Editor's Note: March 2007

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Carpe Transfigurato

This issue is all about the most important skill any of us can learn in order to succeed in the new millennium: transformation.
     Transformative change is fundamental to the 21st century. If you haven’t already been outsourced, offshored, downsized, resized, right-sized or blindsided by the global technological revolution of the past 20 years, get ready. Radical change is coming, and you’d better embrace it … or be flattened. To succeed, you’ve got to seize it, direct it and make change work for you, not let it push you around.
     A decade ago I interviewed a couple in Southern California who started a successful software company. At that point, they were in their early 60s. We were sitting on the patio of their home, set in the midst of an old citrus grove up one of the canyons east of Los Angeles. I asked them why they had become citrus farmers at their age.
     They told me about a wise older man, a kind of guru to them. Twenty years earlier he told them the happiest people were those who started new careers in their 40s. It was all about breaking out of life patterns, expanding horizons by tackling entirely new challenges. So they decided to buy an abandoned citrus grove and make a business of it. They transformed themselves from software geeks to software geeks who were also farmers, and in the process breathed fresh life into their software business.
     That couple seized life with both hands and transformed themselves before circumstances and necessity forced it upon them. Inspired, I moved to the foothills and planted a vineyard. That transformative spirit is what this issue of Prosper is all about. Take charge of your life and embrace change before it wrestles you to the ground. Use laughter and comedy to give your business a makeover. Push yourself to add new professional skills and jumpstart your career … or change direction completely. Find motivation in a remarkably successful youth theater troupe in El Dorado Hills, where both the group and the community are embracing their own kind of transformation.
     Carpe transfigurato! Seize transformation!

Jeffrey S. Young
Editor in Chief

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