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Exploring A New Career While On ‘Vacation’

Ever fantasize about what it might be like to go into acting, run your own coffee shop become a chocolatier or work in the wine industry? Interested in finding a way to test drive a new career without losing a paycheck or risking the mortgage payment?

Missy Grohne did just that. She was working as a consultant in a LASIK eye surgery clinic, but she felt as though her real calling was in entertainment or acting. About 18 months ago, she saw a tiny advertisement about VocationVacations, a business that offers clients one- to three-day immersions with mentors in various careers and businesses. She discovered there was an opportunity to work with Kim Crow, a voice-over professional in Florida.

Grohne, who lives in New York City, was supposed to spend two days with Crow but ended up spending three.

“It was hands-on from the minute I arrived. She put me right through the paces and made me do it,” Grohne said. Crow also gave her lots of encouragement.

“To have someone so established and so renowned in Florida,” Grohne said. “She could have said no, but she said yes, yes.”

Grohne returned to New York with a voice-over demo tape and entered a professional voice-over school where she spent eight weeks perfecting her technique. Now she has her own burgeoning voice-over business. She hasn’t quit her job at the eye clinic yet, but she expects she’ll be able to do so soon.

“It cost me about $1,200,” Grohne said. “It’s probably the best decision I’ve ever made in my life. … This was exactly what I needed the kick in the butt. It got me motivated.”

Brian Kurth came up with the VocationVacations concept in 1999 when he was sitting in traffic on Chicago’s Kennedy Expressway during his long daily commute to his job in product management for a regional phone company. He started daydreaming about what he’d rather do in life make wine, guide tours, train dogs. He thought about how great it would be if there were a way to test an occupation for a few days.

“There were internships for 20-year-olds and there were volunteer vacations go off and work with sea turtles but not something that would allow me to take a few days and work with a winemaker or with a dog trainer.”

Eventually he left the phone company job and got a job with a dot com. When a pink slip arrived in late 2001, he went on a road trip. Along the way, he asked the people he met if they would be interested in a company that offered short internships for grown-ups contemplating career changes. He almost always received a positive response.

By the end of his journey, he decided to take a job in the wine industry and to move to Portland, Ore., but the concept for VocationVacations was percolating. He worked to develop the business as a hobby and then officially launched it in 2004.

Although there have been “vocationers” from Connecticut, none was available for an interview. However, Duncan Goodall, the owner of Koffee on Audubon in New Haven, is one of several Connecticut-based mentors for VocationVacations.

Goodall had worked for a market research consulting business but quit his high-paying position because he didn’t like the lifestyle and wanted more time with his family.

“Now I’m doing something I enjoy and it has meaning for me,” Goodall said of his coffeehouse business. “Doing something like this is very gratifying for me.”

He also enjoys the opportunity to share his knowledge with VacationVocation customers, to help others avoid the pitfalls he encountered in the business.

In his mentoring, he covers everything from understanding the market, to whether to buy a pre-existing coffeehouse or start a new one, to the ins and outs of buying or leasing equipment to how to make a good cup of coffee and ensure that employees do the same.

Kurth said that he makes an effort to find mentors, who like Goodall, know what they do, do it well and are born teachers. The pay for mentors, Kurth said, is a “relatively small honorarium.”

Kurth declined to discuss how many people have taken VocationVacations, but he said the numbers are rising, especially in what he calls the “disgruntled triangle” the region between Chicago, Boston and Washington, D.C.

“This is where the bulk of our customers come from,” Kurth said. “They are not fulfilled in their current careers. They are fed up with commutes, yearning for something different.”

Other hots spots for job dissatisfaction include all of California and Dallas, Houston and Fort Worth. Very often, his clients work in information technology, corporate litigation, financial services or insurance. Sometimes they are doctors or nurses who enjoy helping people but are tired of the medical bureaucracy and insurance demands.

“We also get people from middle America seeking to do something different and something new,” he said.

The company now offers 150 types of vocation with more than 300 mentors across the country. The most popular vocations are those in hospitality (such as bed and breakfasts, hotels, inns and concierges); food preparation (bakery, catering and coffeehouse); entertainment (acting, voice-overs and television production); design (fashion and interior design); sports (sports announcing and baseball team general manager); and various jobs working with animals.

Other possibilities for vocationers include spending time with an alpaca rancher, a chocolatier and pastry chef, or a comedian or a film score composer. The cost ranges from a one-day brewmaster experience at $549 to a two-day Broadway producer/director VocationVacation at $2,999. Most of the vacations are two days and range between $949 and $1,199.

Kurth, whose recently released book is “Test Drive Your Dream Job A Step-by-Step Guide to Finding and Creating the Work You Love,” said that about 75 percent of the “vocationers” are making the trip as part of a career exploration effort and that most (about 80 percent) are baby boomers or Generation Xers. About 10 percent are in their late teens or 20s and using the experience to get an up-close look at a possible career. Another 10 percent are retirees.

Len Dest of Southampton, N.Y., was one of those who was retiring from a career in marketing and promotion with the aerospace industry when he began to think about what else he might do. He had always had an avocation for wine, so his partner purchased him a VocationVacation with a winemaker for his birthday.

What he discovered were the many different aspects of the winemaking business that he hadn’t before understood. “I didn’t think at my age that I could become a true winemaker,” said Dest, but he discovered that he could work in the wine industry by applying his skills in marketing and promotion.

He’s now executive director of a nonprofit organization that promotes the wines of Long Island. “Tomorrow, I’m going to a wine conference,” said Dest, “to explain to people why we believe Long Island merlot wine is a world-class product.”

For more information, visit the VocationVacations website at www.vocationvacations.com.