Entrepreneurs find insomnia, small victories
By Ellen Simon
Associated Press
NEW YORK — Joan Coukos' transition from international banker to artisanal chocolatier began when she found a set of chocolate molds at an antique market in Belgium.
Richard Drew • Associated Press
She began gobbling books on chocolate and making chocolate once a month to bring to work. When she left banking in fall 2001, chocolate became her full-time job. She went to food networking events and chocolate trade shows. Banks and headhunters called with job leads, but she turned them down — she was up to her elbows in chocolate. Then, in 2003, she started her New York-based company, Chocolat Moderne.
Joan Coukos left her banking job to found Chocolat Moderne. Although she says she can't wait to get to work in the morning, many entrepreneurs find sleepless nights and extra worries along the way.
It's a dream so many people have: Chuck your day job and do the thing you're most passionate about. A handful of those who leave cubicles to be entrepreneurs succeed wildly, such as handbag maker Kate Spade, who quit Mademoiselle magazine to start her business and now has 15 retail stores and 315 employees.
Coukos, whose chocolates are sold online and in fancy food stores, is energized by entrepreneurship.
"I wake up in the morning and I wish I was immediately at work," Coukos said. "I can't wait to get here."
For most day-job refugees, though, running the show means small victories mixed with sleepless nights, even when they find success.
Rick Field, a former video director and producer, is now a professional pickle maker with a growing reputation — people bring their friends to his New York farmer's market stand first thing in the morning to try a sample. But he's found insomnia to be an occupational hazard.
"When I was in TV, I generally slept very well," said Field, whose company is called Rick's Picks. "I don't sleep so well anymore, really. When I was in TV, even though I was running my own projects, there was always someone I was reporting to. Now, I am reporting only to myself."
Mark Henricks, author of "Not Just a Living: The Complete Guide to Creating a Business that Gives You a Life," said people thinking about leaving their jobs should, "start now, but start small. Find some customers who will buy what you're selling."
Before she left her job as a business reporter to make jam full-time, Carolina Braunschweig, 27, asked all her friends to sign up for the "jam of the month" club — and pay for it.
"My friends all hated me," said Braunschweig, whose San Francisco company is called CMBSweets. "I was overcharging them. I was never on time. I'd get these e-mails saying, 'Where's my jam??' "
But she was practicing on a willing audience. By the time she quit her job last year, her jam, and her business, had evolved to the point where a handful of local stores carry it, and her Web site gets regular traffic.
Despite such success stories, most people who dream of starting a business don't do it. "A lot of people have great ideas; I've heard them all," said Monica Nassif, 48, who left her job at Dayton Hudson Corp., now Target Corp., in the 1980s to start her own marketing consulting firm in Minneapolis. "I tell people, 'When you come back with a business plan, I will help you.' You want to know how many have come back with a business plan? Zero."
"To say, 'I'm quitting.' That's the hardest thing," Nassif said.
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Business owners who have left the rat race have some advice for would-be entrepreneurs: • You are the boss. "No matter how much you want to delegate, the reality is there are 500,000 more details to worry about than you thought there would be. "At some level, you have to be competent to handle those details," said Clarisse Persanyi, 53, who left mergers and acquisitions consulting for PriceWaterhouseCoopers International Ltd. to open All Things Cranberry Inc., a retail shop, wholesale condiment maker and Web retailer in Monmouth Beach, N.J. • You will be tired. "I didn't know what it was like to be this exhausted, so exhausted you don't care about anything else, all you want to do is sleep," said Coukos. • Don't take every opportunity that comes along. "Just because you can doesn't mean you should," Nassif said. Pickle man Field concurred. "There are people who say, 'I'm going to help you sell a million zillion of these.' Most of the time, those offers aren't that great," he said. • Building the business can be a painful process. John Hayden left Hewlett-Packard Co. in 1995 and started Jamtown, a business that imports indigenous instruments from seven countries, everything from Peruvian drums to Vietnamese gongs. His first year, he sold simple instruments packaged together, five per bag. He sold 100 bags. The next year, his goal was to sell 1,000 bags. "I had a pretty good idea of what 100 of something felt like and looked like," he said. "To do 10 times that was a change in reality. By the time you get to No. 444, you think, 'Wow, this is never going to end.' "
Tips for those stepping out on their own
