COLUMN ONE : Getting a Life After Aerospace : A growing number of laid-off workers are discovering the sense of freedom--and the hardships--of starting their own businesses.
Laid-off aerospace worker Rick Thomas is pursuing a future that has nothing to do with the cruise missiles or MD-11 fuselages he worked on for 10 years, or anything high-tech for that matter.
These days you will find him in his kitchen, spreading flour, working a rolling pin back and forth with quick, sure strokes, flattening cookie dough and talking about becoming the next Famous Amos, the next Mrs. Fields.
He wants to become an entrepreneur, a poster child for President Clinton’s efforts to revitalize a mom-and-pop economy to get America moving again.
Thomas has discovered Life After Aerospace.
“When I was laid off last summer, I was really caught off-guard,” said Thomas, 35, as a batch of cookies browned in the oven. “But hey, this may be a blessing in disguise. Now I want to shake the company president’s hand and say, ‘Thanks!’ ”
Thomas is one of an emerging, gutsy breed of former aerospace, military and defense workers, battered and bruised by wholesale layoffs and industry downsizing, who are taking the leap of a lifetime. They are deciding to go into business for themselves, in altogether new careers that bear little resemblance to the aerospace industry that once might have coddled them right into retirement.
There are people like Harry Luettchau, who was laid off at TRW after 10 years of managing data processing systems to help build satellites. He bought a glass and mirror business in Yorba Linda.
And technical writer George Washington, who was laid off from Hughes Aircraft after 17 years in aerospace. He started his own Gardena-based landscaping business.
And Albert Bartz, who spent 28 years as an aerospace mechanical engineer fitting electronic payloads into spacecraft. He now works out of his Rolling Hills home, marketing his wife’s art prints.
And Jarl Nelson, who worked for 20 years in windowless offices within the bowels of aerospace as a production controller. He now owns Sunrise Pool and Spa Service on the Palos Verdes Peninsula. He is still struggling to meet his mortgage payments but has built up a base of more than 50 customers and delights in a more intangible reward of his career change: He can, for the first time as a working man, listen to the wind blow while on the job.
These people are unlike some of their former colleagues-cum-entrepreneurs who remain married to aerospace and are launching their own small, specialized high-tech businesses, sometimes taking on their former employers.
Good luck and good riddance, say those who are abandoning aerospace altogether.
About 100,000 aerospace and defense workers in California have been laid off over the last five years, but only a fraction of them are likely to start their own businesses. But that option is proving increasingly popular.
“They don’t have a lot of options,” said Susan Fox, who is establishing an entrepreneurial program in Santa Ana to serve some of those who have lost their jobs.
“If possible, they can retire. They can continue to look for work--out of state, where the jobs may be found. They can retrain for an altogether different job--which might take two years--and look for new work. Or they can go into business for themselves.”
Under contract with Rancho Santiago Community College in Santa Ana and the Santa Ana Private Industry Council, Fox is starting a pilot program through the publicly funded Orange County Small Business Development Center to offer entrepreneurial training for 26 aerospace, military and defense industry alumni. She began recruiting students this month.
And she is planning to expand the training to accommodate up to 3,700 wanna-be entrepreneurs a year after the pilot program is completed.
Fox’s motto: Offer entrepreneurial training and they will come.
Fox’s program is one of about 25 entrepreneurial training centers in California. The Greater San Diego Chamber of Commerce began its program in December and is already chalking up success stories.
“They figure they can sell their house and move somewhere else for a similar (aerospace) job, or take a shot at starting something on their own,” said Maria Morris, the program director. So far the program has counseled 50 people and averages 18 students in its monthlong seminars.
“I tell them to find something they have a passion for, and give it the commitment they need to make it successful,” Morris said. “They’re elated. Suddenly they’re looking at their future from a different perspective.”
The city of Redondo Beach contracts with the private Institute for Development of Entrepreneurs to help workers who have been laid off at TRW or Hughes learn how to get into business for themselves. The 2-year-old program can accommodate 15 students a year and 70 people are on the enrollment waiting list.
Some of these people anticipated their layoffs, put money aside and bought restaurant franchises, administrator Barbara Stanton said. One man plans to open a lube and oil shop.
“We’re working with high-tech people who are disgruntled. They just don’t want to go back into another work force, just to be laid off again,” she said.
Teaching the entrepreneurial program in Redondo Beach is Richard Buskirk, who moved to Palm Springs after retiring in 1988 as head of USC’s entrepreneur program.
“These people are looking at the competition for jobs--and the fact that those jobs aren’t paying what they used to,” Buskirk said. “They know that if they want to make money, they’d better do it on their own.”
But they don’t always know where they are headed.
“The first day we work with them, they go into an assessment center, where we learn everything we can about their aptitudes, personalities, transferable skills, what they need to work on,” Fox said. “Some of them find this very reassuring.”
In the eight-week Santa Ana program, students learn the mechanics of starting a business, how to identify customers, the importance of location, how to measure up the competition, how to budget and manage finances. They also learn management and organization techniques, sales and promotion, insurance and taxes, manufacturing and production. “Soup to nuts,” Fox said.
And they will leave the program with a business plan so they can solicit financial backing from others, if necessary.
These entrepreneur programs give a focus to people who might otherwise flail about in their plans for the future.
Take Luettchau, for instance, who was laid off by TRW 13 months ago. He enrolled in Stanton’s entrepreneurial program on a lark. “I figured what the hell, it won’t cost me anything.
“I looked at a bunch of different ideas. The first thing I wondered was what could I do where I wouldn’t have to do anything? Vending machines? But I found that was too hard. I thought about going back to aerospace, but I’m 59 and up there in salary and for me to find a job in aerospace, at my age and salary, I’d be kidding myself,” Luettchau said.
He perused the classified ads for businesses for sale and saw a two-liner offering a glass business. It clicked. His son-in-law has cut glass professionally for 13 years.
“I’ve been in manufacturing for 25 years. I know pricing, scheduling, product control, inventory, deadlines,” he said.
So Luettchau bought the business in June.
“Am I a success story? Am I making a ton of money? No. We’re breaking even, though. Do I look back on aerospace? No way. I talk to the guys in aerospace and they’re still bummed out. I’m sitting here, calling my own shots, setting my prices, deciding whether to close at 7 or go home at 3.
“I’m putting in more time than I did on the other job and making a helluva lot less money than I did before, but I’m happy,” Luettchau said. “Getting laid off was traumatic. It was a blast in the ass. I had three choices: stew in my brew, put on a suit and tie and bang my head against the wall trying to compete, or create my own destiny.”
Jarl Nelson was laid off by TRW in December, 1991--the third time since 1982 he had been out of work. When he went job-hunting, “I was looking at jobs that paid $8 an hour, and that was financial suicide,” he said.
He considered selling karaoke sing-along machines at one point but realized he didn’t have a good-enough singing voice to demonstrate them. Then a friend at TRW who cleaned pools on the side suggested to Nelson that he consider that for himself.
“As I went through the entrepreneurial program, the pool business idea grew on me,” Nelson said. He bought 22 customer pool cleaning contracts from his friend.
“It was nerve-racking. I didn’t know there were so many things to know about taking care of a pool,” said Nelson, who previously worked on space satellites.
“One day I was out there and I heard this noise, and I couldn’t figure out what it was. I realized it was the wind blowing through the pines. I hadn’t heard that since I was a kid and I decided I love this work. I’m outside!”
Nelson, who lives in Torrance, has 55 customers and is on the verge of breaking even. But it has been a struggle.
“One night I was really discouraged. I had the house payment to make, insurance for the truck and car and house, and taxes were coming up, and I’ve got my first year of income taxes to pay, and I was looking at all the money my customers still owed me, and my stomach started to twist and turn. I’m down to maybe $2,000 in the bank and I’ve already had to let our medical insurance go because I couldn’t afford it.
“Then, the next day, I had three late payments come in the mail. Now I’ve almost got the house payment covered,” he said.
Any regrets? “The thing about aerospace was that I was so used to being taken care of. It’s a major shock to be out in the real world. But I’ll make a success of my business. I love being my own boss, calling my own shots.”
Washington of Gardena chose a new career outdoors too. Laid off by Northrop in 1985 and by Hughes Aircraft in 1991, he decided to give up technical writing in favor of starting his own landscaping business.
“The aerospace money was great and the benefits were great, and you miss that when you’ve got a family,” he said. “But with all these layoffs, you wonder if you can find something better for yourself. I decided I’d be better off, seeing how far I could go on my own.”
Al Bartz said he does not miss anything about aerospace--after having spent 28 years as a mechanical engineer at TRW. Now he is marketing his wife’s watercolor art prints--and is learning about the world of direct mail, catalogues and gallery shows.
Leaving aerospace, he said, “has lifted a big weight off my shoulders. It put the ball in my court, so I can run with my life as I choose.
“One friend of mine got back into aerospace at a salary two-thirds of what he was making before,” Bartz said. “It’s not clear to me if that’s worth it, because then you’re back in a high-pressure environment.
“I can do better than that.”
Wanna-be cookie mogul Thomas--who headed a quality control team at General Dynamics in San Diego--bakes tea cakes from a recipe handed down from his great-grandmother and has visions of fortunes.
Ironically, he said, he never considered going into the commercial cookie business until he took a batch of the fat, spicy goodies as dessert to a job-networking group attended by men and women, like himself, looking for work. They raved over them.
So he has rejected aluminum-alloy aircraft skin for cookie sheets, engineering specs for recipes, calculators for measuring cups. He is developing a marketing strategy, lining up sales outlets and looking for a government grant or loan to help finance his start-up.
“I always knew I wanted to do something else, but I didn’t really know what. Other people, when they tasted my cooking, said I should go into business and cook this stuff. So I figured, why not make money doing what I enjoy?”
