May 28, 2009

How to get your dream job
By Heidi Masek hmasek@hippopress.com

Not everyone starts out doing what they love for a living.

But for everyone who has ever “always wanted” to be a chef, produce a play on Broadway or make their own wine, a few people actually make those dreams happen. I talked to Granite Staters who discovered their passions fairly early in life but took years to fulfill their dreams. Most won’t get rich, but they are enjoying their lives.

Mark Schoenfeld’s advice for breaking into the entertainment industry is apt for many dream jobs: you need talent, passion and fearlessness. So what’s your dream job?

Sports team owner
“It was definitely one of the things I dreamed about as a kid,” Jason Briggs said about owning a sports team. The Manchester Millrats finished their second year winning 16 out of 20 regular-season games. They won 28 games and had 12 losses overall in their first year. They are part of the Premier Basketball League and their home venue is at Southern New Hampshire University.

Briggs says you can’t come into minor-league ownership with the idea that you’ll be making a lot of money. You have to be drawn to the sport, build a base, and hope that in time it becomes profitable.

But for details, Briggs points to his friend of 35 years, Ian McCarthy: “Basketball is his life,” Briggs said. Briggs first invested on a small scale and then on a much larger one in McCarthy’s efforts.

“Basically, I’ve always had a passion for basketball,” McCarthy said. He played at Champlain College in Vermont in 1991, then took the “secular route” with a non-sports job, got married, had kids, and about 2003 started pondering how to get back into basketball. The American Basketball Association offered franchising for about $10,000 to $20,000.  McCarthy took over a Boston team in 2005 and moved it to Cape Cod; however, there were only high school gyms for the Frenzy to play in.

David Cooper, who had played basketball at Central High, and Steve Yankopolous of Londonderry contacted McCarthy about interning and about Manchester. A Frenzy player who had also played at UNH mentioned the city to McCarthy and he started visiting it in 2007.

The number of road signs pointing to the baseball stadium and arena was the first thing McCarthy noticed. He took that to mean Manchester really appreciates minor-league sports, he said. When he reached out to SNHU, they immediately responded that they would love to have the Millrats use their venue.

McCarthy is the Millrats’ general manager. Cooper and Yankopolous are now minority investors and Briggs bought the majority of shares.

McCarthy has known Briggs since he was about 5 years old. Briggs worked for about a decade on Wall Street and then retired. Being a descendant of the Merck pharmaceuticals founder also “helps,” McCarthy said of Briggs.

Briggs said there’s an adrenaline rush after a win, and after a loss — well, you get invested in the players, he said. No one’s in the minors for the money. The players are there to get their stats and hopefully move to a European league where they can make a few hundred thousand per year, or to the NBA, where they can make a lot more. Coaches and front office staff also see it as a proving ground, McCarthy said.

As for pointers, McCarthy said, make sure you are well-capitalized. You’ll probably operate at a loss for the first couple of years, he said. His second piece of advice is to be in the right community with the right venue. SNHU has been great to the team, but McCarthy and Briggs think they need to be at Verizon Wireless Arena to raise their profile.

Briggs feels they’ve succeeded on the court but failed off the court.

“It’s frustrating,” Briggs said. They are probably the “winningest” team in Manchester but are falling far short of the 2,000 fans they want to attract to games, Briggs said. Briggs thinks playing in Hooksett is part of the issue.

“On court, we still need to win a championship obviously. But I feel like we put a great product on the floor,” Briggs said.

Dollars & Sense
Pay: McCarthy has seen minor-league executives make anywhere from zero to $100,000 per year. It can depend on the league and ticket sales.

Getting started: McCarthy said early on he reached out to folks from existing Manchester minor teams and they gave him some great advice. He also contacted the Greater Manchester Chamber of Commerce and Intown Manchester. Talk to civic groups and professional sponsors, McCarthy said. Or take a page from the Millrats’ rival team, the Vermont Frost Heaves. Sports Illustrator writer Alexander Wolff founded the team with his wife and spent a year “building up the appetite” for the sport, McCarthy said, by putting booths at trade shows, parades, etc., and working to generate buzz.

Professional photographer
“I knew I was supposed to do this when I was eight years old,” Jeff Dachowski said.

He remembers photographing Crystal Cascade on a family trip to Crawford Notch in New Hampshire and thinking, “This is cool, I want to do this.”

He signed up for photography class as soon as he could, in eighth grade. He took all the photo classes he could at Memorial High School, and also graphic arts, thinking it might be useful. Dachowski attended the Hallmark Institute of Photography in Massachusetts in 1990 and had assumed he’d work for someone else’s studio, but never has.

Dachowski and his wife Carolle moved to Montana the day after they got married and lived there for about five years. When they returned, New England was in a bit of a recession. Dachowski worked in construction, and Carolle is a nurse. They continued to photograph weddings together on the side.

When they sent out their Christmas card in 2003 featuring a photo they took of their girls, many recipients said they hadn’t realized the Dachowskis were photographers and asked them to do their Christmas cards next year.

That was the encouragement the Dachowskis needed, and they opened Dachowski Photography in Langer Place in Manchester in June 2003 with zero clients.

To build a client base, they worked with friends and marketing partners in the area. For example, they partner with salons to get their work in front of potential clients, he said.

Jeff Dachowski originally shot landscapes. It was portrait photographer Carolle who told him if he wanted to make money he’d have to start photographing people.

Dachowski goes to Montana, Wyoming and other Western locales for a week each year to photograph just for himself. He thinks his clients appreciate that his profession is also his hobby.

While it’s an extremely competitive business, photographers see each other as colleagues, Dachowski said. He’s on the board of the New Hampshire Professional Photographers.

And if you want to be a professional photographer? “I usually say, learn your craft. And I mean all of it,” Dachowski said. “Too often ... people say, ‘I have a camera. I’m a photographer.’”

You also need to understand the business end. Too often, people charge too little for what their value is, Dachowski said.

Dachowski Photography is holding an open house June 11 from 3 to 7 p.m. in its new studio (it moved downstairs in Langer, 55 South Commercial St., 626-7300).

Dollars & Sense
Pay: The first year is almost always a loss. Camera equipment can cost anywhere from $20,000 to $100,000. The Professional Photographers of America did a benchmark financial study that showed most earn between $28,000 and $51,000 per year, Dachowski said.

First steps: Learn about the industry. Join New Hampshire Professional Photographers Association (nhppa.com). Many photographers don’t take into account their true costs, which include workman’s comp, taxes, rent and paying yourself, so take some business and marketing classes and learn the business side. “We teach photography all over the country” and commonly find that people forget to pay themselves, so they are just breaking even, Dachowski said.

Winemaker
Owning a winery “absolutely is” a dream job, said Robert Dabrowski of Candia Vineyards, 702 High St. in Candia.

“For me, it’s everything. It’s the wine-making and the growing and the agriculture. All of that,” Dabrowski said. He made his first wine in 1981. There was no Internet back then. He educated himself with library books.

Candia Vineyards is part of a 1760s farm property. Dabrowski, a Manchester native, started planting in 1999. It has “taken hard work and experimentation,” he said.

He did test plantings in 1997 and 1998. The vines are started with 10-inch cuttings and take five years to get into full production — “That’s assuming that you don’t rip the vine out to begin with because you change your mind and want to try another variety,” which he did, Dabrowski said. Now he has 600 vines in full production.

“I brought a lot of new varieties to the state that had been developed out west but didn’t exist here,” Dabrowski said. He’s mainly a “one-man show,” although he gets help with some tasks.

“I was a financial analyst for many years ... as that industry deteriorated, I was continuing to build my vineyard,” Dabrowski said. He started selling wines in 2005.

Dabrowski said his previous career is a “huge asset in wine-making, ironically.” As an analyst, all you should be doing is planning. Wine involves a lot of planning, foresight and making decisions that will affect the wine months down the road. People think he must have gone to UNH to study agriculture, but he has not, which is true of many winemakers, he said.

How do you become a winemaker in a poor economy?

“Don’t give up your dream, but don’t give up your day job either,” Dabrowski said. It’s very capital-intensive and a very competitive industry. For most people, it takes hard work, perseverance, and a lot of experimentation.

Dabrowski said he has a slight advantage since he’s been enjoying wine since college — he would drink a glass of wine while friends were at the keg. He also knows wine — he’s been asked to judge a few competitions.

There’s an agricultural aspect to winemaking, but the business component is also important — “Business is business,” Dabrowski said. Dabrowski doesn’t sell outside the state — in part because there are different legal requirements for each state, and as a small producer he sells everything in state anyway.

Family, loyal customers and supporters —in particular Jeff Raymond of Amherst — are important to Candia Vineyards’ success, Dabrowski wrote later in an e-mail.

If you want to visit Candia Vineyards, just call ahead, 867-9751.

Dollars & Sense
Pay: Your take when starting a wine business in New Hampshire can range from losing $10,000 per year to making $50,000. It depends on factors like the size of the business and materials cost. Some winemakers give themselves a salary, but they can only do that if the business has a good amount of cash to start.

“I would say that when starting out, two thirds of the businesses would not be able to pay out anything for at least a year or two,” Dabrowski said.

First steps: Dabrowski thinks the best winemakers have an “innate love of wine and the ability to distinguish what fine wines are.”

He recommends reading Winemaker magazine. More information can be found at “major grape breeding stations such as Cornell University and University of Minnesota.” Growers should be “physically fit and enjoy the outdoors because it’s still farming and that’s always hard work.” Dabrowski often advises “budding winemakers [that] there’s nothing like getting technical help from somebody that’s already doing it,” he said.

Innkeepers
Eric Johnston traveled for business for years. He knew all the things he didn’t like about hotels.

Johnston was a CEO for a direct mail company in Milford in 1999, and at 49 was getting ready to have his midlife crisis, he said. He left the corporate world and he and his wife Darlene pondered what to do next — they couldn’t retire at 50. They like to be together, love old homes and like to meet people.

“Sounds like a bed and breakfast,” Johnston said.

They opened Ash Street Inn in December 2000 with a somewhat unlikely angle. Most bed and breakfasts are seasonal destinations; this one is located in downtown Manchester and caters to business travelers. They hoped it could make for a year-round income.

As a CEO, Johnston reported to the chairman of the board. When the board of directors wanted a change, Johnston had to tell 600 employees that they had been doing the right things but now would be doing something different — and make sense of it even if it didn’t make sense.

Now, his only worry when he wakes up in the morning is how to bring in more guests, and that goal doesn’t change. Plus there’s instant gratification. The Johnstons don’t have staff, so “if people say they love it, it’s because of things that we did,” Johnston said. And if they need something done differently, the Johnstons can deal with that right away.

“The good news about being the only one around is there’s no competition,” Johnston said. The bad news is it’s hard to get people to think about a bed and breakfast for business travel. People know what to expect from a Holiday Inn Express no matter which town it’s in. With a bed and breakfast, travelers wonder, “Is it going to be dogs and kids at breakfast ... or am I going to be able to conduct business?” Johnston said.

The Johnstons found a Victorian a half mile from Elm Street. They have five guest rooms on the first two floors, all with queen-size beds and private baths. They don’t allow pets or children younger than 12.

“For us, business guests make up 60 percent of our guests,” Johnston said. They offer corporate rates, and each room has a desk and there’s Internet access.

If you want to start an inn, especially in an urban environment, be careful how much you spend at the start. Renovations are expensive, so choose them carefully. Darlene figured out how to fit a bathroom into each guest room. These only have showers, not whirlpool baths or even regular tubs — the Johnstons didn’t waste money on something their target market wouldn’t seek out.

While Johnston said few Mancunians seem to know the Ash Street Inn exists, it was discovered by places like the Currier (barely a block away), Derryfield School, Southern New Hampshire University and New Hampshire Institute of Art early on, and those places refer their visitors. The inn also gets business through its Web site and by word of mouth.

Johnston said the growth of the airport has brought more guests. Some with business in the Boston area now fly into and stay in Manchester. It’s a habit they got into during the Big Dig, Johnston said.

Concerts at Verizon Wireless Arena bring in guests. Development in the Millyard also helps, as has the Currier’s expansion. Parents with high school kids looking at SNHU or NHIA stay. All of this has gone on in the past nine years. When the Ash Street Inn opened, Southwest was not yet using the Manchester airport. Elm Street was just starting to take off. The Currier Museum of Art was still a gallery.

However, “the economy kicked our butts just like anybody else’s,” Johnston said. They’ve rolled back their prices to their 2004 levels.

Their target market can be a problem in a down economy — “It’s easy to cut travel and entertainment” from corporate budgets, Johnston said. Companies are making staff fly back on the redeye after meetings.

On the flip side, people see a benefit to lower-cost events at Verizon Wireless Arena or the Palace Theatre compared to the cost of heading to big cities. Guests from Massachusetts or Rhode Island who want to get away for a day or two have commented on the “lovely downtown” and “fantastic dining.” 

Johnston said there’s enough demand in Manchester for other bed and breakfasts — the real issue is finding the right building, close to downtown with onsite parking.

Dollars & Sense
Pay: Innkeeping is a dream job in that it’s a “wonderful way of life,” Johnston explained. They live on the third floor — their beautiful surroundings (it’s quite nice inside the inn) and lack of commute are among the benefits. But it takes two to three years to get “situated” financially, and you won’t get rich. “Your retirement is going to be your property,” Johnston said. There are times when they start to make a little money and “then the economy goes in the tank and one of us will get a day job for a while,” Johnston said.

First steps: Talk to a banker; banks usually have a staff member with expertise in bed and breakfasts, Johnston said.

Also, have a sense of what you want to focus on, whether it’s business travel or weddings, and whether you’ll have a restaurant.

Novelist
New Hampshire author Jessica Conant-Park writes the Gourmet Girl mystery series with her mother, Susan Conant.

“Writing for me is a dream job. For me there’s an obvious advantage to being able to work from home. I can’t imagine going back to a nine-to-five,” Conant-Park said. It provides flexibility for her to take care of her son and spend time with her husband on his days off — as a chef, he has an unusual work schedule.

“Once you sort of get sucked in to the industry, you really have a need to write. Someone telling me I couldn’t would be like someone telling me not to eat or breathe,” Conant-Park said.

“I fell into this business in a very different way than most people. My mother had been writing her Dog Lovers’ Mystery series for years,” Conant-Park said.

Conant-Park was always a “food nut.” Then, her husband told her crazy restaurant stories, which Conant-Park relayed to her mother, who told her she should write them down. After Conant-Park had a baby, they started working together on a book.

Conant already had an agent and publisher.

“I really had an advantage,” Conant-Park said.

Conant-Park has handed in her fifth Gourmet Girl book, Cook the Books, and believes it’s scheduled to be out next February. She’s also put together a young adult book. She doesn’t know if there will be a sixth Gourmet Girl.

“Things have slowed down,” Conant-Park said. Her husband’s current employer, Legal Seafoods, “is a really fantastic company” with a well-run environment — it’s good for her husband, but he doesn’t come home with the entertaining tales independent restaurants were prone to.

“The truth is that it’s very hard to make a career out of being a writer in terms of financial stability. You’ve got to be aware of that. The old motto ‘Don’t quit your day job’ is very true,” Conant-Park said.

“You’ve got to let people read what you write,” she advises. The more you show work to people and get feedback, the better you become, she said. You need a thick skin, and you need to be persistent. If you send your manuscript to 20 agents, you might hear back from three, and those might all be “no,” Conant-Park said. “But that’s par for the course.... It doesn’t necessarily mean you shouldn’t be a writer,” she said. Search “famous rejection letters” on the Internet and take comfort, she said.

“You’ve got to remember that it’s a business ... criticism of your work is not a personal attack,” Conant-Park said. It’s about what they can sell.

Still, it’s a fun business and Conant-Park has met a wonderful group of people, mainly online. She can’t imagine another industry where people are as supportive as the writers she talks with.

Dollars & Sense
Pay: Conant-Park said if a publisher likes your concept, a first-time writer might get a three-book series, with maybe a $5,000 advance on each book. But most places pay in thirds: you get the first up front, the second when the manuscript is accepted, and the third when it’s published. Then twice a year you’ll get royalty checks, after you “earn out” your advance money.

Everything in the publishing industry is slow, including payment, she said. Taxes are not taken out — you’ll have to pay them. And 15 percent goes to your agent.

“And you do need an agent, by the way ... my recommendation is you do everything through an agent; it’s like having a lawyer,” Conant-Park said. The agent goes through the publishing contract, makes sure you are protected and negotiates for you.

As for royalties, there’s no guarantee what will sell, so there’s not really an average take. The standard contract is something like 10 to 15 percent of sales for certain numbers of copies of hardcovers sold, and less for paperbacks.

If Conant-Park is earning 65 cents a book, she doesn’t try to figure out what her hourly wage is. A productive eight-and-a-half-hour work day yields about 12 pages for her, she said.

First steps: Consider your own style and strengths. Some find writing groups beneficial. Some like classes. There are books about plotting and writing. Some write with an outline. Show your work to a target audience for honest feedback — don’t ask a “chick lit” reader for their thoughts on your medical thriller, Conant-Park said.

Restaurant chef/owner
It took Tom Puskarich 18 years to open his own restaurant. He majored in math education in college but fell in love with the culinary life while working at restaurants. Everything he’s done in his career has been a step toward owning his own place. Puskarich opened Z Food and Drink at 860 Elm St. in Manchester two years ago.

Puskarich worked as a sous chef (“number two in the kitchen”) and as an executive chef, and then started taking manager positions because owning a restaurant is more than food, he said. Before opening Z, he was a general manager for a small restaurant group in central California. He worked in new restaurants to experience the process of opening one.

Puskarich said he wanted to marry the casual restaurant with a fine setting at Z.

“I’m kind of a postmodernist ... I believe lots of things have already been done,” Puskarich said (“Kind of like a Hollandaise is a Hollandaise is a Hollandaise — the recipe is 150 years old”). He doesn’t think his dishes are unique because no one’s done them before, but “I think the point of view that I bring to it might be unique,” he said.

But it’s not just about food.

“I love providing the space for people to enjoy themselves and to get away from things,” he said.

How does he stay successful? “Innovate,” he said. He reads a lot, stays current, and tries to understand what the dining public is looking for — “which really isn’t different than any other industry per se except that we do it at a much faster pace.”

If you want to own a restaurant, be prepared to commit your life to it, Puskarich said. There are loads of details in start-up and operation. “Hire well” and find key employees you trust, “because you cannot be everywhere all the time,” he said.

An owner of a place the size of Z should be able to make a comfortable living but you won’t get rich, Puskarich said. Also, realize there’s more to this gig than cooking. Puskarich said he spends maybe only 20 hours out of his 80-hour work week cooking on the line.

Wanna be Chef Night
Tom Puskarich, chef and owner of Z Food and Drink, 860 Elm St. in Manchester (629-9383), is conducting a series of amateur chef nights where some of his regular customers get a taste of the restaurant industry.

“I give them the kitchen for the night,” he said.

Michael and Emily Skelton had the kitchen at Z on Monday, May 18. They served dinner to 35 friends and family using a menu they designed, with guidance from Puskarich. The guest chef is responsible for filling the one seating at 6:30 p.m. Patrons pay $50, $10 of which is donated to the New Hampshire Food Bank, Michael Skelton said. The couple also had help in the kitchen from students of the Food Bank’s Recipe for Success Program.

The Skeltons met with Puskarich while planning their menu, and came in the day before to do some prep work. They arrived at 4 p.m. Monday to start cooking.

“I was really surprised with the responsibility Tom gave us,” Skelton said. Puskarich told them guest chefs can choose their level of involvement. 

The Skeltons’ “marquee appetizer” in their four-course menu was a grilled-cheese slider (like a mini-sandwich) with a shooter of tomato soup — “That was something that we had come up with that we thought was really cool,” Skelton said. They offered entrée choices of sesame-encrusted tuna, a split roasted chicken or steak au poivre.

Skelton said the first part of the meal was easy — prep work had been done for salads and there was plenty of help. But when it got to serving dinner, with three entrée choices, to 35 people at once, there was more pressure.

“Tom had us on the line, plating meals ... he treated us exactly like normal staff members,” Skelton said. Things were fast-paced and had to be precise.

“He’s an intense guy ... but when you’re back there, you have to be,” Skelton said. It was Skelton’s first time in a restaurant kitchen while it was in service.

“I was surprised at the level of coordination it takes to execute a meal for that many people,” Skelton said.

Amateur guest chef night “exceeded my expectations as an experience, totally,” Skelton said. The Skeltons, who have been married for 10 months, have talked about how cool it could be to run a diner or restaurant — and are big fans of the Food Network.

“Do we have the chops to pull it off? I’m not so sure,” Skelton said. He thinks they would have a long way to go in education and skill-building — and are content to just eat at Z for now.

Wilderness guide/outdoor educator
“I love New Hampshire, that’s the main thing. I love sharing New Hampshire with people,” said Lucie LaPlante Villeneuve. She founded Outdoor Escapes in 2003 to offer guided hiking, kayaking, canoeing, biking, snowshoeing, cycling, cross-country skiing, birding and more statewide, mainly in the Great North Woods, the Lakes Region and the Seacoast. She offers moose-sighting trips, teaches survival skills — the list goes on. Her husband Peter and other guides work part-time.

Her goal is to help people experience the wilderness “so that they’ll come to love it and help take care of it,” Villeneuve said.

And, no, it’s not true that Villeneuve led a whitewater rafting trip while eight months pregnant. “We don’t have anything to do with rafting,” Villeneuve said. It was a kayak trip.

Named for explorers, their son Jacques is six months old and will join trips this summer with participant permission.

So how do you get into this gig? “I actually get this question a lot from college students,” Villeneuve said. You need official training for guide skills and wilderness medicine. You need to know the area you’ll be guiding well. Then you need to learn the business aspect. “That list could go on and on,” Villeneuve said.

Villeneuve grew up in Meredith in the Lakes Region, where she felt like she was “always on vacation” and loved playing tour guide for visiting friends and relatives. She studied education and recreation at Plymouth State University, and worked as a staff naturalist at the Balsams and as a cross-country ski instructor before founding Outdoor Escapes.

She’d always been into hiking, was on her high school cross-country ski team, started canoeing at 17, and her husband got her into mountain biking. She’s a 4H shooting sports leader and offers archery lessons.

Villeneuve completed courses with the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS). Extended wilderness trip experience (like a 32-day canoe trip in Canada) helped her prepare. She doesn’t take people places she’s never been before. She completed a program in entrepreneurship at Hesser College, and Microcredit NH proved a good “hands-on” resource for starting a business.

Villeneuve spent the first couple years networking with other tourism businesses. Outdoor Escapes rents some equipment, but logistically it’s often easier to work with other outfitters. She partners with bed and breakfasts since not everyone wants to camp.

Villeneuve’s Web site, www.outdoorescapesnewhampshire.com, which she built herself, is her main marketing tool. Participants find her Web site from countries including India, England, Switzerland, Panama, Guatemala and Mexico.

This year, Villeneuve said, “I’m finding I’m busier with people from the U.S. and Canada than ever before.” She thinks the economic slump is perhaps making it tougher for North Americans to travel overseas.

Outdoor Escapes caters to all abilities and ages.

“We spend a lot of time planning each trip carefully,” Villeneuve said.

Some individuals come because they want to try an outdoor adventure but their friends aren’t into it. Entire families come, including grandparents. Villeneuve gets many requests from empty-nester women in their 50s.

When people ask what she does for a vacation, Villeneuve says, “More of the same thing but somewhere else.”

Dollars & Sense
Pay: Villeneuve’s average take-home pay is $3,000 per year.

“It’s a part-time seasonal dream job (no such thing as salary for seasonal jobs) and is not my only stream of income,” she wrote in an e-mail. The first year’s take went to start-up costs, including a computer.

First steps: Get educated in your activity of interest and in business skills, “whether through a university, outdoor education centers, schools, clubs, the library, and small business resource centers, as well as getting first-hand experiences from other experts in the field. A business plan implemented with a good marketing plan is essential to the success of the business,” she wrote.

(Plymouth State University now offers a Bachelor of Science in Adventure Education, by the way.)

Broadway musical creator and talent scout
“I had no idea I was going to Broadway. I was just a creative person from the time I was very young,” said Mark Schoenfeld. One of his current roles is producing and marketing consultant for Rock of Ages, which has five Tony nominations.

Schoenfeld wrote stories, songs and poetry, eventually focusing on songwriting. He liked discovering talented people and putting together rock and R & B groups. Irwin Levine, who wrote “Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Old Oak Tree,” hired him.   

Years later, Schoenfeld sold a script with music to Hollywood. Director Stephen Herek (Mr. Holland’s Opus) saw Schoenfeld present Brooklyn as a one-man show. Schoenfeld sold all his scripts by performing them, not just trying to get them read, he said. Herek put it on stage in Los Angeles to see what it looked like before making a film and that’s when Schoenfeld “got hooked” on the idea of using Brooklyn as a stage musical. He found director Jeff Calhoun and, with a few others, raised $7 million to get the show to Broadway, where it ran for 284 performances.

There’s much more to how Schoenfeld eventually made it. Harvey Pekar created a color comic about it which ran in the New York Times Sept. 19, 2004 (www.nytimes.com/images/2004/09/16/arts/pekar.slidelastfull.jpg). Mark Dagostino, who has written for People, made a documentary about Schoenfeld called Matza Boy.

Schoenfeld grew up in New York, which meant he had geographical access to the entertainment industry.

“I would go to Manhattan with my guitar, and I would sing in front of the record company buildings” where famous songwriters had offices, Schoenfeld said. That’s how Irwin Levine noticed him. But then Schoenfeld ended up in New Hampshire raising two kids on his own and taking jobs he couldn’t handle. He discovered Barri McPherson of Boston, who “sang like an angel.” They partnered on writing songs for her.

“The key to any of this — assuming that you have talent, and who knows if you do or you don’t — is you have to have overwhelming passion — where you don’t control your passion, your passion controls you.... I literally went to homelessness to pursue what I had to pursue.”

“And you have to have fearlessness,” Schoenfeld said.

The story goes that McPherson met Schoenfeld again when he was homeless in New York and the two partnered again and wrote Brooklyn based on his life and a little of hers. “But we didn’t know what it was. We thought it was a movie,” Schoenfeld said.

They sold it to Orion Pictures in one day, but Orion went bankrupt and getting their project back became a legal issue.

“Through our depression we wrote a whole new thing called Music Boy,” Schoenfeld said. Herek bought it, and Brooklyn came back through lawyers — that’s when Herek put it on stage.

Hugh Jackman is currently attached as the producer and star of Music Boy as an animated musical, Schoenfeld said. But that project could take a decade, so Schoenfeld is also doing Music Boy theatrically and expects it to be on Broadway within two years. He’s back to raising money.

Networking is key for this industry.

“If every day you’re not trying to meet new people, then you’re not doing your job,” Schoenfeld said. “I probably make 150 phone calls a day,” he said.

“Most people don’t realize everything is a business. They only see the ‘show’ in show business.... Someone has to figure out a way of monetizing what you have, what your talent is,” Schoenfeld said.

Schoenfeld is managing Jodi Katz, a young Manchester singer who has moved to L.A. and New York to pursue her career. Her credits so far include lead singer in the Kidz Bop world tour.

Schoenfeld retreats to Manchester when he’s creating something and also lives in Beverly Hills and New York. McPherson still writes with him. He lives in Wall Street Towers in Manchester, the “closest thing to sophisticated New York living for me.” (It has a doorman.) He always eats at either C.R. Sparks or Bridge Street Cafe when he’s in town, he said.

Schoenfeld also visits Manchester to see his one-year-old twin grandchildren. He raised his children in Manchester.

“My children were very supportive,” Schoenfeld said.

Schoenfeld has become good friends with Paul Boynton, CEO of the Moore Center, and now helps to bring Broadway performers here for Moore Center fundraisers.

“You have to give back, you know,” he said.

Dollars & Sense
Pay: A Broadway musical creator takes in about 6 percent of the profit. It breaks down into 2 percent if you wrote the lyrics, 2 if you wrote the music and 2 if you wrote the book (script). For international runs, you get a licensing fee, usually $75,000 to $200,000. Once producers recoup that, you go back to making a percentage on the profit. (Brooklyn ran in Asia, including Japan and Korea.)

First steps: This goes for any creative aspect of entertainment, Schoenfeld said: start networking, and “find somebody who believes in you who’s in the game.” You need to “go into belly of the beast.” Broadway is in New York, country music is produced in Nashville, and movies and television are mainly made in Hollywood (New York to a lesser extent).

Music Business Blues
“The record industry is a dinosaur right now,” Mark Schoenfeld said. When records were big, music became “corporate rock” developed in the boardroom. “A lot of people saw that and they still aspire to that,” Schoenfeld said. But that’s not really where it’s at.

He says he discovered rap — “It didn’t sound like anything else, because it didn’t come from the boardroom, it came from the streets” — in the Bronx before it was on the radio and tried to bring it to record company executives, but they said “it was never going to happen.” He said he put together the rap group United Streets of America, and helped write for and produce them. Their music was used in the film Armed and Dangerous (1986).

Film and television are not paying much for music either anymore, other than “bragging rights and exposure,” he said.

“They know they can get it free because there’s no access for all these talented people out there to get their music exposed. It’s no different than being on YouTube.... No one’s really making any money,” Schoenfeld said.

Which brings him back to the stage.

“At one time, Broadway was corny... well, it’s not corny anymore,” he said. U2 is writing a Spiderman show, for example. (And there are various ways to make money with a show — like using the script for a film.)

Your Dream Jobs
Christine Davis of the Women’s Business Center (www.womenbiz.org) said owning your own business is not easy, so it always makes sense to go with something you are passionate about. Do the research and make sure there’s a market for it, but do something you love.

For details on how to find guidance on starting a business, read “Congratulations, you’re fired! How to go from laid off to entrepreneur,” by Jeff Mucciarone, in April 9, 2009, issue of The Hippo, available here.