Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Athens, Ga., Handyman Uses Motorola Layoff to Jump-Start Home Repair Company

From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 22 Jul 2003 15:21:43 -0400

Athens, Ga., Handyman Uses Motorola Layoff to Jump-Start Home Repair Company
July 22, 2003 7:11am
Knight-Ridder / Tribune Business News

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Jul. 22--On an August morning in 2002, Ed Beckham got the phone call most workers
hope never to receive.
His boss at telecommunication giant Motorola summoned Beckham to his office -- and
told him to bring the computer, pager and identification card with him.

Beckham, then a 56-year-old employee for the company's Gwinnett County location,
was not at all surprised to have his job eliminated. With the economy already in
the doldrums from the first-quarter recession and the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks,
it didn't take a genius to figure out that axing his high salary was a priority
for executives looking to cut costs, he said.
In a weird way, the news was a relief. "It's like waiting for the other shoe to
fall," said Beckham, who was employed by the company as an operations manager to
Motorola's client Nextel, working on a team that sold Nextel telecommunications
towers and other equipment. "Finally, the damn shoe fell." That day began what has
become a new chapter in the former manager's life.
He looked for work for a few months but found nothing approaching his former
salary. Undeterred, however, he fell back on a hobby that had always served him
well in the past.

A tall, athletic man, with a hawk's eye and a teacher's patience, he had taught
himself back in the 1970s and '80s how to build everything from window frames to
homes. Now, out of work, however, he began hearing how hard it was for people to
find good help in completing home repair tasks. In that news Beckham saw an
unfilled niche. So in February, he began HandyMaster Services Inc. and began
completing small home repair projects, such as installing ceiling fans and garage
doors, for friends and acquaintances in the area. This is my passion," Beckham
said. "I love to build things." Months later, his business has expanded to even
completing major projects, such as the 1920s-style garage be recently finished at
a home in Five Points. He said the business is now booked for the next two months.
Since the economy began its slow crawl in 2001, more than a million people -- many
of them white collar workers -- have lost their jobs. And after seeing their jobs
in telecommunications or other technology-related fields dry up faster than the
returns from a dot-com stock, a number of those people are choosing
entrepreneurship to restart their careers, according to Nick Voit, an adjunct
professor of Information technology at Georgia Tech's Dupree College of
Management.

Voit said displacement, either through downsizing or early retirement, along with
other life-changing events, are often the initial impetus for people becoming
entrepreneurs. To be sure, people laid-off from the corporate sphere comprise only
a small percentage of those who start businesses, he said. But the common thread
of people who become entrepreneurs is a catalyst, some life-altering event --
divorce, unemployment, relocation -- that forces them in the direction of becoming
self-employed.
In the case of people displaced from corporate America taking up entrepreneurship,
what they often bring is a a self-starter mentality and plenty of expertise in an
area at least peripherally related to their new venture, said Voit.
Even then, he said, the adjustment is not an easy one. "As an entrepreneur, you're
sort of on an island," said Voit, himself a former Hewlett-Packard executive who
took early retirement in 2000.

"There's no one else around you. It's a difficult transformation." For the most
part, Beckham didn't allow the downsizing to get under his skin. After all, he'd
had a long, successful career. He had retired from BellSouth Mobility in Atlanta
in 1991, as the general manager of operations for South Carolina, after working
for the company for 25 years.

At 46, he took an early retirement package from BellSouth, which provided him with
enough compensation that he didn't immediately have to look for work. Later that
same year, he made the decision to take the Motorola position, a choice aided by
the company's doubling of his salary. At Motorola, Beckham had a staff of five
direct employees, which handled Nextel's equipment needs in North and South
Carolina, Kentucky, Virginia, Arkansas and Tennessee. It was a job he enjoyed. But
with Nextel cutting back on buying of equipment and his division's numbers being
off significantly from previous years, he knew being laid-off was imminent. "They
had been so good in terms of opportunities that they had offered me, that I had
become a very attractive target for downsizing," Beckham said of Motorola.

He did receive a severance package to "soften the blow" of being displaced. Even
so, the change from professional to entrepreneur wasn't exactly easy. While
getting the business incorporated, securing insurance and other tasks was easy
enough, finding a steady stream of work was not. He advertised in a local
magazine, distributed flyers and relied on infrequent jobs.
"I just had to get one job here, then those led to others," Beckham said. It's
always a tough adjustment when workers leave the corporate realm, whether through
downsizing, retirement or any number or reasons, Voit said. There are no easy
lists to follow at the beginning of each day, and no regular paycheck is
automatically coming in every two weeks. "Even though the severance softens the
blow, you're still eating into that severance to get the business going," he said.

For the first several months after being laid-off, Beckham spent hours each day
trying to find the next career path. He even looked into building speculation
homes in area subdivisions. In the end, he decided small home-repair was the way
to go, so he started doing small jobs in December From installing storm windows to
minor plumbing and carpentry, he's watched as the jobs have grown in frequency and
size. He's even taken on an employee, Ken Eilers, a 63-year-old Athens resident
who had taken early retirement from IBM in 1994. The two have actually been
friends for several years. They also both share a love of building things.

And while on the surface, this job seems vastly different from his former
occupation, Beckham said he's still using the same organizational, managerial and
financial skills he acquired in the business sector. "After preparing
multi-million-dollar proposals for Nextel, it's easy to create a proposal for a
sunroom," said Beckham. Of the 300,000 to 500,000 new businesses started each
year, only a small number actually are started by displaced former managers or
executives, according to Charles Hofer, Regents professor of strategy and
entrepreneurship in the University of Georgia's Terry College of business.

But what those former business professionals bring to entrepreneurship, he said,
are transferable skills.
For example, a former finance or accounting professional would likely bring a
better knowledge of how to cut costs and grow the business than someone without
any corporate experience. Said Hofer of Beckham's experience: "You have someone
who comes into the construction industry with good accounting and managerial
practices, they might be able to make themselves successful." Standing outside the
three-car-garage turned woodworking shop behind Beckham's home, he and Eilers are
a long way from where they both were a decade ago. Then Beckham was a arranging
the sale of equipment to Nextel and Eilers was only a year from retiring from
IBM's Atlanta office.

Here, however, both are laid-back as Beckham describes the intricacies of cutting
wood using a variety of saws.
They laugh, tease each other about employee perks and talk about doing what they
love. Asked whether they have any regrets about pursuing a building profession
only later in their lives, both men say they have none. Instead they see
themselves as fortunate to have had long successful careers, then been able to
enjoy what was previously only a hobby.
"That's what I was blessed with when I was laid-off -- a good hobby," said
Beckham.

To see more of the Athens Banner-Herald, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to
http://www.onlineathens.com

http://www.hoovers.com/free/news/detail.xhtml?ArticleID=NR200307221180.3_0c8d004ab32900ec

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