Fish Tale
When John Harvey was a senior vice president at American Express, he never imagined he'd find himself the owner of Freeman's Fish Market in Maplewood, New Jersey.
These days, he still consults with corporations on leadership and group dynamics, and he runs a workshop for people changing careers. So it's not out of character when Harvey observes that his business is about more than selling fish. "It's a great situation for customer service."
Just down the street from his shop is a supermarket that sells lower-priced fish, but Harvey's business isn't hurting. "People come in here because it makes them feel good."
Harvey left Amex in 2002. It wasn't pretty. In fact, he calls it "a head-on crash with my boss, Attila the Hun," which left him shocked, surprised and angry, especially since he'd received a leadership award less than a month before the confrontation.
Then, one day in December, a local man named Ed Freeman suggested that John Harvey buy his family fish business. Harvey knew nothing about the fish business. In fact, he knew Freeman only because he was a customer at the shop.
Coincidentally, he was soon offered another job -- a big one that he knew it would mean 70-hour work weeks. "I couldn't get the word 'yes' out of my mouth." Suddenly, the fish market seemed like a fine idea.
Ignorance of the business was not a problem. "The fish part was easy, the people part was harder." The loss of status was a different matter. His mother was speechless. His siblings thought he'd lost his mind. And, as another local businessman told him, "Some days people are going to treat you like a fishmonger." There were growing pains, of course. There usually are when you take control of your destiny. The family moved to a smaller home, for instance, but remained in their beloved Maplewood. To Harvey, such sacrifices are a small price to pay for the independence and freedom that only owning your own business can afford.
John Harvey has the sound of a deeply happy man. "I've recovered control of my time. My kids come in and hang out. My eldest works here sometimes. My youngest sits and does her homework here. They're all happier now... In my corporate life, I used to feel that I was looking at photos of my life. Now I'm a part of things.”
Mergers to Mantras
David Kelman spent 10 years as a hard-driving investment banker specializing in mergers and acquisitions. Then his firm was taken over. "I survived eight rounds of cuts, but finally my department was dismantled and I was out of work."
By then, he'd become a father and workaholism had lost its appeal. But he soldiered on and found a job with another bank. One day, when he wanted to leave early for an event at his daughter's school, he was reminded: "You can't put family first." Not long after that, his boss sat him down and said, "You're not happy here. Why don't you go somewhere else?"
His boss was right. "The top levels of corporate America are conditioned and programmed," Kelman says. "I wanted to do something of value." A practitioner of yoga since his student days, he began talking to the owner of the studio he attended. "The more I got to know the business, the more I liked it."
He assembled a team and, in October 2004, David Kelman opened Yoga Sutra, a studio in midtown Manhattan that offers classes in three styles of yoga, as well as lectures and workshops. Kelman runs the business while a colleague takes care of the curriculum. He loves it. "I can't wait to come to work here." Besides, he adds, "I do more business now than I ever did banking. Banking was purely transactional. Now I do everything, including picking up a broom sometimes."
Some old banking friends view him as a counter-culture weirdo. "It was hard on my marriage. I mean, my wife married a banker!" he says. "We've had to trim the fat from out lives. We don't buy many clothes and we don't have vacations." But he has no regrets. "People feel this place has changed their lives... Even if it doesn't work out in the end, it's been a success already."
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