Following Your Dream Brings Bliss, but Not Always Money - NYTimes.com

Following Your Dream Brings Bliss, but Not Always Money - NYTimes.com:



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WHEN Trent Brown was laid off from his job as a sales representative in 2010, he chose to view it as an opportunity to make a life change. Instead of searching for some other company job, he decided to help his wife, Janell, expand her cupcake and cake-making hobby into a business. Just six months after he lost his job, they opened One Sweet Slice in the Salt Lake City area where they lived.



Mr. Brown, 35, triumphantly wrote on his wife’s blog, “Thank you for laying me off, corporate America.” Posing with their four children on their website www.onesweetslice.com, they represent one of those stories everyone loves. Lose your job, find a passion and turn it into a business that’s fun and successful.



But while their cakes and cupcakes garnered acclaim — including winning Food Network’s television show “Cupcake Wars” — and brought in substantial revenue, it wasn’t enough to support their family. And the decision to open a second store pushed them into unexpected debt.



“I’m pretty conservative and I knew it would be difficult, but it was a hundred times more difficult than I thought it would be,” Mr. Brown said.



Karin Hazelkorn wants to combine her business skills and knowledge of textiles. Peter DaSilva for The New York Times

So, even though “everyone thinks we’re wildly successful,” he decided he had to return to the corporate world to support his family. And given his age, it was a realistic option. While his wife is still in charge of overseeing the stores, a few weeks ago he started a job as an interactive marketing manager.



In these times of job insecurity and rapidly evolving careers, reinvention is both a dream and a comfort for many.



“During the Great Recession, when the labor market was at its weakest, business creation rose to record highs,” said Dane Stangler, director of research at the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation.



From 2004 to 2010, the number of new businesses — both those with employees and one-person operations — grew steadily from an average of 470,000 a month to an average of 565,000 a month annually, according to the Kauffmann Index of Entrepreneurial Activity, an annual study conducted by the foundation. It dipped a little last year, probably because of the improving job market.



It’s impossible to say how much of that business activity is part of a second career move. But according to Encore.org, which helps people over 60 find meaningful work, a 2011 survey found that almost 40 percent of Americans aged 44 through 70 are already in or eager to start second careers.



But the numbers say nothing about the true human and financial cost of reinvention — or the failure to reinvent. So maybe it’s time to step back and consider some of the lessons learned from those who didn’t strike it rich the first time out, or even the second, and, some experts suggest, judge ourselves less harshly in the process.



“We have an intoxication with starting fresh, with rebirth, with radical heroic transformation,” said Marc Freedman, chief executive of Encore.org. “It makes for a very dramatic story, but it sets an impossibly high bar for people at any stage of life.”



That doesn’t mean, he said, that people can’t move to different paths and successfully change careers. But rather than reinvention, we should look at it as reintegration — of building on the knowledge, interests and skills a person already has.



The image of throwing out a past career, he said, and careening in a totally different direction is “unrealistic and misleading.”



Karin Hazelkorn, 59, can attest to this. She took a generous buyout from Cisco Systems in 2011, where she worked for 12 years in marketing, business development and project management, with the aim of converting her love of handcrafted textiles — and desire to preserve the craft — into a new career.



She moved from San Francisco to New York for half a year, took classes at the Fashion Institute of Technology, went to industry trade shows and traveled to Southeast Asia to test her idea of creating a partnership between textile artisans and fashion houses.





But it wasn’t coming together. She admired those people who seemed to go “from banker to baker” and felt a little deficient.



“Did they work harder than me? Have better contacts?” she said.



Eventually she decided her initial idea wouldn’t work, and now is considering other opportunities that will combine her business skills and knowledge of textiles. She is excited, but it is different from her original plan.



“I would tell people to really build on the skills you have,” Ms. Hazelkorn said. “It may not be exactly what you wanted to do, but it’s a more natural move.”



The inspiring stories that portray drastic career moves in a rosy light “are coming from a good place,” said Ofer Sharone, a professor of work and employment research at the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “But they go too far. They paint a picture that someone can take complete control, when they can’t.”



And, not everyone knows her passion — or has one.



Have you tried to reinvent yourself in midcareer? What lessons would you share with others?

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“People in the labor market are blaming themselves for not being able to find a passion,” said Professor Sharone, author of the book “Flawed System/Flawed Self: Job Searching and Unemployment Experiences.” “The presumption is everyone has a deep-seated passion, but they might not.”



Dreaming big while being realistic is one critical piece of advice. Another is to have a financial cushion.



Kevin Lincoln, who was laid off in 2006 from his job at a paper mill in Green Bay, Wis., after 34 years, was one of the fortunate ones. His severance package included displaced workers’ benefits that paid for training and education. He went to a community college to study leadership and management, graduating with almost straight A’s. But the jobs were hard to come by — largely he believes, because of his age — and he’s now working as a delivery driver for about half his previous salary.



“It’s easy to say I’m going to reinvent myself,” said Mr. Lincoln, 62. “Just go and try.”



Without financial resources, said David Blustein, a professor of counseling, developmental and educational psychology at the Lynch School of Education at Boston College, “people need to think of a survival job in the short term, and ideally scaffold up to a long-term plan.”



Tiffany Aliche, 30, of Newark, had savings. But her desire to become a financial coach after being laid off as a preschool teacher cost her big. She went through her savings and ended up moving back in with her parents. Her condominium went into preforeclosure, and she reduced her possessions to fit into two suitcases.



But by working free and doing relentless social media marketing, she started her company, the Budgetnista, last year, and made almost as much as she did as a preschool teacher. She said she hoped to surpass that this year.



But knowing that her family would never let her end up homeless or starving is what allowed her to continue, she said.



Something that is not always obvious is that critical success does not always equal financial success. One writer who wanted to see if she could develop a thriving business making artisanal jams said the impressive accolades and awards were wonderful, but “there was no money.”



Of course, everyone defines financial success differently. For some it’s reaping in large profits. For others, it’s not going bankrupt.



That’s the case for Seely Gerraughty. Fifteen years ago, she and her husband left their jobs in Houston and bought a deserted crack house in Narragansett, R.I. Ms. Gerraughty, who was a medical social worker, and her husband, a national editor at The Houston Chronicle, turned it into the Blueberry Cove Inn.



The first year they made $50 in profit. Now the inn is successful, in that it has survived and is usually full during the high season. But “most of our profit is plugged back into the infrastructure,” said Ms. Gerraughty, 57.





Owning a B&B may seem like a dream career, if you gloss over the fact “you’re on duty 24/7 and I worked from July to November without a single day off. There is brutal, grinding work behind any small business,” Ms. Gerraughty said.



But the Gerraughtys cannot say they did not know what they were getting into. They did their research before deciding to buy an inn, particularly by going into online chat rooms of trade organizations.



“In those chat rooms, they don’t paint the rosy pictures,” she said.



Mr. Brown agreed, saying he wished he and his wife had better understood some basics, like pricing and costs, before plunging in.



Now they review their financials with local free assistance from the Small Business Administration and their marketing strategies with mentors from SCORE.org, which provides free mentoring and workshops for small businesses.





And Ms. Hazelkorn said it was crucial to talk to people — and ask pointed questions — from those who will give you real-world feedback on your ideas, not just friends and colleagues who will encourage you.



Of course if your second career doesn’t work out or you tire of it, there’s always the possibility of a third one.



“I’m not settled on a career choice,” Ms. Gerraughty said. “I like long drives — I’m thinking of long-haul truck driving.”