Lemonade Makers: The Lawn Painters

Southern California was a greener, lusher place before the downturn. Homeowners worked to keep their lawns verdant—but with recession came thousands of foreclosures, and acres of brown grass. Last summer, T.J. Davis, who is retired from the fire department, and his brother-in-law, Mike Patino, who had been laid off, saw a news story about a company in drought-plagued Northern California that painted dry lawns using an eco-sensitive dye. In October, they launched Green Genie Lawn Service in Winchester, Calif. Davis talked to Recessionwire about the opportunity they saw in making grass greener for 25 cents a square foot.

What did it take to start this up?
It wasn’t a cheap investment. We spent almost $9,000. We bought a tank for $2,500 and a trailer we got through Craigslist. The dye itself is $99 a gallon and comes in two-and-a-half gallon containers, so if you want to buy several of them, it’s expensive…

Writing a Résumé for Your Next Career

This year, the news has been dominated by job loss news and unemployment statistics. (Well, that and Susan Boyle.) But an interesting trend and bright spot is emerging amidst all of this turmoil: Some workers are taking the time between jobs to re-evaluate their lives in terms of purpose and direction. Many have been stuck in careers that gave them little to no internal satisfaction or reward; instead of standing around clutching their pink slips, they are using this opportunity to reinvent themselves. (Read our recent story Exquisite Reinvention.)

And once you figure out what you want to do? It’s time to officially launch “You, Version 2.0,” repositioning yourself career-wise. Many people dread overhauling their résumés, but it’s especially important to do so thoughtfully if you’re trying to leap into a new field. You need to successfully convey the skills, abilities and expertise that you bring from your old line of work. Here are some guidelines to follow…

Out on the Street: The Hardest Yard

Joe the Trader chronicles his experiences with life after Wall Street.

Sports is full of clichés about scoring or winning, and fans and analysts are obsessed with the notion of being clutch. In baseball the relief pitcher who comes in the ninth inning to seal the victory is the closer. In football quarterbacks are measured by their ability to negotiate the last twenty yards and how well they can guide their team in the last two minutes of a game. In soccer the forward who can score the goals is called a finisher.

I have never been any of those.

In soccer I played midfield and when I played rugby I was the fullback, the last line of defense.

The 5 Questions You Should Ask an Interviewer

Trust me: it’s different now. In this economy, where unemployment is high and you have many more job seekers than jobs, you can’t afford to improvise on the interview. So yes, if you got called in to talk about a position, be psyched. But then knuckle down and do some prep work.

Find out as much as you can about the position you’re interviewing for, how the process will go, and who will be interviewing you. Research the people you’ll be talking to (use Google, LinkedIn, Facebook and real-life contacts) so you have common ground to discuss, and check out the company and the competition.

Wait, you’re not done yet. You still have to ace the interview. These five questions will pull you ahead of the pack:…

How a Banker Reinvented Herself

When I first met Vivian Chen, she was an investment banker. She had spent eight years working her way up the ranks to vice president. She had become an expert in her area of coverage, health care. Her staff numbered 100. And she had a global purview.

And then Vivian became one of the many casualties of the financial crisis. That’s when she came to see me.

I had been working in the public relations industry, with a focus on corporate communications. Since the recession began, I had also started to feel somewhat of a career coach, with so many friends of friends aspiring to move into PR. I found myself conducting informational interviews on a regular basis. Most of them were fairly standard introductory conversations, and I usually never heard from them again…

From Dual Income to No Income

When couples get hitched they agree, often in front of large audiences, to support each other through the thick and thin. It’s well understood that there will be times when one of the partners in the union will need a bit of propping up. But what happens when both partners need a boost? As the nation continues to wade through waves of unemployment, many households are going from two regular paychecks to no paychecks at all, reports Joann Lublin in The Wall Street Journal.

Talk about putting a strain on a marriage. In April, the national unemployment rate continued its climb to 8.9 percent as the number of jobless Americans went from 563,000 to 13.7 million according to the National Bureau of Labor Statistics. …

White Collar Day Laborers (Video)

Remember the days when you practically had to fight off recruiters? The relentless calls, the wooing lunches, the promises of huge salary jumps?

These days white-collar jobs are a lot harder to come by. They’re so scarce, in fact, that some workers have taken to the streets.

Lemonade Maker: Ken Gullette, Online Martial Arts Master

Ken Gullette, 56
Silvis, Illinois

In April 2008, after more than two decades in media and communications, Ken Gullette was laid off from his job at the University of South Florida. He decided to try turning his small side business—shooting and selling martial arts DVDs online—into a full-fledged company. Within several weeks, he had launched Internal Fighting Arts, a website that provides long-distance instruction in Chen Tai Chi, Hsing-I Chuan and Baguazhang to subscribers around the world.

You launched your business on the Fourth of July?
It was my metaphor for being independent of the man. The other day on IM one of my friends typed, “Oh shit, tomorrow’s Monday.” I thought, Yeah, tomorrow I get to work harder! When Friday comes I’m almost disappointed…

The Zen of Job Hunting

Desperately seeking employment? Spending hours on job sites, with not an offer in sight?

“Give up,” writes Peter Bregman over at HarvardBusiness.org. “Not completely. But mostly. Stop trying so hard.”

We’re totally on board with this idea. Yes, it’s a tough job market. Yes, it’s important to be looking after your career. But that doesn’t mean obsessing over your resume, growing pale and wan because you spend hours each day scouring the internet for openings.

You can get burnt out just as easily job hunting as you can on the job, generate tons of stress and waste acres of time that you could be using to network, explore other opportunities, or simply enjoy your life while you’ve got it. Indulge in your passions, or test out activities you’ve always wanted to try. Broaden your horizons–you never know what new doors will open as a result.

But back to job hunting. Bregman, C.E.O. of Bregman Partners, a global leadership development and change management firm, offers these rules:

Should I Trade My White Collar for Blue?

After reading Matthew B. Crawford’s sometimes cantankerous essay in defense of his blue-collar profession in Sunday’s New York Times Magazine, I felt inspired. Crawford described how he’d attempted with valor the white-collar route – advanced degrees, prestigious appointments – but resolved that for him, the more rewarding work came through his hands. So he’d become a high-end motorcycle repair specialist.

As Crawford notes, white-collar jobs are not exactly where it’s at right now. Even the Princeton economist Alan Blinder has lined up behind tradesman jobs, Crawford notes, because, “‘You can’t hammer a nail over the Internet.’ Nor can the Indians fix your car. Because they are in India.”

His story made me want to start that lamp-making business I’ve fantasized about. I began researching, hastily Googling – what are the margins? where could I sell them? where could I get low-cost materials? – but concluded that the financial motive wasn’t there for me…