Sterling Lanier and Bust Myths About Taking Career Risks
Sterling Lanier believed in Frank Herbert’s Dune. When Sterling first read the epic tale about noble houses, intergalactic space merchants, assassins, and prophecies, it hadn't made it to novels yet. Sterling found it in a Sci-Fi magazine called Analog published back in 1965, and he loved it. Sterling wasn't publishing; he was a Sci-Fi writer too, and he was so enamored with Frank Herbert's book that he made an offer for the full manuscript. Sterling was willing to overlook the fact that 20 other publishers had passed on it because it was written by a sand dunes researcher. Most readers couldn't seem to get past the first hundred pages. Dune was convoluted in parts and slowed down almost intentionally in others. And the final book was over 200,000 words in a time when most sci-fi novels were 60,000 words, and 80,000 words would have been considered overblown and long. But Sterling was a true believer. He loved fantasy.
Dune was the peanut butter chocolate combination of both genres, putting dukes, barons, prophecies, and magic powers alongside laser guns, shields and faster than light travel. Dune had everything and Sterling dearly wanted to use his publishing house to do what 20 other publishers refused to do - he wanted to put Dune on store shelves. There was just one problem; The publishing house Sterling worked for was Chilton, as in Chilton car repair manuals. Just imagine a repair manual written for one specific car. Chilton's were as thick as phone books, and they're usually titled after the car was written to repair. Own a 1970s Cadillac? There was a Cadillac Chilton with detailed instructions on how to take apart and rebuild any caddy between 1967 and 1989 down to the last lug nut.
Sterling published car manuals - not fantasy novels. Publishing Frank Herbert's book Dune would have been an incredible career risk for Sterling. So, what is a devoted fantasy reader to do? If you guess that Sterling took his career risk and published it anyway, you're damn right he did.
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It's official. Major news sources are calling this year The Great Resignation. More Americans have quit their jobs during the pandemic and eviction moratorium than at any other time in history. Just last August, 2.9% of the entire workforce walked out on their jobs. So today, we want to talk about taking career risks. If we're in a comfortable job with good benefits and decent compensation, when is it okay to push our chips in? Should we take risks young when our careers can bounce back or near the end when we are financially secure? And if our riskiness gets us canned, how do we put getting fired on our next resume? To answer these questions, we have three myths to bust.
Myth One: If we are secure in our job and the benefits are good, why not lay low? As the Japanese say, the nail that sticks out gets hammered.
Joe: It's been my experience just by knowing a lot of nerds, when somebody is so into fantasy and sci-fi-like this, they have usually tried it. They have at some point tried to be a writer. Sterling worked in publishing, he obviously put his pen to paper at some point. So, what did he write? How come we've never heard of Sterling?
Todd: Well, I think he was working for Chilton to pay the bills, right? But he had visions of being a best-selling author. He wrote a few novels and was a published author. Some of the names include Menace Under Marswood and The War for the Lot. He also did short stories as well. My personal favorite was The Voice of the Turtle. He began researching Dune after he got it as a work assignment. He was studying the Dunes in Oregon. He got so involved in this and got so much material for this article that it was too thick. No editor or reader would have been able to digest it.
Joe: Okay, so he was already off into unpublishable territory. He intended to publish a short article but got way too fascinated. That is a misconception about fantasy writers, is that they're really good at fantasy. Oftentimes, the best fantasy writers are actually good at history or science.
Todd: Sterling's background is kind of interesting to me too. He went to Harvard to study anthropology and archaeology. So, you can see why he would have been attracted to Dune.
So, he's a publisher and a smart guy. He eventually got the publishing house to do it, but it just didn't sell. Dune was 412 pages and $5.95, which was a lot at the time. The problem is that it was too dense, which cost a lot of money to publish. I don't think I could think of a better example of somebody taking a massive career risk than Sterling.
With that being said, we're going to talk about the risk of switching career tracks. We're also going to talk about the type of risks where you get a little comfortable and the ones where you do risky things out of boredom or just because you would like to be paid more. I spoke to a visiting regional manager who was several heads above me and when he asked my opinion on things as far as why we're losing people, I told him why we lost people. It was a risk for me to potentially piss off people directly above me. And if you hadn't been here for as long as I have, you probably would have kept that to yourself.
If any employer out there listening to this thinks that you're a millennial, something we're going to discuss in this episode is there's a reason why company loyalty doesn't exist anymore. And it is because we are expected to work 12 to 14 different jobs throughout our lifetime. It would be foolish as far as time and commitment on our part to have company loyalty. So, we strictly get paid for our work and put in what we get paid for effectively. So, when you are thinking about taking a risk, Sterling might have been thinking about his loyalty to Chilton, but in the end, his real passion was fiction. For this book, he saw an opportunity to push his passion above his job and above his station, and I respect the hell out of that.
Myth Two: Okay, the writing is on the wall. The ship's going down and people are clearing out their desks. Who do we reach out to for our next career? Do we go to friends in similar fields or family?
When do you take career risks – when you are younger or older? Younger people tend to be braver to the point of foolishness. If you gave me an idea, I would actually follow through with it. If somebody dares you to walk out the door, you’re already out. You get more scared of that stuff as you get older. I remember reading long ago that the older we get, the more likely we are to act risk-averse in our careers to the point where people are more likely to be Republican. When they grow older, they will become so risk-averse to change. I think a lot of people are afraid to start a new job and do a new skill or meet new people. But they are doing it anyway across all ages, really. That's the hidden name of today's episode. According to Harvard Business Review, half of all Americans long to do something dramatically different with their work lives to the point where they are pursuing new classes and new careers.
The myth that everybody is just lazy, it's not true at all. There are record numbers of people getting recertifications. Everybody is treating this moratorium like a free card to reassign what their career trajectory is. We're also kind of wired to resist giving up the known for the unknown – making it hard to break sometimes. Some data talked about how when people switch careers, one of the mistakes they make is that the career they choose is too similar to the old one. They basically went to a new job where they knew already they were going to be good at it, not necessarily passionate about it.
That is just one tone darker than what they started with. According to this article, most people imagine themselves in one line of work. So, one of the more important parts of getting into a new career is going to your network - not your friends. Your friends likely do the same stuff as you do already. It's better to reach out to your extended network of people doing drastically different careers than you are. Just ask them. This falls under self-promotion and can lead to mentorship. They can also direct us to a job that is probably something in our skillset but not in our thoughts. So, you don't necessarily have to find a “Headhunter”; You can just find that networking friend who has good ideas on what you'd be capable of. If you want to start looking into a new career entirely, try to volunteer or get involved in another career in some way to at least learn what the work looks like from the inside. After all, jumping to another career is all fantasy until you see what it's like.
If you are like half of all Americans thinking about changing your careers right now, skip doing expensive classes. Skip beating your head against resume walls. Instead, go shadow somebody or volunteer if you can. Or at least get a tour of somebody's facilities.
Myth Three: So, you got fired. That's the worst thing you can put in your resume, right? You might as well say you leave a path of wreckage at every job you’ve ever worked.
Joe: I found Sterling and I share something in common. We have a shared hobby. Have you ever seen game miniatures or game figurines?
Todd: I have, and I know you've painted some, right?
Joe: Exactly. Well, you already know my dark secret, apparently. When you play a game of Dungeons and Dragons or a fantasy tabletop game, they've got these tiny action figures. They're about an inch tall that you push around on a board. Sterling actually makes those, or at least he used to. He had some of them on display at the Smithsonian, and he made Gandalf and Hobbit figurines that were, in his reckoning, so good. He sent them to JRR Tolkien - the guy that wrote Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, and he liked them.
Todd: Oh, wow. To be in that kind of museum, it must have been good.
Joe: I thought it was so neat that he was, to the blood, a superfan sci-fi-fantasy nerd. And I just like that so much.
Sterling took such a huge risk on behalf of his company. I'm guessing these hard-nosed mechanics were patient and willing to let him have another swing because of the high publication cost and the poor initial sales. Unfortunately, Sterling gets fired for following his passion. Taking this to real life, how does someone bounce back from that? And how do you report it to your next job? First and foremost, don't lie about it or say you left because, based on Resume.com, it looks worse on your resume if you quit voluntarily versus getting fired. Being fired looks bad but leaving without a good reason looks worse because that shows that you are not needy enough to need that job and not stapled to that paycheck.
Let's start with an interview roleplay. I will interview for The Re-Engineered You. And by the way, I'm not going to pretend that I was fired for a Sterling level. Let's go with I was caught sleeping on the job or not making sales. How do we look past termination? So, if you are a hiring manager and I tell you that I got fired, your first question would be why.
First off, you do not have to put being fired on your resume. I just put when I started and when it ended. Now, the question will arise. People want to know why you have a gap. But when you ask why I got fired, I will be honest. That is the number one piece of advice that this website gives us. Be honest because you do not want to paper over or try to make it look like there's no gap in your resume. You don't want to pretend you weren't fired. You don't even want to lie and say that you quit, or it was a disagreement about policy. The second you start to get muddy with it, everyone's going to know that you're lying.
Instead, we want to give you a different tool. Be honest, but also be succinct. Get to the point, and if the reason had nothing to do with you, such as layoffs, that’s fine. That's perfect. Just say that. But if it has something to do with you personally, do not bad-mouth your past employer because the person hiring you does not want to hear that. If you do something wrong, they want to hear you being responsible, and they want to hear you learning and willing to pull your weight even after being fired. So simply state what you learned, how you benefited from the negative experience, and how you intend to turn it into a positive in the future. You don't have to elaborate further. If you stop there, you will look golden compared to everybody else who is coming in line saying the boss hated me because I work too hard. The big thing to remember is lots of people have been fired. It is not a deal-breaker. The actual deal-breaker is negativity and somebody who doesn't learn from that experience.
Final Thoughts
Opinions on when to take big career risks differ from person to person. Some say it's best to act risky when you're young. After all, it's no biggie if you get fired in your 20s or 30s. Others say your heart will be your guide, like Sterling. You'll know when it's time to put your reputation on the line for something you believe in. Like true love, you'll know when you see it and you'll fight to the death for it. Whether that's hiring an unpopular candidate you like, championing a project that everyone wants to pass on, or publishing a Sci-Fi novel at your auto repair press.
Here's the important part - whatever risk you take, whether it's jumping into a new career or coming back from a round of layoffs, take risks, be positive, and highlight what you've learned. The average person is expected to hold 13 different jobs throughout their life, which means the average hiring manager will shake a lot of hands, many of whom have been fired. Want to know what will set you apart from the other people who have been canned? You'll have passion and positivity on your side, like Sterling Lanier.