The Boss of You

I stumbled across a great blog today while following up on Boss of You mentions around the blogosphere: Sweet Sassafras. (Great name, no?) And okay, it feels a little self-serving to link there, given that the most recent post at the moment recommends our book (thanks, Sarai!) — but let’s skip right past that and revel in the awesomeness of Sarai’s leaving-the-cubicle-farm-behind story. Sarai is the creative mind behind Colette Patterns, which you simply must look at if you’re a fan of beautiful, vintage-inspired dresses.

(Actually, let me just repeat that, because although I was tempted to grab a photo off her site to link over to her, I’m increasingly stressed out by the copyright implications of doing that — so instead I’ll try and convince you with words. HER DRESSES ARE STUNNING. And they’re amazing patterns — you could definitely make a dress in two different fabrics and end up with a daytime, head-to-the-farmer’s-market-with-a-basket-on-your-arm look, and an evening, everybody-drop-dead-with-envy-and-awe look. Check ‘em out.)

OK, now moving on to why I am posting this here on our all-things-entrepreneurial blog (besides the fact that we love to promote the work of other women running cool businesses): Sarai’s story about starting her business inspired me on several levels. She talks frankly about the factors that motivated her to become an entrepreneur, as well as the stuff that has helped her along the way.

But one thing stood out for me as an “Aha!” moment: She talks about working for a big company and experiencing the opposite of the job security she expected to feel:

Back when I was in grad school at Berkeley, I took an internship at a Big Global Tech Company. It was my first time working in a large corporation and I learned a lot, though perhaps not the things I expected to learn. Towards the end of my allotted time there, the company announced that there would be a reorganization of some departments. Jobs were cut, people shuffled around, the department I was in would have a new boss, the usual reorg chaos.

This didn’t affect my internship; but it was at this point I realized that, despite the fact that a steady paycheck makes you feel secure, working for a big company is pretty risky. You can be laid off at any moment. You are basically a cog in a very large machine, and can be sacrificed at any time. You don’t have much control.

Yes! This is pretty much what Emira and I say every time someone tells us in hushed tones that they could never start their own business, because it’s so… risky. We felt on a gut level that au contraire, it would actually give us more control, not less. I don’t mean to downplay the risk factors, because they do exist, but they exist everywhere. Working for someone else is a massive act of trust. Working for yourself can actually feel pretty stable and predictable by comparison. When we started our business, it was during the big tech bubble of 1999-2000, and we opened our doors right before the first dot-com bust.

You couldn’t ask for more affirmation from the universe that in fact, we weren’t taking crazy risks — we were protecting ourselves from suffering the fallout of other people’s risk-taking.

We’ve heard variations on this story many times since we started work on our book; a lot of entrepreneurs seem to start their businesses to exercise more control over their work lives. If you’ve got a similar story, share it in the comments.