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When the ‘Product’ Is You
Running your business all by yourself can bring singular rewards — but it's not for everyone
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CONNTACT.COM
10/14/2002
By: Elizabeth Linden
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Paul Levatino runs his massage therapy business out of an office in New Haven. He has built a thriving, fulfilling practice over the last seven years - remarkably, without the help of secretary, assistants or partners.
While many massage therapists work under the umbrella of medical practices, physical-therapy centers, health spas or gyms, for Levatino, these were never options.
"I made the decision early that that didn't appeal to me," he explains. "I didn't want to have to monitor other people's performances."
What makes Levatino's decision to run his business utterly independent of employees and partners so surprising is the double difficulty of marketing in a field such as his, where the "product" is essentially himself, or the skills that he has to offer.
Unlike many other areas of endeavor, where self-employment is coupled with the independent production of a certain saleable item, massage therapy is a service that Levatino offers during “normal” business hours, making the necessary self-promotion and publicity come second during any given work day. So a delicate balance has to be struck between the work time he dedicates to his craft, and the hours he spends during the day seeking out new channels in which to advertise his service, or simply administering his existing business.
David Ottenstein, a New Haven photographer who has worked independently full-time for the past 20 years, has learned to maintain a balance between the business of photography and the business of business itself. Most of Ottenstein's clients come from referrals, he says, which mitigates the need to spend a lot of money on advertising. He also actively solicits clients by taking his portfolio to companies and selling himself.
But Ottenstein is quick to acknowledge his good fortune in finding work when he first got started. "I was working professionally while I was still an undergraduate at Yale University and so when I graduated, I continued to work for [those clients],” says Ottenstein. “At that point, my expenses were pretty low, and so as my skills grew, I could gradually afford better equipment and build myself up."
He explains the dilemma of running his business without an assistant or support person. "I've considered [hiring a secretary] many times,” Ottenstein says. “I guess it is an ongoing consideration, but I am essentially a do-it-yourself person. I am sometimes overwhelmed, but I don't want to be an employer."
For Bernie Staggers, another photographer who began to build his business in New Haven just one year ago, working independently is really more a necessity than a choice. Staggers explains that he "started a business in the hopes of getting part-time work," but has since found that jobs do not necessarily come that quickly. The work that he has done has come through word-of-mouth or the occasional lucky break when more established photographers are booked in advance and cannot take the jobs for more spur-of-the-moment weddings or other events.
While Staggers acknowledges that his past year "has been a struggle," he remains optimistic about his business's potential. "The way it seems to work is, you advertise this year, you get work next year.
For others, self-employment is not always a product of necessity, lucky breaks, or unease with overseeing employees, but rather emerging from memories of being employees themselves.
Lydia Dixon, acupuncturist and herbal healer, chose to practice alternative medicine on her own, partly because she says she had "a really hard time working for other people.
“In my experiences, I came up against situations where I would say, 'That's not the way I would do it, that's not the way I would handle people,'" she recalls. Dixon decided then, after working in a variety of jobs for other businesses under different bosses, that when she opened her practice she would be her own employee. "Once I got into one-to-one relationships with my clients, my anxiety level dropped,” she says. “I would rather work with me and a person, than me and a business. This is my forté."
Reflecting that independent streak, Dixon has mostly steered away from advertising her business beyond a single local Yellow Pages ad. That choice was also based on a more generalized commercial ideology she holds. To Dixon, advertising felt inauthentic and unrelated to the kind of successes she might have in the office, essentially promoting the results of her therapy despite the fact that they can only be experienced or understood physically.
"It is a choice for me not to advertise,” she says. “The only advertising I can do is the kind I can do in the office. I get most of my business through word-of-mouth, which also functions as a kind of self-screening process. The only thing I have to market is my own integrity. And so far that has worked."
With a successful practice - she now has three studios in Connecticut - Dixon says she manages to keep "challenging myself at what I do. “The hard part is not getting insecure that I don't have a marketing idea, that I just help people," she says.
But clearly not every independent businessperson is so lucky as to generate much business without advertising. Frequently trade and specialty publications prove useful for marketing the independent business, especially one, like Dixon's, that serves a very specific niche.
Levatino's massage therapy business is likewise supported by clients who find him both by word-of-mouth and through the various publications and specialty organizations where he advertises. Levatino admits that the difficulty of running his own one-man enterprise is the same challenge to any individual wearing more than one hat: “I have to be more than a massage therapist. I must be a marketer.”
For some, though, the demands of business success can overwhelm even the most energetic would-be sole proprietor. David Connell discovered, when he started out in architecture and design, that there was simply too much ground to be covered all by himself. He joined his New Haven firm in 1975 and became a partner in 1976. "We've been as big as 20 [employees], and as little as two,” Connell explains. “Right now there are four of us.”
The growth potential for the single-employee enterprise is limited - although for some sole proprietors - that's exactly the point. Levatino asserts that "there were certain headaches I wanted to avoid," by not hiring employees. "I give 100 percent. I would not expect another individual to have that kind of commitment. I guess it is the old logic of, 'If you want it done right, do it yourself.'"
Other ways to expand the capacity of a business run by a sole proprietor is by subcontracting out work, something that David Ottenstein does to keep from needing to hire anyone directly. Frequently he will give work at various stages to labs and print bureaus to process, freeing him up to go on more shoots.
“Additionally,” he explains, "I have kids that are now at an age that they can sometimes help - when they want to."
Not everyone who is self-employed works in an industry where they can outsource work (and not everyone's children will feel like helping out at the office, either). Dixon, for example, despite her desire to keep her business on a small, personable scale, pays a friend to schedule her appointments. "I've learned the hard way," she explains, "that this isn't what I like to do, or what I am good at."
Finally, a solution to sustaining a business that some independent business people choose is to diversify their offerings so that they can support themselves financially at one thing while they continue to hone their other craft.
Veronica Johnson is an art photographer with a printing business that she uses to support herself. Johnson spent many years working in New Haven before she recently chose to move to New York.
"I think it is a little harder [to make art] in New Haven because it is further from New York,” she says. “There is not a very strong collector base in New Haven and if you are generating a lot of work, you have to sell it. It can't just sit in your drawers."
Johnson stresses the importance of networking when it comes to the business side of making art. Most of the time that she does not spend actually creating photographs is spent sending out slides, attending gallery openings, making contacts and setting up studio visits. While Johnson estimates that she spends about 15 percent of her productive time dealing with the business of art, she more often works in large blocks of time rather than dedicating a small portion of each day to business logistics.
"I take periods where I try to get it out there, create a body of work, and then I take some time and try to sell it,” she explains.
So while the solutions to working independently vary both by profession and personality, it is plain that for anyone trying to run a business that depends both on their creativity and physical presence for its success, managing the business of your business can be a balancing act all its own.
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