Passage 3 Change your Life In his early forties, Peter Van was a successful stockbroker at the London Stock Exchange, with the typical rewards of success: a large beautiful home and a very healthy bank account. But Peter worked long hours, and he saw little of his home and family. He enjoyed his job, yes, but he was never there to see his children growing up. Then last year, the firm he worked for went bankrupt, and unexpectedly, Peter had the opportunity to do something different. So Peter and his family sold their house in London, and moved to the countryside. They bought a smaller house with some land. Today, Peter is more relaxed. He spends time with his children, and he has seen them change into healthy happy kids. He has started working on his land, growing fruit and vegetable. He still trades in shares, but only his own. He and his family have a modest, but comfortable life. Husband and wife Rob and Manda Brent are teachers, but they have both resigned from their jobs, and neither of them plans to return to the school where they worked in Birmingham’s city center. Now they live in Italy, where they have bought a farmhouse in the Tuscan hills. “We’ve never had our own accommodation,” said Rob. “We’ve never had our own business before, so it’ll be quite a challenge. Plus we have borrowed a lot of money from the bank to get started.” “In this first three-month period, we’re settling in and reorganizing the farmhouse,” said Manda, ”Then we’ll open our doors to guests.” Bed and breakfast will not be the only source of income, though. The farm has got olive trees and all the equipment for producing olive oil. It sounds as though Rob and Manda will be very busy. We wish them the very best of luck!

Passage 1 Enjoying your Career “My business is my hobby,” someone tells you. “I wish I could make a living from my hobby,” you may think. “It sounds ideal.” Yet according to Sue Cole, a management expert, there can be both advantages and disadvantages for those who combine their hobby with their career. “There’s a real possibility that your hobby becomes less attractive when it’s your job. But also quite a few people who make their hobby their career become too enthusiastic and forget about the basic principles of business,” she says. “For example, someone may think: I love cooking. There aren’t enough restaurants in this area. I’ll start one up.” And they go ahead without establishing how many customers they’ll need each day or what income they’ll require to cover costs. That can be a recipe for disaster. Richard Campbell, however, has made a success of it. A keen amateur singer with a passion for travel, he first became involved in organizing musical tours as a university student. On graduating, he joined a small student travel company, Sunway Travel, as a tour leader. Thirteen years later, in 1993, he bought the business and repositioned it to focus entirely on musicians, both amateur and professional. It was a successful move and Sunway Travel now arranges worldwide travel for 80% of Britain’s classical musicians. Despite the size of the business, Campbell still enjoys touring with orchestras. “Musicians are usually delightful to travel with and you visit wonderful places.” It can get stressful though. “They assume it’s normal when everything goes right. If something goes wrong, they look for someone to blame, and they can be quite unreasonable and bad-tempered, especially if they are worried about meeting their contracts for the rest of their tour.” Campbell explains that things haven’t always been easy. “Sometimes the company didn’t perform as well as I’d expected. There were difficult times and I had to learn to cope with the stress. However, we’ve now got to a level where my staff can run the business on a daily basis and all I need to do is keep an eye on things.” Campbell recognizes that he could have earned more in another line of business. “Travel generally does not pay well. I have friends in other professions who are very highly paid.” But he has no regrets. “They envy me because I am reasonably well paid to do something that I love doing.”

Passage 2 McDonald’s In 1954, Two brothers ran a small but busy restaurant in San Bernardino, California. The restaurant featured a limited menu that included: hamburgers, French fries, soft drinks and milkshakes. The milkshakes were very popular and the restaurant had purchased ten special “Miltimixer” milkshake makers. Each one could mix five milkshakes at a time. A salesman named Ray Kroc was the exclusive distributor of the “Multimix” milkshake machines at that time. Ray decided to visit the restaurant ; he wanted to find out why they had so many machines. Ray talked to Richard and Maurice (Mac) McDonald, the owners of the restaurant. He saw how they prepared the food using equipment that they had invented. The service in the restaurant was fast and the prices were inexpensive. Ray realized that this was a fantastic opportunity. He wanted to open more restaurants and so sell more multimixers. In April 1955, Ray opened his first franchised McDonald’s restaurant in Des Plaines, Illinois, First day sales were $366.12. Ray continued to franchise new restaurants and to expand. In 1961, he bought the business from the MacDonald brothers for $2.7million. Today, McDonald’s Corporation has over 31,000 restaurants in over 100 countries. There is even one in Kuwait City, which opened in 1994. On its first day, there were 15,000 people lining up to eat at the restaurant.

Mary: Excuse me. Could you pass me a plate?
Alex: Sure. You’re Mary Young, aren’t you?
Mary: Yes, I am.
Alex: I thought so. You probably won’t remember me, but I came for an interview for （1） with you about three years ago.
Mary: Yes, Alex Schein, isn’t it?
Alex: That’s right.
Mary: I seem to remember that one of your hobbies was photography. It was a real passion.
Alex: You do have a good memory.
Mary: So what happened? We offered you a job, but you went to work for （2） —Deutsche Bank, I seem to remember.
Alex: The conditions they gave me were better, I’m sorry to say.
Mary: I can understand that. So, are you still working there?
Alex: No, I have given up banking （3）. I worked for Deutsche Bank for a little more than two years, but I didn’t really like the job. There was too much competition among the employees, and I didn’t really like that.
Mary: Well, sometimes you have to be competitive if you want to make progress.
Alex: I know, but it wasn’t for me.
Mary: So, what do you do now?
Alex: I have become a （4） photographer.
Mary: You know, that doesn’t surprise me. Are you in any particular sector?
Alex: I take portrait photos. I’ve just bought a studio, and I’m creating a library of photos, which I’m going to publish on my website.
Mary: You must give me your web address.
Alex: Better than that. I can give you my business card. And what about you? Are you still in human resources?
Mary: Yes, I am. I’ve moved to the head office, and I’m the manager there. So now I’m even busier （5） .

Small is beautiful. That, at least, is the conclusion of new research（1）how satisfied secretaries are in different sized firms. “We have found that people who work for small or medium-sized companies work harder and are（2）,” says David Smith, author of one of the latest studies in this field. “The smaller the environment, the bigger the part you play as an individual, and the more people notice your absence.”
This will come as a surprise to many secretaries. Some recruitment agencies said that secretaries are keen to get positions in the bigger companies. However, smaller companies can be more flexible when it comes to working hours, and have better working conditions. But working for a smaller firm is（3）. Career development in the form of courses can be limited, but, on the other hand, employees often feel that they can learn more on the job.
In fact, opportunities for promotion are the same（4）. Smith also says: “Our research shows that in a company with fewer than 50 people, employers can actually see what their employees are producing and then give them bonuses（5）.”

Mary: Excuse me. Could you pass me a plate?
Alex: Sure. You’re Mary Young, aren’t you?
Mary: Yes, I am.
Alex: I thought so. You probably won’t remember me, but I came for an interview for （1） with you about three years ago.
Mary: Yes, Alex Schein, isn’t it?
Alex: That’s right.
Mary: I seem to remember that one of your hobbies was photography. It was a real passion.
Alex: You do have a good memory.
Mary: So what happened? We offered you a job, but you went to work for （2） —Deutsche Bank, I seem to remember.
Alex: The conditions they gave me were better, I’m sorry to say.
Mary: I can understand that. So, are you still working there?
Alex: No, I have given up banking （3）. I worked for Deutsche Bank for a little more than two years, but I didn’t really like the job. There was too much competition among the employees, and I didn’t really like that.
Mary: Well, sometimes you have to be competitive if you want to make progress.
Alex: I know, but it wasn’t for me.
Mary: So, what do you do now?
Alex: I have become a （4） photographer.
Mary: You know, that doesn’t surprise me. Are you in any particular sector?
Alex: I take portrait photos. I’ve just bought a studio, and I’m creating a library of photos, which I’m going to publish on my website.
Mary: You must give me your web address.
Alex: Better than that. I can give you my business card. And what about you? Are you still in human resources?
Mary: Yes, I am. I’ve moved to the head office, and I’m the manager there. So now I’m even busier （5） .