Does a 20-year veteran of large corporations have what it takes to face life as a soloist?
When I quit my job on July 31, 1997, it was life at first sight. I grabbed my shadow, and we were off! I was going solo, starting a venture as small as me, myself, and I, but with big possibilities. My corporate role as a business-book publisher had over the years shrunk to three sizes too small. If I wasn't going to shrivel up with it, I had to get out. I wasn't leaving to start just another business. I was beginning a new way of life: I'd be trading in hierarchy for freedom, other people's goals for my own. In 20 years of working with leading-edge business thinkers, I'd learned a lot, but none of it was relevant now. What good was management when it was just you, and you were both boss and slave, CEO and secretary?
I didn't want to manage (read manipulate) people into doing work. I wanted to do the work, all of it. I'd gotten tired of seeing things done in pieces. The greatest satisfaction I'd had always came when I'd gotten involved in the whole cycle of work: from the conception of an idea to the development of the book, to the creation of the cover, to the promotion and selling of the book. Managing 2 or 20 or 200 people removes you from that experience.
I wanted to experience nothing but the work, the pure core experience, as farmers do when they plant and harvest, or as chefs do when they slice open a truffle, sautÉ it, inhale its aroma deep into their system. Picasso, it's said, used to mix ground sapphires into blue pigment to get a color as pure as the eye could see when it looked at the sky. That was the point: he had to mix his paints and stretch his canvas himself.
Sure, I had thought of starting a company. Before I walked out of Doubleday, I'd developed a business idea, had a small staff ready to join me, and had some positive conversations with a venture capitalist. But I pulled out. It's not that I didn't want the headaches of leadership; I just don't believe leadership is viable these days. In any project, there are so many hands who are removed from the original vision that nothing works out as planned or hoped for. It may also be one of the fallouts of empowerment: everyone wants a say, so no one is in charge.
After 10 years of running the Currency line at Doubleday, I don't believe it's possible to lead anything anymore. You can lead only yourself. That's why I had to go solo. That's why I did the equivalent of mixing my own paint.
But my thrill at leaving Doubleday changed to shell shock over the first six months of soloing. Although I was still on retainer at Doubleday, I worried about money and wondered if I'd ever have lunch in any town again. I saw the signs of impending homelessness everywhere. A friend who manufactures corrugated boxes for Compaq offered to send me one in my size. "It's wax-coated," Bubba said. "It will keep you dry for weeks."
By Christmas I'd sold a proposal for a new book and had given a few speeches. Though I still had no consulting clients, money was coming in at last. But my deepest anxieties had merely changed focus. I wanted to capture every pivotal moment of my life as a soloist, so in January, I began keeping a journal.
NEW YORK CITY, JANUARY 21, 1998
Girl guru! No challenge too great, no mission too trivial!
I saw a movie last night about Steve Prefontaine, miracle runner. Pre didn't have a runner's body--not the legs, not the lungs. His coach, Bill Bowerman, told him to forget running the mile; he wasn't built to win it consistently. Run the three-mile, Bowerman had told him. Nobody cares about the three-mile, Pre whined. Well, give them a reason to care, Bowerman said. Pre's three-mile races became thrilling. People came to see his passion.
I'm going to give people a reason to care about my personal dream of being a girl guru. I want to be the reason people answer yes to this question: Is business ready to listen to a female Tom Peters/Peter Drucker?
But corporate habits are tough to break. You don't just step out of a company, go solo, and think, "I'll do what I've always done, just do it for myself." Things slow down in the solo life. You don't have the zillion projects you had as a corporate creature; you have three, and even that may be too many. You have to choose your projects carefully and take the biggest moneymakers, but only where you can do your best work. The scale changes, and the old rules--corporate rules--don't apply.
Being solo is not the same as going solo. The going was a scary, tightrope walk: Will I crash, or will I get over? But the being is indescribably lonely. It's easier in ways I thought would be hard (like earning money) and harder in ways I thought would be easy (like being bossless, which also means being lonely and peopleless). If I were starting a small business, I'd know what to do, how to hire, scout for clients, align a team. But that's not what I want. Now I have to become a company, not start one. More to the point: I have to become a someone.
So who am I? Let's see. Here's my inventory of advantages: I'm immersed in the business of business ideas and will pitch myself as an adviser on leadership trends and methods. The plus is that I offer clients deep knowledge, the big picture, not information. The minus is that there's a small elite audience for my stuff. Next, I have lots of great contacts--a plus. But I don't know how to get help from them--a minus. I'm lost. A plus: I'm honest. A minus: I'm lost. Where do I go to seek help?
Entrepreneurs have books to read and footsteps to follow, and they have other people to call. Go solo and you have...you. If you don't love what you see in the mirror, you're in a pretty dysfunctional relationship. I have to believe that people will want to work with me because I uniquely have something to give them. How else can a five-foot- eight, fortysomething female stand up against McKinsey, Bain, and Arthur Andersen?
