Family business comes to the rescue
But working for parents can have its own pitfalls
By Martha E. Mangelsdorf, Globe Correspondent, 4/25/04
Each month ''Transitions'' profiles individuals who have made significant changes in their work lives - and highlights the techniques they used to make the changes.
Ethan Becker, 33
Career transition:
Deciding to join his parents' business after being laid off from his job in a technology firm.
What he used to do:
Becker said he worked in various roles, including marketing director, for Media 100 Inc., a Marlborough-based company in the digital video technology industry.
What he does now:
Becker is a senior coach and trainer at The Speech Improvement Company Inc., a 40-year-old Brookline-based speech coaching business founded by his parents.
Making the switch:
For Ethan Becker, the hardest thing about being laid off from his job as marketing director at Media 100 in August 2001 was the sense of being cut off from a workplace peer group that he'd been part of for some years. Although he had conducted layoffs as a manager, Becker nonetheless found the experience of being laid off painful - and ''a huge wake-up call'' as he thought about what he wanted to do with his life.
''After you're out of the building,'' he recalled, ''the phone stops. Then the e-mail stops.'' Becker, who felt he had put his ''heart and soul'' into his work, found that his layoff experience felt like a ''kick in the teeth.''
Becker graduated from college in 1993 with a major degree in communications, and his first job in was with a small video and film production company after graduation. From there he moved to Media 100 about a year later. He said he stayed at the company for about seven years and held various jobs, including a stint as a business development manager for Asia. He found he did a lot of traveling, training, and presenting in his work.
''It was really fun,'' he said.
In his work training and making presentations, Becker found it helpful that he had grown up in a household with parents who ran a speech coaching firm.
''A lot of the stuff was just carryover from my family,'' said Becker. He recalled that growing up, ''I was doing formal presentations when I was four 4 years old, to the family, on camera.'' When it came to making presentations as children, ''we were always encouraged, and it was fun.''
But Becker thought he didn't want to work for the family business, a communication training company his parents, Dennis Becker and Paula Borkum Becker, founded in 1964. Dennis Becker explained that he and his wife, who each have doctorates in communication-related fields, met while they were both studying speech at Emerson College. Although Dennis Becker was training to be a speech coach and Paula Borkum Becker was training to be a speech pathologist, they started their business because ''we just decided we wanted to work together,'' Dennis Becker said.
Ethan Becker said his parents, whose company's clients are primarily businesses and other organizations, really found a niche. The Speech Improvement Company now consists of about a dozen people, he said.
After leaving Media 100, Ethan Becker felt a need to figure out his next career move since he and his wife were expecting their first children, twins who were born in October of 2001. Ethan Becker explained that his wife, who worked as a pre-kindergarten teacher in a private school, decided to stay home with the children while they are little.
Dennis Becker asked his son if he was interested in working in the family business after the layoff. Ethan Becker decided to give it a try and started working for the business in early September 2001.
It can be a big decision to work in a business with relatives. In fact, Dennis Becker advises anyone considering working with family members to first ''think twice about it. And think a third time about it.''
James McCabe, a marketing programs manager at Media 100, remembers that when Ethan Becker was starting his new position, he seemed ''a little lost'' and ''uncomfortable.'' McCabe recalled that Becker had really enjoyed working at Media 100, and that, when Becker was laid off and without work, ''every day was painful for him.''
But when it came to joining the family firm, McCabe's sense was that Becker at first ''wasn't sure if that's what he wanted to do - or what he had to do.''
McCabe, however, observed that Becker's feelings changed over time. As Becker put it, ''I really started to like it. I didn't think I would.''
The transition may be partly a function of personality. Gregg Sandberg, an independent Web development consultant who worked with Becker briefly at Media 100 and was also a member of the same fraternity in college, observed that Becker is ''a very enthusiastic person'' by nature and, at Media 100, digital video was a passion for him. But now that he has gotten involved in speech coaching, Becker's passionate about that, Sandberg observed.
''He took to the change a lot better than most, I think,'' Sandberg said.
Although he admits to missing the big budgets of a 1990s technology firm, Becker said: ''I can't see myself going back.''
One thing he likes in speech coaching, he says, is that his work is ''a helping business.'' The field has also proved financially rewarding. According to Becker, except for a small base salary he receives for some work he does on staff for the family firm, his compensation for his work as a coach for The Speech Improvement Company is a function of the clientele he develops.
That meant that, at first, he took both a risk and a substantial compensation cut - a pay cut of about 70 percent in the first year. He also has to get and pay for health insurance on his own. However, Becker, whose salary at Media 100 was in the low six figures, said he is now earning somewhat more than he did in his old job - even when taking into account the $1,300 a month he now pays for his family's health insurance.
While building his speech coaching practice, Becker also managed to finish his MBA, with a focus on business communication, through an online program offered by Capella University.
Now, Dennis Becker said, both Ethan Becker and his sister, who has worked at the firm for a number of years, are planning to pursue doctorates.
McCabe noted that while some people are bitter after a layoff, Becker appears stronger than before. ''Ethan just seems wiser for it,'' McCabe said.
Martha E. Mangelsdorf () is a freelance business and careers writer who writes ''Transitions'' each month.
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