Who the Heck is Charles Burke?
A Brief Biography

If you're looking into my books or my coaching services, you deserve to know who I am, without exaggerations, without special polish or packaging, without puffery.

This is not a sales page. Consider it reference information. It describes where I've been and a few of the interesting things I've done along the way.

Charles Burke, author of Command More Luck and Inside the Minds of Winners

Born in Georgia in 1943, I grew up near Chicago, then returned south in my late twenties.

By the time I moved to Japan at age 42, I had worked in camera shops, photo labs, loading docks, bakeries, print shops, and department stores. I had painted houses, pumped gas, driven taxis, delivered blueprints for a copy shop, and sold brushes door-to-door.

 

A friend once joked that my career track looked like Brownian Motion. Guess you could call me more of a maverick than a herd animal.

I've never been intimidated by variety or change. Nor was I drawn to conventional corporate employment paths. I like to explore.

However, even though explorers spend most of their time lost, they do get there... and enjoy dazzling new scenery along the way. More importantly, they end up marking trails that others can safely follow.

In 1985 I took a wild chance and moved to Japan. This, even though I didn't speak a word of the language, didn't have a job lined up, and had no direct experience with the work I planned to do here.

As soon as I arrived, it became clear that this country desperately needed the services of native English speakers, but few were available. These days that's called a high-paying niche market. But at that time I just called it being in the right place at the right time.

Work was easy to find, so it was possible to earn a very comfortable income working half-days (or less). Isn't that what all the Internet gurus are promising these days? Heck, I did that for years as a freelance editor and advertising copywriter.

Clients included top name Japanese companies such as Isuzu, Toshiba, Pioneer and Sony. I also received regular calls to do ad hoc modeling for product catalogs and walk-on parts in promotional videos.

Though I had never done any announcing or narration in my "previous life," I usually received two or three recording jobs a month for PR and promotional videos for companies like Hitachi and Sanyo. Plenty of variety, and lots of fun.

Then about five years ago it became increasingly apparent that the work being sent to me was changing. Eventually, typical deadlines shrank from two or three days to two or three hours. And prices gradually spiraled downward as translation agencies discovered they could outsource to workers abroad. Harder work at lower fees.

My high-paying niche market was drying up, so it was time for another nimble career change.

That's when I decided to share some of the things I've learned over the years. Drawing upon my own successes in directing my life into new patterns, I wrote Command More Luck and began marketing it via the Internet. Other books followed , as well as the Sizzling Edge Report newsletter.


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