By ANDREA ROCK
December 1, 1997
(MONEY Magazine) – The realization that the job that once thrilled you now keeps you from enjoying life can dawn in any number of ways. For former CBS news correspondent turned vintner Doug Tunnell, 48 (pictured at right), the epiphany came eight years ago when he concluded that TV news shows were too willing to jettison journalistic principles to rev up their ratings. But rather than wallow in disappointment, he laid the groundwork for a new career and a better life.
Today, Tunnell earns a comfortable living making wine from the grapes he grows at his Newberg, Ore. vineyard--and feels again the same pride and passion he once experienced as a broadcast journalist. "I'm living a lifestyle that appeals to me," he says. "I feel like the luckiest guy in the world."
Like Doug Tunnell, a growing number of Americans--particularly baby boomers evaluating their lives as they slouch toward the big five-oh--are reinventing themselves in search of both financial and emotional rewards. For many, the hunt for a more fulfilling career was forced upon them, as some 17 million Americans lost their jobs during the massive corporate downsizings between 1990 and 1996.
But even survivors of the purges have been seeking ways to gain greater control over their destinies. "Those left behind after the cutbacks know that the corporate world no longer offers long-term job security," says Kathi Elster, a New York City entrepreneurial consultant and author of Going Indie: Self-Employment, Freelance and Temping Opportunities (Kaplan, $15). "Many people feel that they can reap greater rewards without much extra risk by going into business for themselves." Elster estimates that entrepreneurs, consultants and other independents now represent more than 27% of the work force, up from 5% or so in 1989, and will account for 50% of all U.S. workers by the year 2001.
In this story, we profile five people who have successfully switched careers and bettered their lives, highlighting the most valuable lessons from their experiences. On page 94, we also give you tips on how to get the most out of a personal coach, a new breed of consultant who is a combination of job counselor and psychotherapist. Any major move in life entails some risk. But, as the stories of the five career changers that follow show, with proper planning and true determination, you can achieve a more spiritually satisfying life without sacrificing financial security.
ONE-THIRD THE HOURS AND 20% MORE PAY
As one of 60 attorneys in a highly competitive Dallas law firm, Sheryl Draker (pictured opposite), now 39, felt guilty leaving the office early in February 1990 to see a doctor about the stomach troubles that had been nagging her for months. But her guilt soon turned to concern. "I knew from the look on the lab technician's face that whatever he was seeing was really bad news," she recalls. Later, her doctor told her she had a seven-inch pancreatic tumor, most likely cancerous, and scheduled her for surgery.
But when she arrived at the hospital three days later, doctors could find no sign of the tumor. "I don't know whether it was a medical error or a miraculous event, but I took what happened as a wake-up call. The message was clear to me that I wasn't living a life I loved," she says.
Draker, then a 31-year-old junior associate, knew her 60-hour workweeks would only grow longer if she wanted to get ahead at her firm. The sole thing that seemed to matter there was generating billable hours. So Draker, who is single, quit her job and took temporary work as a contract lawyer--the equivalent of a temp--at a small local law firm. During a five-week vacation to Hawaii, Australia and New Zealand with her mother and brother, she clarified her thoughts about future goals. Eventually, she decided to move to Houston in 1991, where she studied for a master's degree in psychology at the University of Houston-Clear Lake.
To support herself, Draker continued to work as a contract lawyer, earning more than $80,000 a year. While attending a local bar association meeting, she heard an intriguing presentation on jury consultants, people who help attorneys select jurors unlikely to be biased against their client's case. The job seemed ideal for combining her interests in psychology and law. So Draker sought out the speaker and ended up working with him part time.
Last May, Draker completed her master's degree, and she is now happily self-employed in her hometown, Austin, preparing witnesses, consulting on jury selection and advising law firms and other businesses on how to develop better relationships with clients and enlarge their customer base.
As a legal and communications consultant, Draker typically works no more than 80 hours a month, yet she earns $100,000 a year, 20% more than she did as a lawyer. She now has time to get together regularly with family and friends and to do volunteer work, such as cooking dinner on Friday nights for families of pediatric cancer patients at Ronald McDonald House in Austin. "I've found," she says, "that I thrive in an environment where I'm doing a variety of things."
THE LESSONS
Look for opportunities in today's changing workplace. To launch her new life, Draker took advantage of the corporate trend of farming out work to temporary workers as well as independent contractors and consultants. Although many of these jobs lack perks such as health benefits, they offer you the chance to control your work schedule at the companies that employ you or to start your own consulting business. To find out more about temping, call the National Association of Temporary Staffing Services (NATSS) at 703-549-6287 and ask for the free pamphlet Temp Jobs--Making Them Work for You. You can also download a copy from NATSS' Website (www.natss.org).
Don't hesitate to talk to strangers. "To get new business ideas and leads for work," advises entrepreneurial consultant Elster, "you should talk to professional colleagues and virtually everyone you meet about what you do and what your interests are." For example, Draker has obtained consulting work not only by networking at business meetings but also through conversations about her work with people she's met socially and even on airplanes.
SIPPING FINANCIAL INDEPENDENCE
When CBS television correspondent Doug Tunnell was based in London in 1979 covering Jimmy Carter's struggle to free the 52 American hostages in Iran, he never imagined that 17 years later he'd have quite a different connection with the White House. But today Tunnell owns a successful Oregon vineyard that produces wine of such outstanding quality, it has even been served at state luncheons at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
After living abroad for most of his 17-year CBS career, Tunnell was transferred to Miami in 1989, where he watched American TV news for the first time since 1975. He was appalled by what he saw. "News had always been a noble pursuit for me, but most of the people I'd originally worked for had been replaced by bottom-liners," says Tunnell. "In terms of quality, I saw that CBS was in a race to the bottom with the other networks."
Unsure of whether he wanted to sign another contract with the network when his current one expired in 1992, Tunnell, who is divorced, began planning for a new life. First, he fulfilled his dream of buying a farm in Newberg, Ore., a little town near where he'd grown up. He paid less than $200,000 for a 1928 brick farmhouse and 40 surrounding acres in the Willamette Valley, which was gaining a reputation as a prime wine region.
Tunnell had grown to love wine while living abroad, so he began talking to vintners in Oregon. They schooled him in the basics of the business. "Originally my idea was to grow grapes to sell to other wineries," says Tunnell. "But a year after starting my business, I discovered that producing the wine myself increased my return by at least fifteenfold." He learned that if he got his vines planted in the spring of 1990, he'd have his first harvest around the time his CBS contract ended in 1992. "Psychologically, it was very important to have that first harvest come at that time, because it was confirmation that my new life was real," says Tunnell.
To fund the business initially, he used proceeds from the sale of his $900,000 Coconut Grove, Fla. home. His plan for the Brick House label was to start small and stay small. He has followed it. Producing top-quality Pinot Noir and Chardonnay (which retail for $24 a bottle) and Gamay Noir, which is made from the same grapes as Beaujolais ($14), he hopes to sell just under 1,000 cases from his 1996 harvest and expects about the same amount for the 1997 crop. He markets between 35% to 40% by direct mail, which boosts his profits by eliminating middlemen's 40% cut of the retail price.
From spring through mid-August, Tunnell's days begin at 6 a.m. and end when he collapses around 10 p.m. after mowing acres of farmland and spraying the vines with organic substances to protect them from mildew. Day workers help with the harvest in late September, and--with the exception of two weeks in January, when he prunes his 32,000 vines--winter is his downtime. Tunnell spends much of it on ski trips to the mountains of central Oregon and, less often, on diving excursions in the Bahamas.
His income from the winery doesn't quite equal the $185,000 he was earning when he left CBS, but based on the value of comparable winemaking operations in the area, his house and business may now be worth as much as $860,000. The biggest benefit to his mid-life career switch, Tunnell says, "is that I'm living the way I want."
THE LESSONS
Feel free to think small. "I probably would have got into trouble if I'd had more grandiose goals, but I saw the advantages of keeping things simple," says Tunnell. That strategy is part of a trend, according to William Bridges, a San Francisco business consultant and author of Creating You & Co. (Addison-Wesley, $22). "Prior to the 1990s, small businesses generally intended to grow," says Bridges. "Now there are many more one- or two-person operations that are primarily a means for people to make a living on their own terms." Staying small also increases your odds of financial success, because it keeps your overhead costs down and, as Tunnell points out, the cachet of limited production can be a marketing advantage.
Look before you leap, but leap anyway. "When you're going out on your own, it feels like you're jumping off a cliff, but it usually ends up being more like stepping off a curb," says Deborah Arron, an author and consultant based in Seattle who conducts career seminars for professionals nationwide. "So don't be paralyzed by fear." To ensure that your new life is grounded in reality and not unrealistic fantasy, Arron recommends doing market research before leaving your current job to be certain there's a thriving demand for the product or services you plan to offer.
MORE MONEY AND MORE TIME FOR FAMILY
When he was single and childless, Rene Lovato, 37, of San Jose (pictured above) was delighted with his job as international product manager for Verifone, the leading producer of the devices that stores and restaurants use to verify credit-card charges. He was on the road 70% of the time, from Singapore one week to Brazil the next, but he loved the travel. His schedule began to wear on him in 1993, however, after he and his wife Velda, 37, had their first child, Michelle. The strain grew unbearable after their son Rene was born a year later. "I called from Chile one time and heard my daughter screaming in the background as my wife was trying to nurse the new baby, and I felt horrible that I wasn't there to help," recalls Lovato.
When he returned from that trip, he decided to quit his job. Meanwhile, Velda, a customer service representative for the city of San Jose, had become dissatisfied with the vinyl diaper bags she found on store shelves. She proposed that Lovato go into business producing nylon bags, which are machine washable. She also urged him to make durable cotton changing pads and pillows, rather than the thin plastic pads that come with most other diaper bags.
He decided to give it a shot, relying on skills honed at Verifone and $5,000 of the couple's savings to start the company. "I did market research, found a manufacturer and got distributors lined up," says Lovato. "I even learned how to sew so we could make our own prototypes."
Lovato's company, Designing Mommies, was up and running in June 1993. Velda stayed at her job to provide a steady paycheck and benefits, while Rene got the business going from home and cared for the children. In July 1994, Lovato bartered expertise he had in computer maintenance for 1,500 square feet of office space and secretarial service at a friend's C.P.A. firm. He set up a playroom for his kids adjacent to his work space, and business began to boom. Last year, Designing Mommies brought in $400,000 in revenues from a product line that has been expanded to include computer software, such as multimedia children's games, and stroller shields to shelter babies from sun or rain. Lovato earned about $140,000 last year, compared with $92,000 at his previous job, and he figures that his business is worth $500,000. But most important, he says, is the relationship he has built with his children. "If I had continued in my old job," he explains, "they would have been saying, 'Where's Daddy?' instead of 'Daddy, come see this!' And that's a world of difference--for them and for me."
THE LESSONS
Think of new ways to exploit your skills. "You can do a lot of things that you don't have formal qualifications for if you think of how to apply skills you already possess," says business consultant Bridges. To open your mind to your potential, make a list of 10 things you can do with the knowledge you have developed through your job, hobbies, volunteer work or education. List each skill individually on an index card, shuffle the cards and repeatedly arrange them in groups of three to four to see how you might combine different skills in a variety of ways. So if you're good at crunching numbers on a PC and a whiz at scouting out social and demographic trends, for example, you could sell yourself as a consultant to companies looking to expand sales to minorities and other fast-growing population segments.
Be creative to get the help you need. In areas where you lack expertise, look for help rather than trying to do everything yourself. Lovato suggests two low-cost tactics for lining up expert assistance: Barter your services, as he did, or, if you've organized your company as a corporation, offer a professional a seat on your board of directors and a small percentage of your company in return for advice. "I could balance my checkbook, but I couldn't handle corporate finances," he says, "so I gave my C.P.A. friend a 5% interest in the company and a seat on the board in return for handling all of the company's taxes and contractual agreements."
DOING GOOD AT DOUBLE THE SALARY
Step inside the golden care adult day center in Wethersfield, Conn., a few miles south of Hartford, and you're immersed in a pervading sense of cheeriness and bustling energy. That high voltage comes directly from Golden Care's founder and director, Lynn Peluso, 32 (pictured on page 95).
Before founding Golden Care in 1994, she had worked for three years as an emergency-room nurse in a local hospital. After deciding that she wanted to be in a managerial role in health care, however, Peluso went back to school full time in 1989 to get her M.B.A. While still working 40 hours a week as a nurse and a teacher at a local community college, she earned her degree at the Hartford Graduate Center in two years with a perfect 4.0 average.
Peluso then spent two years as assistant director of nursing at a home for the elderly, but she found it to be a discouraging experience. "I saw many people in the facility who could have continued to live in their own homes if only they'd had the proper assistance," she says. Peluso decided to start her own adult day-care center, where elderly people would receive medical support and enjoy recreational and social programs during the day but otherwise continue to live at home.
Peluso's business school training paid off. She conducted market research in the library and at local and state social agencies to identify the towns near her with a pressing need for adult day care. She selected Wethersfield as a site where there was more demand than facilities for such care, and scouted out office space that rented for a reasonable $2,100 a month. She also sought free help from the Small Business Administration's SCORE program, which pairs successful retired executives with entrepreneurs. "My SCORE mentor was invaluable in reviewing the business plan that I needed to get financing," says Peluso.
To build working capital and to buy a van for transporting clients back and forth from their homes to the day-care center, Peluso and her husband Sam, who previously monitored the use of state vehicles for the Connecticut Department of Transportation, put up $23,000 of savings and obtained a $60,000 loan secured by a lien on their house. Golden Care opened in January 1994, just three months after Peluso gave birth to her first child, Sammy. She set up a room for her baby next to her office, and clients were thrilled to help her care for him.
By the end of the first year, Peluso had 15 clients paying $45 a day, the typical fee in her area. In the second year, the business began to flourish. Today, Peluso provides daily care for 45 to 50 people and employs a staff of 26, including her husband, who left his $31,000-a-year job to help run the center. He earns $60,000 and she $112,000--double her pay as a nurse. Peluso's accountant estimates the value of her business at $750,000.
Watching her move among the men and women in the day-care center, an observer can clearly see that Peluso loves what she does and the clients love her. "The services at our center allow many elderly people to avoid going into a nursing home," she says. "I feel that what I'm doing everyday is worthwhile."
THE LESSONS
Update and expand your skills. To make your dream come true, you may need continuing education or training, as Peluso discovered. You certainly won't be alone in returning to campus. An estimated 45% of today's college students are 25 or older vs. only 28% in 1970. For classes in business training, check out offerings at your local community college as well as at nearby four-year colleges and universities. For a more extensive look at available courses, consult Bricker's International Directory of University-based Executive Development Programs, a comprehensive directory that lists more than 700 business classes and training programs in the U.S. and abroad. This tome sells for a whopping $999, but it's also available in many large libraries.
Prepare yourself for a tough start. Assume you are going to struggle the first few months you are on your own, Peluso says, so put aside enough money to cover at least three months of business and personal expenses. "Having that cushion gives you the courage to keep going when business is slow," she says.
AT LAST, THE DREAM JOB
When Keith Johnson, 47, was in college in the early 1970s, he discovered his true love: social work. He majored in the field at Ball State University and planned to pursue his master's degree. But life moved in other directions, as it has for so many idealistic baby boomers. It would be 20 years until Johnson finally returned to working at what he loved.
In the years between, to support himself, his wife Carolyn and his son Matthew, Johnson worked at a finance company, a bank and, from 1979 to 1992, as controller of his family's heating and air-conditioning company in Fort Wayne. "I worked at a shelter for abused and neglected kids 20 hours a week on the side just to keep my dream alive," he says.
By 1992, however, Matthew had graduated from college and Carolyn was offered a job as executive director of the chamber of commerce for Miramar and Pembroke Pines, Fla., near Fort Lauderdale. She was excited by the new job and also looked forward to escaping the Midwest's brutal winters. The couple decided this was the perfect opportunity for Keith to live out his dream.
Carolyn moved to Sunrise, Fla. in December 1992, and Keith followed in September of the following year. Within two years, the Johnsons moved to Plantation, and Keith was earning about $25,000 a year running the foster-care program at a Florida social services agency for abused and neglected children. While that salary was considerably less than the $40,000 he pulled down in Fort Wayne, Carolyn's new job boosted her paycheck to $30,000 from the $18,000 she had previously earned as a bookkeeper and receptionist. On balance, therefore, the couple's income is only slightly less than it had been before the move. Since housing costs are far higher in Plantation than in the Midwest, the couple are renting a small two-bedroom house for $1,000 a month until they replenish their savings.
Johnson loves his job, though. He is responsible for 30 children in 20 foster homes and does everything from recruiting and training foster parents to shepherding kids to the doctor when they're sick. He works 40 to 60 hours a week and is always on call for medical emergencies. Nonetheless, his schedule still allows time for volleyball, roller-blading and lounging on the beach with Carolyn on weekends.
"I feel so fortunate that I can help kids recover from betrayal by other adults," Johnson says. "I could never go back to a job that I wasn't excited about getting to every day."
THE LESSONS
Work together to ease the transition into a new career. With flexibility and minor sacrifices, couples can find fulfillment the way the Johnsons have. Often, as was the case with Keith and Carolyn Johnson, the game plan may involve swapping wage-earner responsibilities and cutting costs. Both Johnsons agree without question, however, that the rewards of their new lifestyle more than compensate for the minor scaling back they had to do after Keith switched careers.
Reconnect to core values. If you're going to make a career change, you'll be happiest if it satisfies your soul. Says Susan Freimark, director of career services for the Mandel Center for Non-Profit Organizations at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland: "A lot of the students we see are mid-life baby boomers in the business world who have decided they want to be true to what motivated them during their youth--the desire to make the world a better place."
In other words, as Keith Johnson and other socially concerned people like him are finding, sometimes the biggest benefit you earn at a job isn't a fat paycheck but the feeling that what you're doing ultimately makes a difference.
From CNN MONEY.COM published on December 1, 1997