Be Your Own Boss
by Samantha Stainburn
In the late 80s, Mary Voskian, a teacher in the gifted education program in Loudon County, Virginia, began taking workshops in storytelling. Eventually, she took a formal storytelling course. "I was really nervous practicing that first story," she recalls. "But after I did it, I loved it." Her stories soon became a hit in the classroom. When she retired in 2001, she wanted to keep telling stories and be viewed as a professional storyteller—and get paid for it.
After teaching for 24 years, Voskian knew one market very well: her school district. She phoned administrators and librarians in her county and let them know her specialty—adapting and performing tales for different age groups. Her pitch worked. These days, Voskian is a familiar face at school assemblies.
Storytelling, of course, is not the only game in town for retired educators who want to top off their pension income by using skills honed in the classroom. How do you make the leap from the classroom to the consultant's chair? Here's how to launch your new after-school life.
- Do the vision thing. Think beyond the obvious when choosing your niche. Nancy Hall, a retired American history and government teacher in Fairfax County, Virginia, urges former educators to go in new directions. "Teachers can do so many things," she says. After retiring, Hall, who had always enjoyed writing, followed up on a tip from a former student, and contacted PBS. Hall got an assignment writing educational material for the Democracy Project, a PBS-sponsored website about state and local government. That project led to jobs writing for other websites and, voilà, a flexible new career. "The wonderful thing about being retired is that you can say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to projects and assignments," she says.
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Sell yourself. To win work, you need to
persuade people to hire you. Answering these three questions
will help you hone your pitch and target the right buyers for
your services, says Alan Weiss, president of Summit Consulting
Group in East Greenwich, Rhode Island: "How will the
client be better off with your service? Who is most likely to
write a check for your service or expertise? How do you reach
this potential clientele?"
Avoid giving folks a reason to dismiss you as an amateur. Meg Armstrong, a New York City-based executive coach and communications specialist, says investing in the right business accoutrements—professional clothes and a high-quality briefcase for making in-person connections, as well as good stationery and a business phone line—will make clients want to do business with you. "If you know you're doing it right, you'll exude more confidence," she says. - Set your price. Study your new profession to help you negotiate important details like project length and compensation. Learn about your competitors' rates and services by asking around. Voskian, the storyteller, asked her first client, "What would you pay me?" A year later, with a bit more experience, she felt comfortable charging a bit more. When client after client exclaimed, "Wow, you're reasonable!" as they booked her, she knew her rates were fair but still low enough to give her an edge.
- Get a head start. Before you retire, use weekends and summers to research industries, create marketing materials, look for funding, and test your ideas. Phyllis Rosenfield spent 10 years documenting stories and images of human rights abuse survivors for an exhibit called the Survivor Project while she was an elementary teacher in Sonoma County, California. "I spent a certain amount of time and money seeing how far the project could go," she says. Ultimately, interest from a funder in expanding the project's resources pushed her to retire early from teaching and become the organization's executive director full time.
Samantha Stainburn writes about business and education for a variety of national publications.
