BellaOnline Forums Relationships Married No Kids Career/Job Suggestions Needed

Glad to help & glad to see so many others chiming in!

As far as freelance work, it took me about a year to grow that into a viable business. If it's something that suits you, go for it!

In the meantime, I've come up with a few ideas...

Selling + working with kids = Junior Achievement. If the Dallas area is like most, they're likely hiring Program Managers, who use sales skills to get their programs into schools which help kids learn about business in grade appropriate ways. PM's also use sales skills to get business executives to volunteer in classrooms. It's the program plus the mentor that makes this non-profit awesome.

Independent bookselling - if you like the idea of treasure hunting & then marketing books, you could turn a profit. I know someone who makes his living from this. Again, that could take a bit to get off the ground.

The textbook sales was a great suggestion, btw.

You could become an independent sales rep. for just about anything, or anyone. For instance, I pay a few I.C.'s 10% if they set up a regular coaching client, or paid speaking engagement for me.

BTW, if I'm ever in Dallas again, I HAVE to go back to Breadwinners... Bannabread French Toast is all kinds of Yum.

This hasn't come up, but have you thought of banking? The industry is primarily sales orientated and many of the bigger banks not only offer a decent salary, but great incentive pay for meeting your goals.

What about being a sales rep for a publishing company? I know my publisher has a whole department just for that purpose. It requires a lot of traveling, and you might be able to get some freelance travel writing done on a few side trips!

Or maybe you could retrain to be a travel agent? I don't know much about that, but a woman I worked with on an article about her child free travel agency led a lot of tours herself and took trips to "check out" the places she recommended to her clients. Maybe that would suit you?

Kim Kenney
MNK Editor

WOW these are SUCH great ideas!!! I'm printing each post to keep at my desk so I can do some research on each one -- it's worth it!

I'm SO glad I asked!!! You all are awesome.

Angela P, if you were interested, you might also want to consider event planning, like conferences. There is usually a need for organizational and interpersonal skills, and often a technical writing aspect for brochures and other presentation/marketing materials. Not exactly sales, but might work for the sorts of transferable skills you have. I am interviewing for such a position, and was surprised how many overlaps there are with my training/tech writing experience and skills.

Angela, I'm with Selkie on this one. I ran a music agency that specialized in weddings and special events (chamber music, jazz combos) for seven years. The higher-end event planners I worked with seemed to making some serious bank!

I have a happy update to my original post: I got a new job that I start next week.

Still in sales, I'll be selling for a company who patented a product (a technology) that measures blood flow in MRI scans.

Prayers were answered in that I broke into medical sales.

The reason I followed up in this post is because I really appreciated everyone who gave suggestions. Publishing, writing, freelancing, etc. Indeed, I pulled your posts in the last month when push came to shove and I needed to move. I decided to make the push into either pharmaceutical or medical sales, and I had many interviews -- some lasted over two hours, some wanted 3-4 rounds, and some wanted me to fly to their headquarters. Breaking into pharma/medical is an endeavor all its own, so if anyone needs help, I'll help ya.

Anyway, thanks to the CF group -- you provided so many ideas. This was a great place to turn to for ideas.

*hugs*

Congratulations! Good luck in your new career!

That's fantastic Angela! Congratulations!!

Woohoo! Congrats, Angela!