Before long, orders were pouring in

Learning about Richard Bolles and reading his interviews has been a truly enjoyable time. I can't help but feel a bit sad in knowing that he's passed away. There are so many questions that I'd have loved to ask him if I ever had the opportunity.

Today, I just want to highlight a portion of text from an interview with Fast Company.

But as it turned out, Bolles himself was one of the bailers. As an ordained Episcopal priest, he was canon pastor of Grace Cathedral in San Francisco. But he lost his job in a budget crunch. He then landed an administrative position with the Episcopal Church, meeting with campus ministers at colleges across the country. He discovered that many of these ministers shared his predicament: Their jobs were in peril, and they had no idea what to do.

So Bolles did some research and wrote a 168-page guide to help the campus ministers he was supervising find jobs and change careers. Stuck for a title, he remembered his wacky question from two years earlier. He self-published the book in 1970. The first pressrun was 100 copies, which Bolles toted to a meeting in Philadelphia and distributed free of charge. Then something extraordinary began to happen. He started to get orders — first for 1 or 2 copies, then for 40 or 50. Before long, orders were pouring in — not from other ministers, but from such institutions as General Electric, the Pentagon, and UCLA.

What an amazing person.

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