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Lasting value
Like Liberson, many midlife career-changers stick close to their field but switch to a job that’s more satisfying or less stressful. Others, like Wes Kimes, are looking for “work that has more significance.”
For 28 years, Kimes worked in sales for a number of companies throughout the Midwest. While still in his forties, he was promoted to vice-president of sales for family-owned Charles Industries, which sells boat batteries and voice- and data-transmission devices, in suburban Chicago. By the time he was approaching 50, he had reached many of the goals he’d set for himself and felt “a real desire to create a new line of work that I could do well into my sixties and seventies.”
On an airline flight back from Europe, he struck up a conversation with a fellow passenger who was an executive coach. The experience led Kimes to start working with a coach to figure out what he wanted to do in the next phase of his life—and eventually to become a coach himself. He realized that what he enjoyed most about his job was developing talent. “My responsibility was increasing revenue, but I achieved that by getting people to perform to the next level.”
He began researching outplacement and executive-development consulting firms—what he calls “pressure testing” when he advises clients these days. “You talk to people and envision yourself in their business,” explains Kimes. “You find out the pluses and minuses, and what kind of energy it takes. What would your life look like?”
Two years ago, Kimes, 53, joined Right Management Consultants in Chicago as a vice-president and executive coach. In making the switch, he had to make “some short-term sacrifice in total compensation,” which he has since made up.
Kimes works with executives who are moving up and need to hone their leadership skills, as well as with those who are moving out of senior positions. “The work is business-oriented, competitive, fast-paced—the drugs from the business world that are still in my system,” says Kimes. “On the other hand, it creates lasting value for an individual. It’s work that has significance.”
One step at a time
As a child growing up in Little Rock, Ark., Kelly Yoakam had an exotic ambition—to become a harpist. As an adult, her work was much more prosaic—working as the office manager in her husband Bob’s pest-control business in Mason, Mich. But Kelly, who learned to play the piano as a child, never lost sight of her musical ambitions.
While home-schooling her two children, she started a small side business making lace crafts, and by 1990 had saved enough to buy her first harp. She began taking lessons and was asked to play at weddings and other events. By 1994, her performances and her crafts had brought in enough for her to invest $15,000 in a bigger harp. “My husband was super supportive,” says Kelly. “He loves the music, and the harp created less clutter than my sewing projects.”
Kelly tentatively began offering harp lessons and eventually ended up taking on a dozen students—“I never even thought I’d get as many as five.” At the same time, her performance calendar was filling up. Her husband asked if she wanted to leave the business and devote full time to her music, but she hesitated; the office work was easy and safe and provided a steady income. In 1999, a decade after acquiring her first harp, Kelly felt confident enough to make the break and focus on her musical career.
Now 49, with her children in college, she has decided to study musicology and music theory at Michigan State University, and she hopes to get her master’s degree by next year. She earns as much as she made working for her husband and running her own crafts business, and she enjoys teaching and performing. “I’ve taken it one step at a time,” Kelly says. “If I had been shown the big picture, I never would have believed that I’d end up as a graduate student and a professional musician.”
