My friend Rube Lemarque, a retired AT&T sales and marketing manager, may carry that concept to the extreme. Lemarque is now a freelance professor who keeps six packed briefcases in the office of his Arlington Heights, Illinois, home. The brief cases contain materials and paperwork for the business courses he teaches at three different Illinois colleges. Like Paladin of Have Gun, Will Travel, you only need call Lemarque and he'll bring his knowledge to you.
His new role requires Herculean organizational skills and an extraordinary facility for remembering where he's supposed to be when and what he's supposed to be teaching to whom. Still, he's loving every minute of his new work style. Since his ultimate goal is to land one full-time instructorship at a college, his current itinerary is a wonderful opportunity to gain experience with a variety of different schools and students to see what fits him best.
As part of a new cadre of workers who are temporarily self-employed, this 50+ executive is taking a very aggressive stance toward his vocational future.
This is the new advice that career experts everywhere are touting. If you want to be successful and happy, manage your career as if it were a company of one. Because no matter whom you work for, your career is your business. Even if you never get to be the official Big Kahuna, you're still the CEO of your own life.
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 frustration with Kodak's unwillingness to back his dream of manufacturing an instant camera turned into the foundation for a photographic empire called Polaroid.
