‘How to start a career and be your own boss’. Looks like the title of a self-help book? Sure, it is. But then, it’s not so easy for female mid career professionals who have to weigh in a lot many things before the needle swings any which way. It’s hard for those with spouses, loans, and kids to pull off a start-up. But it’s not impossible either. You just have to love your idea enough to figure out how to do it on the side.
But the road to entrepreneurship is pothole-ridden. Take mid career pros. They don’t like the responsibility that comes with it. Usha, the 33-year-old project manager at a software firm puts it succinctly: “It’s as simple as my laptop crashing the other day in the office. Within three hours, I was functional again. That’s the beauty of working in large organisations. The processes are in place, the people are helpful. It’s a secure job whichever way you look at it.”
The lure of global organisations makes it more difficult for mid career pros to say ‘goodbye’ to seven-figure salaries and the perks that come with it, global travel included. “If I do get married to some guy who wants to relocate to Australia, I can join him there without thinking about quitting and finding a new job because my company has a branch out there.”
Anuradha Muralidharan seconds Usha’s opinion. “Yes, a job does come with certain responsibilities, time schedules and deliverables but unlike entrepreneurship, one is not carrying the weight of the entire organisation on one’s shoulders,” she says. “In my job as Manager – MarCom, I might do a late night telecon or stay back in the evening, but be rest assured that when I go to bed, I sleep peacefully. That is the biggest asset of working versus owning your own set up. You tend to worry less and enjoy life more.”
Another important perk is tackling monotony. When you get saturated in one field, you can explore another, without the risks associated with entrepreneurship. “One has options. If one is bored and feels spent, one can move to another department,” says Usha. “You can move roles, go to different cities and countries and work in diverse fields. Because you are working in a larger organisation, there is no harassment at work. Everything is transparent, including your career growth.”
And then, there’s the security factor. “My salary comes on time, there’s a set number of holidays I can take, including maternity leave of 2-3 months,” says a proud Usha, who intends to work for others all her life. “It makes you feel proud to be part of a global organisation because getting a visa is easier and you are respected the world over because you represent a certain company. And then there’s travel insurance where everything is taken care of before you leave your country.”
Working for someone has other benefits, indulging in hobbies being one among them. Ask Anuradha. She gets time in the evenings to read a book, pursue a hobby like writing and have dinner with her family. “When we eat, I am not looking furtively at my cell phone to see if there is a fire somewhere,” she explains. “I eat peacefully and listen to my son talk about his day. This is the biggest perk of working in a company. Not to mention, the monthly pay check which I know for sure will come in. Also, I get to travel and learn more about technologies, markets and cultures, which makes my job all the more exciting.”
It’s the processes that make a big organisation so much more lucrative. And this also helps people to be happy at work. “If you are especially working for an old company, there’s a lot of stuff that has already been done before,” elaborates Usha. “So this helps you build on the existing infrastructure rather than completely re-invent the wheel and go nuts doing it.”
At the end of the day, working for large organisations is also about convenience. “I can choose to work from home, although right now, I don’t want to because I don’t want to carry work home, but maybe sometime later, when I get married and have a kid, I might,” says a thoughtful Usha. “Mobility is an option. Since my office is situated in two parts of the city, I can choose to work from a place close to my house.”
While experts will tell you to jump in, take risks, challenge yourself, trust your instincts, and learn from both experience and the experienced, Usha is clear she will not go on her own. “It’s unnecessary stress that I wouldn’t want for myself,” she says matter-of-factly. “I want to be part of an ocean as it’s so much more easier.”
Domain experts will tell you that twenties are the best for a start-up as you have a whole life ahead for success and failures. The problem therefore is more age-specific. In your 40s, you have many things to deal with. In your 20s, you can focus on one thing and still be an entrepreneur if you focus. This finds resonance in Usha’s early working days. “I took a lot of risk during my advertising days,” she reminisces. “But somewhere inside, I wanted security and stability. Advertising is based on performance. Almost every day, you have to come up with new, original ideas. And in this field, if your account moves, it means the end of your project and you move out of your job. I have also done a bit of freelancing for websites. But I realised these were smaller firms and my growth was stunted. With the dotcom bust, I had nothing to do. Now when I am working for a global organisation, I don’t have to worry about all these things.”
Sometimes, the reason for choosing to be an employee could be found in the family background. Take advertising professional Bela Vora. “All the entrepreneurs I knew – the business folk – my mother and her brothers, worked in run down dingy offices and struggled with clerks, paper work and bribing officials for various licenses, while my father who was a manager with Glaxo Laboratories worked in a spacious, air conditioned office surrounded by well dressed and polite people,” she recalls. “Therefore, I was naturally fascinated by the big corporate life, rather than with entrepreneurship in those early years.”
Given time, you learn the good and bad side to entrepreneurship. “By working in small and large companies for 22 years, I learnt not only about how the advertising business is run and what makes a good product, but also the most important softer skills of people management and the ability to face failure,” says Vora, who was an employee for more than half her working life before setting up her medium-sized advertising agency, Black Coffee. “If I have met with any success today, it has been because of my career background. It molded me, put me in touch with the right people and gave me the impetus to strike out on my own.”
Then again, entrepreneurship can be the best option for those mid career pros who are happily married with young children, as a promotion in an organisation means a change of city or even country. “This is increasingly a prerequisite for a post on the board,” says Vora. “The outstation transfers are measured in years. This can put a real dampener on your personal growth and family life and needless to add, plunge you into the classic dilemma of home versus career, or, in my view, happiness versus money. Many entrepreneurs, especially women, are made by this dilemma. It is a good time to strike out because a newly born business person feels more fulfilled to have a home to come back to rather than a service apartment in a foreign country.”
Working in smaller organisations works wonders for a future entrepreneur. Take 35-year-old technical writer Nirmala G. “I spent seven years being indispensable by working in a smaller organisation. It helped me prove my self worth and learn a lot more because you are being watched and picked on all the time. You multi task and know what it takes to run a firm because you’ve done it all. I know that the value add I can give compared to someone who hasn’t been on their own will be far superior. It is important to know what’s your worth, because then you can survive it this way or that.”
Now she works in an MNC and prefers the relative financial security. “I can become an entrepreneur, if I am able to pay off my home and car loans and have a certain regular income to meet my monthly expenses,” she says.
This could well be a possibility, given time. But right now, Nirmala is happy tapping away on the keyboard until she accumulates enough capital and wisdom to strike out on her own.