DEL.ICIO.USHow three people changed their career
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Sunday, March 22, 2009
Some 4.4 million U.S. jobs have disappeared since December 2007, leaving multitudes of Americans scrambling for a Plan B.
JESSICA MCGOWAN / jmcgowan@ajc.com
Andy Palpant shows Cameron Duff, 12, the proper hand position during a piano lesson at Upstage Dance studio in McDonough.
MIKKI K. HARRIS / mkharris@ajc.com
Sandra Bibbs of Stone Mountain works as a bartender at the Fox Theatre. She serves drinks, and sometimes advice, to the customers.
Jaworski family
Rick and Stephanie Jaworski keep separate offices at their Johns Creek home, but they work together to build business for JoyofBaking.com.
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Andy Palpant, Rick Jaworski and Sandra Bibbs have been there. The three metro Atlantans were all caught by the leading edge of the economic downturn, and each has found a different way to cope.
One decided to utilize an old talent. One learned a new one. All three decided to replace vanishing careers with something different.
Reinventing oneself isn’t easy, they will tell you.
“You have to work your way through it and come out on the other side, or it can bury you,” Palpant said. “You’ve got to pick yourself up because the house payment is going to be here next month.”
From keystrokes to keyboard
When he was a boy, Andy Palpant practiced his piano. You never know, his mother used to tell him: You might need to fall back on that skill.
He grew up and became an IT manager at a health care company with a $30 million budget and 130 employees under his direction, and the piano-playing scenario seemed unlikely.
Then he was laid off, and his six-figure salary went poof. And he remembered Mom’s advice.
Now, Palpant, 49, of Stockbridge teaches piano 3 1/2 days a week at his wife Jeanne’s dance studio, and, on the other days, does some trouble-shooting for PBX phone systems.
Luckily, because he’d played piano for church services, weddings and funerals, his keyboard chops were still sharp. With the combined part-time work and the dance studio income, the couple, who have a teenage son, make about half what they used to.
But Palpant feels twice as healthy.
“I was probably just steps away from a stroke,” he said. “I’m working just as many hours now, but I don’t feel it like I did, ‘cause the stress level’s not there. … This is the most fun thing I’ve ever done.”
The Palpants opened the Upstage Dance Center in Ellenwood shortly after they married in 1983, but Andy says his responsibilities were limited to construction and maintenance. Three years ago they added another studio in McDonough. Andy Palpant’s job ended the next year. He went into independent contracting, but “that has tanked.” Businesses aren’t shelling out, he said.
On the other hand, parents are. Especially for piano lessons. “The last thing people are not going to spend money on is their kids,” he said. The studios provide a modest income, but the Palpants have survived without significant disruption because “we were living below our means.”
And because he listened to his mother.
From cable TV to Internet cooks
Rick Jaworski knows a lot about cable television but nothing about pie.
His wife Stephanie knows pie. When she launched the JoyofBaking.com in 1997, it drew many visitors but not much money. Making money on the Web? Neither one knew much about that.
Then Rick’s six-figure job with a company that made high-tech cable-testing equipment began to unravel. He quit in 2003 (“The writing was on the wall”) thinking he’d do something else. That other thing never materialized. “I had my own recession a little earlier than everybody else,” he said.
About three years ago the Johns Creek couple noticed that Stephanie’s site was getting hundreds of thousands of hits a month, and Rick threw himself into figuring out how to “monetize” those visitors. “There are no courses to learn any of this,” Rick said. “It was trial and error.”
Now, with Rick working full time on the site, tweaking ad sales and boosting hits, JoyofBaking.com brings in about 3.5 million page views a month and earns the Jaworskis about twice what he was making at his old job.
“I am kind of shocked at that,” said Rick, 51. “At the same time, I figure there’s more to be made.”
Almost half their visitors are from outside the United States, and the Jaworskis have plans to build that market; their first hire is a Parisian translator who lives in Glasgow. (Yes, the French are interested in American baking, including cowboy cookies and red velvet cake.)
Rick’s new life is starkly different from his old one. No commute, no camaraderie — except between him and Stephanie and their two teenage sons. To season their constant togetherness, the spouses keep offices in opposite ends of the house.
“Everybody thinks we’re nuts,” he said. “Until we tell them how much money we’re making.”
From marketing to making drinks
Sandra Bibbs didn’t grow up dreaming of becoming a bartender, but sometimes things work out that way.
She’s been in sales most of her life, working for 15 years with Hewlett-Packard, then with two different promotional products companies.
But marketing and promotional budgets began to dwindle — even before the current downturn. Three years ago she began putting on a uniform three or four nights a week and dispensing beer, wine and soft drinks at the Fox Theatre. The big change, she says — besides working for minimum wage plus tips — is the relaxed working environment and the gorgeous setting.
“[Customers] discuss things openly that they wouldn’t discuss in a corporate office — their relationships, their political views, about their families, whatever.” And if they ask for advice, she’s not afraid to give it. (“You want a good wife? You need to be a good husband,” she told one customer.)
Bibbs of Stone Mountain augments her bartending with some marketing work, helps out as a server for a friend who is a caterer and tends bar at parties, but her income is still less than half what it was. She makes do by bartering — trading Sky Miles for bathroom renovation work, and German apple cakes for carpentry. Yet she doesn’t scrimp when it comes to her 14-year-old son Myles and takes him on vacations every year.
“I’m not one of the lucky people that found my passion,” she said, but she’s still looking. “Ideally, if the genie granted me three wishes, I’d probably be a psychotherapist.”
Just not the kind who sells beer.
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TIPS FOR CHANGING CAREERS
So you’re starting over. One career has ended, and you’ve decided to go in a different direction.
It may seem like a huge challenge , but it’s also an opportunity, says Barbara Berman, director of professional services in the Atlanta offices of “career transition firm” Lee Hecht Harrison.
• Understand your motives. Was there a problem with your former boss or the company culture? You might have been in the right career path, but just at the wrong company.
• Identify what you enjoy doing. Ask yourself the question, “If I could do it all over again, what would I be?”
• Study all aspects of the new business you’re seeking. Do the research and talk to people currently in that job.
• If you’ve been let go, remember: You might still be in shock. “Losing a job is a loss for people,” Berman said. “There is a change cycle that everybody goes through. Our goal is always to keep that impact shallow.”
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