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| The Basics | Dream jobs -- and how to get one
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Pitcher for Barry Bonds. Lego artist. Jeweler to the stars. What does it take to land a job that doesnt feel like work? Here are 9 who did it, plus a guide to follow your own fantasy.
By Kiplinger
Let it be known that all the people on these pages love their work. Whats more, youd love their work. When theyre on the job, theyre surrounded by cheering baseball fans, Hollywood stars or the great outdoors. Whats not to like?
Of course, most of us dont actually expect to spend our work lives pitching to major leaguers, draping Gwyneth Paltrow with diamonds or living year-round in a national park. But we can all learn a thing or two about how the people who do these and other to-die-for jobs find themselves in such enviable positions.
Yes, good fortune plays a part. But people who love their work dont just sit around, waiting to get lucky. They hone their talents. Go back to school. Take a pay cut. Sometimes they happen to be in the right place to take advantage of an opportunity. More often, however, they take the initiative to put themselves in the right place so they can create their own opportunities. (Here's how you can do it.)
Quick links to dream jobs:
John Yandle, batting-practice pitcher for the San Francisco Giants
Joe Garden, staff writer for the humor magazine The Onion
Carol Brodie, who makes sure Harry Winston diamonds are seen on the right necks
Scott Kelliher, hitting the road with his band L.P.
Dan Bennett, master builder at Legoland theme park
Kurt Franz, practicing medicine at Yellowstone National Park
Frank Tursi, patrolling the coastal waters of North Carolina
David Gold, tornado-chaser and tour guide for the brave
Harriet Siew, tester, sampler and editor of recipes for The Food Network
A major league fantasy
For John Yandle, a typical workday means going one-on-one in the batting cage with San Francisco Giants home-run slugger Barry Bonds. "Sometimes Ill throw Barry four pitches, and hell crush them," says the part-time batting-practice pitcher. "Well know hes right on." At other times, "if he wants to work on a pitch or two, hell spend a half-hour in the cage."
"Weve built a great relationship," says Bonds. "I have a tendency to work on things I dont do well, and John can throw all the pitches I need to perform as best I can."
Yandle, 49, yearned to be in the big leagues from the day he first saw Willie Mays play with the Giants. After college, he pitched in the minors for five years, first for the San Diego Padres and then for the California Angels. But when it became clear he wasnt going to crack "the show," he took up a career selling commercial real estate.
Then, in 1985, Yandle dropped by Candlestick Park to meet a friend who was a player. A Giants coach mentioned that the team needed a part-time batting-practice pitcher. Yandle jumped at the chance and has returned every season since.
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Yandle owes his big break to being a southpaw. Team coaches usually handle batting-practice duties, but when none of them happens to be left-handed, teams occasionally turn to outsiders. Of course, it helps that at top speed Yandle can still pitch a ball at more than 80 mph, and he throws a full range of curve balls, change-ups and sliders in the batting cage -- "all the pitches youd see in a game situation," says Bonds. When hes warming up players on the field, he concentrates on fast balls at three-fourths speed from 50 feet out (compared with 60 feet in a regular game). "I have to be accurate," he says. "The harder Im hit, the better Im doing."
Yandles pitching gig lasts about a hundred days each year, and he throws as many as 300 balls a game if the opposing team is fielding a left-handed pitcher. A sales manager by day at Cornish & Carey Commercial, in Santa Clara, Calif., he typically leaves his desk at 4 p.m. to go to SBC Park for home games. When he and the Giants hit the road, he totes his laptop and cell phone and plugs in at affiliates of his firm. Bonds, for one, appreciates having him along. "Its definitely an advantage for a left-handed batter like me to hit batting practice off a left-handed pitcher," he says.
As a nonstaff batting-practice pitcher, Yandle earns only about $100 a day (most of which he donates to charity), plus meals, lodging and travel expenses. Yandles wife, Heather, and their two young sons often get to accompany him on road trips. But one of his biggest rewards is introducing his sons Jackson, 4, and Nicholas, 2, to the players: "Watching their excitement is like reliving my childhood."
In it for the laughs
A self-described slacker, Joe Garden dropped out of college, clerked in a liquor store and spent years working as a temp. When he finally landed full-time employment, relative fame came, too.
Garden, 33, writes for the Onion, the newspaper parody noted for skewer-sharp satire and deadpan headlines (his personal favorite, about an obscure real-life band: "37 Record Store Clerks Feared Dead in Yo La Tengo Concert Disaster"). One of six writers on the New York City-based editorial staff, Garden contributes dozens of ideas and several articles a week. He travels the college lecture circuit and will appear with colleagues in the upcoming Onion Untitled Sketch Comedy Movie.
Garden -- who describes his career path as an "unusual trajectory" -- got his start writing signs for a liquor store in Madison, Wis., where he worked while attending the University of Wisconsin ("I was a terrible student," he says). Eventually, the signs became "90% jokes and 10% information. They had mostly nothing to do with liquor." Dan Vebber, who was editor of the Onion at the time, noticed the signs and offered to pay Garden $5 for every article he contributed to the paper, then based in Madison.
A few years later, Garden moved to Chicago, where he worked as a temp and sneaked time at his desk for free-lance work ("I was a terrible secretary," he recalls). When Onion writers set up shop in New York in 2001, Garden (by that time earning half-salary as an Onion contributor) asked to come along. "I wanted to do something that was more commensurate with my skill set, which was screwing around."
Now he makes "a decent living" -- over $50,000 -- writing as a clueless gossip columnist and a blue-collar blowhard. Once he penned an Op-Ed piece in the voice of a squirrel. Of course, even great jobs arent all fun and games. "The same people are at every meeting," says Garden. "You bond, but at the same time you drive one another crazy." Brain freeze is another job hazard, he says, especially when "youre really stretching to put an issue together, and you cant seem to make it work."
Based on Gardens experience, budding journalists with passion, persistence and a willingness to work for peanuts can be successful by following an offbeat career path. Says Garden, "I never thought I would be paid to jot down funny ideas."
Queen of diamonds
For the life of her, Carol Brodie cant think of anything she doesnt like about her work. As communications director for Harry Winston, the jeweler famous for lending diamonds to Oscar hopefuls, Brodie makes sure Harry Winston jewelry bedecks celebrity bosoms, ears and wrists, and travels the requisite red carpets. She frequents A-list parties on both coasts, dishes about diamonds on TV and comes to work every day dripping with company rocks.
A decade ago, Brodie, 41, parlayed a background in marketing, public relations and fashion into a job as spokeswoman for the Diamond Information Center, sponsored by the DeBeers company. Three years later, Ronald Winston (Harrys son) recruited her to raise the companys profile, along with her own. "I wanted a TV career and had experience working with celebrities and fashion designers," says Brodie. "Ronald Winston doesnt go on camera or get his photo taken, so it was a perfect marriage."
Like any good marriage, its also hard work, says Brodie. After all, "you have to earn the trust and loyalty of superstars, which isnt something that happens overnight."
Brodie is expected to put the glitter on the glitterati by lending out jewelry to the stars on movie sets and TV shows and at awards ceremonies. Harry Winston diamonds have adorned Kate Hudsons neck in the movie "How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days"; Whoopi Goldbergs dcolletage (to the tune of $41 million) on Oscar night; and Sarah Jessica Parkers ring finger on "Sex and the City." During the most recent Oscar season, Harry Winston jewels showed up on Jada Pinkett Smith, Diane Lane and Sting -- who wore a single diamond stud.
Stars dont actually bum the stuff themselves; they come to Brodie through intermediaries, such as the fashion designers who are dressing them. Ideally, the result is so dazzling that, after the ball, the client springs for the glass slipper. Brodie helped Gwyneth Paltrow choose jewelry to wear the night she accepted her Best Actress Oscar for "Shakespeare in Love." "Afterward, she came to one of the parties holding her Oscar, and there were tears in her eyes," says Brodie. "She told me, My daddys buying me this necklace." Thats job satisfaction.
Continued on Page 2
How to turn the job of your dreams into reality
-- Contributing to this article: Jane Bennett Clark, Kimberly Lankford, Sean Oneill, Robert Otterbourg And Catherine Siskos, Elizabeth Kountze 2004, The Kiplinger Washington Editors, Inc.
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