And although DeMars is pulling back her presence at the company to half-time, she feels that the work she now does there is more meaningful than what she was accomplishing before taking her leave of absence. She's had time, for instance, to write the company's first comprehensive five-year business plan, to create a new division, and to begin thinking seriously of acquiring another company. "When I come in now, I feel genuinely appreciated and that I can make a difference," she says. "Before, I felt I was spinning my wheels." In fact, she concedes that she probably should have taken her break much earlier. "If you wait too long, you run the risk of making stupid decisions, destroying your credibility with your employees, and losing your self-respect," she cautions.
Things turned out a bit differently for Louis Ravenet. His presence at iCommunicate gave the start-up just the shot in the arm it needed; on April 11, Microsoft acquired the company, which develops online customer-service technologies. As part of the sale, Ravenet agreed to move to Seattle and work for the software behemoth for a specified period of time. That ended his immediate plans to return to Invoke. So Ravenet sent Kam Talebi, iCommunicate's former chief financial officer, to Invoke as CEO. "He brings the same creative skill set that I have," says Ravenet. "I couldn't go back, so I sent my best person." Ravenet will maintain ownership of the company but won't have a role in day-to-day management; Mark Barrett will continue on as COO. "I go back there, and I'm proud because it's so organized and it's run so smoothly, but it's like it's not my company anymore," Ravenet says. "It's grown up."
Donna Fenn is a contributing editor at Inc.
On the Road Again
Three years ago Stacy Brice mustered up the courage to take a vacation from AssistU, the Baltimore company she had founded in 1997 to train, coach, and support "virtual assistants" -- individuals who provide administrative support to clients virtually. "I went to California and did 12 days up the coast in a convertible, and every time I checked into a hotel, I'd call home," she says. "It was relaxing, but not in the way it would have been if I just took off and left the company with someone else." Sound familiar?
Brice found her "someone else" later that year. She hired Marie Schulz, who lives in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, as her own virtual assistant and discovered that Schulz was "the closest thing to me that I've ever found." The following year Brice decided to try a radical experiment: she'd take not just a vacation but a five-week sabbatical, leaving Schulz in charge with very specific instructions. Schulz would take on all the day-to-day responsibilities of running AssistU, which has no employees but consists of a 250-person community of virtual assistants. And she would contact Brice only if there was an interview request from the media or if there was an extreme emergency. Then Brice and her husband hit the road, starting in Orlando and driving, well, wherever they wanted to. "I didn't want to have a plan," she says. "It was wonderful and romantic and carefree. I didn't call in, I didn't bring my laptop. I counted on the fact that Marie would call if she needed me."
"Before this wonderful five-week experience, I really believed I needed to answer all my E-mail."
-- Stacy Brice
The arrangement worked so well that Brice did the same thing last year. "I found that taking time away is not only rejuvenating and relaxing, but I come back with new ideas," she says. "I see possibilities where I might not have been able to see them because I was too tired."
In 1999, for instance, on her return she wrote a 700-page training manual and created a higher level of certification for her program. Last year she put together plans for a seminar at sea for her community of virtual assistants. But perhaps most important, Brice gained new perspective on her role in the company.
"Before this wonderful five-week experience, I really believed I needed to answer all my E-mail," she says. "Now Marie screens it, and I'm down from a couple hundred pieces a day to about six." Brice also signed on two AssistU alumni to volunteer as community director and alumni director; Schulz took on additional responsibilities as training director. "I came back and realized that I could give away a lot of responsibility. I figured out what I was doing that I could let other people do, and I put them in place," Brice says. That meant, of course, that she was less accessible to people who had become accustomed to her undivided attention, but the change was not nearly as jarring as she had expected. "You can take yourself out of the middle of things," she says, "and as long as people still get what they need quickly and efficiently, they're perfectly happy."
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