Jim Rafferty is known for being the marketing and communications consultant and Principal of JMRketing, LLC, in Baltimore, Maryland. Rafferty is a former radio announcer and program director and now puts three decades of marketing experience to work helping businesses communicate better, writing in a conversational and entertaining style. Plus he is also a former Boy Scout leader, the story of which catalyzes his book: Leader by Accident: Lessons in Leadership, Loss, and Life. Pulse 2.0 interviewed Jim Rafferty to learn more.
Amit: Could you tell me more about your background?
Jim: My background has a lot of different pieces to it, beginning with 12 years as a full-time radio announcer and program director. I somehow then wound up in the home improvement industry as a marketing and sales manager for more than two decades, and then finally launched my marketing and communications consultancy, JMRketing, in 2012.
Amit: What made you decide to become an author?
Jim: Two life-changing events: I became Scoutmaster of our son’s Boy Scout troop in 2008 under some really tragic circumstances and with virtually no qualifying experience. A few years later I lost that job I’d had for almost 21 years and found myself stepping off the ledge in entrepreneurship, which I truly had never before considered.
It took me a few additional years to realize how much that first step out of my comfort zone, into the Scoutmaster role, influenced the second one, into entrepreneurship. In the course of that reflection, I realized that there might be some lessons in my experience for new leaders and leaders in general, and Leader by Accident was the result.
Amit: Could you describe some of the experiences you had as a Boy Scout?
The scouting experiences fell into a couple of categories. Probably the biggest impact on me was a result of the physical, outdoor experiences, the very literal trips out of my comfort zone. Those trips took me from the Florida Keys to Yellowstone National Park to the bottom of the Grand Canyon and back out again, and those were all new things for me.
But of course, there were leadership challenges as well, not only in leading and managing a group of 11- to 17-year-old boys (and there are big differences between 11-year-olds and 17-year-olds), but in helping to shepherd the group through the wake of the tragedy that took their Scoutmaster and two members of the troop from us. I think we all found things in ourselves that we hadn’t known were there.
Amit: How did the idea for your new book come together?
As I reflected on that time and realized how much of an impact it had made on me, I began to understand that many of the ideas I was sharing with the scouts had some real-world value as well.
I had kept an archive of the Scoutmaster Minutes (a brief life lesson or inspirational story delivered at the end of each meeting) from my five years as Scoutmaster, and the idea began to form that using those to frame lessons in leadership and life in general for everyone, not just scouts, would be effective. And that’s where the format of Leader by Accident came from: Each Scoutmaster Minute is followed by a chapter that expands on the idea and turns it into something useful (I hope!) for adult leaders … which really means all of us.
Amit: What has been your favorite memory in putting the book together?
One specific memory and one general: I turned on my computer one Monday morning to find a glowing review of my yet-to-be-published book from Robert Gates, who has served our nation in so many ways (and is also a former BSA director). Those kind words from a person of his caliber have provided a great deal of fuel for this authorship journey.
The general memory has just been randomly hearing from people who’ve read the book and have told me how much it has meant for them. There’s a wide variation in which part of the book affected them specifically, but the feedback is often along the lines of, “I really needed to hear this right now.” That’s incredibly gratifying.
Amit: What are some of the challenges faced in writing the book?
I love to write, and writing conversationally comes pretty easily, but the organizational part of it was a huge challenge. Leader by Accident is written in really bite-sized pieces, so organizing those in a sequence that made sense was the hardest part for me.
It’s also a very personal book, and the moment when I had to let it go off to be judged by strangers was definitely another departure from my comfort zone.
Amit: What are the main takeaways that you want readers to understand from the book?
It covers a lot of ground, but I would say the three main themes are the life-changing things that can happen when we choose to challenge ourselves and step out of our comfort zones; the importance of the language we use as leaders (and how easy it is to get it wrong); and how vital it is to always cultivate a sense of gratitude.
Amit: Any other topics you would like to discuss?
The book was written pre-pandemic, but the leadership components really seem to have resonated as we’ve lived through the fallout that includes the Great Resignation, quiet quitting, and the lingering employee engagement crisis. This seems to come up in every interview because there is a crying need for more empathetic leadership in many of our workplaces.
Want To Buy Leader by Accident: Lessons in Leadership, Loss, and Life? You can buy it here:
– Amazon
– Chapters
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