Zcause Blog; Anthony Zolezzi.com

Writing a Book Provides New Insights
About the Impact We Have on Our Kids

October 21, 2009

The reason I haven't blogged in a while because is that I have been writing a book called Uncharted Waters, Boat to Boardroom: Lessons I've Learned. It‘s about the things I learned from my father, a commercial fisherman in San Diego, during summers of my early youth spent aboard his boat, and the various practical applications I’ve found they have in business. It’s now in the home stretch of production, and I’m hoping to make it available in the first quarter of 2010.

Fishing was our family business, a trade we were expected to begin learning at the age of twelve. Writing about those early lessons I received in seamanship and the practical applications they later had for me in the world of big business has proven to be a really interesting exercise, because until I stopped to reflect on them, I never realized to what an extent my basic business sense had evolved from those experiences.

Looking back, I can really appreciate for the first time how important the example and training I received from my dad were to my character development and ability to overcome whatever turbulence I encountered in the course of in my career. So my message to anyone reading this who may have pre-teen children is: never underestimate the impact of the things you can teach them, even at the age of twelve.

The other thing that I’ve found really gratifying about writing Uncharted Waters is the group of people who also got excited about the book and made it happen. Linda Bonvie, who I originally asked to organize the 100-plus photos and ended up in the role of project coordinator. She told me last week she never realized how much work would be involved. Likewise, my sister, Maree Sharman, who was responsible for putting together the family pictures from the ‘50s and ‘60s, said she had no idea how difficult it would be to collect those pictures. And Bill Bonvie, who did the editing, often had to resist embellishing my simple "son of a fisherman" language. Also assisting in the effort were Amy Summers and Melissa McGinnis, who reviewed cover designs and came up with subtitle ideas.

While I’ve co-authored several books, this is the first one I really sat down and wrote without a collaborator, and it made me realize just how many people it takes to turn something like this into a published work. I consider myself very lucky to have a team of people who could accomplish this on such short notice, and I want to take this opportunity to express my appreciation to all of them for the time and energy they put into this project. My feeling is if it proves to be a success, it will be due to their efforts, not mine.

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