The story of how an 80-plus year old woman, the wife of a management guru, started the first company of her life.
What's it like to be 80-plus years old . . . married to the greatest management writer in history . . . and starting the first company of your life?
For years my role as the wife of a professional speaker was to sit in the last row of an auditorium and shout, "Louder!" whenever my husband's voice dropped. I decided that there had to be a better feedback device, and if there wasn't, I was going to invent one. Then I decided, at the age of 80-plus, that I would start a business to sell it.
My children thought I'd gone off my rocker. Friends were more tactful, but I resented their sometimes patronizing comments. ("Marvelous that you can still do it!") Of course, the reactions weren't surprising. Though start-ups have become our national pastime, they're considered a young person's game--certainly not an appropriate activity for senior citizens.
But starting a business at 80 is really no different from starting one at any age. The only prerequisites are that you are still alive, in good physical and mental health, and the owner of a vast reservoir of energy. One's sense of urgency is a plus: if not now, when?
My product was going to be an electronic device: a microphone receiving the speaker's voice would transfer changes in volume to a visual display in which lights of different colors would indicate different loudness levels. The device had to be inexpensive and economical to use. It would take the place of a lot of elaborate audio equipment and reduce the need for the routine services of an audio engineer in an auditorium.
To convert my brainchild into a marketable product, I looked for help. Several consulting engineers turned me down--perhaps they didn't think much of having an old lady as a client. Others I turned down because they wanted too large a piece of the action. A former business associate suggested a 75-year-old retired engineer, Obie O'Brien, in Rescue, Calif. Obie and I met a few times, discovered that we could work together, and formed a corporation called RSQ, after his hometown. Obie calculated the future production costs for the units we were going to build (which turned out to be an accurate forecast), the price we would have to charge, and the number of units we would have to sell to come out ahead. That was our business plan.
Any investor would have been aghast at the informality of it. But at our age, we couldn't have attracted a venture capitalist anyhow, so why bother to be more specific?
A grandson designed a logo on his computer for the company, and in November 1995 Obie and I signed the documents establishing our limited-liability company. Obie built prototypes, one after the other, which we showed to prospective users. We incorporated their suggestions for improvements into successive models till we had the functional product we had envisioned.
The microphone and all the electronics were built into a chassis; light-emitting diodes in the shape of light bars were mounted in a separate holder, which was to be plugged into the circuitry. That way, the light signals--showing a speaker how loud to talk--could be displayed anywhere within the speaker's line of vision.
The prototypes, primitive though they were, got us some orders for the finished product as soon as it would be ready. Encouraged, we decided to build a few "real" samples to test the transition from a homemade product to a manufactured one. Or rather, we decided to have them built because we didn't have the resources to manufacture anything ourselves. I figured it wouldn't be a problem to buy the chassis and the electronic components and find an assembler to put them all together.
Well, how dumb can you be? It took me months, working full-time, to get those samples built. Decisions, decisions: Plastic chassis or metal ones? Cost versus weight. Practicability versus appearance. We needed a box that could be opened and shut by the user. What kind of cover should it have? Sliding? Fitted? Hinged? Nothing was available to meet our dimensions and specifications. I let my fingers do the walking through the yellow pages, culled the names of 10 or 12 chassis makers within an arbitrary radius of 30 miles, and drove from one to the next. Some calls were unproductive--the quoted prices were too high, or the quality standards were too low. Finally, I found a small sheet-steel fabricator with which I placed the order for the chassis. The owner, a retired navy man in his seventies, seemed to like working with other seniors.
Obie and a young electronics specialist whom he had co-opted had made out a parts list of 70 or 80 items, including the manufacturers' parts numbers. With that list in my pocket, I prowled through electronics stores, discounters, and surplus outlets, RadioShacks and Home Depots. It was no use going to manufacturers--they sold parts only in lots of hundreds or thousands. From dusty bins I scooped out capacitors and resistors, Schott and Zener diodes, jacks, plugs, clamps, whatnot.
Next I had to find an assembler, but I had no idea how to go about it. On a Saturday morning, as I raked leaves on my front lawn I asked my next-door neighbor, an engineer, who was also working in his yard, whether he knew an assembler who could put my device together. He did. He had worked for one some years ago, a really good guy.
On Monday morning I went to see Lee Hoffman at JDF Enterprises, in Placentia, 28 miles south of Rescue. The shop was well organized and had up-to-date machinery. Hoffman said he could put our project together. "But," he asked, "who is going to provide the two circuit boards per unit, according to your design?"
"I thought you would!" I said.
"No, we do only the assembly, connecting the boards to the microphones, the other components, and the controls on the outside."
"But who does the boards?"
"Steve. He has a lab in Corona, 40 miles to the southeast. I'll give him a call and tell him that you want to talk to him."
At 8 the next morning Steve arrived at my office. He looked at the drawings and agreed to build the boards. "But who is going to do the layout?" he asked.
"I thought that was part of your job!"
"No, like I told you, I build the boards, but I have to have a layout."
"Then who does the layout?"
"Helen. Would you like me to call her for you?"
I started to get the impression that this game of "I'll call X and say that you want to talk to him or her" was going to go on forever, but Helen, fortunately, happened to be the last in line.
I went to see her in Chino, only 10 miles away. She had a nondescript house in a nondescript neighborhood; only the tightly drawn black shades of the front windows hinted at the high-tech setup inside. Helen, an elderly lady in sweats, led me into her lab. Yes, she would do the layout for the boards but not right away. She was busy with a major project for another customer, and besides, she worked professionally only in the afternoons. Mornings she worked for her church.
