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When Your Business Grows Up, You Became A Manager

Written by: James Chan

Article Overview: Jennifer Thompson tells her story on the difference between between an entrepreneur and being a manager of a business.

When Your Business Grows Up, You Became A Manager

Sometimes, the market responds so well to your business that you have little choice but to grow. But big expansion brings big changes, and you may find that you~{!/~}re stopped doing what you first set out to do, and have turned into a full-time manager.

That is what has happened to Jennifer Thompson, founder and CEO of LinguaCall, a business that helps Americans deal with foreign languages and culture. She says she is pleased with her firm~{!/~}s growth, and happy as a manager, but the thrill of discovery and creation is gone.

As she tells the story, LinguaCall International happened almost by accident. When Jennifer quit her job as a branch manager of a language and translation company in 1987, she didn~{!/~}t have any idea what she would do. She was 40~{!*~}too old, she felt, to start over, but without much idea of where she would go. One day, her aunt told her that she wanted to go into business for herself. Jennifer hadn~{!/~}t really considered self-employment, but at that moment, she remembers thinking, ~{!0~}If my aunt can do it, I can do it!~{!1~}

Then her sister asked Jennifer to translate some material into French. Jennifer did not like to do translations herself, but she knew where to find translators. She decided to start a business finding translators for companies, and offering language instruction to their staffs. The eldest of seven children, she comments that delegating work comes naturally to her.

At first, she called the company Jennifer Thompson, Translation and Language Specialists, but this proved to be a problem. People would ask her which languages she dealt with. When she told them ~{!0~}I can do it all,~{!1~} they were incredulous. In fact, Jennifer wasn~{!/~}t doing all the work herself, but the firm~{!/~}s name implied that she was. She needed a name that put the emphasis on the service she provided, not on herself. A friend suggested that a name she had given to one of her services would be a good name for her business. So LinguaCall it was.

It turned out that she had started her service at an opportune time, one in which several major companies in her area were bought by or merged with European companies. It suddenly became important for American executives to understand what their new, mostly French-speaking bosses were saying. At just about the time she renamed her business, she won such a client. Her business nearly tripled from her second year on the job.

Jennifer had begun her business in a spare bedroom. She had always used contractors to perform the work, but now she needed employees to help her manage it. She set up an office in the basement, then moved a few months later to an office building. Before long she had a payroll of 45 full-time and part-time employees and contractors, working in two different offices.

But even as LinguaCall~{!/~}s business took off, Jennifer felt depressed. The company was like a child that had grown up too fast and was now on its own, leaving her behind. ~{!0~}I don~{!/~}t feel that I am an entrepreneur any more,~{!1~} she says. ~{!0~}I~{!/~}m no longer essential. I feel that I~{!/~}m working for LinguaCall, and the company has a life of its own.~{!1~}

She managed to get over her depression fairly quickly. The separation of LinguaCall from Jennifer Thompson is, she asserts, a positive thing. It allows her to keep her own life and identity separate from those of the company she started.

But she misses the first three years of her business, the most precarious ones, in which she was scrambling for clients and improvising services to offer them. She relishes telling the story of a day when a couple of burly, cigar-chomping businessmen showed up at her office and told her they wanted to know enough French to sell steel to Ivory Coast, in West Africa. ~{!0~}What you need is a conversational warm-up course,~{!1~} she told them, making it up as she spoke. ~{!0~}It will take 100 hours, three times a week.~{!1~} The businessmen agreed. It was a Thursday, and they wanted to start the following Monday. She spent the weekend recording cassette tapes and creating a manual. The client was happy, and it evolved into one of LinguaCall~{!/~}s most successful products. Running an established business doesn~{!/~}t offer her as many chances to take creative risks, and it~{!/~}s not as much fun.

~{!0~}One time I had 145 people at an office Christmas party,~{!1~} she recalls. ~{!0~}As I looked at all the people having a good time, I realized that I had made all this happen, and that felt good. But now LinguaCall is living its own life. The name may be worth some money someday, though I don~{!/~}t know how much. But I feel that I~{!/~}m only working for the company.~{!1~}

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Article Tags: ceo, discovery, foreign languages, full time, hadn, jennifer thompson, job, language instruction, language specialists, self employment, staffs, time manager, translation company, translations



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