Oct 1, 2014
BJ Jones, Center for Nonprofit Excellence's Encore Innovation Fellow, is quoted in this MONEY Magazine article about her work with us:
Dream of venturing forth into a new and rewarding career? Navigate your journey with expert help from people who know the territory.
Twenty years ago as she whipped up peanut butter balls for friends, Cathy Churcher never thought she’d wind up making a living as a candymaker. But after a series of deaths in her family—including that of her brother, at age 49—Churcher quit her job as the director of admissions at a nursing school and opened Chocolate Cravings, a 400-square-foot shop in Richmond. “It was about happiness,” says Churcher. “I stepped out in faith that I could make a go of it in a new career.”
Churcher, then 50, wasn’t depending on faith alone. Three years before launching, she began writing a business plan. She studied local candy stores, trying to learn from their successes and failures. She earned a certificate as a professional chocolatier. And two years before she opened her shop, she started selling at farmers’ markets and to local stores and restaurants.
Fifty-five percent of U.S. workers want to change careers, according to a University of Phoenix survey. As Churcher’s story suggests, those shifts take time. To make a switch, you’ll have to learn new skills, make new professional contacts, sock away cash, and more.
Maybe you, like Churcher, want to start a business, or maybe you’d like a salaried job in a new field. While the prospect of starting over may be daunting, it can also be deeply rewarding. So if you ache for a professional reboot—either as your own boss or working for someone else—follow these five steps to learn from experts and people who have successfully made such a move.
1. Make sure your dream has some connection to reality
In 2011, Jennifer Johnson, a general manager at Johnson Controls (no relation) in Plymouth, Mich., had an idea. Noticing an increase in seasoned executives no longer working full-time, she thought she might match them up for project assignments with local companies that could use their expertise.
Was this a viable business? Johnson, then 35, resolved to find out. On nights and weekends she studied other professional-services firms. She cold-called people running similar businesses in other states, asking them everything from how they dealt with competition to how much they charged. And, believe it or not, they told her. “People who have started businesses generally want to be helpful,” she says.
Johnson’s research led her to Patina Solutions, a Milwaukee-based firm already doing what she envisioned. Rather than start her own company, she proposed teaming up with Patina, and in February became managing partner of the firm’s new Detroit office.
Research like Johnson’s is key; you need to learn if the image you have of your proposed career—the routine and the money—is an accurate one.
How to do it:
Get the inside scoop. Reach out to people doing the work you want to do, and ask them all you can about their jobs. How did they get started? What do you need to succeed? And what can you expect to earn, both at first and later on? Because you aren’t asking for a job, the discussion should be relaxed. “Be an inquisitive child,” advises Jayne Mattson of Keystone Associates, a career-management firm in Boston.
Do a trial run. Moonlight or apprentice yourself to someone already in the field. A client of career consultant Maggie Mistal who baked in his spare time did a second-career dry run making cookies on nights and weekends. Over six months he saw how much effort beyond actual baking he’d have to put in, and he decided he couldn’t earn enough to support himself. He kept his day job and now just bakes for fun. “Don’t ruin a hobby that you love,” says Mistal.
If you want to work for a nonprofit in a cause meaningful to you—a common goal among career changers—then volunteer; you’ll not only see what the day-to-day work entails, but also meet people in the organization.
2. Identify the skills you need...
Image by Matt Chase