Bracing for Re-Entry: A Mom Goes Back To Work After 21 Years at Home

Mary Lynn Kummerer credits a bad case of the chicken pox for giving her a future in accounting. While she was home sick with the virus for a few weeks during Kindergarten, her older brother, then a high school student, spent some time teaching her basic math skills while she recovered. “I guess he figured he had a captive audience,” Mary Lynn chuckled during a phone interview. But her knack for numbers didn’t disappear when the last of her chicken pox scars faded, and she’s been able to build an amazing career as a bookkeeper even after a whopping twenty-one year absence from the work force. (Twenty-one years and seven days, Mary Lynn noted – but who’s counting?)

Mary Lynn’s story is remarkable because of this long absence and the triumph over adversity that allowed her to re-enter the workforce after so many years. We here at Professional Detours are very aware of the difficult decisions working families – particularly moms – must make, not the least of which is whether or not to stay home with the kids. Whether you’ve opted out, opted in, or are trying to decide between the two, we hope that Mary Lynn’s story gives you some insight into what “opting out” really means.

Mary Lynn got her feet wet by becoming the Treasurer of her school’s chapter of Junior Achievement, took her first clerical class as a senior in high school. Originally, she had wanted to be a teacher, but when she learned how much math was involved in accounting, she knew she’d found her calling. “I didn't know if I wanted to get married or not,” she said. “I was the worst person in the class when it came to typing, but whenever we did anything that involved math, everybody came to me for help. Discounts and percentages were especially confusing to the rest of the class.”

She did end up getting married, but not right after high school. In the meantime, she went to college and obtained a degree in Business Administration. During her senior year, she was hired by a professor who also worked at an electrical products distributor. “[He]hired somebody from one of his classes every year to help get ready for the audit, so it was only supposed to be a temp job, but when I graduated in June I didn’t have another job lined up. So they made me an accounts payable clerk.” After a while, the young and inexperienced payroll clerk stopped paying the health insurance premiums, so she and Mary Lynn switched jobs.

By then, Mary Lynn had gotten married, and in 1982, while expecting her first child, she got laid off when the company downsized. “I got unemployment for getting laid off,” she recalled, “and they sent me to a job interview. I was, like, five months pregnant, and I wore the shirt that made me look the biggest, and the guy kept looking at me, and eventually he asked, ‘Are you planning on…starting a family?” Mary Lynn laughed at the memory. “Needless to say, I didn’t get the job.”

But she wasn’t really looking to go back to work at the time anyway. Her staying home with the kids was a foregone conclusion. “We had talked about it,” Mary Lynn told me, “and we decided that if I did continue to work, any money I did make would basically go to daycare, and it just happened that I got laid off on St. Patrick’s day of 1982 and then [my daughter] was born in August.”

Mary Lynn had two daughters and, as they grew, she got involved in their school activities. They were heavily involved in the Girl Scouts, and Mary Lynn was one of three troop leaders and was the recruiter for the elementary school and, later, the junior high and high schools her daughters attended. “I was in charge of all the bookkeeping, at least for our troop. Things didn’t really change, we didn’t have much money so we were always looking for something cheap to do,” she laughed.

Her girls grew up and went to college, and Mary Lynn was happily beginning to look forward to her retirement years, when suddenly, her husband of more than 23 dropped a bombshell: he was moving out and wanted a divorce. Devastated and terrified, Mary Lynn had no choice. “I hadn’t worked for twenty-one years and seven days…I was applying for different jobs and sending my resume out, and I wasn’t getting anything back.” So she took a job at a big-box discount retail store while she continued applying for every bookkeeping and accounting job she could find.

“I also called the University and they had this women’s program that would help homemakers get jobs, but I found out I didn’t qualify because I lived [just across the state line]. But they did put me in touch with a program called WIA, that helped people who were displaced or had lost their jobs and needed retraining.” The WIA is actually a federal program, and it stands for the Workforce Investment Act (click here for a map with links to the WIA programs in each state). Through this program, she was able to take some skills tests and enroll in a placement program. Mary Lynn did well on the math section of the test “until I got to the question where it asked you to divide fractions, and I totally…wow. I took the rest of the test, and I went back and I actually figured it out. It went as high as the 12^th grade level, and they didn’t even finish grading it because I’d already reached the maximum score. When I got the results, I called my mom and I said, ‘I’ve got a brain, and it still works!’”

Mary Lynn also took some classes at the community college to update her skills. She learned Quickbooks and Peachtree, but “What they teach you in those classes can’t prepare you because there is so much more. They just give you a brief overview, but then you can customize it as much as you want.” The technology was the most difficult part of seeking a new job after spending so long as a stay at home mom. “When I was in college, our computer classes, you had to use punch cards. Going to MS Word and Excel, it was so demanding.” But now that she’s mastered it, she uses it for everything. “When things happen, I got right to the computer and make my spreadsheets about what I need to do,” she said, recounting how she used Excel to keep track of her mother and stepfather’s estate after they passed away in 2009.

Mary Lynn got her lucky break when her current boss, the owner of a small engineering and IT support firm, took a chance. “He took a big chance,” Mary Lynn admits, by hiring someone who had been out of the workforce for many years and whose technological skills were still developing. “He liked the fact that I had an accounting degree.” And he was willing to put in a little time for on-the-job training for an employee he felt would be loyal and committed. “If I needed help, [my boss] would say, ‘Ok, do this, do that.’ He would show me how to do it.” And the risk seems to have paid off for them both – she’s been the office manager at her current company for over four years now.

Getting a job in a field she enjoys has been crucial to Mary Lynn’s confidence as well as her financial independence. A little while after getting her current job, “one of our customers was having a problem with Quickbooks,” she recalled. “My boss said, ‘Talk to Mary Lynn, she knows everything about Quickbooks!’ It made me feel good that I could conquer that and that I could succeed at it.’”

Mary Lynn advises anyone re-entering the workforce after a long hiatus to look into any free programs offered by your state or local governments. She also checked into the low-fee courses at her local community college. And above all, don’t give up. “If I can do it,” she said, “anyone can do it!”

Schedule Change

Greetings, Detourists! As you may have noticed, there was no update yesterday, thanks to a vicious and late-breaking stomach virus that mercilessly struck one of our writers. Instead, we'll be updating on Monday with the story of a stay-at-home Mom who went back to work after a twenty-one year absence. How did she do it? Find out Monday!

Additionally, after some market research and deep introspection, we've decided to move our feature article updates to Mondays instead of Fridays. So as of April 25, check in with us at the beginning of each week, or follow us on Facebook or Twitter to get all our updates as they happen.

"Why, Grampa?" How One Question Inspired a Recycling Revolution

If you’ve ever changed the oil in your car, you know what a mess the old used filter is. Some of the dirty oil stays inside it no matter how hard you try to drain it, and it can’t be recycled – all the steel trapped inside is contaminated and therefore unusable. There really isn’t anything useful to do with a used oil filter, so we have no choice but to haul them off to landfills – and we do this in mass quantities. Over 500 million oil filters are manufactured in the U.S. each year, comprised of 150,000 tons of steel and 18 million gallons of oil. That’s a lot of resources to throw away, but we really don’t have a choice – except that now, thanks to Jerry McRae, we do.

Round about 1993, Jerry McRae took his grandson on a business trip to a processing plant where used motor oil was being recycled. As the younger McRae looked out over the sea of used oil filters piled up around the plant, he innocently asked his grandfather what would happen after the oil was drained out. Jerry explained that they would go to the landfill, and his grandson was shocked and dismayed. “Why don’t they just sell that steel to a scrap dealer?” he asked.

“I said, well, it’s kind of complicated,” Jerry told me in a phone interview, “and I went into detail on telling him why it couldn’t be done. But the more I talked, the more I convinced myself that, well, it could be done. So I said to myself, Jerry, you’re a furnace builder, you know how to do this. And so I started on a design.” Jerry had an idea, but it would take two pivotal client relationships and an air sickness bag to turn it into a prototype worthy of a federal patent application.

Jerry’s career had already spanned four decades in the combustion industry, starting in 1957 with his first job at a refractory. “If you look [refractory] up in the dictionary, it means stubborn. These are products that are stubborn to burn, they do not burn up, so they’re used to line furnaces. I was totally taken in by that. The guy that hired me said, “Jerry if you get involved in this company, you will never leave it for the rest of your life. Well, I’ve never left the industry, and I’ve always been fascinated with furnaces and fire.” Jerry worked for that company for twelve years, then started his own business as a manufacturer and distributor of, among other things, furnaces for the disposal of medical waste.

In 1982, during the “Oil Patch Crash” that devastated Texas’ industrial economy, ten of Jerry’s clients with contracts totaling nearly ten million dollars declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy, and Jerry closed up shop. He started a new company repairing furnace systems, then founded his current business, McRae Combustion, in 1990. It was this company, which sought to manufacture thermal equipment that would clean up the environment, like Jerry’s patented medical waste incinerator, which would burn medical waste (known as "Red Bag Waste") and used the clean heat generated by the incinerator to fire a boiler for Hospital Steam Sterilization. Jerry also designed and built custom afterburner systems that burned off toxic fumes coming out of industrial equipment, reducing it to inert gases.

It was through this line of work that Jerry happened to take his grandson to the job site where the mountains of used oil filters inspired the simple question that changed the world. “I was going out into one of my clients businesses to basically to help them figure out how to heat the waste oil that they had,” Jerry said. “They were an oil collector, we never even discussed filters with them.” But he didn’t need to. A year or so after that visit, Jerry got a call from a man named Jim Nickerson of Nickco recycling. Nickco had had a contract to process used tank tract (the tread on tank “tires”) and recover the rubber and aluminum. That contract had ended, and Jim wanted Jerry to help him convert that furnace into a machine that would – of all things – recover the steel from used oil filters. “I said, ‘This isn’t going to be a great job, because it wasn’t built to do this,’” Jerry recalled, “but we did it! In fact, it’s still in operation. But I was never pleased with that design, because I felt like it wasn’t as good as it could be.”

Jerry then went to see another client who wanted to do the same thing. He was trying to use an industrial oven to process the oil filters, but the temperatures required were so high that the oven was melting and it just wasn’t working. But Jerry knew he could make it work, so on his flight home, he took the nearest scrap of paper he could find and started to sketch out a plan. “I took a barf bag, of all things…Just as a side note, barf bags used to all be white. Now they come in every color of the rainbow, and they don’t make very good scratch paper. But back then, they were all white. So I took this barf bag and I sketched up a design that is very similar to what, ultimately, I got a patent on. I still have that barf bag, and it’s framed and hanging on my wall.” His patent for the idea was awarded in 2001.

Jerry McRae started out as a man with a lot of knowledge and expertise in his field – combustion and waste processing – and suddenly, thanks to a simple question from his grandson, became a man with an idea. But his transformation from a businessman to an inventor wasn’t complete until that second “aha” moment – when he realized that there was a real market for his products. Nobody else had ever made furnaces like these before.

“The system is totally green,” he said proudly. “I’m a Christian man, and I believe that everything is God-given to us, and if we waste it, we’re wasting something that God has given to us…[my system] takes used oil filters, which are one of the nastiest products on the Earth, and it turns it into something useful. It saves the steel, it saves half of the oil that was in that block, and it cleans up all of the energy that is contained in the oil.”

“You can actually generate electricity from the by-product coming off of my product,” Jerry noted. “But that’s not what we normally use the heat for, we normally use the heat to process the oil that’s being collected by the plant. In other words, we use that heated oil to clean up the rest of the oil so that they can then sell it. But here’s the key to it, my system runs off the oil that’s reclaimed.” And in addition to being good for the environment, it’s good for the pocketbook, too – Jerry’s clients make very good money selling what was once useless, hazardous waste to scrap dealers and oil processing plants to be recycled into industrial and consumer products.

Jerry advises young people seeking jobs to find a career they really, truly love, “Because you’re at your work more than you’re at home. And sometimes it takes changing jobs several times before you find that job that you like. The key to success isn’t being some genius or mastermind or inventor, but it’s being persistent. In other words, stick with it! It might take you a year or two, or more than that – in my case it’s taken a whole lifetime.”

Additionally, aspiring entrepreneurs have an additional row to hoe – getting the experience they need to succeed before attempting to strike out on their own. “If you want to start your own business, find out what you want to do and then go work for someone else. Get your business legs under you. Most people think that just because a guy starts his own company he’s going to be driving a Mercedes and flying a personal jet in a few weeks. Most of us guys are just human beings who have good ideas, and most of us have some background doing something else first. I love designing furnaces, I love solving problems, and I changed direction a few years back. After I decided I would never work building furnaces in the oil patch again, I decided I wanted to help clean up the environment, and our equipment does.”

To learn more about Jerry McRae’s systems and the impact of used oil filters on our landfills, visit http://www.mcraecombustion.com.

Calling All Moms, Mothers, and Mommies!

Are you a Mom who works outside the home, or who quit a full-time job to spend more time with your kids? Did you learn anything from your Mother -- directly or indirectly -- that influenced your career path? Professional Detours wants to hear from you!

We're working on an exciting feature for Mother's Day paying tribute to Moms from all walks of life. We're collecting your thoughts on being a working mom, quitting work to be a mom, or going back to work after spending a few months, years, or decades as a stay-at-home mom. Please share your thoughts in the comments, and we'll be compiling them (along with submissions collected via e-mail, Facebook, and through personal interviews.

A few questions to get you started:

1) What job(s) did you have before your kid(s) were born that they would be surprised to know about?

2) How did becoming a parent change the way you think about work and your career?

3) Whether you had a stay-at-home mom or one who worked outside the home, what did you learn from your mother that influenced your career path? (All are welcome to answer this one!)

Mom Week will begin on May 2 with daily bios on famous working moms from history and end with a special article based on your feedback on May 6. Thanks for posting, and don't forget to follow us on Facebook and Twitter for all our updates!

How Civil Service Is Like A Mental Hospital

What do public administration and working as a mental health technician have in common? Leslie Kohli. She has used what she learned in her studies as a psychology undergraduate to do both jobs, with plenty of interesting twists and turns in between.

Many students, faced with the question of choosing a major, opt for (or are advised to pursue) an “all-purpose” degree that will serve them well in almost any profession. Business, English, communications, and psychology are all common choices. Leslie Kohli chose to pursue a psychology degree out of a real desire to practice psychology and help others, but after graduation she discovered just how versatile that course of study could be.

Although her first career aspiration was to be a Broadway performer, Leslie realized at a young age that the performing arts were a risky proposition. So she decided by the time she was in high school that, as she told me in a phone interview, “I wanted to do something working with people and something where I would help people, and [psychology] seemed the most interesting to me, and I thought that would be helpful to me no matter what I did.” Was it? “It definitely has been. The problem was…that psychology degree is kind of like a communications degree – standalone, it’s hard to find a good job. Whether it’s dealing with people, how to manage people, how to communicate with people, It definitely helps with whatever you’re doing, but without going on and getting your master’s, there’s very little you can do with it.”

After college, Leslie moved back home and started looking for that perfect job. She took a job at the Medical College of Ohio (now the University of Toledo Medical Center), where she became the third generation of women in her family to work for that particular hospital. “I knew that if I could get a job [at MCO], they always hire within first, and they had an adult as well as an Adolescent & Youth center, and I really wanted a job there, but they didn’t have an opening. So I worked as an administrative assistant in billing, and then I got a job doing medical records, and then I worked in the medical school for two months, and then finally they had an opening in the adult mental health ward as a medical health technician.”

Leslie knew where she wanted to work – her mother and two of her aunts had spent their whole careers at MCO – so she took the first position available there and worked her way gradually into the field of her choice. When you have an “all-purpose” degree like psychology, communications, or one of the humanities, the side-step approach is especially effective. People who are looking for work experience should take entry-level jobs that will help them build relationships with those in related fields who can put in a good word for them when a vacancy appears.

Leslie loved her job in the adult mental health ward, and was able to use her psychology degree to its fullest without going to graduate school. “I loved that job, and I learned a lot,” she says, but unfortunately, the hospital closed the adult psychiatric unit a few years later. “They took all of us who were first-shift full-time and tried to divide us all up into second and third shift part-time, and I went to the child/adolescent psych unit. That’s where I really wanted to be, but it was only part time and I couldn’t really live on that.”

Leslie, seeing the writing on the wall, applied to law school. While she was waiting to hear if she was accepted, she also applied to be a probation officer, and she was accepted for that job. “It was the best of both worlds. It was related to the law, but I worked with the substance abuse cases, so I got to use my psychology degree and lead AA and NA groups,” she says. “I got to use my psychology degree along with my interest in law, and that’s what let me know for sure that I really did want to go to law school.”

Leslie was accepted into law school and, because of the strict requirements of the program, had to leave her job as a probation officer. But she had enjoyed that job so much that she had a hard time deciding between specializing in criminal law and family law, which would allow her to use her psychology background. So she tried a little bit of everything. “I did a prosecutor’s clinic, I did a public defender’s program for about two months to see what it was like on the other side. I did an internship doing mediation in the juvenile court, and that was the psychology part coming back again, because I got to work with kids and their families. I also did another prosecutor’s internship in Wake County, NC, and I did the mediation program again there.” All these internships helped her get a feel for the different types of law practice and prepared her for her first job after graduation.

Leslie started working for a law firm in an administrative capacity before she got her bar exam results, and when she passed, they offered her a position as an attorney. “It was not at all doing what I wanted to do, because it was all medical malpractice and personal injury. They let me do all their criminal stuff, but it wasn’t really what I wanted to be doing.” By then, Leslie also had a young daughter and was working a lot of hours, so when her contract expired a year and a half later, she opted not to renew. It was a hard decision because she didn’t have another job lined up, but Leslie’s faith that things would work out for the best allowed her to take a giant leap into uncertain territory.

Leslie started her own law practice and struggled with financial uncertainty while she waited to see if she was going to be able to maintain a client base. She was accepted as a public defender for three local suburb courts, which occupied her time at least three days a week, and started building her client list through referrals. Ten months later, Leslie’s mother was diagnosed with cancer, and a year after that she passed away. As difficult as it was, Leslie was glad that she was able to have the flexibility of being self-employed so that she could help take care of her mother and spend her remaining days with her. Furthermore, about a year after Leslie left the law firm, they were investigated by the FBI for possible embezzlement. “As the newest attorney,” Leslie said, “I know I would have been the scapegoat. God was really looking out for me.”

Four years later, on a trip to New York with her daughter, Leslie suddenly got a call from someone she’d gone to law school with offering her a temporary position as an attorney for the United Auto Workers. The pay was excellent, but they needed her immediately . Leslie cut her trip short and returned to Toledo so she could start Monday. Six months later, the attorney Leslie had replaced came back from medical leave, and three weeks after that, Leslie’s father suffered a debilitating stroke. Leslie went back to private practice, and once again was thankful for the flexibility in her schedule that allowed her to get through her family crisis. “That was a really hard year, financially, and emotionally because I was trying to be there for my dad, and for my daughter, because she was only in about second grade at the time.”

A year later, a chance encounter with an old friend from grade school opened a door to a whole new career path. Her friend was married to one of the three trustees who sat on the governing board of Springfield Township, where Leslie lives. “We were helping a friend move and afterward we were just sitting around chatting, and [my friend’s husband] had said how he thought I would make a really good fiscal officer for the township. At that time they had a fiscal officer, so it was mostly just talk.” But suddenly, three months later, the township’s fiscal adviser resigned. That night, her friend’s husband called her and asked her if she’d like to interview for the job. Normally, the fiscal officer is an elected position, but in the case of a mid-term resignation, an appointment is made. Leslie became the new fiscal officer in July of 2006, and when the Township Administrator resigned the following February, Leslie (and thirty other people) applied for his vacancy. “I didn’t have any administrative experience, but I had a law degree, which made people feel like I had some intelligence. But I think what really won people over was that I had eight months of experience with this township…If I had not had eight months of relationships with these people, I would never have gotten that job. I probably would never have even known it was open to apply for.”

“I think a lot of people think that if you go to school for one thing, there’s only certain things you can do, and that’s not true,” said Leslie. “When I went to law school, they gave us this piece of paper that was like, okay, here are 100 or 150 different jobs that you can find yourself in that are non-legal. At the time, I knew nothing about being an administrator, but looking back, I realized that was probably on the list.”

And she loves it. “I think it’s a niche for me. I think it’s right up my alley because I get to work with people -- part of my job as administrator is human resource and personnel issues, and benefits and stuff. But it’s also really diverse...I’m the kind of person who I can’t see myself being anywhere for ten years because I get bored too easily. But this job, I could do for ten years because one day I’m looking at maps trying to plan where the new roads should go and another day I’m writing a grant to get a homeless shelter, and sometimes I’m looking at contracts. I use my law degree a lot because, whether we’re looking at who we get our trash service from or what’s going on with our police force, it’s all contracts. So that’s why I love my job, because I never get bored.”

Leslie’s story has plenty of lessons for students and recent grads. If you know the general field you’re interested in, it’s important to get a foot in the door and stat building relationships that can help you move up. “Realize that a Master’s of Something is important, but experience is just as important,” said Leslie. “I think it makes just as much sense to get your master’s while you’re getting the experience. Because people will be like, oh that’s great, you’ve got an MBA, but you don’t have any experience, so you’re not going to get the job. And I you think you want to work in, for instance, healthcare, get a job in a hospital, even if it’s not in the specific area you want to end up in.”

And if you don’t know what field you’re interested in, Leslie advises that you do as Danny Dunston did and think about what kinds of things you enjoy. “You may not even know what job would make you happy, but what kinds of things do you enjoy? For me, it’s not really the politics aspect of it. If I really, truly think about it, I love my job because: one, the diversity, it’s always changing, and I don’t get bored. Two, I get to organize things, and three, I get to manage people. I could probably do that in a lot of different settings and be happy. And I’m constantly learning new things. So that’s what makes me tick, that’s why I love my job.”

Working for Google -- Do You Have What It Takes?

If you're intuitive, insightful, and type 32,000 WPM, Google has a job for you. In case you missed it earlier today, the search engine released a video about one of its most challenging careers along with a recruiting appeal. Check out the video below, then click here for more information or to apply for this job.

A Picture Perfect Career: A Self-Employed Photographer Tells All

Here at Professional Detours, we recognize that not everyone takes a winding path to career happiness. Some people discover their vocational passion at a young age, and they follow that dream in a relatively straight line – even when it leads them off the beaten path. Heather Swanner, a successful wedding and portrait photographer based in Cary, NC, is one such person, and she found time to sit down with me during a rare break in her busy schedule.

While most teenagers (and adults, for that matter) consider photography an art form and a hobby, Heather beat the odds and has been successful in this very competitive, non-traditional field. So if you’ve ever thought you might like to turn a creative hobby into a career, but weren’t sure how to start or if it’s even possible, read on.

When Heather was little, like many young girls, she wanted to be a veterinarian because she loved animals. However, when she was nine years old, she says, “I found out you had to deal with snakes, and I said, ‘Uh, no.’ And then I picked up a camera when I was sixteen and that was the end of that.”

Heather’s father bought a pair of Nikon 6006 film cameras for Heather and her brother for Christmas the year she turned sixteen. “I went and photographed a big green grasshopper on a red poinsettia leaf with raindrops on it -- I still have the picture -- and I fell in love with photography.” Heather started taking photography classes at her high school the following year, and during her senior year she joined a work program that allowed her to take four hours of photography classes at school and then spend the rest of the afternoon working at a frame shop.

After high school, Heather got a job at a well-known portrait studio associated with a chain department store. Besides taking photos in a professional setting for the first time, Heather learned the sales skills that would serve her well later in life. “I had to sell these chintzy little necklaces, you’ve probably seen them, the little portrait necklaces that are cheesy, but it taught me how to sell and how to believe in the stuff you’re selling.”

Heather then spent some time studying at several art and design schools before finally settling in at the Art Institute of Atlanta, where she met her husband, Matt, a graphic designer and animator. Several years later, after having of two children, relocating twice (from Atlanta to Palm City, Florida and then Cary, North Carolina), Matt and Heather launched their own business, Coastal Creative, Inc. As a team, Matt offered web design and consulting services so their business customers could make the most of Heather’s photography skills to highlight their products and services online. Heather also branched out into wedding photography, a service she continues to offer and enjoy, but her true love, she found, is portraits – especially of families and children.

In 2008, after a close friend’s child was diagnosed with autism, Heather became the first photographer in North Carolina to be certified by Special Kids Photography of America (SKPA), a non-profit organization that trains photographers to work with special needs children. Heather has since photographed dozens of children with autism and other disabilities, both in private sessions and in her role as the official school photographer for The Mariposa School in Cary, N.C. She has also recently started teaching photography classes to amateurs and hobbyists on Saturdays, which she thoroughly enjoys even though she was initially nervous about it.

There’s no doubt Heather is busy. The week before we spoke, she had photo shoots every day Monday through Friday and taught two classes on Saturday. But she manages to find enough balance to manage three kids, two dogs, and a house. Her photography business now works independently from Coastal Creative, but she still gets lots of support from Matt. “I can tell you that my husband knows when I get to the stress level where I can’t handle any more, and he helps me out.” Being self-employed and able to set her own schedule helps, too. “I stop at three o’clock every day, when my kids get home from school. I go outside and I play with them...That’s not to say I don’t have to leave them on Saturdays to go shoot a wedding or teach two classes, but I don’t work Sundays any more – though that came later in my career.”

So what does an aspiring photographer need to succeed? Although a degree isn’t required to hang up your shingle as a photographer, Heather strongly recommends taking some classes. “You really need to focus in on learning your skills on the camera and what the camera can do,” she says. But there’s more to photography than understanding shutter speeds and apertures. “You have to be able to see a photograph without even having a camera in your hand, when a photographer starts training their brain you start seeing things differently.”

Besides the technical skills you’ll need, Heather also thinks that successful photographers are usually extroverts. “You need to like people if you’re going to photograph people.” Additionally, she says that “You have to be patient, not just with working with people, but for the light to be right to photograph something.” And you have to have the passion for it. She says, “Don’t do something you don’t love. ‘Love what you do, and money will follow.’ I’ve heard that so many times in my life, and it’s so true.”

So even though she gets to do what she loves, be her own boss, and set her own schedule, none of these are Heather's favorite thing about her job. So what is the best thing about being a professional photographer? “I get to watch people smile," Heather says. "It’s the best job in the world.”