0816_TOEFL-Test-and-Score-Manual-1997

10 ● 201 Great Ideas for Your Small Business
GREAT
Say Goodbye to Corporate Life
People leave their corporate jobs to start small businesses
for all sorts of reasons, financial and emotional.
IDEA
Liz Clarke was working for IBM as an organizational consultant when
her son, Dana, died in 1994. To rebuild her life after his traumatic death,
she moved to South Strafford Village, a tiny town in south central Vermont.
Clarke purchased a couple of extra acres adjacent to her home, cleared the
brush, and planted raspberries, blueberries, and currants.
Then, with scientific precision, she taught herself how to make jam,
jellies, and coulis (a super-refined jelly). In the fall of 2010, she began selling
U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) fancy-grade products under the
Morrill Mountain Fruit Farm brand.
Clarke told me that digging in the dirt, driving a tractor, and picking
berries cleared her mind. Slowly, she felt happier and brighter.
Across the country, Adam Dawson leveraged his experience as an
investigative reporter into a successful small business. Dawson spent 12
years as an aggressive investigative reporter for the Daily News and the
Orange County Register. His beat was white-collar crime, and he was relentlessly
competitive. (I know because we battled it out covering federal court
stories every day when I was a reporter for the Los Angeles Times.)
By the time Dawson was in his 40s, the newspaper industry was faltering
and he was ready for a change.
“I could buy a toy like a sports car, have an affair, or reinvent my job,”
said Dawson. “I couldn’t afford to buy a toy and my wife wouldn’t let me
have an affair, so I thought about what else I could do with the skills I had.”
The attorneys and cops he worked with every day encouraged him to
become a private investigator. Intrigued, Dawson looked into what it would
take to obtain a license. He learned he needed 6,000 hours of investigative
experience to qualify. Luckily, the director of the state licensing agency
granted him credit for his many years of investigative reporting.
In 1989, Dawson passed a state exam and has since parlayed his reporting
skills into a lucrative PI business based out of his Santa Monica, California, home.
He avoids marital cases (“too emotional”) and hires other investigators
to handle surveillance. Mostly, he focuses on what he did as a reporter:
unraveling complex frauds and following the money trail. Still passionate