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Bleak economy bringing out the entrepreneur in job-seekers

Landscape architect Juanita Salisbury said after being laid off from her Petaluma firm this summer, she gave brief thought to other lines of work before deciding to stay in her field - as her own boss.
Salisbury, 49, said she saw the writing on the wall when she was reduced to a part-time worker months before being let go as work slowed to a trickle.

"So when I was finally laid off, I was able to hit the ground running," said Salisbury, a Rohnert Park resident who launched a Web site for her fledgling firm, began giving talks to garden clubs throughout Marin and Sonoma counties and kept in contact with former clients in Marin and elsewhere. This week she will be speaking at the Marin Art & Garden Center.

As jobless figures continue to rise in the ongoing recession, Salisbury is among a growing number of people who are leaving the unemployment lines and taking a stab at entrepreneurship, some trying new industries as well as careers.

John Kosecoff, a Larkspur investment manager who has worked with job seekers through the Marin chapter of a professional support group, said most people he has been working with aren't entrepreneurial by nature, but rather due to a lack of alternatives.

"The majority of people that I speak with are doing it because they see no other choice," Kosecoff said. "They recognize the job market has permanently changed and the incomes they previously had are not sustainable. Businesses they were in such as real estate or financial services aregoing through an extended cycle for the next 10 or 12 years and they're not going to be back at the heights they were at previously."
He added: "I think people will find more role models to be entrepreneurial because they recognize there will be more entrepreneurs out there in coming years."

Support groups for job-seeking professionals, business start-up classes and networking groups in Marin have reported not just spikes in attendance, but higher numbers of members going the self-employment route.

A recent national Index of Entrepreneurial Activity by the Kauffman Foundation reported a small jump in new businesses in 2008 over 2007. Last year, an average of 320 Americans out of 100,000 started up a business each month. California had one of the highest entrepreneurial rates, with 440 people out of 100,000.

The index also showed patterns of "necessity" entrepreneurship on the rise with "opportunity" entrepreneurs declining, Kauffman reported. One indicator was the oldest age group, from 55 to 64, showing the biggest bump in entrepreneurial activity from 2007 to 2008.

Novato resident Shari Weiss taught business communication, public relations and marketing classes at San Francisco State University for the past decade until being informed this summer her services were no longer needed. Budget shortfalls have pushed more lecture classes to online courses monitored by secretaries.

No matter. The 62-year-old has been busy blogging about local public relations events and recently formed her own company that helps small businesses harness social media such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

"At this point in my life I was perfectly happy to do exactly what I was doing," she said. "The last thing I thought about was going and starting a new career, but I am so energized. This is where business is going."

Terra Linda resident Phil Boland, a business consultant who has run career transition classes in Novato since December, said attendance has been growing steadily over the past few months.

"I'm seeing more (self-employment) because people are just not going to get re-hired because of ageism, sexism, whatever," said Boland, whose sessions include talks on financial, social and spiritual aspects of such transitions. "That's a hard reality to accept. This is probably the worst time that people have been going through for 30 years or more."

According to officials with the Women's Initiative for Self-Employment, a San Francisco-based agency with an office in Novato, attendance at its multi-week business start-up course so far this year has been up 10 percent over 2008. The percentage of Marin clients who were unemployed when they joined the group nearly doubled from 17 percent in 2008 to 32 percent so far this year, the agency reported.

San Rafael resident Bruce Birtch, a former senior-level marketing executive let go last year from an online publishing firm, described himself as a "cause marketing catalyst" these days.

Seeing funds dry up for nonprofits, Birtch said he now works to create partnerships between nonprofits and for-profit companies. With a background that included creating two previous nonprofits and for-profit firms himself, Birtch said "going out on my own was not daunting, even in this economy, because I am really motivated to help."

Lorraine DuVernay, director of the Small Business Development Center at Santa Rosa Junior College, said the center's "So You Want to Start a Business?" class, with sessions in Marin and Santa Rosa, has doubled in attendance recently. Prospective business owners are having to be more creative as they learn the ropes, she said.

"Because of severe restrictions in credit, people have been unable to tap normal sources they have for starting a business," she said. "A lot of people use equity in their home, (but) because of plummeting value in real estate, there's no equity and banks traditionally aren't willing to lend money in a start-up phase.

"It all makes it harder on someone to start a business," DuVernay said.

San Francisco author Po Bronson, who cataloged the career transition of individuals across the nation in his book, "What Should I Do With My Life?," said of those taking their careers into their own hands, "we need to innovate our way out of this economic mess.

"People need to start making things others need and really want and stop making things they don't really need," Bronson said. "I do see this as a time of opportunity, in a sense."

Kosecoff said as corporations downsize, an increasing number of people are seizing that opportunity.

"People are now saying, 'I have no choice. I have to take extra risk, (but) don't have capital to put in it so I will do it on a shoestring.

"It's going to be inspiring and one of the healthy things to evolve out of this."

RESOURCES

Marin Professionals holds free career search/networking meetings from 9 to 11 a.m. Mondays in the Redwood Room at Marin Employment Connection, 120 N. Redwood Drive in San Rafael. Call 507-2140 or visit www.marinprofessionals.org.

The next session of "So You Want to Start a Business," offered through the Small Business Development Centers of Northern California, is 5:30 to 8:30 p.m. Tuesday at the center's office, 606 Healdsburg Ave. in Santa Rosa. For information, call 707-524-1770 or visit www.sbdcsantarosa.org.

The Marin site for the Women's Initiative for Self Employment is 7250 Redwood Blvd., Suite 207 in Novato. For information, call 878-2100 or visit www.womensinitiative.org.

The Service Corps of Retired Executives provides free one-on-one help in starting a business or solving business problems every Thursday morning at the San Rafael Chamber of Commerce office. Call 454-4163 for an appointment.

The Network Central Chapter of Business Networking International holds weekly breakfast meetings from 7 to 8:30 a.m. Tuesdays at Ace Conference Center, 1925 E. Francisco Blvd. in San Rafael. Call 389-8311.

North Bay Business Connections meets from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. on the first and third Wednesday of every month at Marin Power Squadron, 789 Hamilton Parkway in Novato. Call 897-9103 or visit www.northbaybiz.org.