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Can you recover after hitting bumps in the road while changing lanes?

Posted by: Susan Marshall   |   Posted in: Fear of Failure, Financial Safety Net, Living Intentionally, Relationships and Lane Changes, Summoning the Courage, Susan's Musings
Monday, March 10, 2008

 

The Cat House Hotel.

In last week’s blog, Jane talked about people who wanted to own their own business. Their motivations varied as you might suspect: Lucie Bava wanted to seize the day and shine —and was able to turn a hobby into being a specialty foods provider to a major retailer and cataloger. John Lappington got fed up with the corporate world and decided to create a company so that his values were reflected daily in his job. And Will Bashan simply missed his wife and kids; so he chose to chuck the high-flying salary and perks he and his family were enjoying—and run a small retail store here in Steamboat Springs.

To be sure, they each encountered a few bumps in the road, but nothing like a couple we met in Santa Barbara. Their story is one of plans thoughtfully made and suddenly upended; detours taken and persevering through it all. They were determined not to become a statistic—one of the 34% of new businesses that fail in the first two years. 

We’ve all heard the quip, “The devil is in the details.” To Sharon Sutton, however, “God is in the details,” as the architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe famously say in 1959. Read her story and you’ll see how sweating the details saved the day.

 

Sharon Sutton and her husband, Bob, own and operate The Cat House Hotel. No, it’s not an inn of ill-repute though it did originally flaunt a red light above the entrance. It’s a boarding facility for cats. And after successfully changing lanes when they opened The Cat House Hotel, they almost lost it all.  

A little on their backgrounds. Sharon had always wanted to teach, but after a five year stint in the classroom, she left teaching to get her MBA.  While in that program, she became good friends with a professor who helped Sharon realize how much she enjoyed the service sector. After researching her options, she began her new career as a product manager position at Lexus-Nexus, a fast growing information management company.  

It was there that she met Bob. He has always been the nerd in his family, driving them all crazy as he took clocks apart as a child only to put them back together again. At 11, he was one of the youngest ham operators in the country. Never attracted to sports, he focused on music—playing the clarinet, sax, guitar, and piano. Bob went on to earn both a BSEE and MS in Computer Science and after working at various computer companies, he also landed at Lexus-Nexus. 

Bob and Sharon married in 1986 and, even though they each had grown up with dogs, they realized their lifestyle was more conducive to owning cats. Their first cat, Alexus, a gorgeous Himalayan, lived to the age of 20. More cats joined their family, first Randy, an abandoned tabby, and later Celeste, a beautiful Persian. 

A few years later, Lexus-Nexus (now Meade Data), was experiencing great growth and provided a corporate culture that matched the Suttons’ values. The company’s golden rule, adopted by all managers, was that “everybody is trying to do the right thing.” But over time the growth slowed, and unhappily, the culture changed. When the company was sold, both Bob and Sharon left to pursue their careers elsewhere. 

While Bob worked in a variety of industries, Sharon stuck with information management until, at 45, she realized that while she loved working in a customer service company, she really didn’t like corporate life. She had been a victim of her own advancement, as she explains: “As success comes, you get further and further away from the end customer.” Bob adds, “I’m convinced that companies have to pay a handsome salary to corporate staff because it’s less rewarding.”  

Sharon was determined to change careers and chose hotel management as her goal. To be properly prepared for her new vocation, she researched the field and created her master plan. First on the list was entering Cornell’s Master program for hospitality management. Once she earned her new degree, she planned to buy a Bed & Breakfast.

Bob, too, felt he wanted off the treadmill, but as the only breadwinner in the family now, he had to keep going. But if he had to work, he would at least make it his last hurrah.  It was 1999 and Internet start-ups were the rage. Unfortunately, in the middle of the dot com boom, neither he nor Sharon appreciated the risk he was taking as the only income-producer for the family. 

Meanwhile, degree in hand, the Sharon found a B&B but was unable to negotiate a deal that made economic sense. Disappointed, Sharon abandoned the project—she wasn’t about to plunge into a deal that didn’t meet the criteria she had painstakingly laid out. 

To earn some money and keep herself busy while she contemplated her next step, she began teaching service marketing at a local college. It was while preparing for one of her classes that she came upon a business for sale—a cat-boarding kennel Santa Barbara, California. 

Intrigued with the idea—and in typical fashion—Sharon went about investigating every detail of the business. Once convinced it met her business requirements, she went ahead and purchased it and immediately began to reap its psychic benefits: being appreciated for delivering a valued service. As Sharon explains, she’s in the business of “delivering peace of mind—knowing your pet is being lovingly cared for when you’re away.” Sharon had successfully executed her plan. 

But unfortunately, that was not to be the happy ending of the story.

Two weeks after opening The Cat House Hotel, Sharon received a phone call from Bob reporting a crisis: “I can’t see and they’re talking about taking me into surgery.” He had suffered a detached retina. It proved to be the first of several eye-related problems that spanned two years—including cataract surgery, another detached retina, problems from one surgery that resulted in eye spasms and crossed-eyes that took months to correct. “My expression was so bizarre that Sharon took to calling me Picasso,” Bob joked to us. 

But it wasn’t funny at the time. While dealing with these problems, his start-up went belly up. His vision severely damaged, Bob had to go on long-term disability. They were now dependent upon The Cat House Hotel for their family income, supplemented by Bob’s disability insurance. When his eyes stabilized, Bob attempted to find a new job, but quickly realized that his 50-plus age limited his opportunities in a “down” technology market. Besides, his condition meant that he couldn’t drive after the sun went down. 

To make matters worse, Sharon was diagnosed with Lupus. Though they had been habitual savers, they found themselves deep in debt. “We started to play the blame game,” Sharon shares. Bob was anxiously dealing with his career coming to a premature end. Sharon was angry at his unilateral decision to leave his secure corporate job just when she was trying to get her business off the ground. And their respective illnesses compounded their problems. 

Since they remained confident in the soundness of their original plan for the business, they decided that Bob would become actively involved. What they didn’t foresee was that his undefined involvement would add stress to their relationship. Sharon was clearly the CEO, leaving Bob to determine how best to contribute to the venture.  

It was tough times for them as a couple. Only through their commitment to each other, supported by couples counseling, were they able to prevail. They say that they could only start talking to each other after they developed a plan to remedy their financial condition—it provided a necessary relief valve. 

Sharon and Bob say the hard times have made them stronger individually and as a couple. They work together on the business now—Bob oversees the accounting, finance, facilities, and technology functions for the kennel; Sharon does all the hiring and personnel management, sets all the policies related to cat care, and settles any disputes. They both work to empower the staff, emulating what they had learned during the great days at Lexus-Nexus. No matter how financially cautious they had to be, they would offer competitive pay, vacations, and profit sharing. 

Today, Bob and Sharon can afford to be philosophical about the challenges they faced and overcame to make their lane change work. Surviving their ordeals and enjoying the freedom of being the boss, Sharon says she feels truly blessed. 

You might think that the lesson learned from this story is that there’s no point making detailed plans since life has a way of derailing even the best laid plans. Perhaps you can take a tip from Sharon, who despite it all is still a firm believer in planning. But now she understands that they are meant to be adjusted to conform to reality. She now espouses a new philosophy which we affirm: “Bloom where you’re planted.” 

 

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