Over 60 Exchange

Sometimes the value of a particular skill or talent is more about how you utilize it in conjunction with other attributes - attributes that might not show up on a resume or aptitude test.

I've recently retired and want to work part time doing photography. It's an old hobby of mine. How do I go about starting up a business?

Let me answer this by telling the story of a person who asked himself the same question you did. His field is different, but the principle is the same.

Back in the 70s, the running craze began to make big inroads into American culture. In central Massachusetts and southern New Hampshire, where I lived at the time, towns everywhere began sponsoring ten kilometer (6.2 miles) runs almost every weekend. I soon fell under running's spell and began thinking of myself, for the first time in my life, as an athlete.

Running clubs began to proliferate throughout our area and before long a few people stood out in the brand new field of personal training. These people were, back in those days, pretty much self-taught. There were no formal courses outside the usual college phys. ed. curriculum. People just wanted help in designing training programs that might keep them from typical injuries that sprang from doing too much too fast.

It wasn't long before the advantages of personal coaches who were trained and experienced became appreciated and the field began to organize itself. That was surely a good thing. But there was a brief window of time when an energetic, self-motivated, conscientious runner who liked to read a lot and work with other people could carve out a niche and become known as a personal trainer. Some of them became pretty big fish in the small ponds around my neighborhood. One of these was a man everyone called 'Coach.' I never knew his name. But, like everyone else, I knew Coach. He was a staple at every race, showing up to check on the progress of his pupils and give encouragement when needed. One Saturday morning, when a sprained ankle kept me out of the field for a few weeks, I had an opportunity to hear his story during the forty minutes or so between the opening gun and final finish of a race.

Coach worked in a factory for most of his life. Back in his earlier days he ran cross country in the fall and track during the spring season at his high school. He never went to college, so until the running boom swept across America he was pretty much a weekend warrior, keeping in shape only to run the occasional race. Then the marathon bug hit him, big-time. He tried to train up to his first long race using the same techniques he had used in track. It didn't work, of course. He kept running himself into injuries. By the time he finally got smart enough, in his words, to understand what he was doing to himself, he decided he'd better learn more about marathon training. He talked to everyone he could, read every book he could find, went early to Hopkinton, the beginning of the Boston marathon, every April so he could question the runners who were racing that year. He considered himself a one-man testing ground, and eventually, through trial and error, discovered what worked and what didn't, what techniques to use and what pitfalls to avoid, how much the human body could absorb and how much rest it needed. Nowadays, this is all pretty much standard stuff and bookshelves are full of material that can synthesize all this information for the neophyte. But back then a person had to learn on his own. Coach learned. He and a thousand others like him became the research assistants that gathered the raw data that eventually produced the great running coaches and personal trainers of today.

Coach eventually found himself facing a real dilemma, however. He wasn't quite old enough to retire from his day job, but training others had become profitable enough to tempt him away from factory work. He knew that if he waited much longer he was going to miss the wave. The writing on the wall seemed to say that if he didn't act right now he was going to lose out to those who had college degrees and were beginning to regulate the industry. If he acted quickly he could be grandfathered in and find himself on the ground floor of what appeared to be a whole new field of work.

It took courage and conviction. He had to give up benefits and job security. But he made the decision and never looked back. Now he was making almost as much money as he did back at the plant, but he was having much more fun, was a whole lot healthier, and was really enjoying life.

A few years ago, long after I moved away from that area, someone sent me a copy of the old local newspaper. Coach had finally died at the ripe old age of 92. He had had a heart attack while attending yet another local race and watching yet another generation of his trainees attempt personal bests. Hundreds of people attended his funeral. Speaker after speaker stood up to eulogize their beloved mentor. They all said the same thing. He died doing exactly what he wanted to be doing, exactly where he wanted to be, and surrounded by exactly who he wanted to be with at the end.

He was a happy man.

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