Corporate dropouts - corporate employees leaving to start their own businesses - includes related article on valuing time over money - Cover Story

Home Office Computing, Feb, 1993 by Jim Schutze

Why work for someone else when you can work for yourself? That's what a lot of people are asking these days, even though they should be thankful just to have a job. As the recession and cutbacks have sliced tens of thousands of managers from payrolls, more and more motivated individuals are voluntarily leaving the corporate fold and setting up small, independent, fleet-looted businesses of their own. They might make less money, but they value their own freedom and time more.

Ironically, the corporate downsizing that is x-ing out thousands of jobs may be forcing lucky managers who have kept their jobs to reevaluate their own situations. With restructurings and global competition, "The demands on managers have never been greater," says Dee Soder, president of Endymion Company, a New York executive advisory firm.

With fewer managers being asked to do more, the strain is taking its toll. In a recent Roper Organization survey, only 18 percent of 1,296 people polled said they felt their careers were personally and financially rewarding.

In a 1991 survey conducted by Hilton Hotels, 50 percent of 1,010 people polled said they would sacrifice a day's pay for an extra day off each week. When asked to rate eight goals for the 1990s, 77 percent said "spending time with family and friends" was a top priority, compared with 61 percent who cited "making money."

"A large segment of Americans say they feel a significant time crunch--and the more time-needy they feel, the stronger their desire to take time off," says John P. Robinson, who directs the Americans' Use of Time Project at the University of Maryland, and conducted the survey for Hilton Hotels.

For a very few at the very top, bailing out is a chance to pursue new goals unrelated to money. That's what propelled Peter Lynch to quit running Fidelity's super-successful Magellan Fund and Michael Swavely to resign his post as president of Compaq North America. They went cold turkey from 80-hour weeks to a slower life with their families. Why work for someone else if you don't have to?

But for many corporate dropouts, going into business for themselves means continuing the same work as outside consultants or contractors. Two years ago Colette Weil was a marketing vice president for McKesson Corporation, one of the nation's biggest wholesalers to dragstores. Now she works from her attic. "I wanted a higher job reward," says Weil. "I wanted the time I spent on the job to be under my control. I wanted to work with people I enjoyed who were intellectually stimulating."

DEFENSIVE ENTREPRENEURS

Authors Paul and Sarah Edwards (Working from Home, Making It on Your Own, and The Best Home Businesses for the '90s) meet scores of the newly self-employed every year and think most are defensive entrepreneurs.

"A defensive entrepreneur is a person with a good corporate job who nevertheless sees the handwriting on the wall and decides to get out while the getting is good," says Paul Edwards. "They're doing the same work they did in their past job, but something has motivated them to do it on their own."

Fear of getting fired is not always the primary factor. Often it's frustration on the part of the employee. "There's not just a glass ceiling for women," Edwards says. "There is also a low ceiling for men as well, as the modem corporation begins to look less like a pyramid and more like a pancake."

Colette Weil certainly quit out of frustration and her inability to control her own time better. At 41, she had already experienced more success in the corporate realm than many people gain in a lifetime. She started in the high-tech industry as a marketer for Atari during the company's wild early years.

At McKesson she helped double the size of her division. She worked from eight in the morning until seven at night. She laughed off comments from male associates, who told her she didn't need the job because her husband was a successful lawyer. She took a nanny with her on the few occasions when she brought her infant son along on company travel, just to "show commitment," she says.

But two years ago, Weil hit the glass ceiling when her job was restructured. "It was effectively a staff position, no longer a line-management job," she says. Weil left so she could hire herself out as a marketing consultant. Her first client was a competitor of McKesson's. When that client relationship ended, she found she knew more about growing other people's businesses than about building her own.

"I had a marketing plan, but not really," she says now, a bit sheepishly. "I started reading magazines and talking with people, researching how to build my own business. Now she serves a broad hi-coastal client list from her home in the hills of Mill Valley, north of San Francisco. She puts in long hours in her attic office, while an au pair helps out with the two children downstairs. Now Weil sees more of her children and her husband in a day than she used to in a week.

"I proposed the idea of working from home once, prior to the birth of my son, when I was at McKesson. I said I'd like to work a flex schedule and take modified pay. The man who was then president of the drug division said, 'That does not work here, I need a vice-president on-site,' and I said, 'OK,' "says Weil. "Now, quality of life is so important to me. I really enjoy the clients I work with, too. Corporate protocol and cultures--I understand all that." She just doesn't want to belong to it.