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Former high-tech employees get creative to stay in Bozeman

Robin Béquet never thought she would love a machine.

But since she started her own caramel-making business, Béquet Confections, she has learned to love the refurbished 1960s-vintage candy wrapper machine that takes each caramel and carefully wraps it in cellophane.

By KAYLEY MENDENHALL Chronicle Staff Writer

Two years ago, caramel-making was nothing more than a hobby for her. But, after Béquet was laid off from ILX Lightwave in July 2001, she changed the course of her career.

Béquet’s story is like that of many former employees of technology companies in town who have found ways to stay in the area after layoffs by changing career direction or starting a new business.

She was vice president of worldwide sales at ILX Lightwave for three years and worked in distribution for WL Gore and Associates, the maker of Goretex, for 15 years before that in Flagstaff, Ariz.

After being laid off from ILX, "I spent two months playing with my children," she said. "Then I started thinking, ‘if I was going to start a company what would I start?’"

She had been making caramels for her family and to give as gifts for a few years and knew it was something she did well. With a background in sales, marketing and distribution, Béquet knew a successful business would have to be based on the quality of the product.

Now, almost a year later, 130 retail outlets — from Denver to Northern California, through Washington, Idaho and Montana — sell Béquet Gourmet Caramels. She makes between 1,000 and 2,000 pieces of caramel a day with the help of her dad, Ray Béquet, her husband and her 11-year-old daughter.

"I have no aspirations to be a Hershey," she said. "I want to keep it a nice, family-made product."

Béquet is one of many former ILX employees who have landed softly on their feet.

The tech-firm that makes production equipment for companies who produce fiber-optic components has gone through five rounds of layoffs in the past 18 months as the market for its equipment has continued to decline.

The company has gone from nearly 300 worldwide employees to 64 — leaving a lot of highly trained workers without jobs.

"I think we hired a lot of great employees. Some are entrepreneurial in spirit," said Larry Johnson, founder and CEO of ILX. "Many more of them are just very talented people who have, relatively quickly, joined other companies."

Lucian Hand, a former sales engineer for ILX, found another job in Bozeman where his background in fiber optics is appropriate training.

Hand has been hired by AdvR, a Bozeman company that develops parts for lasers. He said while he was still at ILX, he had worked closely with one of AdvR’s lead scientists. Since he started there, another former ILX engineer was also hired by AdvR.

"There’s a good deal of networking that goes on," Hand said. "Every time ILX does a layoff there is usually an informal get-together at Ale Works. The newly laid off are commiserated by those of us who were laid off and bounced back."

John Walsh is one of those "newly laid off." He got the news Oct. 24, although he was actually finishing up work with the company in his position as vice president and manager of the Bozeman operation this past week.

When he’s through at ILX, Walsh has a plan to take some of the product ideas he has had for years to market.

"Basically in the past four or five years, I’ve had lots of design ideas and haven’t been able to get to them because of my regular job," he said. "I’m looking forward to the next phase of my career and to see if they can be successful.

"I’m turning my passion into my career," Walsh said. "Developing products and bringing them to market."

His inventions range from a home heating system to a welder for jewelry making and products for deaf people. The invention bug runs in his blood.

"When I was in high school, I developed products that I sold to my neighbors and friends of my parents — little electronic insect control devices," Walsh said. "I have a couple of patents on other products I’ve developed as well."

He plans to work out of a lab he has set up in his home next to his wife’s jewelry studio. If all goes well and he ends up hiring people to help with his new business, Walsh said it will add to an economic comeback.

Plus, this way, he gets to stay in Bozeman.

"You couldn’t drag me away from Bozeman," Walsh said. "It took us 10 years to get here."

Kayley Mendenhall is at [email protected]

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It takes persistence, hard work to change career

By Shirleen Holt
Seattle Times business reporter

The books scream from the self-help section: "Do What You Love and the Money Will Follow" and "Change Your Career, Change Your Life."

The messages are inspiring, but those who have tried to start a new career in midlife, or simply advance in the career they’ve got, know that inspiration can sour after about the fourth fruitless phone call.

That’s when they give up.

Big mistake, experts say.

"We want a McSolution," said Curt Rosengren, a Seattle career coach who calls himself a "passion catalyst."

"Drive up to the window and get our new career. It doesn’t usually happen that way."

Rosengren, who helps people make the leap from jobs they hate to careers they love, said those who succeed are willing to work for what they want, and they’re patient.

Their job hunt is active, not passive. It’s rife with rejection. It’s time-consuming. It takes resilience and a large dose of self-confidence.

Some career changers take the high-volume approach — targeting a list of companies, sending letters of introduction and asking for as many meetings as they can get.

Those with the luxury of time narrow their searches to favorite companies and persist until a position opens up. Or they move to another part of the country where the opportunities may be better.

Some simply create the jobs they want by working for themselves.

All make sacrifices, whether it’s taking a huge cut in pay, accepting a lower-level position to get in the door, or working two jobs to cover the bills during the transition.

"The first thing," Rosengren said, "is to get over that notion that it needs to be a flip of the switch."

Mining to muslin

Cheryl Barragar was 51, with no college degree and little work experience outside of a Centralia coal-mining company, where she’d been a payroll manager for 24 years.

How would she persuade her dream employer, in this case an upscale apparel company, to hire her?

She had no clue when she set her sights on Blue Willi’s, a Danish manufacturer of classic casuals in natural fabrics (think Eddie Bauer blond).

Blue Willi’s U.S. headquarters in Lacey had only 10 employees in 1999. The company wasn’t desperate for workers, let alone a middle-aged career changer.

But its size made it easier for Barragar to get a personal appointment with the chief executive.

"We had just a good chat," said Barragar, now 55, who lives in Olympia.

She talked to the CEO about the skills she knew would transfer from her job at the Centralia Mining Co. She could organize with military efficiency; she was good with people.

The meeting got her a part-time job as an independent sales rep. To get into the company, she volunteered for projects, in some cases without pay. She helped with inventory, worked warehouse sales, planned the annual picnic.

When executives decided to hold a three-day convention for buyers, they asked Barragar to organize it.

It took Barragar four years to get where she is today, working full time as a Blue Willi’s sales rep and events planner. Time hasn’t blunted her ambition. As the company rolls out more "concept stores" like the one in Bellevue Square, she hopes she can be involved in opening them.

"I feel like there’s a whole future ahead of me."

His money or his life

David Grout was a good salesman. He sold cars, then houses, then mortgages. Some years he earned as much as $240,000.

Grout, who lived in Edmonds with his wife and two children, also woke each day sick to his stomach.

"I hated what I’d been doing for the last 20 years. It literally made me ill."

In his mid-40s, the mortgage broker decided to divorce the part of his career he hated — selling — and keep the parts he liked: analyzing transactions, making deals.

He was leafing through a book on careers when he found his new calling: professional guardianship. It’s a low-profile industry that handles the affairs of the elderly or incapacitated, including their property. He wouldn’t have to prospect for clients, the courts would appoint them.

Grout had no contacts in the industry except for a list of guardianship firms that were registered in Washington. He started calling companies on the list.

Those executives who agreed to meet with him were polite, but discouraging. He didn’t have any background in social work or psychology, which was the typical path for most in the profession.

He kept calling.

"I just had to do it until I was exhausted."

One Seattle company he’d been talking to, the nonprofit Partners in Care, saw something in him that others didn’t. He may not have been a social worker, but he knew better than most how to handle big-ticket property like cars and houses.

He agreed to join as a property manager, someone who would handle cars, houses and other tangible assets. He took a big cut in pay. Within six months the company had set up a formal property department, putting Grout in charge of real estate. Five years after he was hired, the company is under new ownership and Grout, now 48, is a senior manager.

"I’m never going to be rich here," he said. "But I’m a happy camper."

‘This is going to be work’

Jon Schalkle had never been unemployed, never even written a résumé, when he decided to switch careers earlier this year.

Frustrated by the income limitations of retail (he worked at an auto-accessories store), the 35-year-old Renton man wanted to be a manufacturer’s rep, where he could earn commissions.

If he thought the shift would be easy, his career coach, Tom Washington, quickly set him straight. He’d have to treat the job search like a job.

"I was like, ‘God, this is going to be a lot of work,’ " Schalkle recalled. "I just want someone to tell me what my next job is."

He compiled a list of companies he wanted to work for, then he started studying. (He largely ignored help-wanted ads — there would be too much competition from more-experienced candidates.) He navigated the companies’ Web sites, learned who the officers were, found out who was responsible for what department.

"I would try to skip over human-resource departments because they’d just try to weed you out," he said.

He sent cover letters introducing himself. He tossed in a few sentences about the company to show that he’d done his homework and explain why his skills — his retail knowledge, his natural sales ability — might be a good match.

He’d give the company a week, then follow up with a phone call asking for a meeting.

Half the time, he got one.

"I wanted them to see me. First impressions are important, and if people can see you they’re going to remember you."

Schalkle’s persistence paid off. An Australian truck-accessory manufacturer, Air Locker, hadn’t planned on hiring a Seattle-based sales manager, but after talking to Schalkle, it decided to create a job for him.

"My approaching them, telling what I could do for them, convinced them to give me a shot."

Heating up a hobby

When the technology sector crashed, so did Betsy Rogers’ public-relations business. The 39-year-old Seattle woman wasn’t exactly grieving. She’d gotten tired of writing press releases touting "b-to-b enterprise solutions," and trying to get media coverage from reporters who were suddenly cool to the high-tech hype.

She wanted to do what she saw on the "The Great Chefs of the World" every weekend: She wanted to cook.

Because she was used to serving clients rather than restaurant customers, she decided to become a personal chef, a culinary niche that complemented her background. Personal chefs, which Rogers believes will soon be as common as house cleaners, cook meals in their clients’ homes, often preparing several dishes to freeze.

With a loan from her parents (the "Ray and Jay Rogers Scholarship Foundation," as she calls it), Rogers enrolled in personal-chef school in Arizona.

She built her business, called Ovens to Betsy, slowly, getting clients by handing out samples of burritos and vegetarian chili at Seattle Fitness, or giving discount coupons to people who referred others. She networked at the Women Business Owners Association and Business Networking International. She got a listing on hireachef.com.

She also saw her once-handsome income drop by half, forcing her and her husband, Auburn high-school teacher Matt Hagen, to make some lifestyle adjustments. They put themselves on a tight budget and stopped going out to dinner. Rogers took a part-time job at The Bon Marché and does some free-lance writing on the side.

"I was going to be fully booked by March," she said. "That hasn’t happened. You’ve just got to get more realistic."

Shirleen Holt: 206-464-8316 or [email protected].

Copyright © 2002 The Seattle Times Company

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