For Rebecca Hendrix, the call arrived recently that aspiring entrepreneurs both crave and dread: a Manhattan job offer waited in the wings, promising $160,000 annually and the opportunity for challenging work in one”™s field of expertise.
For one more morning, Hendrix had to look in the mirror to take the measure of herself. “No thanks,” was the answer.
As the economy slowly gathers steam amid Global Entrepreneurship Week 2009, numbers of new entrepreneurs ”“ some by choice, some the result of a layoff or the handwriting on the wall ”“ will be headhunted.
Like Hendrix, they will face a day of reckoning on whether to continue down the entrepreneurial path they are following, or take the comparative security and familiarity that accompanies a guaranteed paycheck.
Hendrix chose the former, and is making it her business today to help women entrepreneurs through that moment and other equally challenging conundrums, as the local “leader” for Ladies Who Launch, which provides seminars and other support.
As the case with many entrepreneurs, Hendrix stumbled onto Ladies Who Launch by happenstance.
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Hendrix, who has worked for a range of consumer goods businesses, initially carved out a marketing career at companies like Tiffany”™s, Asprey and Ghurka, a New York City-based luxury leather goods manufacturer with a Norwalk location.
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After Hendrix returned from family leave following her mother”™s death, Ghurka wanted to change her job description and she decided to strike out on her own. She enrolled in a master”™s degree program in “spiritual psychology” at the University of Santa Monica, then hung out a shingle in New York City as a marriage and family counselor.
“It was hard to see myself doing something different,” Hendrix recalled, comparing her initial entrepreneurial foray with those of women she has since assisted herself. “It was almost a self-sabotaging thing where I couldn”™t own it.”
She encountered the Ladies Who Launch concept at a New York City “incubator workshop,” and inquired about how to become the company”™s local pointperson.
She is now leading such workshops, including one that commenced last week and runs three more sessions through Dec. 7.
Ladies Who Launch also has leaders running “communities” in other parts of the tri-state area, including MetroMoms in New Haven County.
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The company”™s Ohio headquarters in Chagrin Falls is an apt metaphor for the emotional ride many entrepreneurs take in good times and bad, as what they consider promising business ideas are put through the marketplace wringer. In its second year, Global Entrepreneurship Week takes place Nov. 16-22 and is sponsored by the Kansas City, Mo.-based Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation in an attempt to provide encouragement to those contemplating starting a business. Only a handful of affiliated activities are scheduled in Connecticut, including seminars Nov. 18 and Nov. 19 in Bridgeport and New Haven on growing a business within 16 weeks; and the Connecticut Youth Entrepreneurship Seminar Nov. 19 at Gateway Community College in New Haven.
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New York boasts a swath of events throughout the week, however, addressing everything from “ultra-light startups” to “underground” entrepreneurs ”“ those that are launching businesses on the side even as they keep their day job.
Larry Brauner, a Rockland County, N.Y., resident, started a web site called Online Social Networking after losing his business analyst job at IDT Corp., and is hesitant about returning to the corporate sector.
“I”™m listening but I would not go to work somewhere where I couldn”™t have outside (freelance work),” Brauner said. “I won”™t have all my eggs in one basket again ”¦ Everyone is in a state of temporary employment ”“ if they have a job, it”™s temporary.”
In a study published this month, the Kauffman Foundation estimated that nearly two-thirds of the jobs created in the boom year of 2007 were by companies less than five years old.
“This study sends an important message to policymakers that young firms need extra support in the early years of formation so they can grow into viable job creators,” said Robert Litan, vice president of research and policy at the Kauffman Foundation who co-authored the study. “Sometimes a single barrier, such as limited access to credit for business growth, can mean the difference between survival and failure. We must create an environment that aids firm formation and growth if we are going to turn employment around.”
