When she doesn't fail, they'll spend a lot of time figuring out how much it would cost them to get into that niche, too. Then they'll have to decide whether they should do it themselves or buy a company with a similar product. "Competition will be interesting," she says. "I know the cultures of some of these companies and what they're likely to be throwing at me. I just don't know which company it's likely to be.'
Whichever company it is, Jackson will rely on two advantages. She will have had time to establish My Own Meals as the brand in the markets that she's entered. Second, she'll rely heavily on the value of her own image: "Mary Anne Jackson, a mother as concerned about her own kids as about yours. . . . We're not a faceless corporation.'
On the other hand, she might sell out. Remember, for Jackson this is a project, not a calling. It's a step along a career path, a few lines on her résumé. She does care about her product, but it's just a product, after all. If the right corporation comes along with the right price? "We're not ruling anything out," she says.
BIG-COMPANY EXODUS
Fired managers start their own companies
Nearly half a million corporate executives, administrators, and managers lost their jobs between 1981 and 1985, the latest years for which the Bureau of Labor Statistics has figures. Since then that number can only have grown, given the spate of corporate mergers and acquisitions and the continued downsizing by large companies.
What's surprising, though, is how many of these former pinstripers have decided to launch their own enterprises.
Currently, reports one Chicago outplacement firm, 17% of the displaced executives it sees are starting their own businesses instead of returning to corporate life. Three years ago, according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc. (CGC), the rate was 7%.
Interest in start-ups is particularly high among senior execs, those who formerly earned six-figure incomes, and among professional and technical specialists. About 20% of laid-off execs are choosing jobs at small companies, often in exchange for equity, says Drake Beam Morin Inc., a New York outplacement firm.
The backgrounds of the people running INC. 100 public companies tend to confirm the trend. In the class of 1983, 49% of INC. 100 CEOs reported having previous big-business experience. Five years later, about two-thirds of the responding CEOs among the 1988 INC. 100 companies said they had come out of the big-business world.
Many corporate émigrés are seeking financial security foremost, according to CGC president James E. Challenger; indeed, they originally took positions in large corporations because they thought those jobs offered security. Having been laid off, they are turning to entrepreneurship to become their own bosses and regain the security they once had. As a result, says Challenger, "They tend to take less risk. Their [start-ups] tend to be well thought out."
-- Amy Schulman
POINT/COUNTERPOINT
What others think of professional managers as entrepreneurs
No matter how thorough Mary Anne Jackson thinks she's been, given her corporate training, some problem that she never imagined is going to surprise her one day. Maybe a consumer group or obscure government agency will question the safety of her processing or packaging. Whatever the issue, it will be serious, and all the data she's acquired won't account for it. If she wants to save her company then, there won't be time to plan. She'll have to react. She'll have to know what questions to ask and what action to take. That's when she'll find out if she's really an entrepreneur.
-- Al Burger
The Burger Group
The fact is that entrepreneurs are just people who learn more, then work harder.
-- Stephen Reuning
Diedre Moire Corp.
Mary Anne Jackson may not be unique, but she's certainly special. From my own years spent in Fortune 500 companies, I know that most corporate managers don't have the drive and intensity that entrepreneurs can substitute for any particular skill they lack.
-- Charles J. Bodenstab
Battery & Tire Warehouse Inc.
As a happy refugee from big corporations, I agree with Mary Anne Jackson that the name of the game in business is defining and solving problems -- based on facts. The principles and techniques are the same, whatever business you're in.
It was a happy surprise for me to find that there was very little systematic problem solving or creative marketing in our manufacturing segment when I bought my company 10 years ago. We were competing with "classic" entrepreneurs -- self-made, visceral, intuitive, with a hands-on technical background, light in marketing experience, and with a ferocious need for personal control.
In that competitive environment, the corporate management skills I brought with me helped us to increase sales tenfold, boost pretax profit by 2,100%, and raise our ROI to the same level as those of companies in the top 10% of the Fortune 500 -- all within 10 years.
But the single most important thing I brought with me from my corporate experience was the wisdom to know that I couldn't do it all alone. I recognized that other people in the company could care just as much as I, and that our success depended on my ability to delegate to them. I did, and we grew. The entrepreneur who can't let go can't compete with us.
-- Tom Melohn
North American Tool & Die Inc.
I'm leery of the "average" big-business refugee as successful ent
