Two-and-a-half years ago, when Jory Rozner decided to throw it
all away and start anew, she was a 29-year-old in Chicago making
$200,000 per year as a national sales manager for a
telecommunications firm: "I don't know anything about
technology, I had never managed people and I had never done sales.
But I said OK [to the friend who offered me that
position]."
Rozner had always liked to take chances, so when the company
experienced what she calls a "management schism," she
says, "I decided to start my own thing." That thing?
Totility Solutions! It was a firm that provided technology to
offices! To restaurants! To any business that wanted it, and . . .
"I did it for six months, and made $24,200," groans
Rozner. That's great for pocket change, but Rozner had
expenses.
Meanwhile, her previous lifestyle was knocking on her door.
Rozner had purchased a condo, which was still under construction.
And suddenly she was asking herself, "How am I going to pay
the rest of the down payment, and [where will I be able to get] the
money when I have to move in?"
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But while working on Totility Solutions, Rozner came up with a
new business idea, Zipple. Her
vision: a Web site for the Jewish community. While on the site,
Jews could learn about their religion, meet faith-minded people,
look for Mr. or Ms. Right, or find a virtual rabbi.
Says Rozner, "I gave up everything I was doing and moved
into my parents' basement." The basement had an aging
mattress lying against the wall, crammed in with other pieces of
furniture and well-worn clothes that Rozner's sister was
storing. And it had no windows. Rozner propped up her desk and set
up shop. "I became known as the basement lady," she
recalls.
True, Rozner had the security of not paying rent, but there was
still the stress of the unfinished condo she couldn't afford.
Meanwhile, she was living under not just her mother and
father's floorboards, but also under their parental microscope.
Her parents would often ask, "Why don't you get a
part-time job in the mean-time?"
And Rozner would wonder, "In the meantime of what?
Like while I'm waiting to not do this anymore?" Her
sister, who was working on a master's at Harvard, and the rest
of her family and friends, says Rozner, were looking at her as if
to say, "You bought a computer a year and a half ago, and you
barely know how to do anything on it-who are you to be doing
this?"
Ditto with the potential investors, who gave her looks that said
it all: "You don't know anything about the Internet.
You're not a rabbi. You're not a Ph.D. in Judaic studies.
You're not a leader of an organization. Who are you?"
Undeterred, Rozner depleted $40,000 from her savings-only to get
zip for her work on Zipple. Meanwhile, her credit card debt was
expanding and would ultimately total $20,000. The minimum payments
were (gulp) around $800 per month.
Debt piled up with no income for eight months. It was, to
lowball it, a depressing situation-which wasn't lost on Rozner,
who kept thinking: "I'm 30, and I'm living in the
basement of my parents' house. I'm broke. I'm not
married; I'm not dating anybody. This is sort of
pathetic."
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| |  Think you're in dire circumstances? Don't be so
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