Leaving the nest

Sometimes, you jump out of the nest; other times, you have to be pushed out.  My experience includes a little bit of both.  It wasn’t a bad job nor was it a bad company.  But, it wasn’t a great one, either, and nothing about it was going to change.  The outlook was for sameness, mind-numbing sameness.  And then, my boss did me a favor. 

The company has an intranet site that shows who is in the office or out, if people were traveling on business, when they’ll return, etc.  Beside the boss’ name was “PTO.” Nothing unusual there.  “Honeymoon.” Or there; newlyweds should be able to celebrate, right?  Then came the kicker:  “Bora-Bora.” In one sense, good for him.  In another, it smacked of waiving your wallet in your employees’ faces, a message that explicitly said “because I can” and implicitly stated “and you can’t.” 

He was right; working for him meant that Bora-Bora or some similarly exotic destination was out of reach.  It was that final nudge I needed to jump from the nest.   Into an entirely new world.  One that entails working without a net.  One that puts the onus of success or failure squarely on me.  One that is equal parts exhilaration and abject terror.

In all fairness, it was not a rash decision prompted by one man’s actions.  The idea of making such a move marinated over time, spiced by conversations with others who work for themselves, some for most of their careers and others who faced the same decision point that I did.  The common denominator among these entrepreneurs was that not a one yearned to return a past professional life.  One did so over lunch, where lifted a mug of beer and said, “It’s a lot easier to do this when working for yourself; sure, I’m only going to have one, but it’s one more than I would have dared have before.”  Another, a commercial real estate broker who survived the downturn, told me “If that’s the worst thing that can happen to me, it still beats working for someone else.” 

You wait for life to happen or you can make it happen.  For years, I was the regular workaday guy – earned my degree, went into my chosen field, had a couple of steps up the ladder, changed professions, lather/rinse/repeat. Each job had a ceiling, the ones closest to it are scarce by definition, and then came the economic downturn.  Getting an advanced degree just made me a more educated workaday guy returning, ironically, to the same company for whom I had worked prior to returning to school.  And given the overall outlook, I was grateful for the opportunity.  Until I started to get restless.

Everyone invokes some sort of spirit at some point; I asked my deceased dad for a little help in plotting the future.  Within a few days, I had an interview with a local company for a job directly in line with my education, another with a company that focuses on job postings within my field, and a third that was totally unexpected – an offer to work with a multi-million dollar firm but as my own boss. 

The first interview sounded very much like moving the existing limitations to a different address.  The second was with someone who sounded no older than any of my children; seriously?  The third became two, three, and four interviews with my initial question of “why” gradually becoming “why not?”  What was there to lose in striking out on my own? 

It helped greatly, and I cannot stress this enough, to have a supportive spouse.  When the person who will be as impacted by your decision as you will is on board, finding reasons to say no becomes increasingly difficult.  And so, we said yes.  Which meant spending my vacation week in a place where I daresay few people go just for the fun of it.  But that’s a story for another time.