One of the "14 Stations" by Robert Wilson, MASS MoCA, North Adams, MA 2001-2002
Strategic retreat "Once you've seen a ghost," goes a Chinese saying, "you'll always be afraid of the dark."
Count me among the frightened, then, because I've come face to face with the specter that self-employed people want least to encounter: business failure. I got through this dark patch by making what I now see as a strategic retreat. But it seemed like failure at the time. For the first four years I had my business, income was increasing year after year. I was able to afford vacations, a new car, and even a house that actually had a spare room I could use as my office. There was stress, but I was extremely confident overall. The fifth year, gross income declined for the first time, but only a little. The next year, it declined some more. The euphoria over China had ended, as was inevitable, though I still was being asked for proposals. Fewer and fewer were being accepted, however. The following year, I had to start using some of my savings to pay my fixed expenses. Then the ghost appeared. In June 1989, the Chinese army fired on students in Tiananmen Square in Beijing who were protesting corruption, nepotism and lack of freedom. The whole world saw the students' idealism and the government's violence. Will anyone forget the picture of a lone man, trying to stand up to a tank? A few months before, a very large company had asked me to submit a proposal to help them establish several new operations in China. It promised to be the breakthrough for which I had been hoping. They spent a lot of time mulling over the proposal, and I was growing very impatient. But the smoke had hardly cleared in Tiananmen Square before they gave me an answer. In view of the chaos in that country, they said, this was not a time to enter. Before long, other clients were calling and telling me that they wouldn't need me -- at least until things sorted themselves out. I couldn't really blame them. During that period of uncertainty, I wasn't sure I wanted to go to China myself. Only then did I start to face the real likelihood that my business was in trouble. I didn't want to go back to a nine-to-five corporate job. But there was really little choice. I didn't want to deplete my savings, and prospects for more consulting business were bleak. I started to look for work. I did direct mail, answered ads, talked to friends. At one job interview, the employer contemptuously walked out in the middle and went to the bathroom for half an hour. I felt he was telling me that, even though I was used to being my own boss, if I worked for him I would have to show my subservience every day. One afternoon, my telephone rang. It was the president of a company that was about an hour's drive from my house. He needed someone to handle unruly Asian suppliers, including the manager of the company's Taiwan office. He wanted me to start right away. The salary was quite attractive. When I showed up on a sleety January day in 1990, I found that not all the company's problems were in Taiwan. Its founder had agreed to sell the business to the man who hired me, but he was having second thoughts. He was hiring and firing executives left and right. (Six months later, he even fired his chosen successor, the man who hired me.) My new employer was nearly as despotic and unstable as China. My two hours of commuting were the only part of the day I enjoyed.
Fortunately, when I took the job, I asked two of my ongoing clients if they wanted me to continue to work for them on nights and weekends. I wasn't willing to let my business disappear entirely. And it worked well for my clients. They didn't want to do much in China right then, but neither did they want to give up. I found the work I did for them much more satisfying than for my employer. Finally, after 16 months on the job and seeing 11 top executives come and go, it was time for me to leave as well. It was as if a storm had lifted. I was able to expand the work I did for my two ongoing clients, and new ones came along. I have had healthy growth each year since -- though I know the ghost is out there. And one very odd thing has happened. I frequently find myself making use of knowledge I acquired during the time I felt I was in exile. If I had fretted less about how taking the job had certified me as a failure, I probably would have learned far more. When you're on your own, it often seems that every reversal of fortune is your own fault. But sometimes, things happen that you are powerless to resist. I was caught in a geopolitical storm. There was no choice but to retreat and wait for it to blow over. Finding refuge when disaster strikes doesn't make you a failure. It's great to succeed. It's essential to survive.
Excerpts from Spare Room Tycoon, pages 190 - 193.
Celebrating the 27th Anniversary of My Independence
