Page 32 - 6 Secrets to Startup Success

True Believers 11

happy with her work. She was far more fatigued than inspired. Within
a week, as if on cue, Bank of America announced a plan to lay off
12,000 employees. Two hundred of these were on a national service
team Lynn had just spent a year building. The company expected her
to shut down the department over the next two months and then
transfer into another operational role.

One afternoon, about a week later, her father called. “Your mother
has had another episode,” he said. “She’s really confused, and I don’t
know what to do.” Lynn hurried to her childhood home in Wilming-
ton, North Carolina, on a quest to help her family find comfort and
make sense of her mother’s deteriorating, unwinding life. Soon she
learned that she was eligible for three months of personal leave under
the Family Medical Leave Act. She filed for those three months, plus
an additional three months of accumulated time off. On her last day
with the bank, she cleared out a decade’s worth of files and papers
from her office, filling a large, two-wheeled, recycling bin to the brim,
thinking her banking career was most likely over. “When I walked out,
I had my lamp in one hand and a few pictures in the other,” she said.
“I remember thinking, ‘Wow, is this all there is?’”

Over the next year, Lynn sought solutions for her mom’s compli-
cated medical needs and her dad’s pain. The more she learned about
existing services, the more she was convinced of a gap in the market,
a need for a comfortable and clean—even luxurious—daycare facility
for seniors with memory loss. In addition to her mom’s needs, she saw
her dad’s burden, felt her own, and thought the right care center would
bring relief and comfort to family caregivers as well.

Lynn never found the perfect care center for her mom, and as she
began to think about what her next career step might be, she inched
toward a radical idea. What if she started an adult daycare center her-
self ? Although she knew what the experience should provide—com-
fort, safety, and stimulation in a warm, nurturing, luxurious
environment—she couldn’t visualize the component parts. She talked
with industry experts and visited site after site, but saw nothing re-
motely close to her ideal center. Most facilities seemed poorly man-
aged and maintained, lacking even the basics of compassion and
comfort.

American Management Association • www.amanet.org