Written by Pamela Skillings

Some say that a true entrepreneur could never work in Corporate America. Many claim that you have to be born with that entrepreneurial DNA and will know from an early age if you’ve got what it takes to run your own business. I strongly disagree. I believe that entrepreneurial skills and attitude can be acquired.

In fact, doing some time in Corporate America can be a great way to pick up very valuable business expertise that will come in handy when running your business. As Aliza Freud, founder and CEO of SheSpeaks, puts it, “I think that the skills that I gained when I was working at a big company really helped to make me a better entrepreneur.”

The trick is to get out before the bureaucracy crushes your entrepreneurial spirit.

Sure, the stories about entrepreneurs who started their first profitable businesses during junior high are inspiring. But it’s also true that many of the most legendary entrepreneurs of all time started out as corporate employees.

 

• Henry Ford was the son of farmers and toiled in an engineering job before striking out on his own to form Ford Motor Company.
•  Walt Disney was an illustrator for an advertising agency before he and his brother Roy started a business in their uncle’s garage that eventually became the Walt Disney Company.
• Ray Kroc was a salesman for the Multi-Mixer Corporation when he bought a California hamburger restaurant from the MacDonald Brothers and turned it into a multibillion-dollar international chain.
• Mary Kay Ash was a sales director for Stanley Home Products for twenty years before she retired and used her life savings of $5,000 to get Mary Kay Cosmetics going in 1963.
• Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak spent time as engineers at Atari before they created Apple Computer.
• Jeff Bezos quit his job as a senior vice president on Wall Street when he came up with the revolutionary idea for Amazon.com.
• Michael Bloomberg was a senior manager at Salomon Brothers until he was squeezed out after the company was acquired in 1981. The unemployed Bloomberg went on to make his fortune by starting Bloomberg LP, the financial information company, and later used
  his billions to finance a successful run for mayor of New York City.
• Martha Stewart had a successful career as a stockbroker before she turned a catering business into a media empire.

Do you have other nominations for the Corporate-to-Entrepreneur Hall of Fame? Don’t be shy. Show your entrepreneur-sized ego and nominate yourself if you like!

Written by Pamela Skillings

Based in New York City? Join a group of fabulous women for a night of cocktails and networking sponsored by Womensphere and fashion designer Kathlin Argiro. The event will be held at Kathlin’s studio and I will be reading from Escape from Corporate America at some point in between the drinks, the shopping, and the mingling.

Womensphere is the fabulous organization that sponsored the women’s entrepreneurial summit that I blogged about last week. And Kathlin’s lovely designs have been featured on The Today Show and in InStyle magazine.

This event is free, but limited to just 40 people. So RSVP to INFO@KATHLINARGIRO.COM if you’d like to join us.

What: Midsummer Soiree
When: Tuesday, August 5th, 6-8 pm
Where: Kathlin Argiro Studios, 265 W. 37th Street, 7th Fl. (at 8th Ave.)

Written by Pamela Skillings

Who says losing your job has to be a bad experience? I don’t mean to be glib about it because I know personally that getting laid off or let go can be a very unpleasant surprise. However, I also know many people who have turned job losses into positive career changes and/or  profitable new business ventures.

I recently shared my views on this subject with a CNN.com reporter for the article Make Getting Fired Work for You. My bit is near the end (under the subhead ‘It’s OK to be happy about it").

The article also provide some other interesting insights. One tip is to thoroughly analyze why the job loss happened. While I agree that it’s generally useful to reflect on what you can learn from an experience,  I also think it’s important to make a distinction between getting fired and getting laid off. If you’ve been let go for performance issues, then it certainly makes sense to think about how you can avoid making the same mistakes in the future. However, when it comes to trying to understand the reasons for getting downsized, you can drive yourself crazy trying to figure out what you did to "deserve" it. In most cases, it absolutely was not you, it was them. You’d be better off using your analytical skills and your valuable time to figure out your next career move.

Written by Pamela Skillings

Back in May, I posted about an interesting article by Tammy Erickson on the Harvard Business Review blog. Tammy provided an overview of Ten Reasons Why Gen Xers are Unhappy At Work and most of them rang very true for this Gen Xer (yeah, I hate the stupid term too but I’ve accepted that it’s never going away).

Anyway, BusinessWeek picked up Tammy’s story and recently published a selection of very insightful responses from Gen X readers who are rebelling against Corporate America. These are most definitely my  people.

Here are a few interesting selections (though it’s really worth reading all of the reader comments):

"If you truly value authenticity and aren’t motivated by ‘increasing shareholder profit,’ and you wind up in publicly traded corporate America, at some point you’ll probably leave."

"Many of us want to do work that we believe in. We want jobs that fulfill us on more than just a financial level. We don’t want to spend our entire lives with our respective noses to the grind[stone] only to retire or semi-retire with small pensions and little or no means to enjoy our later years… We want to work for places that value us as human beings."

"Corporate America needs me? Then I suggest that they, as a group, clean up their act, because as it stands, as my good friends Wayne and Garth say, ‘They are not worthy.’"

And then there’s Amy W., a precocious  member of Gen Y who has learned from the pain of Gen X:

"Fortunately, we may be better equipped to set out on our own and avoid the whole sordid mess altogether. I’d rather struggle now at 25 and be reliant on myself for my income at 30, than get a "great job" now and have some corporate snafu rip the rug out from under me at a similar time."

Read Gen X Talks Back at BusinessWeek.com

P.S. Critically acclaimed actor Emilio Estevez is a man always in search of new challenges in his life and his work. Read more.

Written by Pamela Skillings

Think you can’t afford to escape from Corporate America? I’ve found that money fears keep many from pursuing their dream careers.

That’s why I recommend taking the time to make a detailed Escape Plan and build up an Escape Fund before you quit your day job. Escape from Corporate America has lots of advice on how to do that.

But what if you have specific questions or issues? Friday is your lucky day . Sherrill St. Germain, a financial planner who specializes in financial planning for career change, is hosting a free call-in session for career changers this Friday, July 18th from 1PM-3PM EST.   Sherrill is the founder and principal of New Means Financial Planning and a successful career changer and corporate escape artist herself (her valuable financial advice is also featured in my book). 

Sherrill is also offering free 10-minute individual consultations to the first 12 people who dial in for the session.

Find out more about Sherrill or contact her for more information about financial planning for career changers.

Written by Pamela Skillings

A reporter for a major media outlet is interested in interviewing people who were recently downsized/laid off and seized the opportunity to start a business (or expand a sideline business).

If this sounds like you or someone you know, drop me a comment or email me ASAP. This could be a great media opportunity for a new entrepreneur.

Written by Pamela Skillings

On Friday, I had the pleasure of speaking at the Womensphere Women’s Entrepreneurial Summit. It was a great event with lots of terrific panels and presentations.

I also had the opportunity to meet a number of amazing women  — including many successful entrepreneurs who escaped from Corporate America to pursue their entrepreneurial passions.

Check out some of their stories for a bit of inspiration to keep you going next time you start wondering if your dream is really possible.

Analisa Balares is the founder and CEO of Womensphere. She is also a Harvard MBA who served in senior roles at Goldman Sachs and Microsoft before launching her career as an entrepreneur. Analisa was recently selected as one of 35 “young leaders” to join the New York City Young Leaders Program, a public-private partnership between the New York City Government and private NGOs.

Joan Coukos is the CEO and chocolatier behind Chocolat Moderne, an award-winning chocolate maker that has been featured on The Today Show. Joan was a banker for many years before she fell in love with the art of chocolate making. She started her new career by experimenting with chocolate recipes in her tiny New York kitchen and testing them with her banking colleagues. Pretty soon, she was ready to turn pro and start Chocolat Moderne (I happily sampled some of her wares and can attest to her talent!)

Nadine Vogel joined the conference fresh from a speaking gig at the United Nations. She is the founder and CEO of Springboard Consulting, a firm that helps companies communicate with the one third of the U.S. population that either has a disability or is the parent of a child with a disability. Previously, Nadine had a long and successful career as an executive for a large financial services company.

Feyi Boroffice is a cofounder of 2 Hats Network, a consulting firm devoted to helping companies retain and advance emerging leaders, particularly mothers and women of color. Feyi is a Harvard MBA who spent years in senior corporate roles before leaving to start 2 Hats. She and partner Simi Sanni Nwogugu (a former investment banker and media executive) boast an impressive list of Fortune 500 clients.

Read more daring tales of corporate escape or check out my corporate escape artist directory.

Written by Pamela Skillings

How do you know if you should escape from Corporate America? How can you determine if it’s time to make a major career change or if you’re just having a bad week?

I put together my Are You A Corporate Casualty? quiz based on the  research and interviews I conducted while writing Escape from Corporate America.

I would love it if you could spend a few minutes taking the quiz. We are compiling the results to try to get a better sense of just how many aspiring corporate escapees are out there (and what is driving them up the cubicle wall).

The quiz was debuted online a few weeks ago by the amazing Guy Kawasaki (thanks again to Guy for taking the time to speak with me) and the response has been great so far.

Please pass the quiz link along to any disgruntled friends who might welcome an opportunity to vent!

Written by Pamela Skillings

The media is full of stories about summer vacation fun and the annoyingly named stay-cation trend, but what about those poor schlubs who have been spending all of their sunny days at the office this summer? Are all Americans entitled to paid vacation time?

A recent poll by Take Back Your Time/Opinion Research Corporation found that 69% of Americans support a paid vacation law while 27% are opposed. And how much vacation is enough? The majority of respondents said three weeks sounded about right. Read more about the poll.

American workers are obviously sick and tired of  "vacation starvation" and the burnout symptoms that often result from a non-stop work schedule. U.S. companies offer the stingiest vacation allotments in the industrialized world — an average of 8.1 days after a year on the job. Meanwhile, our French colleagues average 25 vacation days per year and German employees take off for 30 annual vacation days.

And those of you with 8.1 days off each year are among the lucky. 25% of Americans receive no paid vacation leave at all.

But wait, there’s more. Recent studies have shown that half of U.S. workers don’t even take the vacation days they’re given. U.S. workers forfeited approximately 421 million vacation days in 2005. Often, employees postpone their much-needed vacation breaks due to heavy workloads and/or concerns that employers will disapprove. But what if your employer was required by law to give you a break?

Take Back Your Time is a U.S./Canadian initiative to challenge the epidemic of overwork. Take Back Your Time believes that the lack of vacation time in the United States is a serious problem and that a law guaranteeing paid vacations would lead to higher hourly productivity and reduce the escalating cost of health care by making all Americans healthier.

According to their research, men who don’t take regular vacations are 32% more likely to die of heart attacks, and 21% more likely to die early of all causes.  Women who don’t take time off increase their risk of heart attack by 50% and are twice as likely to be depressed as women who go on vacation.

Evidence also indicates that workers who take regular vacations are more productive and loyal employees.  Read more about the Take Back Your Time initiative.

Has any of this convinced you to take some of those unused vacation days already? Do you believe that every hard-working American should be lawfully entitled to a few weeks of paid vacation? Would a paid vacation law put undue burdens on employers?

I’d love to hear opinions from all of you who are currently sitting at your computers instead of sitting on the beach (and all of you freelancers and telecommuters who might be currently sitting at your computer WHILE sitting on the beach).

Written by Pamela Skillings

I hope you enjoy lots of fireworks, burgers, and cold beer this July 4th weekend.

Although Independence Day is meant to be a celebration of American independence from the British, it’s also a great opportunity to celebrate your independence (or impending independence) from Corporate America.

Or maybe you’ve been looking forward to July 4th weekend as a break from thinking about work at all.

Either way, have a great three-day weekend. Now step away from the computer (or put the BlackBerry down) and go out and enjoy some fresh air and sunlight!

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