Leaving the corporate nest - corporate executives as self-employed; includes related articles

Nation's Business, March, 1987 by Harry Bacas

Don Jacobs, a Kentuckian who sold advertising magazines all over the Southeast and now distributes his own line of gourmet Cajun spices from Gonzalez, La. "The first year I lost money,' he says, but the business is now profitable. "Last year, I hit $180,000 in sales, and this year it looks like we'll double that.'

These business people came from different backgrounds, and they have gone in different directions, but they had one thing in common--a yearning for independence, growth, self-fulfillment and a better life. Each one's success, large or small, was built less on money than on hard work, long hours, the flexibility to meet changing situations--and a determination to reorient their lives toward greater independence.

Dallen Peterson knew as a boy that he wanted to go into business. Growing up on a farm in New London, Minn., he says, "I used to think of breaking out of rural life, making more money. By the age of 10, I had a dream of carrying a briefcase, although I didn't know what was in that briefcase.'

He went to work after two years in the Army and four years of college for a national dairy and snack foods company, Fairmont Foods in Omaha. He stayed 13 years.

By age 26, he was a plant manager in the snack foods division. And by 33, he headed the division, one of the most profitable in the corporation. But eventually the company decided to move its corporate offices from Omaha to Houston, "and my wife and I wanted to stay in Omaha,' Peterson says. They had five children, some in their teens.

"I loved the job. The work was great. But the lifestyle was awful. I was on the road so much I was giving up more of family life than I wanted to.

"I had also become disenchanted with corporate life. I saw that the closer you got to the top, the more vulnerable your position became.'

Peterson decided to start his own snack foods company.

He cashed in his profit-sharing retirement benefits, obtained a loan at a local bank and drew on his savings.

He kept the business seven years. Then costs, especially of potatoes, were driven up by a world oil crisis, while prices were kept down by competitive pressures. Peterson's profits disappeared. He sold the company at a loss.

Then he took six months off to figure out what to do next.

"I wanted to make sure the next business I got into had a future,' Peterson says.

"All indicators pointed to services. A service business also has low capital investment, regular cash flow, low inventory and a large customer base.

"I could see that 45 percent of women were now employed outside the home, and I wondered, "What service can we do for them?''

His wife, Glennis, helped him find the answer: a professional cleaning service for the homes of working women.

The Petersons distributed fliers announcing the availability of the "Merry Maids.' When the calls came in, Peterson and his wife took mops, rags and vacuums and cleaned the first homes themselves. Then he bought more equipment; his wife wrote out cleaning routines, and they hired workers.