Have you ever dreamed of being your own boss? No more office politics. No more butt-kissing to make someone else look good. No more clawing your way to the top of some invisible ladder. No more boring, busy work to fill the hours until quitting time. Suddenly it's all interesting, exciting and meaningful because it's YOURS!
Some people are practically born into an emancipated role; others grow into it more gradually. For Mary Nissenson Scheer, the road to self-employment seems both fated and circuitous.
She may have demonstrated her first entrepreneurial streak when she was still a preschooler, but it took two misguided career choices for her to realize that she was probably throwing good time after bad.
Initially, Mary made family history at age four when she and her eight-year-old sister held an art sale. They sold off all the family paintings, sculpture and knickknacks while their parents were at the neighborhood patio store.
Three years later, the precocious seven-year-old created a flyer-which she distributed to her teachers-announcing her intentions to become a vocational counselor. In that ad, she offered to solve "Big Problems for 50, Little Ones, a Penny."
Today as the owner of Foresight, a full-service communications company, Scheer is still selling creative works and solving problems. But, like many entrepreneurs, she didn't waltz into business ownership right out of school. She tried her hand (and mind) at other things first.
Her resume begins in a place where others would die to end up.
As a trial attorney for the prestigious Chicago law firm of Hopkins & Sutter, she was well positioned for a successful legal career. The only problem: She didn't like it.
She was next attracted to the glamour of television and broadcast journalism. Explaining how aggressively she pursued that dream could fill another book. Again, she was successful. While only in her 30s, she became a network news anchor for NBC. She had it all: glamour, power, prestige and a six-figure income.
But there was still a problem. "It was wrong for me," says Scheer. "Wrong place. Wrong people. Wrong job."
Not one to live with unhappiness too long, she quit.
This woman isn't a perpetual malcontent. She's an adventurer. She's also smart, creative and energetic. She thrives on challenge and doesn't fear risk. In other words, she fits the entrepreneurial profile almost perfectly.
If you share this passion for success and self-reliance, self-employment may be right for you. But it's not a path of easy answers. It's a trek down the road of individualism. The Sinatras of business, entrepreneurs live with an unparalleled desire to say, "I did it my way."
A Tough Escape
Obviously, there's some risk. Statistics from the U.S. Small Business Administration show that nearly 65 percent of new businesses fail in the first six years. Failure (which fortunately is no longer a four-letter word) is the entrepreneur's middle name.
Frank Borman, a former astronaut who was CEO of Eastern Airlines at the time it went under, once said: "Capitalism without bankruptcy is like Christianity without hell."
When you factor in the financial realities-no more steady paycheck or paid vacations, the expense of health insurance, and the loss of your 401(k)-it comes down to this: You'd better really want it.
Having your own business is often a dream of escape. But regardless of whether you're a disgruntled corporate refugee, a college dropout or a B-school graduate, before you sign up for the Pioneer Track you'd better have a destination. After all, to be your own boss is to determine your own fate.
To paraphrase Eileen Ford, who built one of the most successful modeling agencies in the world: When you own your own business, success and satisfaction don't come from the tooth fairy or a magical white knight. You have to work like crazy to succeed.
To stay motivated under those conditions, it helps if you've followed your heart, says Richie Melman, founder of Chicago-based Lettuce Entertain You, which owns and runs more than 30 successful restaurants. If you don't do what you love and know best, he says, you won't be able to compete with people who do love their businesses.
But what if your heart is parched with fear, anger and self-doubt, perhaps because of a recent job loss?
Many a corporate empire has been built on the back of an individual's anger and frustration. Dr. Edward Land's frustra-tion with Kodak's unwillingness to back his dream of manufacturing an instant camera turned into the foundation for a photographic empire called Polaroid.
For Playboy founder Hugh Hefner, the decision to "go solo" was a direct response to a rebuff. While working at Esquire, Hefner asked his boss for a $5 raise and got turned down. He quit to make his fortune where his contribution would be more appreciated.
But while anger can fuel healthy competitive instincts, it can also be self-destructive. However temporarily liberating, rage and revenge motives aren't a good foundation for long-term career satisfaction. You need a deeper commitment to sustain you for long-range fulfillment and success.
When Candy Lightner founded MADD, her heart was filled with pain over the loss of her daughter and anger at drunk drivers. But her fiery passion was for the cause, not for the building of an organization. With 20/20 hindsight, she realizes that she was suffering from a bad case of founder's syndrome.
"The drunk driving issue was like my replacement child," says Lightner. "After I lost my daughter, MADD took her place. But I wasn't willing to share the issue with other people because I wasn't ready to let go of her."
Lloyd Shefsky, a Chicago attorney and author of Entrepreneurs Are Made, Not Born (1994, New York: McGraw-Hill), thinks that many entrepreneurs make the mistake of viewing their businesses like newborn children. He says the more appropriate metaphor is that of a marriage or a partnership, not a parent-child relationship.
From Cavorter to Tycoon
We can all take a lesson from Neil Baiter, who successfully channeled his adolescent rage (and energies) into a small corporate empire. Baiter caught the entrepreneurial bug when he was a teenager, almost by default.
Baiter's parents kicked him out of the house at age 17 for having a bad attitude. In teenage terms, that means he was out "cavorting" until all hours of the night, sleeping late, skipping school and barely passing his classes. This hardly sounds like the background of an ambitious executive who'd become a millionaire before he was 30 years old. But that's exactly what happened.
Forced out on his own, Baiter had to find a way to make a living. An excellent carpenter, he put his talents to use converting his neighbors' messy closets into custom-built bastions of organization. Working from the back of his van, he ended up grossing $60,000 in his first year of business. Twelve years later, he sold his highly successful California Closet Co. to Williams-Sonoma Inc. for $12 million.
It helped Baiter tremendously that he had a mentor: a "believer" in the form of a friend's dad who fronted him the $1,000 and van he needed to get started in exchange for a piece of the action. A few years later, Baiter's "fairy godfather" sold his share back to Neil and his dad-with whom he made amends- for $20,000.
It was sorely needed financial and emotional support. Like many new ventures, Baiter was pitifully undercapitalized and highly dependent on "sweat equity." Along the way, he met up with many doomsayers, accountants and lawyers who were convinced no 17-year-old kid could make the concept work, no matter how great his carpentry skills might be. (Let's face it: There are lots of carpenters who never become millionaires.) But Baiter had that odd combination of ambition, drive and naiveté that sometimes outsparkles the more judicious voices of conventional wisdom.
Nonetheless there's something to be said for preparation. While Baiter can argue for the "school of hard knocks" over traditional education, most of today's more successful entrepreneurs are formally educated.
When Inc. magazine compiled its 1994 list of America's 500 fastest-growing private companies, it found that nearly half the entrepreneurs listed have four-year undergraduate degrees. More than one-third held advanced degrees, but not necessarily in business.
Tim Prince typifies this sort of entrepreneur. Prince started out, though, as a traditional corporate ladder-climber. Right after college, he joined Airmax, a transportation-management company in Chicago. It was an exciting place for Prince to work because it was growing quickly. In five years, he worked his way up the ranks from customer service to marketing to sales management. Along the way, he was inspired by the vision and leadership of Ken Ryan, his boss and mentor there. It was from him that he caught the entrepreneurial bug. Soon, Prince decided to try his own hand at business ownership.
At 28 years old, though, Prince didn't feel he had enough confidence, skill or credibility to go it entirely alone. Having been well mentored, he really appreciated the value of such a partnership. It seemed to him that buying a franchise might be a good way to test his entrepreneurial wings. After researching the marketplace, he decided on ServiceMaster, because the systems and mentors were already in place.
Prince liked ServiceMaster's policy of teaming new franchisees up with more experienced owners to help you through those rocky first years. He knows that, as a newcomer to business ownership, he's bound to make mistakes. But to him that's the price of the experience-the cost of trying something new.
"This is my MBA," he says. "I'm really going to learn how to run and grow a business."
Now that he's just getting started, he finds the process both scary and exhilarating.
"Airmax taught me that you can't be afraid of change," says Prince. "If you're afraid to change, you won't make the moves you need to make to keep growing."
