The Life

Passion Before Paycheck    

Name:  Judy Brandt

Location:  Alexandria, VA USA

Age: 48

It is a good time to talk about passions and where they come from. My father passed away on March 20th. My brother, in his remarks at the memorial service, alluded to the parable of the sons who are given talents, and the riches earned by the one who took his out into the world, explained to the mourners that my father had given his children many talents and we had indeed continued to make them flourish.

See the list of things he did, at www.bradt.com.

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
– Robert Heinlein

Life is a giant playground, and I want to ride all the rides. I am a relentless generalist.

I have flown an aircraft, a sailplane and a hang-glider. I have punted, rowed, canoed and kayaked. I have played guitar and autoharp, and last week picked up my first banjo experience. I have photographed the heck out of a lot of rocks and trees, and the occasional human has stood still for long enough for me to be happy composing my shot. I have mushed a dog team above the arctic circle, flown an airplane above the Richardson Mountains, driven the ice road atop the Beaufort sea, walked on pack ice over the arctic ocean, and photographed the Aurora Borealis from the McKenzie River at two in the morning. I’m a writer and a reader, a baker and a cook. I still want to do one of those cycling trips where you ride all day and eat whatever the hell you want for dinner. I might eventually learn to snowboard. I can honestly say I’ve had more lovers than I can count, and managed not to die from my passions or theirs.

The talents that come from my father include:

aviation — because he dreamed of being a pilot, and took us to so many air shows, I had him take me to the airport for my first flying lesson. Watching me take off made him realize he had waited long enough. He sneaked off to another airport and started flying lessons just after I did…and didn’t tell me til he was almost ready to solo! He got his license six months after I did (his own father’s death that summer slowed things down, a grief that I’m only now discovering. God, I wish I’d asked him how he felt when he lost HIS parents. He was 52 when that happened; I am 48. His parents lived til their mid 80’s. My Dad would have turned 72 on April 25th) and six months before his oldest son did. My flying club is flying across America this spring — a trip I will do on the eastbound leg and fly in his honour.

- climbing, perhaps a little: my dad climbed a lot of telephone poles in HIS first job, installing phones. I took up climbing in 2006, when I was 46. Shortly after that, I met Kenyon’s mother, Linda, who became my climbing partner. And her passion for her grandchildren and desire to spend more time with small kids, even ones not related to her, spurred her to coax me to join her in becoming a climbing instructor, introducing other people to a sport that brings me joy both physically and, when we’re outdoors, visually in nature, too. I absolutely LOVE climbing real rock. Candidly, I don’t like being cold. I DO get motivated to strength train in order to climb better. Until I hit a tendonitis injury last november, I was starting to crack indoor 5.10’s…and now I’m having to re-set my goals, simply enjoy being able to do 5.7’s at all, and work up again. I am thrilled that Linda is training to do more trad, and I hope to keep up with her! There is nothing more fun than a good partner you trust, and I trust her with my life.

Friends — I cannot say I have a boatload, but I love the ones I have, and I love to help everyone I meet. If I know a thing or a connection they need, it gives me great joy to share that.

- giving — one of the things I would love about making a lot of money would be to give it all away to do good stuff. I don’t care particularly much for posessions. I am always trying to get RID of things. I would rather spend my money on experiences.

- nature — I love being outdoors. Would rather live in a remote, naturally beautiful place than a city. (Still trying to figure out how to package my expertise so I can do that…not sure if I want all the responsibilities that come with chucking it all to become a mountain guide…still a possibility, might be in my future…the Universe keeps sending me FREE CLIMBING STUFF  — can you believe that in the past SIX MONTHS i’ve won a climbing backpack, sleeping bag and dynamic rope to go with all the other stuff I own…if a rack of trad gear falls into my lap, I may have to pay serious attention. Don’t want to ice-climb or do stuff that’s cold…though I loved my trip to the Canadian arctic in 2001, and I find there is something very special about those remote communities, even though those who live there grapple with tremendous hardships.

- photography — as professional and as amateur, he had an eye for the visually spectacular, and capture tremendous beauty on film. He taught us all how to see the world through many lenses. His father took many pictures of flowers (and –imagine — MOVIES of flowers. Pan, pan, pan…). So did my Dad. So do I.

- love of the water — he loved the water, though he never learned to scuba dive, a passion I picked up from my sister Karen and enjoy when I can. I love the fish! And the warmth of floating in water watching a totally different world.

Exploring the world around me is my passion. A friend of mine observed yesterday, “You do such daring things! You don’t just think about them, you make up your mind, and go out and do them!” I suppose it might look that way to someone else.

I have never in my life taken a job for the money. (and, at the moment, I am blessed to have a partner who is willing to do just that, to enable me to follow my  professional passion of sharing my business expertise by running a solo consultancy…)

Yet every job I’ve ever done has paid me richly in priceless life experiences.

The final work-term job I competed for when I was doing my MBA was the worst-paid of the bunch: a grand $1,500 (Canadian) a month. I was working with aboriginal-owned businesses on reserves in Northern Ontario: coffee shops, craft co-operatives, fishing camps, a bus line. I was providing technical small business assistance (and on a wing and a prayer, as at the time I didn’t know how to balance my own chequebook — and still don’t do it, for that matter) that I was learning one step ahead of my clients from a senior consultant in the field who took pity on me and gave me a crash course in “native small business accounting” before I was strapped into my first floatplane and sent into the middle of nowhere. I spent a surprising amount of my time looking down on virgin wilderness from 3500 feet thinking, “Someone is PAYING me to be here?”

My job at IBM wasn’t terribly well-paid either, but at the time I was passionate about being a business stragetist. Inspired in part by a dynamic professor in my business school, Chris Bart, I wanted to put my creative brain to work to solve business problems using technology.  Which would have been fine if IBM hadn’t been looking to move boxes…that was as close as I ever came to drinking the kool-aid. For six entire months, I believed that I was going to be a business strategist. Then I realized that I was working for a marketing company. Useful, portable soft skills, helpful lexicon, and many lessons about how I never wanted to behave or treat people in a business environment or anywhere else. It took me two years to figure out what next.

I also wanted to make a difference — even if only a small one — on as big a canvas as I could find. I applied to the UN, the OECD, the IMF, the World Bank…and got a lot of fancy rejection letters. A friend suggested I send a resume and cover letter to the Canadian Embassy in Washington…and within six months I had interviewed successfully for a job as a trade commissioner there: helping Canadian companies win government contracts. Oh boy — “make a difference” meets “business strategy”! Heaven on earth!

For fifteen years, I gave it my all. And I began to realize that I had outgrown the job. I wanted to work coast to coast, all industries, in at least two countries and then maybe beyond. I couldn’t rely on the spin of the personnel dice to see whether or not I’d get a manager content to let me run wild and do things that were way way beyond any conventional job definition. The system had stretched as far as it could. It was time to go. By the end, it was a very expensive paycheque: I look back and realize that I was utterly exhausted mentally, physically, spiritually, and the downslope would have had no end. I did not like the person I was becoming.

So for the first time in my life, I jumped. It was the first time I had left job A without having a certain job B to go to…yet at the same time knowing that whether or not I had been fighting the idea for years, I was about to start my own business. A bit — maybe even a lot — like getting married, you look back and wonder how long you’d have thought about it if you knew then what you know now. (In the case of getting married, a resounding YES — very best decision of my life was to choose a partner, J.J. Gertler, who was ever so much more perfect for me than I could have possibly known)

Have I sometimes wished the money part wasn’t so hard? Oh, yes. Particularly now, running my own business – I give people the insight they need to win government contracts. Even there, I do the fun stuff: I’m a business strategist. I don’t write proposals, I don’t sell people’s stuff, I don’t lobby the Congress. I help people who own healthy, thriving companies figure out whether selling to the government could be good business for their business, and if it is, then what they need to know, who they need to know, and what they want to do next. (If ya want to win more government contracts and spend less time and money doing it, then check out www.summitinsight.com).

It drives me nuts every time I hear about another business owner registering on web sites to receive solicitations and wondering why they don’t win. As soon as someone understands that they need to invest in this market to profit, then I can help them. I love sharing my expertise of over 20 years, serving over 5,000 clients, helping them reach the world’s biggest buyer — the U.S. government — and providing goods and services that can profoundly change people’s lives by improving how effectively government serves its citizens and delivers its missions.

I love working one-on-one with my clients; I love crafting creative programs, resources, seminars, FAQ’s, briefing that are illuminating and fun, for people who are tired of government contracting being dreadful drudgery. I love to travel to the places where people are, and to help them succeed. I am thrilled when the things I can share as easily as breathing represent breakthrough intelligence to people who need to know these things.

I am passionate about wanting this business to succeed…so I can afford to go off and do more of all those other things.

Judy Bradt

Judy would like you to visit the links highlighted in this piece:

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Passion Before Paycheck – What’s Your Passion?