The Road Not Taken: Giving Up Law Saved My Father’s Small Business — and My Family Life

In this series of posts, Influencers explain how their career paths might have changed. Read all the stories here and write your own (please include the hashtag #RoadNotTaken in the body of your post).

“Why would you want to do this?”

I was 27 years old, newly married, and from a typical striving, second generation, middle-class background. My parents sacrificed so that I could have four years of college (I am a proud English major) and an advanced law degree.

This was the American dream – the path most people would feel lucky and privileged to follow. And, so, when I decided to leave the law profession just three years into practice, pretty much everybody I knew counseled me not to do it. Not only that, but my new career choice was to take over my father’s small, struggling travel agency with very little prospects. We were not financially solvent, couldn’t pay our bank loans, and were being sued by customers because of some bad hiring choices conducted without an HR department (like the escaped convict from Poland who disappeared with our clients’ money, and, no, I am not making that up). It’s no wonder that many people thought I was throwing everything I had to the winds and heading in the wrong direction.

I can understand that thinking, but it’s also true that very few people saw what my life as a young litigator was really like. I missed my first Thanksgiving with my wife and family because of my 80-hour work week, and that is an unfortunate memory that stays with me. As part of a small litigation firm, the atmosphere held lots of pressure and stress. Sunday nights were miserable, and sleep proved elusive. I was in a business that literally revolved around fighting. My quality of life was miserable, and I was bringing it home. Specifically, bringing it home at 10 p.m. after an extremely long work day and barking at my new wife because we didn’t have salt on the table. I saw the writing on the wall and realized that, if I continued on as a litigator, my marriage probably wouldn’t survive. I realized that I had become a really grumpy person. I knew I needed a change in course.

I have always had a high tolerance for risk. I decided that if I needed to be away from my family, my hard work and energy should be poured into my own business venture. I loved the intellectual rigor of the law, and I enjoyed research and coming up with novel, creative ways to represent clients. One option for me, which is where I would probably be today were it not for Ovation Travel Group, was to open my own firm as a trial lawyer. The idea of righting wrongs and extracting big settlements from major corporations who inflict damage upon the public is very appealing to me. Not only that, but high-profile trial lawyers at the top of their profession can make more money than we do at the top of our profession. Again, that was the more obvious and potentially lucrative path to take.

But I didn’t go down that road, either. I come from a very entrepreneurial family, and I did not yet have many family obligations. I also had the naiveté that naturally comes from being in your twenties – it really never occurred to me that failure was a possibility.

As I’ve written before, my first job was delivering pizzas, and it was at the age of 16 that I learned the art of customer service. The basic principles of taking initiative, seizing opportunity, and investing in one’s workplace continue to resonate with me 40 years later. Also, travel was always fascinating and exciting: it was in my blood. As an undergraduate, and later, in law school, I worked as a tour leader for my father’s “teen tour” business that he had started years before. I would take teenagers across the country, and I really caught the travel bug. After selling the teen tour business, my father had used his life savings to purchase a small travel agency, and they were struggling big-time. The opportunity presented itself, and the decision to take over the business satisfied my need for change, provided the excitement of risk, and allowed me to exercise creativity in both marketing and client services. Although my parents were initially against the idea, they eventually accepted and supported my change in career trajectory.

These same notions of entrepreneurial thinking and creative customer service have now sustained Ovation for 30 years. In 1984, we were a tiny, ground-floor travel company looking up at skyscraper competitors like American Express and Carlson Wagonlit. With my father-in-law’s connections in the “garment center,” we gained our first clientele, and with a little help from my background as a lawyer, we were able to handle our debts and legal troubles. In fact, my past helped write the map for our future as Lawyers Travel pioneered the concept of facilities management of travel for law firms. We then looked at other vertical markets with similar travel needs and that’s how we expanded into Ovation Travel Group, today with 600 employees and a global footprint.

This industry is not for everyone, and I would not have lasted long without the right temperament and the ability to tolerate risk. Early on the airlines eliminated the long-standing model of paying travel consultants 10 percent commission, and so we had to go ask our clients to pay us a fee after we had told them for years that what we were doing was free. Not to mention such cataclysmic global events as two Gulf wars, 9/11, the global financial crisis, SARS, Hurricane Sandy, Ebola, and ISIS — you just add it up. Yet, while the challenges have been difficult and the work is not always easy, the rewards are always worth it; I love what I do and wouldn’t want to do anything else, even after 30 years. Ultimately, everything is a learning experience that you can take and build upon.

While my career has taken many detours from my start as an undergraduate English major, I still find poet Robert Frost’s advice to be true:

Photo Credit: Mikola / Getty Images