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A Walk in the Woods for An Entrepreneur

Written by: James Chan

Article Overview: A story of how Helen Solomons finds peace and realization as an entrepreneur during walks in the woods.

A Walk in the Woods for An Entrepreneur

One of the benefits of being a entrepreneur is that the commute is short. For me, it~{!/~}s just a single flight of stairs. I know others who live and work in the same room, and still others who, as their business and staff have expanded, have created offices in the basement, the garage, and the garden shed as they have tried to keep home and business together.

But this desire to keep the business within your personal domain creates the danger that you might become insular and lose the all-important sense of balance. Every waking moment seems to be part of your business. You worry over leaving the house for fear that the phone will ring and you will miss out on great opportunities.

Yet, there is great value in leaving the house, even if you have nowhere to go. It gives you a chance to stand apart from your business, perhaps even to think about something else.

I know one entrepreneur who has staff members in every nook and cranny of his suburban house. And every morning he leaves the house and drives somewhere. He thinks about his life. He thinks about what he should have done yesterday or what problems he didn~{!/~}t solve. Then he drives home, and arrives at the ~{!0~}office~{!1~} at the same time as his employees.

Helen Solomons, a former corporate executive who founded her own human resources firm, Harrison Associates, in 1986, believes that one of the best things about independence is that it allows you to follow your own style of work. ~{!0~}I was ~{!.~}on stage~{!/~} all the time when I was a corporate executive,~{!1~} she says. ~{!0~}I hated it. I wore clothes that didn~{!/~}t feel right to me. People worshipped my position, but I had no idea of whether they respected me.~{!1~}

Her most recent venture, a computer software system that helps companies to manage telecommuters, is a logical outgrowth of her interest in allowing people to work productively in their own ways. It has been extremely successful. ~{!0~}I~{!/~}ve succeeded in everything I~{!/~}ve set out to do,~{!1~} she says.

Part of the freedom she feels now that she is her own boss is that she can wake up in the morning, see that it~{!/~}s a beautiful day, and give herself some time off. ~{!0~}In a company, the boss often feels that if he can~{!/~}t see you at your office, you must be goofing off,~{!1~} she says. ~{!0~}They don~{!/~}t understand that employees learn to mentally leave their job by staring at the computer and a spreadsheet.~{!1~}

It~{!/~}s better, though, to escape into fresh air and sunshine. Helen lives near a large park, criss-crossed with hiking trails, and she frequently leaves her home office to take a five-mile walk. She believes the time is highly productive. She thinks about what she has been doing, and how to be better at what she does. She doesn~{!/~}t go out on the trail with an agenda; one of the benefits of getting out of familiar settings and moving around is that you jolt your thinking and get out of intellectual ruts.

~{!0~}Very often,~{!1~} she says, ~{!0~}I come back from a walk in the woods with the solution to a problem that had been a terrible puzzle.~{!1~}

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Article Tags: clothes, computer software system, corporate executive, desire, entrepreneur, fear, flight of stairs, human resources firm, logical outgrowth, nook and cranny, office 1, personal domain, sense of balance, staff members, worshipped



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