Posted By BillHeise on May 22, 2010

I had forgotten I wrote this on MEDTEXL in March of 2000. It is advice about how I got out of my academic experience relatively unscathed. It is aimed at guiding fellow academics out of the labyrinth, but it provides a sound enough introduction to the entrepreneurial path that I have followed that I thought I’d reprint it here:

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GETTING INTO BUSINESS

Two of the chief difficulties in breaking into business are finding out what you want to do and getting the experience that allows you to do it. Ask yourself what you’d like to do every day when you wake up My wife asked me this during my second year in the doctorate program when I thought I might not finish. This is the most productive question anyone has ever asked me. It’s not an easy question to answer. It took me years to figure out, and I’m still not there. It gives me a sense of direction.

Start Right Away

If you are lucky enough to know what you want to do, start doing it. If you want to be a computer guy, tell everyone you know that you’ll build a computer for them for $50.00 (or more) plus parts. Have some cheap business cards printed up that say you do things like this. This counts as experience. Build web sites for small businesses, if you can do such things. Find out if you like it. I did this for a while as a side job, thinking I’d like it. I didn’t and moved on.

Volunteer

You can volunteer your time somewhere to build experience. A friend of mine started his own build-your-custom-computer business and volunteered at his local library to get experience building local area networks. Another friend makes $100,000 a year as a network builder. Nearly all his clients come from contacts he’s made doing volunteer work for his church.

Temp

While you are waiting to get an entry level job, don’t get a job at the video store. Get temp jobs. You will hate this. Not only is it dull, the working conditions can be bad. Health insurance costs about 250-350 per month, and you’ll have to pay for this yourself (or go without) until you get a full time job. That isn’t the worst of it. I got laid off with a day’s notice at one company, and I spent a week cleaning out the basement at another, though I was hired to type.

Despite all this, it’s very good experience. You get to see a lot of companies, especially big companies. I worked in places like MetLife and 3M. This may not impress you much, but it looks good to employers.

The better reason to do it is that the exposure to many businesses will give you an overview of business without commitment to a long term engagement in one company. This is good, because it will give you, who have little or no business experience, perspective. There is no faster way for anyone to get to see so many different businesses.

Once you settle into a company for a longer term job, you will have some perspective from which to evaluate the working conditions. You will find that there are people in every company who work much of their lives without much idea of how businesses other than theirs operate. When they get laid off, this becomes a crippling liability. For this reason alone, humanities graduate students who aren’t planning on leaving academia but who cannot be sure there will be a job waiting for them when they are done would do well to try this for a summer or two.

Temping is also a good way to break into business, since temps are frequently hired into permanent positions. I got a job as a secretary this way. The job paid more than many beginning professorial jobs. Because I’m smart, I soon got promoted out. Here’s some trivial but important advice. As a temp, don’t be late. Never be a no-show. Have a positive attitude, etc. Your temp agency will keep hiring you, and you’ll keep getting the best assignments.

Explore the Business World

When you’re in each company, find out what they do. If you’re in a sales department, ask as many questions as you can (without becoming obnoxious) about sales. Then get a pile of textbooks on sales and read them, even if you couldn’t care less about sales. You never know what knowledge will suddenly become useful two years later. Do the same at your insurance job, your marketing job, and your job at the oil refinery. Think of this period as your general education requirements period.

Ask people how they got interested in their careers. You’ll pick up a lot of ideas here. It can also be enlightening. I met a guy with a master’s degree in theology at a chemical company.

Take this time to observe the differences between textbook business and real business. There is a huge difference. The biggest lesson about human nature that I’ve taken from business is that almost everyone knows what they ought to say and do in a given situation, but almost no one does it. Egos interfere. People like the ‘old way of doing things, before these computers made me give up my index cards,’ even if (or perhaps because) a week’s worth of work can now be done in ten minutes time. Managers can talk the talk of the management books they’ve read and behave like textbook recipes for failure. Talk is cheap.

Interview

Interview a lot Even for jobs you don’t have a chance to get. You might get it anyway. If not, you’ll hone your interview skills and learn a little something about a new company. Interview the interviewer to get information. People like to talk about themselves, and so they’ll like you, and you will learn.

Network

If you want to break into computers, but are working in the secretarial pool, introduce yourself to the computer guy and his boss, etc. Ask them about their careers, how they got started, and what advice they would give someone like you. They might have some good suggestions or even a cousin who needs skillful computer guys like you to come work for him. Personal contacts are the most common way to find a job. Use your time as a temp to network as much as you can. I find networking disturbing sometimes. Kant says (and I agree) that you should never treat people as means to an end but as ends unto themselves. Networking implies that you are treating people as a means to an end. There are certainly a lot of people who do this, but you needn’t be so cynical as to form relationships simply to get a job. I have breakfast once a month with one of the people who directs me towards a lot of my clients. But I was doing this before I had any thought of getting into the business I’m in. I genuinely like him; he likes me. That’s one of the reasons that we direct clients to each other. We trust each other. I associate with people I want to spend my time with, and many business relationships have come from this.

My wife claims that I was good at networking in school, too. But I never pursued a relationship with anyone who might have been a good contact for future employment for any other reason than that I genuinely liked that person and love the company of scholars.

In my opinion, even from an economic standpoint, it’s not worth it to pursue relationships as a means to an end. People can see through that kind of thing. Take the view that you will meet a lot of interesting people. You will.

Change Jobs

Even after you land a full time job, shift jobs. You’ll probably get your first job at a low pay rate, because of the risks involved in hiring someone without experience. Even if they give you a promotion into a job with more responsibility, they’ll never think of you the same as others at the same level.

When I got promoted from secretary to Marketing Analyst, a job for which I might have made up to $50,000 in other companies, I got a 12% raise and a speech about how lucky I was to get such an opportunity. It was true, but gratitude is no reason to stay with an employer today. The same company also laid off 150 people one Christmas while I was there. They’ve recently announced plans to eliminate another 1,500 jobs.

You will have learned about the company’s lack of loyalty to you during your time as a temp. After a few months in any job where you’re not being paid what you’re worth, you’ll actually have experience on your resume that people will respect. They’ll pay you a fair wage for your services. It’s also important to shift jobs so that you’ll have a sense of whether you’ve really become independent or have simply settled into the first comfortable position you’ve been offered. I don’t know that I could have had a career in marketing, even if I’d wanted one. I thought I might be stuck in one company until they laid me off at 50. That’s not a good prospect, so I found work where I could dictate the terms of my employment.

Read. Read. Read. Read.

Give yourself a general business education. There’s a series of books called The Portable MBA. There’s a Portable MBA in each major area of business: Finance, Marketing, Sales, Management, etc. Read them all. After you’re done, you’ll be able to talk reasonably well in any business discussion about the issues that are involved. It doesn’t take long to become fluent in businessese.

To keep current, read Business Week. Five years ago I would have bet that Business Week would be an ideological arm of the Republican Party, but it is not. I find this one of the best sources for news available, because business people can’t afford to be ideologues. They need good, unbiased information to make decisions about the world they must interact with. The mainstream media is too narrowly focused (and perhaps too ideological) to present the kind of overview of the world that you need to survive in business.

For that reason, BW covers more than just the world of business. I regularly find stories covered here that are covered in the mainstream weeks, months, and even years later. At least once every six months, show up at work with a clipped article from BW, the Portable MBA, or any other book or magazine that is relevant to the job you’re doing. It shows you are aware, connected, etc.

Another good set of books to read early on are books on the business of self-publishing. They will help you gain perspective on everything that’s involved in an industry you feel a connection with, rather than introducing you to business through big corporate America and jobs like renting cars or quality control in the manufacture of heart monitors (two thrilling areas I’ve worked in).

Doug and Marilyn Ross and Dan Poynter have written the two most popular and useful overviews of self-publishing. These books will give you an overview of how a business you know something about is run. They give you the ins and outs of the whole sector: from writing to setting up the company, printing, distribution, legal questions, marketing, sales, getting free publicity, and how to use publishing (self or not) to boost your career.

Become an Entrepreneur

Big business is a good place to start when you need to make a living. If you pursue a course in big business, assess whether you really like big business. If you do, you may want to get a law degree or an MBA. But I suspect most of you will not.

I myself don’t really like big business much. It creates very narrowly focused specialists who are cogs in giant machines. Most academics, accustomed to academic freedom, will not find this a pleasant environment. We get into academia because we’re independent-minded, and we like the promise of intellectual autonomy. There are a lot of very unhappy post-academics in jobs from which they draw a paycheck but no joy.

So think very seriously about starting a business. Jim was a freelance translator. If you like to write, find out what the going rate is for business writing and tell people you’ll write business reports for them below this rate to get some experience. The barriers to entry in freelance writing can be quite low.

On the other hand, you never know what you’ll end up doing. I know a guy who left the company where I was a market analyst to become a professional party organizer. No kidding. Entrepreneurship may be the best path to getting to do what you want to do in life, since you will self-select yourself into the career you like.

There are millions of people who make a living running small businesses that match their interests exactly. I saw a woman on television the other night who makes a living raising rats. It doesn’t work for me., but to each his or her own. From my point of view, it makes sense to equate business more closely with the map of human possibility than the medieval conception of business as the realm of sin.

Be aware that more than 75% of businesses fail, so there is a lot of risk. But if you start out running a business as a second job while you temp and analyze markets (or whatever you end up doing), you’ll get a lot of experience and build a client base before you take the big leap into self-employment.

Don’t Work for Money

Although this is a necessity when you’re starting out, do as much as you can to make your need for money less urgent. People who work for money aren’t usually happy. People who work at something they love don’t think of it as work, and they often excel because they love their work. You already know this from your academic experience.

Good luck.

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