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End Up as a Clown

If you wear the wrong clothes, the monsters will get you. This is not just a firmly held belief, it is a reoccurring nightmare of mine that I have had since childhood.

When I worked in the comics industry, I used to attend conventions where hundreds, of people would shmooze their way through throngs of editors and producers, introducing themselves, presenting their proposals, making deals that established who would and would not work for the coming year. That was back when people still made money in comics. Something that hasn't happened for at least five years now. The conventions I attended were perhaps 98% male dominated, and I was convinced, absolutely convinced, that my hair, makeup and wardrobe was every bit as important as the material in my brief case.

First, you had to look like you were already making money. Next you had to look like you were up to the minute of the times, but not a fashion victim. Next, you had to look perfectly comfortable in whatever you wore. It had to breath in the sun and keep you from getting goose bumps if the weather changed. You had to look like you meant business at the business meeting, and like you were ready to dance when the parties started. In short, you needed to seem perfectly prepared, and effortlessly cool.

In comics, one of the things that really successful artists used to do was hire a full time assistant or two, so that the amazing - better than one person could possibly produce -- work that it looked like they were producing was, in fact, produced by more than one person under one person's name. Even in something as frivolous as comics, competition was brutal.

In business, if you don't have a personal assistant to make you look like a god, you have pockets full of electronic gadgets to save every millisecond of your time. Personal Palm Pilots can now come equipped with electronic "e-sistants" that can plan your trips for you, make your airline reservations, check your frequent flyer miles, get your house cleaned, your clothes pressed, your car for you at the airport and book you into the hotel within walking distance from your meeting.

In his book "Under the Big Top", about the American Circus, Bruce Feiler talks about the four stages in a circus performer's life. When one is young and agile, you take on the highest trapeze. It is the most dangerous thing you could do, the thing you are the most likely to suffer a major injury from and the thing that will put you squarely in the spotlight in the center ring. When you lose a little strength and agility, but still have balance, you do the high wire acts. Not shabby, but much less risk involved. Now you are taking care of your family. Other people are standing on your shoulders as you glide across a single wire - but you aren't trying to fly. When you have knowledge of how it all works together, but can't move as well as you used to, you work the animal training acts. This requires a great deal of courage, a great deal of know-how, physical strength and presence, but you are guiding beasts around a ring, not standing hundreds of feet in the air. Basically, you're in management. And when you can't enforce your will on wild animals anymore, you end up as a clown. You realize it's all just for fun and you're there only to interact with the audience while everybody else does the stressful stuff.

The key to any circus performance is in the fantasy that it is effortless when, in fact, it is not effortless at all. The high wire acts are actually as dangerous as they appear to be. In every family there is a tragic performer story. The animals are truly wild and dangerous, and every trainer has either had a long row of stitches to contend with, or a stupid audience member who lost life or limp trying to "pet the kitties". The trick to the woman who hangs by her hair is that it hurts so hard she can barely stand afterwards. And every time a man makes himself into a human cannon ball, he damages to bones of his legs just a little bit more. And people in the circus don't do it for the money, adding all the hours they put into their trade and the average circus performer makes less than American minimum wage, which is around $5.60 an hour. It's not coincidence that the circus is a euphemism both for American business and American politics.

There is something quintessentially American about needing to appear to be super human. Nobody is, of course. There is always some kind of story behind the big show. Sometimes it's a looming heart attack. Sometimes it's a handful of hidden associates. Sometimes it's stealing the work of others. Sometimes it's a company that looked impossibly good on paper, but has nothing to back it up.

The most recent version of the game is to build up a company and then fire 30% of the people who built it so that you don't have to pay out stock options. It drives the value of the company way up and frees up operating capital just before going public with the stock.

Whatever the delusion, Americans are in love with the idea that something, anything is too good to be true. And if you're not up to competing with that , my friend, don't step into the game.

With the sizzling of so many dot.com upstarts, we have a whole generation of brilliantly clad, perfectly equipped young people who have just fallen off the trapeze.

So what is the high wire, for them? What is the next phase of their life going to look life when they don't have the agility and manic energy and insane courage to risk everything they don't have on a company that goes bust? When they put in 80 hours a week for the big stock option pay off, only to lose the stock option and get stuck with a quarter of a million dollar condo and a job a Starbucks?

And that's when the reality of diminished expectations set in. The adjustment has to be made, and laser quick, to living within your new means. The Seattle phenomena that makes some people Mircrosoft Millionares is, contrary to popular belief, not a function of meritocracy. It is a function of luck. At a moment in time, a few people were rewarded for an insane amount of hard work with equally insane amounts of cash - that is until corporations began to figure out how to get the work out of people without paying out the big gold rush bonuses. And if you were unlucky enough to miss the bell curve, you must not sit and wait as though a new one is coming around the corner like a wave you can surf into upper-middle-classdom. Unfortunately, being in the right place at the right time is also not a function of merit.

I'm not saying that the people who made their money and got out of the dot.com game early didn't work hard. They did. I'm just saying that statistically an American has a better chance of winning the lottery than they do or working hard and getting rich. The circus is glamorous, but averaged out it really doesn't pay very well.

The computer companies can, and are, flying people in from India, to replace American technology workers more cheaply, on contract.

"I don't mind being let go," said a friend of mine recently. "But I do mind them flying someone in from overseas to pay them half my salary after they've just let me go." It's very tough to have something come so easily to you and then lose it. You think you deserve it. You think it will last forever. You think it's the norm. And you think you'll be able to pick up right where you left off.

Trapeze to highwire to animal act to clown.

At least in a circus you're working within a community - a community that takes care of it's own and provides a place for you to go when you lose your footing. We don't have that in American companies, and we certainly don't have it in American start-ups, where the credo is build it up for five years, sell the company and get out.

I would try family owned businesses. The pay is quite a bit lower, but the gratitude factor is much higher. As the company grows, you will grow with it. It's an old fashioned concept, but it's healthy and it's been known to work. Family owned businesses are also usually run by families - by people who know how to take time off for the important things. My friend Michael has gone from working for Adobe - the graphic designing software giant - and being more than 60 miles away from his home; to working at Weyerhauser - the timber giant - and being more than 80 miles away from his home; to working for Premiera -- a local insurance company that doesn't pay him as well and is about 20 minutes away from his son - the one who is just learning to walk. My husband David is working at a five man tech support company where the boss's wife sends him home with flowers and the boss is taking us out to the Seattle Men's chorus as a kind of "thank you for being such a great employee" gift. They not only give maternity and paternity leave, but parents bring their babies into the office to play on the floor and the office is carefully baby-proofed.

So, who knows - if the small business thing works out, you probably won't set any income records - but you might end up with a life.

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