How to launch a second career

When Dan Nainan was laid off from his job as a senior engineer at Intel, he dove right into his second career: stand-up comedy.

That's not the head-scratcher it first appears to be. "I went into stand-up comedy for a specific reason -- my job involved speaking on stage doing technical demonstrations in front of thousands of people, (sometimes) on television in front of millions of people. I had tremendous stage fright, so I thought that a comedy class might help -- in other words, if I could do comedy, then a corporate presentation would be nothing."

So he already had the training for his second career when his first was eliminated. He never needed to pursue other alternatives as he found almost immediate success. "I've performed at the Democratic National Convention, at three inaugural events, and I just starred in an Apple commercial and shot a movie with Dev Patel, star of 'Slumdog Millionaire.'"

He points out that residuals from the commercial could end up paying him more for a day's work than he earned in a year at Intel. That's no laughing matter.