Jobjoy

How many times have you heard a person who truly loves their work say, “I can’t believe I get paid for what I love doing!” You can be that person. Getting paid for doing what you love is possible.

The book is laid out in a very clear and concise manner that is easy to read. It’s divided into three sections: The Process; Your Story; The Product.

The Process describes Dutch’s approach to career consulting, putting heavy emphasis on the notion that individuals already have within them everything they need to find their right work. He focuses on the personal story of a client--on the facts, people and events that make up these stories.

His style of writing is very personal too. You are quickly drawn into his argument by the way he weaves his own personal story into his methodology. It’s like reading someone’s personal journal over their shoulder, now embellished through the advantages of e-book features, including hyperlinks, illustrations, and more.

Carla Coconcelli heard Dutch promoting his book on a Pittsburgh radio station and ordered it. “The book is great. It got me thinking about making a change in a way I’d never thought of before.” Other readers said similar things, like “rivetting storytelling.” One person said, “It touched my soul.” And yet another said, “I read his autobiographical sections twice in one night.”

Which may prove Dutch’s point: that every life is a very interesting one. He urges readers to focus on the raw material that runs through their own life stories like a vein of gold revealing the truth about who and what they are in terms of work.

The thing about mining for gold is that you have to move a lot of ore too. And the second part of the book helps readers do exactly that. There is a kind of flow to the Story exercises that builds momentum. You will see certain patterns coming through the written exercises, things you had completely forgot about or never been aware of.

Canadian Andy Haw bought the book on a Thursday night at one of Dutch’s seminars. “I stood there thinking, ‘Why spend 20 bucks on a book that is only going to tell me what I already know?’ I mean I’d done a lot of different things in my life. How can he make sense of it?”

But Haw took a chance and bought the book. “Once I started on the exercises, I couldn’t stop. I finished them in a weekend. I’d never done anything like that before. But there are examples in the book to show you how to do the exercises. That made it easy for me.”

The final section of the book called ‘The Product’ defines the clarity that a person gets from doing the exercises. Throughout the book, Dutch uses stories and examples from his clients. The uniqueness of each person comes through clearly. And Dutch shows how this uniqueness is at the root of job satisfaction.

For example, ten days after he bought the book and got an analysis and report back from JobJoy, Haw was on a plane to Vancouver with a resume under his arm and a clear job search strategy to find work as a stunt man in the West Coast’s booming film production industry.

Job Joy is not a job search book in the usual sense of the term--the kind of book that concentrates on resume writing, how to dress for an interview and so on. It starts--to paraphrase a bestseller by Stephen Covey--at the beginning with first things first: finding clarity about the essence of your story.