REVIEW: Ted Clark — Shipping Clerk to CEO (BOOK)
Ted Clark’s new book is Shipping Clerk to CEO — christened with the subtitle The Power of Curiosity, Will, and Self Directed Learning. Like any good piece of motivational advice, leadership and/or business advice, or overall nonfiction book, there’s a plainspokenness and clear-cutting nature to Clark’s writing. He’s not interested in assuming a certain song and dance because of the success he achieved on a professional and interpersonal set of levels. Rather, it’s just the opposite.
ABOUT THE PROJECT: https://www.shippingclerktoceo.com/
The book feels like a genuine offering of the hand of camaraderie and friendship, like an acquaintance finding the reader on a street corner and taking their arm. Sure, there are tons of charts, descriptions, and transcribed methodologies Clark swears by and employs as solidifiers and continuators of the position he enjoys today. But it’s the nature of the generous footnotes, accompanied by his wholesome and unpretentious literary demeanor, that keeps the reader’s attention on Shipping Clerk to CEO cover to cover. “This is a book for dreamers and pragmatists alike, I believe.
It’s a book for people in their twenties, or even high school, who are grappling with the tough decision about whether to invest in college or just jump straight into the workforce and earn that invaluable experience,” Clark writes at the beginning. “It’s also a book for people midcareer who may be searching for inspiration to break through glass ceilings in spite of a lack of formal education. It’s a book meant to inspire workers of all walks, low level to high. Now, I’m not the first CEO without a college degree, obviously. Ranked among the mightiest of the mighty are millionaires and billionaires who dropped out of college or never finished high school: Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Michael Dell, Mark Zuckerberg. The list is an impressive who’s who. But you don’t have to be born with the Midas touch to get into that elite club. Degree-free CEOs are even more widespread than you might imagine.”
He continues: “This book is a collection of the conscious choices I made every day along the way that compounded, one upon the other, to become the $240 million dollar global company I eventually came to head…(In) these pages, I’ve identified the key lessons I learned through each phase of my career and highlighted those concepts throughout my personal story as themes and asides so the lessons are obvious and universal. Where possible, I added sidebars to further highlight the information I consider to comprise the pillars of good leadership. It is my hope that my journey and its lessons inspire you.”
AMAZON: https://www.amazon.com/Shipping-Clerk-CEO-Curiosity-Directed/dp/1940013925
Such attention to communicatory detail and sense of informality are welcome reliefs to the traditional flintiness of the leadership and business advice subcategories. By doing this, Clark has widened the receptivity field for a wide ranging audience, making what could be an intellectually exclusive work something easy to read, fun to read, and completely concise in the spirit of his goals…
Colin Jordan
