All Posts Tagged With: "Your Job Makes me Jealous"
Franny Strathern, 24, makes jewellery
It’s hard to turn a profit, but it’s fun
Frances Strathern in her Calgary shop
Frances Strathern, 24, started making jewelry at age 14, went on to major in Jewellery and Metals at the Alberta College of Art + Design and then started franny e fine jewelry in 2010. She got a $15,000 loan to open a “tiny” gallery space in Calgary and worked part-time elsewhere until recently to make ends meet. She still works seven days of the week, but now it’s entirely for herself. It hasn’t been easy. She’s just now “approaching” the point where she can support herself financially. Still, she loves it. Here’s her story.
Did ACAD prepare you for this business?
ACAD is very hands-on and studio based, but then you have your academic classes as well. It was a good balance of the conceptual art side of things with skills, but it just didn’t prep us very well for the business side of things.
Nicole Barry, 34, co-owns Half Pints Brewing
Winnipeg accountant traded insurance for entrepreneurship
Half Pints' Jeremy Wells, Chris Young, Zach Mesman, and Barry. (Photo: Kevin Rempel)
Nicole Barry, now 34, had an unusually long-term plan for a 20-year-old woman. She and her then-boyfriend (now ex-husband) would both get jobs in their 20s and then “reconvene” in their 30s to open a brewery in their hometown, Winnipeg. To hold up her end of the bargain, Barry became a Certified General Accountant, earned Bachelor of Business Administration from the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology and got a job as a controller for an insurance company. Then a severance package allowed the pair to fast-track their dream and at age 27 Barry became co-owner of Half Pints Brewing. Seven years later she has 14 employees. Her path is the perfect addition to Your Job Makes me Jealous. Here’s how it went.
How did you get from university to starting your own brewery?
My parents were entrepreneurs so that was something bred into me—the whole DIY lifestyle. I didn’t start off wanting to become an accountant or a CGA but I realized that if I was going to be successful being my own boss, at some point I needed a strong business education. I’m fairly smart and I’ve seen people succeed and fail and so having a good backup career was a good plan. My then-boyfriend and I decided he’d go to brewing school and I’d do the business side of things.
How did you spot the craft beer trend back then?
I have this mixed bag personality where I can be the accountant girl, but I was also going to punk rock shows at age 15. The Winnipeg music scene was really big in the 90s with Propaghandi, and the Weakerthans developed from that scene. The music scene lent itself to the ‘support local’ movement. So when I became of drinking age I was like, ‘I’m not going to support mass beer, I’m going to support the little guy.’ But there wasn’t really much [craft beer] going on in Winnipeg.
Continue reading Nicole Barry, 34, co-owns Half Pints Brewing
Briony Smith, 30, is a fashion writer
Every day she’s hustling
Smith (Photo by Max Kopanygin/FLARE.COM)
Briony Smith, 30, is a fashion writer, editor and stylist. She grew up dreaming of working in magazines and The Martlet student newspaper at the University of Victoria got her that first byline. After finishing a Bachelor of Arts in English and Creative Writing, she did plenty of less-than-thrilling work. These days she covers emerging style in Toronto, contributing to The Grid, ELLE Canada, Chatelaine.com, MuchMusic and others. The money isn’t great, but she’s loves the hustle.
Click to hear Briony Smith on the ups, the downs, and the modest pay in fashion writing (6:30)
Tell us who you are and what you do.
My name is Briony Smith and I am a writer and editor. I am the in-house fashion person for The Grid newspaper, writing and styling their fashion page. I also write for places like ELLE Canada, LOULOU, Toronto Life as well as Chatelaine.com, FashionMagazine.com, ELLECanada.com and I also do freelance styling for MuchMusic. For my day job, I work as a senior editor at Totem Brand Stories.
Tom Dobrzanski, 30, owns recording studios
Pianist from The Zolas explains how he built his business
Dobrzanski sitting on a recording console for his new Monarch Studios (Photo by Mary Day)
When Tom Dobrzanski started Vancouver’s Vertical Studios with a friend in 2001, he considered it a part-time job to help fund his Bachelor of Commerce degree at the University of British Columbia while he toured with The Zolas.
Since then, he graduated from UBC, studied audio engineering at CDIS (now The Art Institute) and the Vancouver Film School, and built up his skills as an engineer, producer, composer and instrumentalist in the studio alongside Indie bands like Hey Ocean! and Said The Whale.
Now, he’s just putting the finishing touches on a bigger second space called Monarch Studios.
Click here to listen to Tom Dobrzanski talk about breaking into the music business (4:45).
My name is Tom Dobrzanski. I’m a music producer and recording studio owner. I started my first studio basically to create my own part-time job in university. So it was me and a friend of mine, I was in a band at the time. It was actually his idea. We each had a little money saved up and we decided to put it together to get a small simple studio where we recorded demos and people’s first CDs.
Mike Thompson, 25, takes care of fans
What it’s like to work at Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment
Thompson (University of Windsor)
Your Job Makes Me Jealous is an interview with a young Canadian whose career is so cool that people at parties crowd around to hear about it. We discuss the ups, the downs and the pay.
This week, Mike Thompson, a 25-year-old from Oshawa, Ont., talks about his job as coordinator of fan services at Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment, based at the Air Canada Centre in Toronto. It’s his job to oversee customer service at events from Raptors basketball games to last week’s Barbra Streisand show. When something goes wrong, he’s the one who makes it right.
Thompson holds a Bachelor of Commerce and a Master of Human Kinetics in sport management from the University of Windsor. He’s worked with MLSE since 2010. The hours are long, the pay is fair ($45,000 to $55,000 per year), but he can’t imagine doing anything else.
Click to listen to Mike Thompson talk about his job as coordinator of fan services at MLSE.
Sabrina Miguel, 22, is a mining engineer
First-class flights and fat paycheques? Yep, we’re jealous.
Sabrina Miguel (Roman Cho/Getty Images)
Your Job Makes Me Jealous is a weekly podcast with a young Canadian whose career is so cool that people at parties crowd around to hear about it. We talk about the ups, the downs and the pay.
This week, Sabrina Miguel, a 22-year-old from Whitby, Ont., talks about her job as an engineer-in-training at Rio Tinto’s mine in Boron, Calif.
The University of Toronto graduate was featured in a story in the Maclean’s Professional Schools issue about how the shortage of mining engineers is leading to fat paycheques and sweet perks, often before students even finish school.
Click to hear Sabrina Miguel talk about how well mining engineering has treated her so far.
The transcript is after the jump.
Rebecca Addelman, 31, is a writer for New Girl
Comedy work is sporadic, but the pay can get “obscene”
Your Job Makes Me Jealous is a weekly podcast with a young Canadian whose career is so cool that people at parties crowd around to hear about it. We talk about the ups, the downs and the pay.
This week, Rebecca Addelman, a 31-year-old comedian from Ottawa, talks about her job writing for the hit show New Girl that airs on Fox/Citytv.
Addelman started with a B.A. in literature at the University of Toronto and then took Comedy: Writing and Performance at Humber College.
After many evenings of stand-up in Toronto and a day job copy-editing, Addelman made the leap to L.A. in 2008. Since she got there, she’s written for half a dozen shows including China Il. She returned to Toronto one summer to write for CBC’s InSecurity and then started at New Girl in June.
The money in comedy writing can be “obscene,” she says—$3,600 a week right now—but the work is sporadic at best, with contacts lasting mere months while agents and managers take their cuts.
Click here to listen to Your Job Makes Me Jealous with TV writer Rebecca Addelman (5:05)
Continue reading Rebecca Addelman, 31, is a writer for New Girl
Kurt Jahr, 26, is an Air Canada Jazz pilot
Aviation careers start with long days at low pay
Your Job Makes Me Jealous is a weekly podcast with a young Canadian whose career is so neat that people at parties crowd around to hear about it. We talk about the ups, the downs and the pay.
For this inaugural podcast, I interviewed Kurt Jahr, a 26 year-old from Markham, Ont. who landed his dream job flying for Air Canada Jazz out of Toronto’s Pearson Airport. He started in January.
Jahr got the job was after paying his dues in Gander, Nfld. and Timmins, Ont. He’s been flying since age 14 and earned a Bachelor of Business Administration in Aviation & Operations Management at the University of New Brunswick in 2007.
Click here to listen to the podcast with Air Canada Jazz pilot Kurt Jahr (4:48)
The transcript:
What was your first job like?
I was employed by Capital Airways and Capital Airways is who I did my training with. They’re coupled with the University of New Brunswick. I worked the ramps, I cleaned planes, I fueled planes, I worked the hangar. I worked as dispatch and then I got to fly, maybe a couple hours every week.
I moved on to instructing a couple months after that, I moved to Gander Newfoundland where I had to teach people how to fly. Same thing. You’re making maybe $25,000 per year and you’re working 12 to 14 hour days, so there’s a lot of work in it. But what you’re basically trying to do is build your hours, get experience for that next job, build experience for your next job and eventually make it up to the airlines.
