From corporation to start-up: Who is going to fix the printer?

— -- Brent Bouchez, David Page and Nancy McNally are no strangers to corporate perks.

They've each worked for top-tier ad agencies in top-tier roles. They've had able assistants, private offices, great retirement and health benefits, and the use of professional car services.

Now the trio sometimes debate who should run out and buy printer paper.

Six months ago, the three opened their own marketing firm, Five0, which focuses on consumers 50 and older. The ad industry bigwigs all share a small, one-room office in Manhattan. There's no swanky lobby, no company lunchroom serving sushi and no cool coffee bar. The door to their office is at the end of a drab hallway. Inside, a shelf holds rows of bottled water bought at Staples. The glossy white conference table, which dominates a good part of the room, was an Ikea steal for $295.

"We change the (printer) ink. We fill out Fed Ex forms and set up the phone system," says Page. "We are the IT team. There is nobody to turn to."

The Madison Avenue veterans are among millions who have gone from working in a corporate culture to running their own small businesses. Three-quarters of company founders toiled for someone else for at least six years before launching their own firms, according to a survey this summer by the entrepreneur-focused Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. Nearly half had more than 10 years' work experience at other firms.

As this recession turns more workers into entrepreneurs, such transitions are becoming more common. Most are trying to persevere without the organizational help of assistants, the tech know-how of an IT department and the use of ample expense accounts. They empty the trash, buy toilet paper, set up utilities, shop for an affordable source of office supplies, and somehow manage to get computer equipment and software installed.

"It's daunting," says management consultant and corporate coach Michelle DeAngelis, who left Bank of America 15 years ago to launch her own consulting and coaching firm, Michelle Inc.

Fledgling entrepreneurs often have so much to do that they can easily get tripped up, she says.

The lone office printer is seemingly always going to run out of ink when an important client's report is due.

"The most mundane, trivial stuff can hamstring you," she says.

Prioritizing is a necessity

The Five0 founders have a decent work system down now, but are still honing time-management skills.

"You have to think about what you can do and what you can't do," says Bouchez.

"And what you shouldn't do," chimes in McNally.

Sure, they could have painted the office walls and refinished the floors, but they decided that was time that could be better spent soliciting clients. So they paid someone.

Yet Bouchez and Page installed the shelving around the 20-by-28-foot room to function as their workspace desktop.

"You have to look at billable hours that you're wasting if you do the wrong thing," Bouchez says.

After they spent four hours trying to get a new scanner installed — without success — they went to Plan B: using an iPhone to take pictures of the documents they needed.

"You figure out very quickly that you're not going to spend all day on a silly thing that is not a good use of your time," Bouchez says.

Making the successful leap from corporate worker to able entrepreneur takes many skills, and time management is an essential one, says Pamela Slim, author of Escape from Cubicle Nation, a book that offers tips about how to move from corporate work to being an entrepreneur. "Most entrepreneurs go in thinking they just have to go in doing everything themselves, but that just isn't true," she says.

To be successful, small-business owners have to have "a clear understanding of their strengths," she says. "They have to decide how much time they can sink into just managing the little things like the phone and Internet."

Shedding your old work identity

Those who abandon a corporate culture often have more to cope with than workspace issues. Frequently, they have to contend with an identity change. "You have to be very centered and secure of who you are," DeAngelis says. "You have to let go of external connections for your identity. All that external reinforcement — the expense account and the company car — they are wonderful perks that can come with the lay of the land, but they don't determine your value as a business person."

Grand Junction, Mich.-based Kelly Elvin says her decision to go from attorney to dog trainer not only meant a loss of fringe benefits — it also led to a new response when she told people what she did for a living.

"There's a different reaction that you get from people when you say, 'Hi, I'm a dog trainer,' vs. 'I'm a lawyer,' " she says. Most people think of attorneys as high-powered professionals, while they assume that dog trainers "just play with puppies all day," she says.

She decided to make the career shift after she took her dogs to a training class. Impressed by the approach used, which focused on positive reinforcement, she decided to learn more about dog training. Soon, she was hooked.

Elvin is glad that she made the shift and enjoys the job, but says, "There's certainly not that prestige, and certainly not that income." Her income has dropped more than 85%. Some of her law firm colleagues where "horrified" when she said she was leaving the legal profession to pursue a new career, especially because she had just been named a partner. "They could not understand why I'd walk away from that," she says.

But she and her husband, who also left a job as a lawyer to pursue a venture in finding lost pets, saved up enough money to pursue their new career dreams. To cut expenses, they moved from the outskirts of Chicago to a small town in Michigan.

Elvin says that five years ago, she would never have expected to "be living in a little country home in southwest Michigan," but working with animals is something she is passionate about, so she had to make identity, lifestyle and income adjustments to pursue that goal.

Ali Galgano, who transitioned from a corporate recruiter role at firms such as Goldman Sachs to a seller of unique costume jewelry, has to cope with another type of issue: being isolated for long stretches of time.

Galgano mainly runs her Charm & Chain online jewlry venture (online at charmandchain.com) out of a New York City studio apartment. She sometimes goes to business meetings, but otherwise, she toils alone.

"I don't see anyone really except my intern, who comes to my apartment occasionally," she says. "There are times that I'm working so much that I don't even feel the need to leave my apartment. Someone will come in and say, 'It's so hot out today,' and I'll say, 'I don't even know about that' because I've been in my air-conditioned apartment."

It takes discipline to focus on work; to not clean out the refrigerator or check out videos on the computer.

"It's a lot easier to get distracted now," Galgano says. "It's hard to be focused when you have a couch to lie down on and a TV you can turn on."

Galgano and others who go it alone have to force self-discipline upon themselves in order to be successful. There is no boss, no corporate mandates and no yearly performance reviews, Slim says.

Small-business owners "have all the accountability," Slim says. "If something goes wrong, you can't blame someone else. It's just on you." Galgano works around this by making lists of things she wants to accomplish and by having an "advisory board of people who are smarter and more accomplished than I am." She has monthly meetings with the group, which includes her father, an investment banker.

"It's the best way I could come up with to have a boss or someone to report to without having to hire someone who is in charge of me," she says.

Advisory boards and peer-review groups are extremely important for entrepreneurs — and not just because their counsel can help folks grow their small businesses. Advisers can provide an honest assessment of when it's time tweak a business model, make major adjustments or even fold up completely, says Monica Doss, director of the Kauffman Foundation's FastTrac entrepreneur training program.

"Entrepreneurs have to be willing to listen and learn and make judgments and be adaptive," she says. "You're processing information all the time. Sometimes it's not what you want to hear, but ignore it at your own risk."

What some folks don't want to hear, but need to, is when it's no longer financially feasible to launch a new business or keep an existing firm running, Doss says.

"There's a lot of things that might work in a different environment, but might not work now" with the sour economy, she says.

And there are also those who should shelve their ambitions for good. "If you don't love to roll your sleeves up, it's not a good jump," she says.

There's no shame for those who try an entrepreneurial route only to find that they prefer working in Corporate America. Some people simply aren't built to be entrepreneurs, Doss says.

Forced out of the corporate nest

Elvin, Galgano and the Five0 founders made the tough decision to venture out on their own. Other corporate refugees were forced to embrace their entrepreneurial side due to the recession.

Olga Naiman, a freelancer at posh publishing company Condé Nast, wasn't laid off. But Domino, the design magazine she worked on as a stylist for photo shoots, folded this year.

Naiman derived about 75% of her income from that job, which also included benefits such as using the company's in-house library for research and being able to expense lunch and taxi rides. She misses those perks, as well the "buzz" of working in an energetic office. "Even though they weren't my full-time employer, it was such a warm and consistent relationship," she says.

Projects for Amy Shapiro Morris, a freelance communication strategist for Condé Nast magazines such as Domino, Condé NastTraveler and GQ, also dried up during the recession.

So she and Naiman have teamed and are preparing to launch their new design and branding agency, The Anchor Council, in October.

In the meantime, each has had to adjust spending habits.

Naiman is now well aware that the money she spends on calls and faxes comes out of her own pocket. Shapiro Morris and her husband have made professional and personal budget adjustments. They skipped their usual December vacation and scaled back on one thing they love about living in New York City: eating out.

"We had to cut back," says Shapiro Morris, "and it has saved us a lot of money."

Jewelry seller Galgano is contending with an income drop, too.

"It's been a big adjustment to make a much, much smaller salary than I was even making when I came right out of college," she says. "I had to cut back on going out for dinner and shopping. I've had to learn how to cook for myself instead of ordering in."

"Hopefully the payoff will be worth it," she says.

The Five0 founders have made some financial adjustments themselves.

"You find out quickly why entrepreneurs seem more miserly," Bouchez says. "But it is your money."

The group did invest in sleek Apple computers and other technology to help them compete against larger ad agencies.

And while the founders are working with the agency's accountant to get in a structured benefits system, it currently lacks some financial comforts that often come with a large company, such as automatic bonuses and a 401(k) plan.

Yet those benefits — and less-trivial perks — don't matter if you're not happy, Bouchez says.

In a corporate world, "You have an assistant and big office, and you don't worry about the copier" working, he says. "But you also don't make decisions the same way.

"Everything is by a committee. But when you have your own thing, you decide. It makes a huge difference."