Nancy Reagan were getting down….”). Underneath the bluster, however, is a keen intelligence at work, a forceful personality and a delightful chronicler of the ad industry, and about western culture.

Anyone who works in advertising and marketing will gain something useful in reading Often Wrong, Never in Doubt, or by tuning into old episodes of Donny’s CNBC talk show called The Big Idea with Donny Deutsch (2004 -2008). Many of those episodes reside on YouTube.

How Banana Republic conquered the fashion world with chutzpah and irreverence

Wild Company, The Untold Story of Banana Republic

Published by Simon & Shuster (2012)

I’m a sucker for rags to riches stories, and Wild Company, The Untold Story of Banana Republic, is as rags to riches as they get, with plenty of laughs, life lessons and anecdotes thrown in for good measure.

This is the story of a young couple, Mel and Patricia Ziegler, who almost by accident created one of the world’s most iconic fashion and lifestyle brands (Banana Republic). They did so by breaking most of the rules of business and with sheer talents, instincts and chutzpah.

In the late 1970s, Mel was a writer, Patricia an artist/illustrator, both working at the San Francisco Chronicle. Feeling unfulfilled, they quit their day jobs to try their hand at freelancing. One day, Mel took an assignment in Australia and returned from that trip sporting a British Burma jacket. Mel and Patricia both loved the jacket, as did many strangers who approached them wanting to know where they could buy one.

This was a light bulb moment, and the couple figured there was a market for British Burma jackets “and anything else we could find,” Mel writes. With no business experience or business contacts, the couple set about establishing a company offering unique lines of clothing (shirts, jackets, bags, skirts and accessories) using un-businesslike ideas and strategies. As they would soon discover, there was a large, untapped market for finely-made and stylish outdoor clothing.

The couples’ journey from impoverished creative types into successful business leaders makes for a fun and entertaining read. Their chemistry was a recipe for success: Mel focused on marketing and promotions while Patricia concentrated on the fashion and merchandise side of the business. Their retail stores out-grossed larger and more established retail players in terms of sales per square foot. Their hand-illustrated, mail-order catalogue became a must-read for millions of customers and generated response rates double and triple the industry norm. By the mid 1980s, Banana Republic had become a recognizable name in fashion with a fiercely loyal customer base.

One has to admire the courage, chutzpah and prescience of Mel and Patricia Ziegler, who redefined fashion retailing and demonstrated what is possible by applying old-fashioned creativity, gut instincts, common sense and hard work. Their ideas and strategies were cheeky, irreverent, and far ahead of their time. Here’s Mel describing one of the company’s marketing initiatives:

I believed the best way to ensure our long-term survival was to overdeliver. Go above and beyond and, most importantly, make a human connection with customers. I scribbled notes to customers and put them in the boxes. The notes, on official khaki stationary, were signed by a random minister of the Republic: sometimes Minister of Finance, others the Minister of Progress, but usually the one truest to me, the Minister of Propaganda.

Wild Company is filled with many such creative initiatives, which helped grow the Banana Republic brand. This is a story that any entrepreneur, marketing manager or business student would appreciate. The tone and style are playful and witty, but the underlying message is very inspiring and resonates loud and clear: creativity and curiosity are just as integral to the success of a business as sound financials and the bottom line.

The Tiger: a riveting tale of the hunter and the hunted

The Tiger, A True Story of Vengeance and Survival

By John Vaillant

Originally published by Alfred A. Knopf and Alfred A. Knopf Canada (2010)

Most people encounter tigers by viewing them in a cage at a zoo, reading about them in a book, or researching them online. Imagine the fear of not only sharing the forests with these powerful predators, but knowing that you are being stalked by one – with nowhere to hide.

That’s the scenario that Vladimir Markov found himself in back in 1997, in a remote corner of southeastern Russia near the Chinese border. Markov, an ex-Russian serviceman and paratrooper, lived and worked in Primorye Territory. He was a hunter and beekeeper and did other odd jobs to survive in that inhospitable part of the world.

Primorye Territory is believed to be the last stronghold of the Siberian tiger, and one of these beasts had targeted Markov, carefully stalking him and viciously killing him. The horror of the attack sent shockwaves throughout Primorye Territory and beyond, and then about a week later, the same tiger attacked and killed another man.

The story surrounding these deadly attacks forms the basis of John Vaillant’s excellent The Tiger, A True Story of Vengeance and Survival. With exhaustive research, a meticulous eye for detail and a true storyteller’s skill at producing suspense, Vaillant recounts the period leading up to these attacks and cites plausible theories as why the two victims may have been targeted. The story proceeds almost like a police procedural, gathering evidence and building suspense as the story unfolds. In describing the tiger’s capacity for exacting revenge, Vaillant writes:

The Amur tiger’s territoriality and capacity for sustained vengeance, for lack of a better work, are the stuff of both legend and fact. What is amazing – and also terrifying about tigers – is their facility for what can only be described as abstract thinking. Very quickly, a tiger can assimilate new information – evidence, if you will – ascribe it to a source, and even a motive, and react accordingly. 

The second part of the book describes a search party that was hastily assembled and charged with locating and killing the tiger, led by Yuri Trush, the head of a group known as Inspection Tiger Unit. Trush and his team persuade the authorities that this tiger needs to be tracked and killed to avoid further attacks. But hunting this tiger in the mountainous and forested regions of Primoyre will prove no easy feat, and a kind of cat-and-mouse game ensues.

Vaillant’s story doesn’t always follow a linear progression, and the story is much richer for it. He digresses periodically, tracing the history of tigers across Europe throughout the centuries, discussing the reasons why these wild beasts have been driven to extinction, and examining the complex relationship that has existed between man and tiger, from 10,000 B.C. to the present. Vaillant describes the landscape of the taiga (forest) in great detail, the courageous efforts by Trush and his team to find the elusive, man-eating tiger, and brings to life the many personalities who were directly impacted by these tragic events.

For  centuries, tigers have fascinated people all over the world. Their incredible physical powers and ferocity, their keen intelligence and cunning, and their incredible mystique and beauty continue to produce a sense of awe. In reading The Tiger, your fascination will deepen, and you will gain a new-found respect for the world’s most feared predator.

A young Alexander prepapring for greatness

Fire From Heaven

A novel by Mary Renault (1970, Penguin Books)

This is a finely written novel about the formative years of Alexander III of Macedon (356 – 323 BC), or Alexander the Great, which explores themes of honour, ambition, friendship, homosexuality and loyalty.

The young Alexander is born into a world of privilege, a world where men often distinguished themselves in battle, a world that is powered as much by myth and superstition as it is by warfare. Into this world, Alexander comes of age, making friends and enemies, learning about philosophy (he was tutored by Aristotle) and gathering experiences on and off the battlefield that will serve him well when it comes time to inherit his father’s kingdom.

Renault’s Alexander seems destined from an early age to achieve greatness. As a young boy, he is he quick to observe the power struggles between his father and mother and the shifting allegiances among neighbouring states. Even when choosing friends, Alexander is bound by a moral code and keen intuition that will pay dividends throughout his rise to power.

The main challenge I had with Fire From Heaven is that I’m not versed enough in ancient Greek history, and so many of the references to Greek Gods, kings, battles and events were lost on me. To fully appreciate the depth and subtlety of this novel, readers would do well to possess a nodding acquaintance with Greek history. It would save a lot of Wikipedia searches.

But this observation is no reflection on the power of Renault’s writing, which has the ability transport readers to a fascinating era (Hellenistic) of Greek history. Renault’s eye for detail and her skillfulness at creating vivid scenes are extraordinary. Here, for instance, is 12 year-old Alexander poised for his first battle:

The rose-red on the hill-tops changed to gold. He stood between death and life as between night and morning, and thought with a soaring rapture, ‘I am not afraid.’ It was better than music or his mother’s love; it was the life of the gods. No grief could touch him, no hatred harm him. Things looked bright and clear, as to the stooping angel. He felt sharp as an arrow, and full of light.

Renault is brings the world of Alexander to life in Fire From Heaven with clarity, sensitivity and imagination. I would recommend this novel to anyone interested in reading a stirring portrait of one of history’s most accomplished and enigmatic figures. This type of historical fiction, in novel form, beats text book learning any day of the week, hands-down.