Test-drive your dream job
Do you ever dream of becoming an actor or a bed-and-breakfast owner? How about becoming a winemaker or a chocolatier, even if just for a day or two? Brian Kurth, a former director of product management at AT&T and Ameritech, often daydreamed about other jobs he might rather do. "I didn't like the lifestyle, the commute. It's not that I hated my job or my boss, but I wasn't fulfilled either," Kurth says. It was then that he came up with the idea and registered the domain name for Vocation Vacations, a company that gives workers the chance to test the waters of exciting employment without quitting their day jobs.
The Portland, Ore., company, now two years old, puts people in their dream jobs for several days at destinations across the United States and in the United Kingdom. For a fee somewhere between $200 and $1,000, not including lodging or transportation, "vocationers" are matched with a mentor and invited into their business to experience what day-to-day work is actually like in a chosen career. To date, Vocation Vacations has the cooperation of about 200 mentors, who let vocationers peek into the inner workings of their daily endeavors in exchange for a fee from Kurth's company.
Even after conceiving the idea, Kurth wasn't quite ready to go out on his own. So, he joined a dot-com company where he worked in business development and learned "how not to run a business." When the bubble burst and Kurth was laid off, he traveled across America for six months, finally settling in Portland, where corporate jobs were not easy to come by. Kurth then chose to do one of his personal dream jobs in the wine industry while working to solidify his business plan for Vocation Vacations. The company was officially launched in January 2004, but Kurth didn't quit his winery job until three months later.
It took Kurth years to get involved in a job that he really loved, but he hopes his business will ease the transition for others or simply ease their curiosity about a different line of work. Kurth thinks that 20 to 25 percent of his vocationers are purely curiosity seekers. The rest are generation X corporate workers who are burning out or baby boomers who are tired of being, say, a corporate attorney, doctor, or information-technology manager and looking to make a change. "We are the test-drive, the baby step," he says. "We're not the cure-all. We are the first step toward making that change."
David Ryan, 43, of Rye, N.H., tried two Vocation Vacations experiences while an international banker at HSBC—dog day care and dog trainer. Dog training was the one that stole his heart. "I always enjoyed teaching. The idea of bringing teaching together with dogs was just superb," he says. Upon retiring from HSBC, he enrolled in a school for professional dog trainers and launched his business, Beyond Dog Training, several months later out of his home. Now, instead of the daily grind, he conducts private in-home dog training and runs group classes at dog-day-care centers in the evening. He has instructed about 50 dogs and is in the market to hire another trainer, so that he can spend more time consulting. "So far I've taken a big cut in pay, but there's a lot of money to be made out there, and I'm just having a blast," Ryan says.
Despite Kurth's expanding Vocation Vacations business, he says he is still a career changer, too. "If I were to leave it all tomorrow," he says, "I would either go into the culinary area on the wine side of things, and really my ideal world would still combine it with dogs. I would own a dog-day-care center right next to my wine shop."
The top five categories that Kurth says people test-drive:
1. Culinary: Chocolatier, cheese maker, brew master, winemaker
2. Animals: Animal therapist, dog trainer, horse trainer, worker with marine animals
3. Fashion: Style consultant, fashion designer
4. Sports and entertainment: Sports team manager, radio announcer, TV producer, choreographer
5. Miscellaneous: Wedding planner, photographer, bed-and-breakfast owner