Someone once observed that “necessity is the mother of invention”. As I look back on my story that is certainly a true statement for me.

I began my “first career” at IBM in San Jose California in 1963. When I started I anticipated a single job for one employer for a lifetime with a company sponsored retirement, benefits, and Social “Security” to finish out my “Golden Years”. Well, it didn’t work out that way but……rather than sit back and say “poor me” and turning to the government for help I became an entrepreneur out of necessity.

My first job with IBM was in manufacturing as “direct” employee. I was a Customer Engineer, a Customer Engineering Manager, a Program Support Representative, and a Systems Engineer before I was “downsized” in 1991.

During this whole time, IBM was able to charge very high prices for their products and their services. Product prices were high because of something IBM called “added value”. If you bought their hardware you got people like me for free as “added value”. Their salesmen were also very adept at using something called “FUD”. If a customer suggested they were going to get some lower cost provider for service the salesman sowed “Fear/Uncertainty/Doubt.

Slowly on customers discovered that either their employees or some other third party could maintain their IBM hardware just as effectively. Credible competition also began emerging and they encouraged customers to get involved in the installation and maintenance of their hardware. Over time customers began telling IBM that they could handle more and more of what IBM had told them they couldn’t do and do it for a lot less. They told IBM to “unbundle” the hardware cost from the “added value” and they would buy what they needed. IBM responded and I and a lot of others who were “value adds” were told that we would have to start charging our customers for something they had gotten for free in the past and that many of them had paid for in the “added value” part of the initial hardware purchase. Needless to say this did not sit well with customers. Also, because of IBM’s bloated cost structure I was told to ask $125/hour for my services, a price that was not even close to competitive.

In 1992, after 29 years of employment, at a company that had told me if I worked hard and did a good job of taking care their customers I could retire and live happily ever after, I was told to take the buy-out I was being offered as it was the last “good one”. In November of 1991, I took the buy-out which came with benefits for 5 years and a bridge to retirement. I also got a severance check for one year’s compensation which sounded good until I found out that, because of the timing in late November, resulted in a 6 figure income for 1991 and a 40% tax bite which decimated the check. Income averaging had been done away a few years before so my severance check (and a whole host of others) became a wind fall for Uncle Sam and we were left to sink or swim.

Sinking was not an option for me with three kids in college, a newly minted mortgage, a car payment, and a host of other bills. I, and two other women with whom I had worked at IBM began talking about starting a business doing what we knew how to do for customers we had worked with before leaving IBM. We set up shop in an unheated office which I put together over my garage. We started calling on our former customers and before long we had a business going. IBM offered a program that they called “Business Partners” and we became one. Many of the people that we worked with at IBM were former associates which was good news and bad news. Some of them were eager to help us succeed and some were eager to help us fail. Through it all, training at IBM both in the hardware and software aspect as well as the customer satisfaction aspect of the business allowed us grow our business and to move from my garage to our first office space.

Subsequently, the business began growing. After 5 years it was time to sign a new lease and we needed more space so we moved to 5000 square feet in a new building. Our space was every bit a nice as anything IBM had. We were growing and had 15 people employed. Y2K made it possible to sell almost anything under the “it’s needed for Y2K”. By 1998 we had tripled our incomes from the IBM days and life was good. The last half 1999 and 2000 was slow because you would have been deemed foolish to make changes and had the wheels fall off your wagon at 21:59 on December 31, 1999. After surviving that milestone, nothing needed replacement in 2000 because, if you survived, you had just replaced everything and didn’t need anything more.

Business began picking up again in 2001 and then came 9/11 which saw it tank again. We made another move in 1999 to smaller space due to the changing nature of our business. In the old facility we had two large training rooms which we no longer need.

By 2004, business was again doing well and we had 26 employees and annual revenue of $7M. Not bad for three employees who were “surplus” in 1991. The business continues to thrive to this day. It peaked out at 35 employees in 2007 and has contracted with the downturn in business to 25. I left the business in 2005 to retire but I go back frequently to see how things are going. I do not recognize the current business which is now nothing like the business I started and which is also nothing like the business I left 4 years ago because of the nature of business and the technology business. My old partners have reinvented the business and they continue to do well in spite of the national economy and the depressed nature of the Michigan economy.

With the benefit of hindsight, I tell people the best thing that ever happened to me was losing my job at age 51. I would never have been able to do the things I did or to do as well as I did had I not been thrust into being a reluctant entrepreneur. I suspect the 25 employees of the current business would also concur as they have full time employment, benefits, and a great place to work.