They used to work for aerospace firms or other big companies. The ‘90s wave of corporate downsizing cost them their jobs, so they started their own businesses. They found new freedoms, new distractions. Some prosper. Some struggle. All hope to make their way by doing their . . . : Home Work

She had worked for a mining company for eight years, keeping track of employeerecords, when her boss called her in and said she no longer had a job. Today, Lori Quon runs a balloon business from a bedroom in her Cerritos home. She’s gearing up for Valentine’s Day, stuffing balloons with roses and teddy bears.

For seven years, he was an engineer for an aircraft company. After Kalim Mian got his pink slip, he converted the den of his Norwalk home into an office. He mails out brochures to airlines, hoping they will sign him up to design wiring inside planes or test cockpit controls and other electrical gadgets.

Quon and Mian are among a growing number of workers in the Southeast and Long Beach areas who began anew in their homes after losing their jobs.

Among other new entrepreneurs is a former telephone operator who sells costume jewelry--wood-beaded necklaces, gold-plated bracelets and glass earrings--from a shelf in her Compton home.

A construction planner whose job was eliminated at General Electric now prints signs and posters in his Whittier home. He converted the den into a design studio with a drafting table and oversized copy machine.

A former security expert at Northrop rebuilds cartridges for laser printers in his Lakewood garage. His work counter is a mix of plastic screws, boxes of bolts and bottles of ink toner.

Although there are no specific figures to support an increase in such ventures, local chamber of commerce officials say many of their new members work from home. There also is a great deal of anecdotal evidence that home businesses are on the rise.

“There’s a sea of us out there,” said Carol Tober, a onetime Rockwell employee who now sells nontoxic cleaning products and long-distance telephone service from her Lakewood home.

Many welcome their new line of work, seeing in it a chance to escape humdrum routines and fulfill dreams of being their own bosses. But others opted for the home office as a last resort--after failing repeatedly to land jobs.

Some have trouble adjusting to working alone at home, cut off from their former co-workers. New distractions--the kids playing games in the living room, trips to the store--interfere with work.

Few of the domestic entrepreneurs earn as much as they did at their previous jobs. Some are struggling to pay their bills and cutting back on essential items. Tober goes without health insurance. A Lakewood couple stopped buying new clothes. One man has put his home up for sale after pouring thousands of dollars into a struggling venture. Another, who used to buy a new car every four years whether he needed it or not, has held onto his latest model for seven years and plans to keep it a few more.

But many say the benefits of being on their own far outweigh the financial drawbacks.

Burt M. Bailey, who was laid off 2 1/2 years ago by Wang Laboratories in Los Angeles, says he is delighted to be working out of his home in Lakewood. He has escaped layers of bureaucracy at the huge computer company and the hassles of a 90-minute commute each way.

He has traded in his suits and ties, which cost nearly $5,000 a year, for slacks and open-collar shirts. And he no longer contends with the uncertainty of rounds of layoffs at Wang, of not knowing whether he will be employed in six months.

At Wang, Bailey was in charge of the office that demonstrated new products for corporate customers. He spent about six months looking for work after he was laid off. But when a headhunter told him there were no openings for mid-level managers in the computer industry, Bailey decided to move full time into a consulting business that he had been operating on the side.

Bailey converted his master bedroom into a high-tech office filled with two computers and five printers that spit out 5,000 sheets of correspondence a month. He runs seminars for businesses that want to improve customer service and product presentations, among other things.

“I’m working a lot more hours now, but I’m finding my stress level is a lot lower,” said Bailey, 46, wearing jeans and cotton socks in his office. “All the energy I was using to fight the internal politics at work is gone. Now I spend my energy working for people.”

Sheila Shouse’s layoff last May gave the feisty Long Beach entrepreneur a chance to pursue a more creative line of work. During her 15 years at GTE in Norwalk, Shouse worked in a cubicle arranging service for long-distance phone companies such as MCI.

Today, Shouse spends her days taking people shopping for new wardrobes in malls and garment districts, or picking through a client’s closets in search of inexpensive outfits that match. She also advises job hunters how to dress for interviews. FHP Inc. in Cerritos and several branches of Coast Federal Bank are among the clients that pay up to $100 an hour for her advice.

“I feel like a door has swung open and I have all this opportunity ahead,” said Shouse, 36. “I thought I was going to fall flat on my face and (have) nothing to show for my efforts. But this is the best thing I ever did.”

But working from home has presented Shouse and others with new challenges. People who once enjoyed chatting by the office coffee machine now find themselves isolated from colleagues. They also have found it difficult to separate work from family, particularly when the office is just a few feet from the kids, the kitchen and the television.

Mian, a former engineer at McDonnell Douglas in Long Beach, often worked hours on end with fellow engineers, testing the reliability of cockpit controls and other electrical parts. Now, his day is interrupted by trips to the drugstore or the market. In the afternoon, when his children arrive home from school, he hears the thud of the basketball on the driveway outside his Norwalk home.

So Mian sometimes works from 9 p.m. and until 3 a.m, the only time when he can get “peace, quiet and calm.”

He says he plans to rent office space as soon as he can afford it.

Those who have been working on their own have discovered another pitfall: Good intentions and long hours on the job do not guarantee financial success.

Quon has been working at home for more than year and has yet to earn enough to cover her $6,000 investment in balloons, an inflating machine and a daylong training course.

Quon said she chose the business after seeing a demonstration at a business fair, and because she thought there would be a demand for balloons. But it has been difficult getting out the word on a shoestring budget. Her promotional efforts have consisted of placing ads in throwaway brochures on grocery store racks and displaying balloons at business shows sponsored by the Cerritos Chamber of Commerce at local restaurants.

A 10-foot-high balloon coconut tree, built for a New Year’s Eve party, sits in the middle of her living room, the balloons wilting like raisins. She reclaimed the creation after the party so that she can reuse its metal frame. She is gearing up for Valentine’s Day, hoping that customers will buy balloons filled with teddy bears, lingerie, boxer shorts or roses. She put her creations on display at a bridal fair last weekend at a Cerritos hotel.

But Quon also is looking for another job. “I don’t know if this was in the plan, to have a college degree (in business management) and be doing balloon decoration,” said Quon, 34. “I probably should be working in the corporate world.”

She and her husband, a car mechanic in Cerritos, live on his salary.

Many new entrepreneurs discover that years of technical training and academic degrees haven’t prepared them for the demands of running a business.

Richard Mieir, who designed graphics and forms in Downey for Security Pacific Bank, says he brought little sales experience to his new venture, printing logos on T-shirts and other clothing. To find customers, Mieir jots down the names of businesses from storefronts and newspaper articles, then calls the owners to see if they are interested in his merchandise.

It is a hit-and-miss strategy, resulting in a sales about one once in five tries, he said. “When I started cold-calling people, I was fumbling all over the place,” said Mieir, 35.

Mieir operates the venture with his wife, Nancy, a former systems planner at Northrop, who keeps the books. Both lost their jobs last June, one day before their wedding. They invested $5,000 in the silk-screen machine that occupies the second bedroom in their Lakewood condominium, and have earned about $1,000 since they opened for business last October.

Jim, a Whittier resident who designs signs and posters at home, says he also is struggling because he lacks experience. As a project planner for General Electric, Jim coordinated the work of engineers and contractors so that construction of power plants ran on schedule. Jim, who asked that his last name not be used, left his job in El Monte four years ago under a voluntary layoff program--choosing to retire rather than accept a transfer.

He invested $40,000 in printing materials and equipment, including an extra-large copier. But he didn’t know enough about the business to buy equipment that produces vinyl signs, which are in high demand. His sales haven’t topped $1,000 a month, which is less than a quarter of what he made at his old job. He plans to put his four-bedroom house in Whittier up for sale, and is looking for another job. His wife is a homemaker and his two children, ages 18 and 20, are living at home and relying on scholarships or part-time work to help pay tuition at local community colleges.

“I’m at the point where I need to get some ongoing income at a regular job so I can survive,” said Jim, 50. “It’s very hard not to get depressed about going out there and getting (job) interviews. You almost get paralyzed.

“I wish that everybody who goes into business (for themselves) could sit down and talk to 10 people like me.”

Economists say it can take years before a business establishes a loyal following. Start-up ventures face competition from larger companies, and generally have insufficient funds to advertise and expand.

“The cash flow is very irregular,” said Joseph Wahed, chief economist for Wells Fargo Bank. “You can be successful for a few months, then no orders come for three months.”

Those who succeed, often do so because they have built up their businesses on the side while working at their regular jobs full time. When they leave those jobs, they will already have established a base of clients.

“They know their markets, they have a handle on what their competitors are doing and where there might be a niche or a hole to fill,” said Jon P. Goodman, director of the Entrepreneur Program at USC’s School of Business Administration.

Bailey, the former Wang employee, started a part-time consulting business about six years before he lost his job. Now, he can barely keep up with his 14 accounts, and is even thinking of hiring two workers to run some of his seminars. He expects to earn more than $45,000 this year working for clients such as State Farm Insurance, Norwalk Toyota and Cerritos Ford Inc.

“Business is good right now,” Bailey said. “My only failing is that I can’t keep up with the referrals.”

Employment counselors who train small-business people say that banks could help entrepreneurs such as Bailey by loosening requirements to get loans. Most banks lend money to small companies only if they have been in business at least two years, can show they are profitable and have collateral, said Patricia Ayres, an assistant vice president for Wells Fargo Bank. Wells Fargo requires that businesses applying for loans be operating for three years and show a profit for two years, she said.

The banks are often reluctant to take on such enterprises because they are risky, the experts say. One in four new small businesses folds after two years, and half of them close after four years, said Bruce D. Phillips, acting director of the Office of Economic Research for the U.S. Small Business Administration.

Still, economists say that home businesses inject money into the local economy by hiring extra employees and contracting for services such as printing and photography. At the very least, the experts say, people who would otherwise be standing in unemployment lines are creating jobs for themselves.

Mian of Norwalk even plans to compete with his former employer, McDonnell Douglas, for engineering contracts. He says he can beat their prices because of his low overhead. He hopes to have customers by June.

“It’s a matter of telling them what I can do for them and how they can save,” Mian said. “Once I start having positive feedback, I think the business will take off.”