Today is Job Action Day 2009, a day for job-seekers to take action steps right now — today — to move forward in their careers. The Quintessential Careers family of blogs (including this blog and Quintessential Careers Blog, Quintessential Resume and Cover Letter Tips Blog, and A Storied Career), is looking at a promising aspect of the currently employment scene — turning unemployment into entrepreneurship.
For Job Action Day 2009, Quintessential Careers and a cadre of writers and bloggers are targeting several areas as offering bright spots of opportunity. Two of those areas are green careers and entrepreneurship. Here are stories of laid-off workers who found opportunities in both areas:
Zach Rose
I’m an architect, and I began working in the green field about six years ago after graduating from the University of Florida. I moved on from UF to obtain my Master of Architecture degree on full scholarship from the University of Michigan.
I started my company with zero capital from my friend’s couch, where I was living after being laid off on December 31, 2008, as a result of the ongoing crash in the architecture industry. My company is called GreenEdu.com, and we offer educational seminars on green building and design.
I got the idea for my company based on the huge push in the current administration for more green jobs, which in turn is going to (and already has) created a demand for more education to train the workers hoping to fill those positions. Having worked as an architect for seven years, I had the experience and the know-how to create the courses and furthermore had learned marketing tactics in my stint as a business developer working for a national 3D animation studio. Given the unfortunate loss of my job in December 2008 because of the economic meltdown, I was forced to come up with creative and inexpensive means of developing a business from the ground up. The result was a very organic and dynamic business plan that changes literally daily. The most important thing about keeping my business alive is to keep working as hard as physically possible and to constantly strive for the reinvention of every facet of the company — experimentation is the only way to know what works … and what doesn’t.
Literally an overnight success story, I have recently expanded to 15 markets and will be in 21 by the end of this October. Our educational seminars for corporations are very often funded with government grant money that is meant to get as many workers up-to-speed on the changes in renewable power and green design.
Rich Close
After being laid off from a supervisory call-center position several years ago, I pursued a real-estate license as a quick way to transition into a new job. It proved successful for a while, but when the real-estate market took a downward turn, the need to find a new adventure came calling.
I now proudly an owner of an exciting business called The Recycled Retriever. My partner and I started it as a Web-based business from our home, having researched what eco-friendly impact pet products had on the market. While we found some other companies offered products hit or miss, we were unable to find one place that offered exclusively Earth-friendly products. So, we decided to develop The Recycled Retriever as a resource that pet owners could utilize knowing that the products they purchased from us were not only good for their pets but great for the Earth.
As the Web business began to grow, we decided to take the concept to a retail-store version and now have a storefront open in Provincetown, MA, where I run the store with our toy poodle, Arnold. Provincetown was a fitting location as an area that has so much natural beauty and is extremely pet friendly. Working the store with Arnold has given me the ability to use a lot of the skills that I possessed from previous careers and is allowing me to fulfill a dream of owning my own business and enjoying the summer in a wonderful location.
Amanda Crater
(Amanda documents her experience in starting a green business experience on her blog and especially tells how she got into what she’s doing here.
I was laid off in June 2009 and started my business doing public relations for green companies in July. I’ve been supporting myself with my business so far, securing several clients right off the bat due to the solicitation of testimonials from my contacts and active networking. As the founder of CraterCom http://www.cratercom.com, CraterCom, do public relations and branding for green businesses. I love connecting with the movers and shakers of the world and getting the great green stories out to the audiences who care.
I’ve always been passionate about environmental issues. I wrote my senior honors thesis at UC Berkeley on American attitudes toward nature (focusing on dams as the epitome of man’s control issues over the environment) and did some media relations in college as well as print journalism. When I worked in the corporate world, my first client was a dam builder. Needless to say, I’m loving life as an entrepreneur. I soul-searched for a while after college while freelance writing and working at UCLA. I did a lot of contract work that helped me balance time, projects and income. In February 2008, I got a job as a media-relations specialist for a global investor-relations company based in Los Angeles, where I worked for a year and a half before getting laid off in a difficult round.
In the role of media relations specialist, it was my job to get media coverage of the clients I was assigned — mostly microcap public companies. I got to work on a couple of alternative energy clients — one in wind power and the other in solar — and asked my bosses to allow me to specialize in alternative-energy accounts. Soon my client list expanded to include biofuels, nuclear and hydropower companies; at the same time I also became the agency’s only brand specialist and developed branding programs in addition to straight media relations. Thus I started to build my personal brand as a branding and media-relations specialist in the green space. I formed relationships with key journalists covering environmental issues and built up a solid base of contacts.
Before going into business for myself, I also worked on the side doing marketing for a nonprofit, freelanced with a PR veteran on one account, and took a couple of writing and public-relations courses at UCLA Extension while also working my full-time job. I worked on the skills needed for the work I do and formed many relationships that helped me a lot once I started my business. The idea for my business came from wanting to promote green companies to the media and help them with marketing. I didn’t expect to launch my business for a few more years, but the lay-off proved to be a blessing in disguise that allowed me to pursue my dream earlier than expected.
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