The Drunkard’s Path – Self-Help and Guidance for Your Career Path
Barry Jessurun
The Drunkard’s Path is self-help and career guide based on four decades of working in the hospitality industry. It offers practical working advice to anyone on a career path, be it the readers first steps or someone well into their journey. With his matter-of-fact style, sometimes funny, sometimes serious, Barry lets the reader know they have the power to shape themselves and their career into something that will create a more valuable self in the future. Barry does this through examining different aspects of work in the hospitality and service business and the knowledge required to accomplish the work, along with interspersed stories and humorous anecdotes, all while making the topic relevant to the reader. Through examples and practical tools, Barry takes the reader through the process of how to think like an entrepreneur, and how and why to construct one’s own narrative. This book is about you and your story. It mobilized you to challenge yourself to become the main character in your story-a story about a successful and meaningful career and a fulfilling future.
As a restauranteur and entrepreneur Barry’s main role is that of a storyteller. His job has been to create, maintain, and sustain stories that help to make people feel compelled to interact with, as employees and customers, and then to have them to continue to help tell the story. All entrepreneurs are storytellers. They all create and generate a narrative that generates excitement in other people. This translates into a product and/or service in the marketplace. Entrepreneurs are artists who create with words.
Barry is the President of Green Valley Hospitality and co-owner of 4 restaurants in Northeastern Connecticut. Barry is not only the owner, but he is the main founder and designer of all the locations, from the kitchen and bar design to the overall look and feel of each location. He works with his partners to create comfortable places of hospitality, for the guests, employees, and the vendors. To him, everyone is a customer and needs to be treated as such.
Part of Barry’s main narrative is helping others to succeed. He knows that the restaurant industry is just a steppingstone in many young people’s career, and he works to educate them and expose them to new thinking and practices that will help to propel them into a career of their choosing. His restaurants are what he refers to as ‘young person development agencies.
Drawing from over 4 decades in the hospitality industry, Barry has taken his experience of working with, educating and coaching young people and complied it into a self-help/career advice book that will be immensely helpful for anyone who is looking to learn the thinking, practices and skills that can help them advance in whatever career they choose. For managers and business owners this book will also help them to create a place that attracts the right people by being better able to tell their story.
