by Pam Gilberd

Your best career choice may be found in the make-do job you’re doing while you’re waiting and waiting for your dream career to get in gear. “My advice for people in transition is to go to the door that’s opening.” Gale Ricketts, President, Ready to Roll Limousine Service, Inc., NYC and LA.

Gale Ricketts expected to enter her career through the stage door, but found that a side door opened wider.Gale grew up in southern California, studied at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in Pasadena as a member of the founding class, and graduated from the University of Southern California. Like many young people who want to be actors, she moved to New York City to seek more opportunity. And like many young actors she found that it was challenging to keep going to acting classes, auditioning, and just plain surviving, even with occasional work.

But Gale had plenty of ingenuity. She and a friend started a Greenwich Village roller skating rental service called Ready to Roll with a hundred pairs of skates and a leased van. With her roller skating business on the side and roles in plays, a few in films, and a soap opera, she says, “We starved, but we made enough money not to starve too badly.” As it turned out, however, roller skating was a trend that abruptly came to an end. “One day everybody in New York decided not to roller skate anymore. We went out of business. I realized that I still had no skills. I didn’t even know how to wait tables like my other actor friends.”

Not one to give up easily, Gale had another brainstorm. “I realized that since I grew up in southern California, I did know how to drive. I took a job as a chauffeur for a limousine company, which afforded me the time off to go on auditions and do summer stock.” For Gale, driving a limo continued to be just a way to make some money, nothing more. She still saw herself as an actor, but another opportunity kept knocking at her door. 

When Liza Minnelli started requesting Gale as her driver on a consistent basis, Gale began to think about what she was doing in a different way. “One day,” Gale explains, “Liza said to me, ‘Why don’t you buy a limousine and I’ll be your client.’ I said, ‘Why don’t you buy a limousine and I’ll be your driver.’” Gale eventually decided to take the chance. She says, “I didn’t have any money, but I had Liza as a client. I knew another chauffeur who had started his own business, so I subcontracted a car from him every day on an hourly basis.”

Liza kept Gale busy. “I didn’t have time to spend my money, so everything I made I put toward a down payment on a used limo with some very high financing—worse than credit cards.” Even after Gale incorporated Ready to Roll, her limousine service, she still considered herself an actor who drove limousines. After a few years “it clicked that the bigger the limo business got, the more it was a serious thing. I could hire someone to answer the phone 24 hours a day, instead of me. I could hire drivers, instead of me. Since the business was taking off, it became something that I really had to pay attention to and manage, or not do it at all.”

With that realization, Gale finally understood that the opportunity she had seen as a sideline was actually more satisfying than the acting career she had been pursuing with little success for years. “The combination of interests has made Ready to Roll more than a business to me because many of my clients are in the entertainment business,” Gale says. “I feel like I’m still in the entertainment business, and my clients know that I understand them.” Gale acknowledged that owning a limousine company gave her a better return for her time, energy, and emotions than being a struggling actor. 

What was the key to Gale’s finding satisfying success in a business she’s now owned for 25 years? She’ll tell you, “If what you want is full of disappointment and not working out, and something else seems more effortless, I say, go for what presents itself.” Gale adds, “I would bang my head and struggle, but full-time acting wasn’t going to happen. I’m more aware now of the importance of staying flexible.”

To act on unexpected career opportunities do the following:

   1. Pay attention to what is or isn’t working in your dream career.
   2. Analyze what brings you more satisfaction and money than your dream job does.
   3. Stay flexible with your vision of what a successful career looks like for you.
   4. Combine the best of your paying career with the essence of what you like about your dream career.
   5. Give yourself permission to change your mind and shift gears.

 Have fun,
 Pam  

Pam Gilberd, www.pamgilberd.net, wirtes and speaks on career, life, and success issues. Her books include: The Eleven Commandments of Wildly Successful Women., The Twelfth Commandment of Wildly Successful Women, and Leadership Secrets of Elizabeth I.