Making Cape Cod their world headquarters
by Cape Business staffThree entrepreneurs tells a story that is becoming more and more typical across Cape Cod. Former corporate executives are combining buisness and quality of life to live here.
Beth Chapman tends to her Wellfleet flower gardens with the same care that she gives to a public relations career that makes her intimately familiar with the drive along Route 3 to and from Boston.
She lost her job as vice president of a Boston investment management firm in 1987, but chose to parlay a generous severance package into her own business, Ink&Air, rather than reenter corporate life.
Charles Preus worked at Abt Associates Inc., an international consulting firm in Cambridge, managing projects and recruiting staff for its 70-person, $18 million Business Research and Consulting Group. Now he owns a strategic communications firm in Sandwich, while he helps his wife operate a bed and breakfast. “I am living her dream,” he said with a laugh.
John G. Reeve was a Cambridge-based partner and vice president for A.T. Kearney, a major international consulting firm directing a global practice in shipping and intermodal transportation as part of a 50-person team with revenues of more than $50 million. Now his world headquarters is in Yarmouthport, where you won’t find a sign or shingle outside his home.
Chapman, Preus and Reeve are among nearly 2,500 home-based businesses on the Cape. Many have been formed in the last five years by 45-to-65-year-old former corporate executives and managers who have given up that world to leverage a lifetime of professional relationships, a telecommunications revolution and a love for Cape Cod.
While they earn much of their income off-Cape, they spend it right here – from property taxes to office supplies to airport limousines.
“I spend 95 percent of my income on the Cape,” said Chapman. “I use an Eastham-based Web designer; I am building a new house using local contractors and suppliers. I choose to use independent bookstores rather than Amazon. I use Cape medical services, a Cape chiropractor, and all of the ordinary purchases of household life are made in Orleans, Provincetown or Hyannis.”
Meanwhile, these entrepreneurs are coming by the hundreds each year.
“The Cape is a magnet for a particular type of individual,” said Elizabeth Harris-Moritz, president of The Executive Suite, a Hyannis-based human resources company. “It’s now like mining for gold. We are ending up with an incredible brain trust of people who choose to live and work here as they enter their 50s.”
Cape Business sat down with Chapman, Preus and Reeve to learn what makes them tick, and how they have managed to enjoy Cape Cod – years before retirement – by combining work and place.
Why did you move to the Cape, and how have you managed to organize your professional and personal lives?
Chapman: I moved to the Cape as a single woman for several reasons. One, it was where I belonged. It was where my family had been a family since I was 5 years old. It is where I have a sense of belonging and place. Two, I could. My consulting business was portable. I moved here on April 15, 2000. Three, I needed a quieter, more spiritual lifestyle than I had managed to create inside the city limits of Boston.
Preus: I had a total hip replacement in 2005. I was rehabilitating at home in Osterville. When I was recovered, I decided not to go back to Abt. I realized I could make a life for myself right here. I wanted to be on the Cape full time. Now, I seldom try to sell work off-Cape. I have work off-Cape, but I would rather stay on this side of the bridge.
Reeve: Changes in the container shipping industry led to my major clients in the United States – Sea-Land, Lykes, APL – being acquired by overseas-based companies. Rather than try to sell $6 million to $8 million a year in this challenging environment, I decided to downsize and manage my own consulting operation at smaller revenue levels that would be sustainable with a shrunken client base with A.T. Kearney. This move significantly simplified my life and reduced stress.
What qualifies you as an entrepreneur?
Reeve: My success as a home-based consultant is tied totally to having created a personal network over my career. I continue to connect with associates all the time, but mainly through e-mail. I also can put a team together long distance. Meanwhile, consultants tend to be entrepreneurs, whether they work for a firm or own their own. If you don’t come up with ideas that are of value to a client on a consistent basis, you will not succeed as a consultant.
Chapman: Years ago, I took a test to discern my interest in and ability to become an entrepreneur and scored off the charts. It was that specific test that gave me the confidence that I could start my own business. Public relations is actually sales, you sell story ideas to the media. It turns out that I was good at doing this. I was as profitable after 11 months in my own business as I had been the day I left the corporation.
Preus: Thirty-four years of work experience. The ability to hear what others need and the ability to find a solution.
Do you think the concept of retirement has changed?
Chapman: I think retirement previously has been the marker of time for people who leave a job that is only an income. I will never retire because I like the intellectual engagement of my clients, who are all over the country. My work is to develop financial stories with my clients and then to interest reporters and editors at major national business newspapers and magazines to use my clients as sources in their pages and in broadcasts. It is not a skill that diminishes with age. If anything, I’ve become much better at what I do over the past 14 years.
Reeve: The entire economy is changing. Most of us are not going to retire. But we want to put a stake into the ground in a place we love. For us, it is Cape Cod.
You lack a shingle outside your office and you make most of your money off-Cape. How do we recognize your business here?
Chapman: My business is unrecognizable here, and it will stay that way. Unless you know my name or my e-mail address you can’t find me on the Cape. Nationally, I speak at many conferences of financial advisers, who are my target market. I’ve only had a handful of Massachusetts clients over the last 14 years. I’m upgrading my current Web site. I make 85 percent of my income off-Cape.
Preus: My inn, the Inn at Sandwich Center, is a successful seasonal business. But I am not sure I can be a successful consultant only on the Cape. In the health-care field, I have limited potential for clients here. I now must go off-Cape to find enough work. But I am trying to develop 50 percent of my clients locally.
Reeve: I bring all my revenue from off-Cape, but I spend most of it here on the Cape.
Do you see yourself as unique, or do you represent a new kind of Cape worker?
Preus: As part of the first wave of the baby boomers, I have always been moving against the grain. The changes in the nature of work and employment relationships have facilitated these now fairly common independent experts. I teach a course at Suffolk University about the new career strategy that is the reality today. I think we will see more of this in the future. The Cape will attract some of the next wave, but housing prices and other issues will be barriers to many others.
Chapman: There are hundreds of us doing national business, or at least statewide business, from our homes here on the Cape. The distances to travel to get to a metropolitan city are no greater than many corporate employees’ regular commutes. A friend of mine who coaches professional women unhappy at their jobs says she has a phrase that you “make it or take it.” It means you either create a job that can sustain you here, or you move a job down that is portable. More than a new type of Cape worker, I think we are the personification of a new kind of lifestyle. I don’t believe I am unique at all.
Reeve: I think many of us are moving into the arena of independent business people who still retain ties to old business relationships (mine with A.T. Kearney, for example). But we still have a much greater degree of independence than we did in the corporate world. This is a more flexible lifestyle that can accommodate new interests – golf, playing the guitar, writing, in my case.
What trends and economic forces do you see impacting the Cape in coming years?
Chapman: I think businesses here need to understand the economic power of the 50-year-old-and-older Cape Codder. Ageism isn’t going to work here. We will demand more choices and better service than at any time in our past lives. We want convenience. Public transportation must improve, but the economic force that concerns me most is the problem we are having with affordable housing. As we age, can we actually expect to hire help, whether it is an electrician or for health care? It’s great that we can afford astronomically expensive retirement homes, but not great that we have to wait four months to get a new roof, or have no luck at all finding someone to rewire a yard light because the trades and service sectors have such severe housing problems.
What are the tools and temperament needed to be your own boss?
Chapman: I’m someone who has always been a self-starter and, I suppose, disciplined. I’ve always had a knack for creating organization where none had existed before. That has helped. I was willing to barter services in the early days of my business. It did take me a long time to ask for compensation from clients that was commensurate with the value I was offering to them. My tools are the computer, Internet, phone and car. That’s all, and that’s going to continue.
Preus: You must be willing to live with less guaranteed income and must always be selling to have cash flow. Single-shingle consultants have a problem: when you are working on a project and have income, you are not selling; when you are selling, you are not working and have no income. You also must be able to connect with other consultants and professionals to be able to offer a comprehensive service; you must network.
Reeve: If you don’t sell, you don’t eat. Some savings help offset immediate cash flow problems, but the bottom line is that you need to be actively involved in order to stay solvent. It certainly is not a path I would recommend to the risk-averse, but for someone who can provide real value to clients, the risk is manageable. Meanwhile, we live in a world of constant change. Certainly, modern computing and communications technology makes the move to an independent consultant much easier.
Can you make as much money in your self-employed business as you did when part of the corporate world?
Preus: No, but I do not need or want the same money that I needed when I lived in the Back Bay, worked in Cambridge, traveled a lot and spent only weekends on the Cape. There is no need to spend time going into the office. I can now go weeks without the need to put on a coat and tie to see clients, but still communicate daily via the phone and Internet.
Chapman: Priorities change. I needed a quieter, more spiritual lifestyle than I had managed to create inside the city limits of Boston. I knew I needed to slow down and changing my physical envelopes gave me a chance to slow down. There is a great deal of aloneness here, but I am never lonely. There is a great deal of quiet, but I never crave noise.
Reeve: I make somewhat less, but we have cut back on our commitments. We have completed paying two college tuitions, so we are out from that burden. I work in many ways as hard as ever, but it is different. Now it is in spurts. But, I also can close my office and play golf. I am learning to pace myself. In the corporate environment, it is very hard to pace yourself. While being an entrepreneur introduces new risks, being an entrepreneur means I can focus on what I really want to do. It also significantly reduces travel time, and there is no more corporate [bureaucracy].
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