Interview With Author Roger Osorio

 

1. What motivated you to write your book, to force you from taking an idea or experience and turning it into this book?  In May of 2020, while the world was still in pandemic lockdown, I was laid off from my job at IBM. Everyone was given 30 days to wrap up their work and hand it off to those that remained. One of my mentors at the company challenged me to help those that had been laid off with me to prepare for their next professional chapter. Many who were laid off had been there for most of, if not their entire career.  I launched what I called the Reinvention Mastermind to help people look forward and teach them the skills I had learned on my own journey to reinvention. Having reinvented myself from a national account sales manager to a math teacher, international speaker, executive coach, Ivy League instructor, entrepreneur, and author, I had already experienced reinvention. This time however, I was going to have to revisit my journey to extract the lessons, insights, and strategies that helped me along the way. Doing the work for the Reinvention Mastermind inspired me to write a book about reinvention. 

2. What is it about and who is it for? This book is about the journey to building a life aligned with who you really are, what matters to you, and the opportunity to make it fulfilling along the way. Often, we put so much focus on the getting to the destination (i.e. the partner of our dreams, a big house, dream job, perfect body, etc.) that we forget that we spend most of our time on the journey, so why not make that fulfilling! This book is for anyone who knows or feels that some part of their life is not aligned with their values, passion, or purpose. It might be someone in a relationship they know is no longer right for them, somebody whose finances don’t reflect their ambitions, or someone working a job that doesn’t bring the best out of them anymore. Bottom line, The Journey to Reinvention is an invitation for people who aren’t living life on their terms to begin their own journey to reinvention and build a life aligned with who they really are and what really matters to them.  

3. What takeaways might the reader will be left with after reading it? In the words of two of my early readers, “Poignant, powerful, motivating advice that gets you moving. Packed with relatable stories, The Journey to Reinvention is a transformative read that will take you from wondering if you can to knowing that you will.” — Amanda Rodrigues, MSEd., Founder of Lotus Premiere Education

“This book will help you smash through the limiting beliefs keeping you stuck. It’s hard to put down The Journey to Reinvention. It reads like a chat with a trusted friend who makes you believe you can reinvent yourself.”  — Isabel Albelda Ros, Personal Branding Coach & Speaker

Biggest takeaway from The Journey to Reinvention - you’ll walk away knowing you can and will reinvent the areas of your life that are not currently aligned with who you really are and what matters to you.  It’s like I share in the book, “reinvention has nothing to do with becoming someone else and EVERYTHING to do with becoming who you really are.”

4.      How did you decide on your book’s title and cover design?  The original working title of the book was, The 10 Keys to Reinvention - How to Reinvent Your Life at Any Age. While I liked that, as I got into the research and wrote out stories, I noticed that I wrote about the journey in such a way that people could feel as if they were being invited to get on their own journey to reinvention. Yes, I do cover the “how” of reinvention, but that didn’t feel like the real mission of the book as I got further into the project. The title, The Journey to Reinvention, felt like it more accurately captured what the book is about.

      By the time the title evolved into the current version, I had visions of a winding or zig zagging road. When I booked my first book talk in March of 2022, before the book was even revised and still at least 4 months away from cover design, I needed a prototype of the book to take with me. I hired a graphic designer online and asked them to create a concept based on a winding road. I took the first version I got and printed it in the shape of a book jacket and put it on top of another book so that I could hold it at the book talk.

      Four months later, when it was time to work with my publisher’s artists, I got three concepts back and to my surprise, without me having ever showed them my prototype, one of the concepts was the dotted line in the shape of a winding road. At first, I didn’t select it and moved forward with another concept. However, as we got further down the road, something in my gut told me to go with the dotted line. I had to tell the team that I wanted to switch to another concept, and they were incredibly supportive of my decision.

Maybe one day I’ll reveal the concept I almost went with!

      5.     What advice or words of wisdom do you have for fellow writers?  After this experience, I could probably write a book on the advice I’d share with a fellow writer! However, I’ll just mention a couple here.  First, you don’t write books. You build books. You write the pieces (i.e. stories, ideas, research, etc.) and then you assemble them into chapters and sections. I didn’t know this at the beginning. I always thought that authors just sat down and wrote entire chapters until they finished the book.  Second, allow the book to develop and don’t interfere or try to nudge it back to your original idea. My original idea was to write 10 keys to reinvention, but as I got to work, the idea evolved and I made a conscious decision to allow it to do so. In fact, even my target audience changed after conversations with people about the book.  Talk to as many people as possible and listen to all of the amazing insights around you regarding your topic. You’ll be pleasantly surprised how quickly your book develops! 

      6. What trends in the book world do you see -- and where do you think the book publishing industry is heading? Personally, I think book writing is going to become significantly more common. In reality, it is already a lot more common than ever because the tools and resources for publishing have been democratized. The main reason I think it’ll become more common in the future is because writing is one of the most effective ways to quickly develop a significant level of expertise and deep understanding of a topic. The mere act of writing forces you to organize your thoughts in a way we don’t often give ourselves the time to do when we only talk about the idea. Writing The Journey to Reinvention helped me develop a deep level of expertise in reinvention that also serves my business, The School of Reinvention. After this experience, I now know that if I want to explore a new topic for career or life-goal purposes, the best way to do so is to write a book about it. Even if I don’t publish it, I will be significantly better off for it.   

      7.   What challenges did you overcome to write this book? Another great question that I could write a book about. In fact, in The Journey to Reinvention, I share some of the limiting beliefs that got in my way. Limiting beliefs weren’t the only challenges I had to overcome. Another was time. If I wanted my book to publish in September of 2022, I only had 11 months to make this happen. Many times, I felt I was falling behind, and objectively, I was falling behind. However, I had to trust that I was still committed to finishing this book and that for me, my best work came after I had enough time to talk to people, research key ideas, and process what I was learning. Even though I was usually pushing the limits of my deadlines, the work I produced would not have been possible earlier because I was not ready to write it. This challenge tested my resolve and faith in myself. Afterall, this was my first book so how dare I claim to have a writing style or process? After I delivered the first draft manuscript, I found it easier to trust myself in the editorial process. 

      Speaking of time, I also had other professional commitments going on at the same time. I was teaching a course at Sarah Lawrence College and at University of Pennsylvania. It often felt I didn’t have enough time for the book. However, I resolved to write it and I needed to make it a true priority. To do that, I thought strategically about why this book was a must and not a should. I concluded that if I finished this book, I would be a better expert on reinvention and the book could help me grow my business, The School of Reinvention. When I made that connection, I had all the purpose and “why” I needed in order to make sure I finished the project.  The Journey to Reinvention became one of my most important goals and when I saw it that way, I made the difficult decision to cut other projects and commitments out of my life that weren’t aligned with my values, passion, and purpose. To bring the book to life, I had to do exactly what I teach in The Journey to Reinvention     

          8. Hw would you describe your writing style? Prior to embarking on this book, I had mostly done academic writing for my master’s in psychology from 2008-2010. In those two years, I wrote over 500 papers. That experience taught me to write in much longer sentences and build arguments grounded in evidence and research. My formula back then was to do the research, let it percolate in my head, and then sit down to write. Given we had anywhere between 3-6 papers due per week, there wasn’t much time to let ideas percolate! 

      Then in 2021, I set a goal to write and publish articles on my blog (www.rogerosorio.com/thejourneytoreinvention) for 75 consecutive weekdays. I think I just about made it there, I might have stopped in the high 60s. This experience taught me to write in shorter sentences and mostly in a reflective manner where I wrote as the ideas came to me. Then I would organize what I had written so that I could publish something easier to digest. This experience helped me move away from the more academic style of writing, while still honoring my desire to cite interesting research to back up some of my ideas. 

      For The Journey to Reinvention, I did a lot more research and talked to a lot of people, sometimes not writing a single page for several weeks. I thought a lot about the ideas, discussed them with my dear friends and wife as a way of processing those insights further. And after all that was done, I would sit down to write. That said, sometimes, the ideas that developed during a period of a few weeks, didn’t get turned into book content until months later. 

      The funny thing is that I wanted so badly to be the writer that wrote a couple of pages a day. I really wanted to be that person, but it never happened. If I combine the actual days I spent writing for this book, both the manuscript and the editorial process, it would probably add up to a total of 8 weeks of writing. And 6 of those weeks were made up of two solid 3 week sprints. The other two weeks were spread out. The total time I spent talking about the ideas in this book? Well, the clock is still ticking on that. Ever since I started working on this project in October of 2021, I have been talking reinvention to anyone that will listen to me. My poor wife has endured a lot of this! 

      9.  If people can buy or read one book this week or month, why should it be yours? Because after reading this book, life will never be the same again. You’ll believe that you can reinvent yourself, become who you really are deep down, and build a life in alignment with your values, passion, and purpose. Put more simply - do you really want to wait another day to become your best self and build your best life?

Plus, if you pick up a copy in September or October, you’ll get complimentary access to The School of Reinvention coaching platform through the end of 2022!  

About The Author: Roger Osorio is an author, reinvention expert, and founder of The School of Reinvention, a community-based coaching platform empowering people to launch and succeed in personal and career reinvention. Roger works with companies such as Google, Citibank, Orlando Magic, Chase, LVMH, and Mastercard.  Roger grew up in the projects in a predominantly Latino neighborhood in New Jersey and Spanish was his first language. After graduating from Penn State University, Roger worked for many years at a Fortune 500 company in marketing and sales. In 2008, after falling in love with a part-time job tutoring math, he quit his day job to become a teacher. He changed careers again, going back into corporate as an executive coach and trainer before developing his current path. Along his journey, Roger has earned a master’s degree in psychology, an M.B.A., and reinvented himself into an international speaker, math teacher, executive coach, entrepreneur, and author. When Roger isn’t writing or coaching, he teaches entrepreneurship at University of Pennsylvania and Sarah Lawrence College.  For more information, please consult:  https://rogerosorio.com/book/

 

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About Brian Feinblum

Brian Feinblum should be followed on Twitter @theprexpert. This is copyrighted by BookMarketingBuzzBlog ©2022. Born and raised in Brooklyn, he now resides in Westchester with his wife, two kids, and Ferris, a black lab rescue dog. His writings are often featured in The Writer and IBPA’s The Independent.  This blog, with over 4,000 posts over the past decade, was named one of the best book marketing blogs by BookBaby  http://blog.bookbaby.com/2013/09/the-best-book-marketing-blogs and recognized by Feedspot in 2021 and 2018 as one of the top book marketing blogs. It was also named by WinningWriters.com as a "best resource.” For the past three decades, including 21 as the head of marketing for the nation’s largest book publicity firm, and two jobs at two independent presses, Brian has worked with many first-time, self-published, authors of all genres, right along with best-selling authors and celebrities such as: Dr. Ruth, Mark Victor Hansen, Joseph Finder, Katherine Spurway, Neil Rackham, Harvey Mackay, Ken Blanchard, Stephen Covey, Warren Adler, Cindy Adams, Susan RoAne, Jeff Foxworthy, Seth Godin, and Henry Winkler. He recently hosted a panel on book publicity for Book Expo America, and has spoken at ASJA, IBPA, Sarah Lawrence College, Nonfiction Writers Association, Cape Cod Writers Association, Willamette (Portland) Writers Association, and Connecticut Authors and Publishers Association. His letters-to-the-editor have been published in The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, New York Post, NY Daily News, Newsday, The Journal News (Westchester) and The Washington Post. He has been featured in The Sun Sentinel and Miami Herald. For more information, please consult: linkedin.com/in/brianfeinblum.