Reinvent Yourself

To Change Big, Work Hard

So Andy Tuck declared himself a consultant, though he still wasn't quite sure what that was. Nancy Koors started hawking caskets, though she had never set foot in a funeral home before. Cecilia Barajas left the courtroom to work with a bunch of programmers, and Bob Presman had to find people in Rockford who believed that Mr. Baseball could handle their life savings. These tasks were not going to be easy, so this was where all the hard work began. "You have to be absolutely obsessed when you're making such a big change," says Barajas. "It's the downside of finding work that you really believe in. To get up to speed and succeed, you have to absolutely pour yourself into it."

That's why, in the proper Smith Barney tradition, Presman began earning money the old-fashioned way: He made cold calls. Like thousands of rookie brokers before him, he gathered lists of doctors and country-club members. Then, he began calling them on four nights during the week, plus Saturday mornings, on top of the long hours he put in during the day. This went on for two to three years. "The rejection was tremendous," he recalls. "But I kept at it. I tried to treat it like a game." But it was no game. Reeling those clients in was the only way he would make a living; at that time, Smith Barney cut off every new broker's base salary after about a year.

Like Presman, Barajas was entering an industry in which the pressure was relentless. For brokers, however, finding clients is the hard part; successful investment strategies don't change much over the long haul. But successful design strategies for video games are always changing. Like moviemakers, game companies have to keep guessing about the story lines that will appeal to the public.

"The thing that surprised me was how hard it was," Barajas says now. "The technology allows you to do 50% more with each new release, and there are no rules about what will end up being fun and what won't. The learning curve never flattens out."

So what did she do to keep up? "I worked seven days a week until 2 am or 3 am," she recalls. "I tend to have a pretty obsessive personality, and this job fed on it. When we were on a deadline, all I would think about was the game. I didn't think about my friends. My producer warned me to make sure I didn't end up getting divorced." Incredibly, Barajas's husband became so enamored with the process that he ended up joining the company himself.

The Past Is Prologue

Now, for the good news: No matter how radical your transition seems, you'll still use plenty of your old skills in ways that you never would have imagined. So pay no heed to people who think you're trashing your investment in a JD if you leave the law practice or those who say you're crazy for ditching accounting to run a hotel. "There's this notion out there that says it's sinful if you're doing work that doesn't directly tap your academic training or previous experience," says Barajas. "But it's all of our experiences that formulate who we are at any given moment, and all of it affects how well we do our current jobs."

That was the case for Bob Presman. "Deserved or not, having been on television and on the radio for years gave me credibility with strangers," he says. "I'd call people on the phone, tell them who I was, and they'd say, 'Oh, Mr. Baseball!' I knew some of that would probably go on, but I was surprised at what a tremendous advantage it gave me. Right away, the people I was calling believed that I was someone they knew personally."

Launching a new career as a stockbroker might seem like a strange choice for Presman to make at age 44. At the time, the number of people investing in mutual funds without any professional advice was growing. Plus, outsiders have always seen cold-calling as a young person's game requiring a young person's stamina.

Presman doesn't see it that way, though. "My age was a huge advantage," he says. "First of all, I had to make this work so I could support my family, so I had a lot more urgency than I would have had if I had started doing this at 22. Second, you're asking people to invest their retirement money with you. There's a large percentage of people who simply don't want to give all that money to someone so young."

In fact, Smith Barney has recognized this marketplace reality, and the firm has begun attempting to attract more career changers. It even posts ads in the lobbies of its branch offices, in case any customers want to do what Presman did.

Cecilia Barajas hasn't called on her legal knowledge much since she started working at Activision, except for the occasional tip she gives out to colleagues who get nailed for low-level narcotics possession. ("You basically get one free drug bust in California," she says cheerily.) But the traits that helped her put criminals away have certainly come in handy in the gaming world.