Excerpts from Sharkproof

About Getting the Job You Want and Keeping the Job You Love...in Today's Frenzied Job Market

“We may not be in a recession, but there is nowhere you can hide that's guaranteed earthquake-proof against your own personal recession. The day can come when you step into your boss's or banker's office some Friday afternoon and hear, ‘I'm sorry to have to tell you this, but...’ It's not going to be easy, no matter how well prepared you are. But it's going to be a lot harder if you're like the 90 percent of us who aren't prepared when the bomb falls. And it can happen to anyone, anytime.”

“There used to be a little piece of folk wisdom: ‘The good people are all working.’ It's not true anymore. There have been just too many layoffs of too many good people in recent years. There's no longer any stigma attached to being laid off. It's a fact of business life today. “

“Age is not the disadvantage it once was to employment. The era of the linear career... school, work, retire at sixty-five, die at sixty-eight...is over. As corporations rush to shed their high-salaried employees, you're probably going to be out of work much sooner than sixty-five. Yet paradoxically, past sixty-five, you're also much more likely to find work in some form for as long as you want it. “

“Changing values and expectations can erase the pain. In other societies, professions like the clergy, teaching, and social work are valued far more highly than in America. Yet, for a lot of us living in the most materialistic society on earth, success in material terms hasn't produced personal satisfaction. Who says you have to live by any values other than your own? If the personal freedom America affords has taught us anything, it's that you have only yourself to answer to for doing what you believe in and picking the life you choose.”

Harvey Mackey is a graduate of the University of Minnesota and of the Stanford Executive Program, Graduate School of Business, Stanford University. He is the chairman and chief executive officer of Mackey Envelope Corporation. He is an internationally renowned public speaker, an avid runner and marathoner, and a number-one-ranked tennis player in Minnesota.

He and his wife, Carol Ann, have three children and live in Shorewood, a suburb of Minneapolis, Minnesota.