That I walked away from my comfy job as Director of Strategy and Business Development (Asia) for a Fortune 100 global information company without another job lined up might be a little surprising to some of you who know me. Since graduating from college, I've always been part of a big organization, a cog in the wheel, making my way up the ladder. It's probably in my nature to like groups where it's clear where you stand and where you have a place and can see how advance. Heck, it surprises myself, but this isn't something I came to lightly.
I hadn't felt passion for my job for awhile. Despite the nice title, being in senior management, and being able to travel around the globe on the company dime, I just didn't feel that I was making a tremendous impact. At the risk of sounding corny, I've never had a clearly defined career track -- I've only felt that as long as I was learning something new each day, and could justify my paycheck at the end of the day, I was on the right path.
I wasn't feeling this, and the deployment last year made me feel it even more acutely. Last year at this time, I was helping in a tangible way to improving the rebuilding of Iraq and getting our guys out of a war. People were coming up to me, commenting on the value of the information I was getting out or the training sessions, and despite some of the conditions, I was having fun and looking forward to more days than not.
I hoped that coming back to work, I'd be more refreshed and ready to go. Unfortunately, this wasn't the case -- within a few days, it felt like I had never left. When you start thinking that you wish you were back in a war zone, it usually means that something is wrong. Part of this was just the nature of the function I did -- strategy guys are usually happiest when they accept the fact that they are advice providers, not doers. If they can deal with the fact that they can't control what gets implemented, they're ok. I didn't like that and tended to try to get my hands dirty. Being in a regional role is also tough -- you're squeezed in the middle between the global business unit that makes the product strategy and the country owners who choose what they want to execute. So, frequently, I felt like I was either relabeling strategy and just repackaging stuff, or if I came out with a particular direction, I would sometimes find that the countries were actually doing something totally different. Covering so many different country markets in my job also meant that I tended to be spread pretty thin. It was all pretty unsatisfying.
I had intended on giving notice in June, but a talent review forced my hand, since I didn't want to make my boss look stupid by not giving him a heads up. It went very quickly. Once I confidentially told one person in the company (the global HR head), I had taken a step that couldn't be taken back and it was a big relief. From then, I had to have the conversation with my boss, which was pretty painful, but in the end I just told him that my heart wasn't in it and it was better for him to find someone who could better meet his expectations.
The last 3 weeks was essentially transitioning and tying up loose ends. I was looking forward to taking a couple months off to travel, work on personal projects, and figure out what I wanted to do, but it was weird. As soon as i decided to leave my company, a lot of other opportunities started popping up from all directions -- headhunters, friends, relatives. It was a relief -- I didn't even really remember how to job search. But, I decided that I wanted to go all the way to the other end of the spectrum and try something entrepreneurial. I always had a lot of respect for people who went their own way, and having missed the whole internet boom in the late 90s, I thought that if I went to some corporate post during the China wild rush, I'd never forgive myself, especially while I didn't have a big family to rely on me and Sarah could be my sugar mommy.
So what instead? I sat down and brainstormed one day on a plane. I made a list of growing market trends (Chinese domestic tourism, real estate values, the education market), what I had to offer (consulting skills, services know-how, insight into the expat market), and what I was interested in (travel, operational roles, socially-redeeming activities). A few ideas popped up, but nothing breathtaking.
Then, on the way back from a golf trip in the Philippines with a good buddy (also a b-school classmate, though a few years earlier), he brought up an idea he had come up with but had never put into play. The idea was basically around being an indoor environmental (air, water) testing and remediation (correcting the problem) company serving the expat market. He had come upon this idea when he himself was trying to get his apartment tested and found no good companies that could help him navigate the different environmental hazards, recommend what tests he needed to get, and help tell him how to fix the problem.
I enjoy discussing business ideas (screening good and bad ideas was a big part of my job before), so we went at it at 20k feet (literally) and by the time we landed, I was pretty excited. There was an good market opportunity, it was not capital intensive (therefore not very risky), and I had someone who I could work with for a couple months before he went back to the states.
So, over the past month or so, we have been doing all the groundwork of building a business, from coming up with an offering document, doing market research, scanning for partners, understanding business incorporation options, preparing marketing, talking to potential customers, and pricing. Some of this was what I might have done before, but only on a project plan for someone else to do, and now that this is for myself, it's really a lot of fun. There will be a lot more to do, but succeed or fail, I will learn a lot from this venture, so I'm quite excited and have few regrets about making the leap.
I'll continue to make updates to this -- it might serve as a record to myself later on of the lessons I'm learning! Please weigh in with comments or suggestions, especially from anyone with experience in doing their own business or who might know something about the indoor environmental testing business.
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