Audacious at Any Age: Second Act Strategies from a Career Chameleon

By Garrison Leykam

Certified Professional Career Coach and Official Member of the Forbes Coaches Council, Garrison Leykam doesn’t just believe that everyone is capable of creating their own second act careers. This AARP card-carrying motorcyclist and “career chameleon” has proved it himself many times over. Garrison has been a successful record producer for industry giant London Records, performed as a singer-songwriter at Nashville’s iconic Bluebird Café and CBGBs, president of his own record label, held leadership positions at major corporations, been an AM radio news-talk personality, a stand-up comic at NYC’s legendary Gotham Comedy Club, and a documentary host and producer for Connecticut Public Television (CPTV). In Audacious at Any Age, Garrison shares his career reinvention lessons learned and motivates readers to find and follow their own dreams no matter what their age. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Publishdrive
• Release date: May 18, 2019

Book preview

© 2019 Garrison Leykam LLC

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

CONTENTS

PART ONE

Chapter 1 Career Chameleon 5

Chapter 2 American’s Love Affair with the Jukebox 10

Chapter 3 Musician Years 15

Chapter 4 London Records 19

Chapter 5 My Life in the Seventies 25

Chapter 6 From Music to MCI 28

Chapter 7 Moving Up the Corporate Ladder 35

Chapter 8 Becoming a Business Guru 40

Chapter 9 Diners and Motorcycles 44

Chapter 10 Host and Producer 48

Chapter 11 Authoring Diners 54

Chapter 12 The World of Standup Comedy 57

Chapter 13 Life-Long Learning 63

Chapter 14 Backtrack America 66

PART TWO

Chapter 15 Why You Need to Reinvent Your Career 70

Chapter 16 The Right to Reinvent Yourself 77

Chapter 17 Your New Career Compass 87

Chapter 18 Designing Your Career Reinvention 91

Chapter 19 Your Personal Value Proposition 94

Chapter 20 Values and Vocation 99

Chapter 21 Success on Your Own Terms 109

Chapter 22 Your Career Reinvention 3-Act Play 112

Chapter 23 Prototyping Your Way to Successful Reinvention 113

Chapter 24 Hold Yourself Accountable 119

Chapter 25 Perpetual Forward Motion 123

PART ONE

Chapter 1: CAREER CHAMELON

I am blessed to belong to two families. No, I don’t mean the classic father and mother lineages which came together to create you and me and everyone on the planet. Rather, there is the family of relationships of father, mother, son, daughter, significant others, and close friends whom I consider to be my primary family. But, for me, there is another family that I became part of through the ever-evolving process of my own career reinvention and which, in some way, was actually the motivating force behind it since its beginning. This other family I belong to has a last name different from Leykam; it’s Chamaeleonidae. Chamaeleonidae family members can change colors to camouflage themselves in the event of imminent physical danger but they can also do it to signal to other family members as well as to adapt to temperature changes. Quite remarkable, if I do say so myself.

As if color change weren’t remarkable enough, the Chamaeleonidae family has the most distinct eyes of any creatures anywhere. The upper and lower eyelids are joined, with only a pinhole large enough for the pupil to see through. Each eye can pivot and focus independently, allowing observation of two different objects simultaneously.

My two families have played significantly different, yet complementary and mutually supportive roles in my career evolution. Going back three generations on my mother’s side, my grandfather Lou, my Uncle Howie, and my mother Rose, imbued in me a passion for music and, more broadly, self-expression and creativity. Both my mother’s and my father’s side of the Leykams moored me to a blue-collar work ethic and a don’t rest till you get it done attitude that fueled me to see things through to completion. No doubt, it was a remnant of the golden age of work when retirement and a gold watch were the rewards for company loyalty and tireless commitment.

The Chamaeleonidae family, let’s call them the Chameleons because of the limited space on the side of the mailbox, were the roots of my being dubbed by supportive peers, the Career Chameleon. Those close to me in my business and personal lives have seen me successfully change careers by seemingly instinctual responses to changing industry climates and business competitor threats, as well as adapting to new entrepreneurial opportunities. I have learned through looking back at my diverse career path to appreciate my ability to be open to all new opportunities as they presented themselves and to see situations in which I could explore new talents and abilities as yet underutilized or not used at all. Once I had a new venture identified, I could switch from stereopsis to monocular focus, magnify in my mind what I wanted to go after, and like a laser beam, direct my chameleon-like vision with my Leykam work ethic until I achieved a desirable outcome. In the classic words voiced by Fred Foy for the opening of the vintage Lone Ranger TV series, Return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear and I will guide you through the changing colors of my chameleon-like career, sharing with you lessons I learned along the way which will I will expound upon in later chapters so that you can successfully chart your own career reinvention.

*

I spent my early years as an Army brat. Ironically, most photos from this time depict me waving either hello or goodbye as we were always on the move. I was born in Alexandria Hospital in northern Virginia, proximate as it was to Fort Belvoir where my father was stationed as a Master Sergeant. He would often have to assist with barrage balloon training operations at Camp Tyson in Paris, Tennessee. There mini dirigibles were used to protect land-based targets from low-flying aircraft.

My mother was employed as a civilian secretary in the records department at Fort Belvoir. She and my dad were both dedicated to supporting the military. Shortly after being patted into my first breath by the delivery doctor, I joined my parents and brother, Jack, in the military housing on the post. My cousin Dave in New Jersey had a collection of Army Dinky vehicles that could not even come close to rivaling the fleet of actual army trucks, tanks and jeeps that I got to play on each and every day.

My father’s enlistment into the Army had been a spontaneous decision made one day on his high school playground. He and best friend Daniel McFarland watched a fire engine race by and they decided to chase it. Running out of breath adjacent to an army enlistment office they went in to catch their breath and ended up as GIs, never to return to school again. My father’s ultimate plan to return to his home plate, Brooklyn, led to his requesting an Army reassignment from Fort Belvoir to Fort Hamilton; however, his gypsy restlessness made that relocation short-lived and it was followed by another assignment at Fort Totten in Queens. Once again, our Ford Super Deluxe station wagon was loaded up with our personal belongings as we moved from one lookalike housing post to another one. My mother learned early on not to throw away the moving boxes but to store them nearby with magic-markered contents labels that led to easy unpacking and repacking, which was a good thing since shortly after the Queens move, Fort Slocum, on the other side of Long Island Sound in New Rochelle, beckoned my father. However, this reassignment was to be different from all the others. My father would retire from full-time military service and become a private sector employee though still working for the U.S. Army.

The Leykam family transitioned from a migratory military household into a family with roots in the community. New Rochelle enabled my parents to realize a life that was more secure, more comfortable and more rewarding than the one they began as a young couple. John and Rose Leykam joined the middle-class stampede to the suburbs enjoying such newfound luxuries as the occasional meal away from home. Upward mobility was no longer measured by the number of stripes on my father’s sleeves but rather by owning their own home, upgrading the tired Ford and those wonderful Sunday breakfasts at the College Diner. For me, going to the same school, having friends for longer than a year, and feeling that wonderful sense of belonging, were treasured family gifts.

Career Chameleon Lesson: Adjusting to new schools, new teachers, new friends, and new neighborhoods sharpened my abilities to quickly adapt to new circumstances and new challenges which aided me greatly in business. Adaptability is key to a successful career reinvention.

The College Diner was both an extension and a symbol of our newfound happy and permanent suburban life. Enjoying the last forkful of home cooking away from home, one could almost see reflected in our plates the 1950’s experience of abundance. Dessert was our slice of the new American consumer pie. While heavy food, coarse language and informality accounted for the pre-war appeal to blue-collared male industrial workers, the College Diner represented the shedding of the old diner image in favor of one that symbolized the redefinition of the meaning of success in America.

Diner owners, like their customers, the Leykams, experienced newfound opportunities to realize the American dream. More diversified clients were frequenting diners than in the prewar years. Behind-the-counter grill cooks were still slinging hash for 3rd shift industrial workers and refilling the coffee cups of late-night truckers but they were also now scrambling eggs for busy executives on their way to the office and preparing sandwiches for female clerical workers on lunch breaks, as well as making burgers and fries for couples looking to extend their evening at the movie theater. Diners were now playing host to everyone in a new $12 billion restaurant market. And, the College Diner was situated in an ideal location on North Avenue in New Rochelle, New York on the borders of a well-heeled residential neighborhood, an inner-city in transition and a growing college town. And, it was within walking distance to of our house on Brookside Place.

The humble little College Diner had repackaged itself as a middle-income family restaurant and family had replaced working man as the basic social and consumer unit. Domesticating the diner brought it a new respectability over its pre-war predecessor. No longer an extension of the factory floor, the diner was now part of the happy suburban home; it integrated women and children into the world of eating out. The nuclear family was part and parcel of the new and simple diner marketing message: Eat out. You deserve it. In fact, so synonymous were diners with what was good and wholesome about America that their marketing message enabled them to lure families out of their homes at dinnertime. Eating out was no longer only utilitarian; it was now recreational, a part of living the new life. My father’s taking the Leykam family out for Sunday breakfast at the College Diner was not only about family bonding, though that was a big part of it. My parents were experiencing, demonstrating, and enjoying their newfound affluence, as modest as it was life-changing.

The post-World War II diner acceptance of kids eating out diminished parents’ fears that loud behavior on the part of their children would be a cause for embarrassment. In fact, the addition of children’s menus, crayons and paper placemats on which to draw, were tangible affirmations that the College Diner was surely a family-friendly place to dine. Given my Army brat background and being in perpetual motion, going to the same place every Sunday and feeling truly welcome was a salve to all the painful experiences of changing schools, having to make making new friends and gaining their acceptance. Getting to know the diner regulars, who had their predictable positions at the counter each Sunday and whose names my father got to know as if reading by rote from a roll call list, starkly contrasted with living on military posts where neighbors were continuously relocated. And having that one day a week when my parents, my brother and I sat down and enjoyed a meal together— free from the demands of work and school—made the College Diner a sacred place—our own Shangri-La.

The Leykams were living proof of the post-World War II diner owners’ mission to position the diner meal as a potion for strengthening family bonds. Pancakes with syrup and scrambled eggs have a way of helping family members to bond. Sunday breakfast was truly a ceremonial testament to core family relationships. My father felt a newfound pride with his ability to go into his wallet and pay for a family meal out. Gone were the overheard conversations about money issues between him and my mom. And, for my mother, you could literally see every line in her face relax as she became the primary beneficiary of the diner experience, allowing herself to indulge in the antidote for domestic drudgery on top of the two jobs it took to supplement my father’s income in order to pay the mortgage and put my brother and me through private high school and college. Diner owners made it possible for suburban housewives to free themselves from clutter, cooking chores, and dirty dishes. Many wives and mothers held part-time and full-time jobs during the ‘50’s and ‘60’s as a means of financing their families’ expanding consumer budgets.

For me, it was absolute joy walking from our home to the College Diner on Sunday mornings and regrouping as a family after six days when we were disjoined. I remember kicking the back of the diner booth with excitement over just being together. My parents would ask my brother Jack and I to share what happened in school that week and they would, in turn, tell us about interesting things that had occurred on their jobs, interrupted only by pleas from my brother and me for coins to put into the booth-side jukebox.

Over the course of years of Sunday breakfasts, the diner became my Rosetta Stone for interpreting what is most important in life: family, community, conversation, caring for yourself and others and living your life purpose. These are the riches in life available to everyone and they can be found in any classic diner. They’re not on the menu but they are served in overflowing portions at the counter and in the booths. You can hear them in the conversations between patrons sharing the latest community news as a platform for connecting with each other. You can feel them in the handshake with a regular who is truly glad to see you. You can see them in the smile from the waitress who knows you by your first name. You can experience them in how the owner of a diner welcomes you and makes you instantly feel like family. You can taste them in the home cooking like the aromas and love of your mother’s kitchen.

Career Chameleon Lesson: Career reinvention is a solitary journey but one that invites new connections, mentors, colleagues, friends, clients, customers, and suppliers. Like a classic diner, community and relationships are the living fuel that drives change. These relationships can eventually create a new business family to be valued and nurtured like the old diner community. They are more than means to an end. They are the gifts of reinvention like an extension, a new branch with new blossoms.

Chapter 2: AMERICA’S LOVE AFFAIR WITH THE JUKEBOX

My passion for music actually started in diners. America’s love affair with the jukebox crossed through my parents’ generation and into mine providing what Ronald Reagan referred to on November 3, 1988 in Proclamation 5896 National Jukebox Week as good, clean fun underscoring its enduring place in American Life.

David C. Rockola, founder and former chairman and president of Rock-Ola Manufacturing Co., the last of the developers of the famous jukebox industry of the 1930s, '40s