Ina Garten built a multi-million dollar empire by teaching people how to host intimate dinner parties and roast the perfect chicken, but her career didn’t start in the kitchen.
In his 20s, Garten worked in the White House for Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter, crafting nuclear energy budget policy.
At first, she loved the job. Garten, 76, writes in her new memoir, “When Good Fortune Happens, Be Ready,” that her job was close to the president’s and that the projects she worked on were worth $50 billion. He revealed that he had reached it.
But despite his fame, Garten quickly becomes restless. “Every day I grew a little weaker,” she wrote. The slow pace of government work and limited creative freedom left her wanting more.
She realized that her future at the Office of Management and Budget depended on others, primarily men, choosing her for leadership roles.
“In 1978, that would never have happened,” she wrote. “I needed to find an alternative path where my success would be measured by my business skills and no one could stand in my way.”
Little did Garten know that her next chapter would be waiting 300 miles away in a small 400-square-foot grocery store on Long Island, New York.
One morning in April 1978, Garten, then 30, was reading the New York Times in her office when an ad caught her eye.
It was for Barefoot Contessa, a specialty food store in the Hamptons, and promised “more than six figures in store traffic in the summer alone.” The owner was selling it for $25,000.
Since cooking was her passion, Garten thought she might be happier working in the food industry rather than politics.
She spent her evenings poring over Julia Child’s cookbooks, experimenting with complicated recipes, and her weekends hosting dinner parties at her apartment for friends.
Garten thought the food business offered more freedom and creativity than a stifling government job. Additionally, she recalls that having a “low boredom threshold” meant she was willing to take “tremendous risks just to get out of that misery.”
The next weekend, Garten and her husband, Jeffrey, drove to New York and purchased the store for $20,000.
“It sounded a little crazy, but I lost my mind with excitement,” she wrote. “I didn’t know if it was going to be the best decision or the worst mistake I’ve ever made.”
The secret to a successful career change
Success didn’t come quickly. On their first day running the store, she and Jeffrey made just $87, not including expenses. “We thought this was a disaster,” she recalls. Although Garten had no experience running a food business, he quickly learned an important lesson as a new entrepreneur. That means flexibility is key.
She worked 20 hours a day most weekends, restocking shelves, running last-minute errands, and experimenting with new menu items based on customer feedback. She didn’t get discouraged even if things didn’t sell. She adapted, asked her team of teenage employees about local people’s preferences, and continued to tweak the product.
By the end of that first summer, the line was out the door.
In 1996, after serving customers in the Hamptons for 18 years, Garten sold the business to a chef and manager.
“It seemed insane to walk away from the success of The Barefoot Contessa, but I was so miserable I couldn’t see another way,” she wrote.
She added: “I felt like I wasn’t doing anything new and I certainly wasn’t bringing any creativity to my work.If I continued on autopilot, my business would suffer.” I knew that,” he added.
Once again, Garten realized it was time to switch things up in his career. She took over the office above the store and decided to try her hand at writing a cookbook that would chronicle Barefoot Contessa’s story and some of her most popular recipes.
In 1999, at age 51, Garten published the bestseller, The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook, which catapulted her career. By 2002, she published two more cookbooks, began filming the Food Network show “Barefoot Contessa,” and established herself as a star chef.
Garten previously told CNBC Make It that the secret to making a successful career change is to just do it and not hesitate or hesitate for too long.
“I think people are standing by the pond and trying to figure out what’s going to happen to the pond,” she says. “You just have to jump in and be brave and make a change.”
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