But it's not a panacea for career unhappiness. Building a consulting business takes more than hanging out a shingle and waiting for business to come to you. Besides industry expertise, you also need self confidence, a market for your services, a financial cushion, some salesmanship and time. It's not an easy ride; you'll have to get in the boat and row to your destination. New York City career counselor Anita Lands believes that many people have unrealistic expectations about what it means to be self employed. "They're operating more out of fantasy than reality and may be in for a rude awakening," she says. "You have to be a very self motivated person to make it work. If you don't generate activity, nothing will move. It's all up to you." Phyllis Edelen admits she underestimated the amount of marketing time and skill it takes to build a successful business.
Although she's a dynamic trainer with outstanding organizational skills, sales and marketing aren't her idea of a good time. When Edelen formed her own human resources consulting firm in Gary, Indiana, she didn't expect to return to a more structured environment later on. But circumstances changed and so did she. For starters, she got married. As a newlywed, Edelen felt a need to curtail her extensive travel schedule so she could spend more time with her husband. This definitely put a crimp in her work life. The harsh truth is this: If you want to do interesting and challenging work, you have to be willing to travel to where that work is. Otherwise, you can stagnate. Dreaming of a no travel schedule, Edelen jumped at an opportunity to help manage an AT&T outplacement center in Chicago.
Technically, she was still a consultant on an account, but it would be hard to tell her from a regular staffer. Indeed, for any consultant who craves variety, challenge and freedom of movement, it wouldn't be an appealing solution. Translated into real life terms, Edelen worked 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., four or five days a week for 2 4 years. When that assignment ended, she took a short break before accepting another 9 to 5 position managing Kraft's downstate Illinois career transition center. "I may be self employed," says Edelen, "but in my case, the only difference between self employment and a J.O.B. is the cost of health insurance and a 401(k) plan." She is not alone. Many of her former colleagues have made similar decisions. In an intensely competitive market, consultants who lack marketing ambition are finding it increasingly difficult to compete for more desirable assignments with their more extroverted counterparts.
That said, there's no mandate that only highly extroverted sales types are cut out for self employment. While gregariousness certainly helps, you can overcome that lack by hiring people who complement you and offset your limitations. Consider Wheaton, Illinois, financial planner Peggy Tracy. She lives the independent consultant's dream-thanks, in part, to the assistance of Julia Schopick, an Oak Park, Illinois, public relations professional who specializes in promoting doctors, lawyers, accountants and other professionals.
Tracy went independent after leaving her job as assistant accounting manager for a financial services company. She wanted to concentrate on doing the work rather than getting it, so she hired Schopick to help promote her business and carve out a niche where her services would be welcome. The result: Clients seek her out and she's created a very profitable business. Their collaboration is a textbook example of how two consulting businesses can profit by working together. Certainly, the ideal may be to spend a decade developing expertise and influence within a specific industry before launching a business. However, when it comes to entrepreneurism, exceptions make the rules. If all would be owners took the time to work their way up the corporate ladder before carefully planning and starting their own firms, the U.S. economy would boast far fewer entrepreneurial success stories.
Inspiration from a Crisis
Sometimes, a significant life experience points people in a particular entrepreneurial direction. Anna Navarro left her job as Monsanto's director of corporate social responsibility to pursue a more meaningful career path. Navarro knew that she wanted to be self employed (she was sick of corporate politics), but she was clueless as to what field she should choose. For her, the process of leaving a high level corporate position to find a new vocational role turned out to be one of the most significant experiences of her life. In fact, she found it so meaningful that she eventually chose to devote her career to helping others make such career transitions. Cheryl Heisler suffered a similar fate. When she switched careers from law to advertising, she never imagined that the process would form the basis of a private counseling practice.
But when so many attorneys spontaneously sought her assistance and advice on how they could leave law as well, she knew she'd stumbled into a job market niche worth exploring. You may be able to develop an even larger entrepreneurial venture if you have the vision (and capital) to recognize the seeds of a great idea in your own life circumstances. In trying to find a solution to his dog's food allergies, Jeffrey Bennett spent hours in the kitchen whipping up tempting concoctions. His veterinarian, A1 Plechner, was so impressed with Bennett's canine recipes that the two formed a partnership and founded Nature's Recipe Pet Foods, a Corona, California, enterprise that manufactures specialty pet foods to the professional market. Now who but the most inventive among us would ever imagine that Spot's indigestion could be the foundation for a multi-million dollar business?
Expand on a Hobby
Hobbies and other extracurricular activities provide another popular source of fulfilling entrepreneurial adventures. Usually, though, these types of businesses start small and build slowly. Heidi Hyatt spent 25 years as an engineer designing machines. But in 1988, she gave up that career to work full time restoring Victorian homes. She'd gotten hooked on restoration in the early 1980s, while working on her own two bedroom ranch house in Mt. Prospect, Illinois. Then, when she sold that property in 1984 to move to the country, she bought a house that looked more like a shack than a country home. The place was in such bad shape that the second floor had been condemned and plaster was falling off the walls. But she tackled the remodeling project with vigor, even though she was still working as an engineer.
In fact, when she finished her extensive renovation of the house's interior and exterior, it was so picture perfect that Sears, Roebuck used its photo on a brochure. News of her gift for restoration spread like wildfire through the countryside, which is filled with rundown Victorian era architecture badly in need of Hyatt's imagination and loving attention to detail. One by one, she has done her part to turn dilapidated farmhouses into magnificent Victorian treasures.
In the process, she's created a livelihood from a passion that was once her hobby. If you think hobbies are too "small potatoes" to make lucrative career choices, think again. Real devotees may be willing to pay tons of money on expensive equipment and services to indulge their passions. Joe Mansueto had a love of investing and an unusual-almost cultish-fascination with mutual funds. His belief in them became the foundation for a Chicago publishing firm that covers mutual funds the way newspapers cover sports. Entrepreneurs are, by nature, builders and creators-not just of products and services-but also of communities. They're mavericks determined to mold the world to suit their needs and dreams. In many ways, Mansueto is the classic entrepreneur. Yes, he had some of those innate childhood leanings.
When he was nine years old, he decided to sell crickets to the neighbors as garden accessories. He ordered 1,000 to get started. It turned out to be his first entrepreneurial failure: The crickets died. Almost from the beginning, he had a great eye for a value. As a sixth grader, he was a ham radio buff. This hobby netted him his first real taste of financial success when he bought a vintage radio for $100 and sold it two weeks later for $300. But he admits that the community mattered more to him than the money. The camaraderie he shared with other ham radio fanatics has stayed with him as a happy memory. As an adult, when it came time to get a "real job," he sought one that would suit his casual lifestyle, intellectual curiosity and sense of community. He founded Morningstar to create it. As the company grows, he finds that his role is constantly changing. Businesses, like people, have different developmental stages and need different types of leaders at different times in their history. For him, that is part of the challenge.
