Sense of Direction Crucial to Self-Employment : Career: People who want to launch their own business should first invest time and effort in determining what they really want--and are best suited--to do, says strategist Anna Navarro.

Getting off the ladder. Self-employment. Home office. Consulting! It sounds so appealing when you’re used to punching a clock and taking orders from an inept boss.

But a specialist who’s been near the top of the corporate ladder herself says you should take a long, deep look in the mirror before you leap into your own business.

“There’s a big trend toward self-employment where people are making big mistakes,” said Anna Navarro, a career strategist who left the corporate world in 1982 and founded St. Louis-based WorkTransitions.

“They need a map of the territory. I’m not talking about a business plan, which is number-based, but rather the self-examination and concept development stages that must come first.”

People seeking to strike out on their own often make the mistake of not investing enough effort to determine what they really want--and are best suited--to do.

“The problem is that people don’t even know that they need to do this,” Navarro said. “They think all you need is a few bells and whistles and you’ve got yourself a home office. But they don’t realize they don’t have a concept, or any idea of what they need to build a concept around.”

As director of corporate social responsibility at Monsanto Co., Navarro tried to help the company anticipate social trends that could affect its business. One issue she focused on was work satisfaction, and she came to realize that there had to be much more to work than just the trappings of a high rung on the ladder.

“I spent my days crunching numbers and writing reports,” she said. “I realized I wasn’t a corporate type.”

She left Monsanto with a two-year consulting contract and set out to determine what she really wanted to do.

“My own process of evolution is a good model. I did the kind of self-analysis that I now do for my clients. I realized I wanted to be self-employed, but I wasn’t sure how,” Navarro said.

She came up with three business concepts, and the first two promptly bombed.

Then, drawing from her own career experiences and desires, Navarro developed a program that she says is “a major departure from the testing” usually done by career counselors.

“I have many clients who arrive with thousands of dollars worth of testing that they don’t know what to do with,” she said. “There are career counselors who rely on testing--and there are those who focus on job skills. There are very few of us who rely on getting a sense of direction,” she said.

Navarro’s program encourages clients to focus on what they really want, in terms of both work and personal goals, combined with what they are good at doing.

“The challenge is to figure out what you really want,” she said. “I put people through a historic analysis of what they like--what they studied, what they like to do, dislike, their family needs.

“Then we analyze their skills. What do they do well and like?”

Although a client’s financial desires are important, other issues are just as weighty. “What are their passions? Their life priorities? A person who has kids doesn’t want to travel all the time,” Navarro said.

A client’s fantasies are also important to the process. “I once worked with a guy who wanted to be an astronaut,” she said. “I thought at first that he sought the fame and glory, but he was actually interested in the body’s ability to withstand changes. He’s now a sports therapist.”

Clients combine their skills with their underlying desires to come up with a viable product or service concept. “Getting it right is figuring out what you want to do and then packaging it into a concept that really works,” Navarro said.

The next step is even more analyzing, asking “What’s involved in pulling this off? Does it match my criteria?”

Before launching a new enterprise, clients are urged to “pilot” their projects, taking on customers or clients on the side, often for free, while they continue their regular jobs.

Navarro’s clients, who come from all over the country, do a one-hour telephone interview with her “so they understand how the process works and what it doesn’t do,” she said.

She sends them assignments to be done at home, which often takes several months. They then come to St. Louis for three or four days of brainstorming with Navarro.

At a cost of $105 a hour, “it is an expensive process, and there are a lot of people who can’t afford it,” she concedes. “The ideal time to do this is before people quit their jobs.”

But there are evidently plenty of people out there who think it is worthwhile.

Since 1984, Navarro has consistently had a waiting list that runs from six to eight months--not bad for a woman who only two years before that didn’t know what she wanted to do.