“Anyone who fails the headhunter question is not mature”

Sabine Votteler

The expert on the path to self-employment worked for 25 years as a manager in various companies – and then gave up herself.

(Photo: Christian Kasper)

Dusseldorf Sabine Votteler has worked as a manager in various companies for 25 years. Her goal: “work your way up” and “make a career”, as was customary in her time. In her late forties, she asked herself the question of meaning, to which she had previously been “zero receptive”.

She didn’t want more money, an even bigger company car, and an even fancier title on the business card. She wanted to be in control of her tasks and her time. After all, she had already had more than half her life, says the business economist in the Handelsblatt podcast “Rethink Work”.

In 2014, Votteler left, quit her job and became self-employed. Today she advises seasoned managers 45 plus who want to set up their own business like her. But more and more younger people are coming to her, she says.

According to the state development bank KfW, more people in Germany took the plunge into self-employment last year. The number of so-called full-time start-ups rose by 35,000 to 236,000. After a significant corona slump in 2020, it was back to the level before the pandemic.

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Votteler believes that job dissatisfaction was high even before Corona. But here too, as in so many other areas, the pandemic acted as an accelerator.

At the time, she herself felt restricted by the framework conditions and structures in the company, because she has learned one thing over the years: “In a large company, no matter what your position, you are part of the mechanism.”

In order to find out who is really ready for self-employment and who is not, Votteler asks all those interested in coaching what she calls the “headhunter question”. A customer got her thinking about it, who broke off the coaching with her after a few weeks and took a new job.

“What would you do?”

That was a lesson for her then. “Since then I’ve always asked everyone at the beginning: ‘Imagine a headhunter calling tomorrow with the perfect job offer. What would you do?’” Anyone who says they would accept it, they send back to the job.

“Independence should never be an escape, never a plan B, then it won’t work,” says Votteler. After all, she experienced for herself what it’s like to get out of a “great height of fall”. You have got used to a certain standard of living, various obligations and often an environment that does not understand what drives you to quit the apparently great job.

But it is often a matter of attitude, as Votteler knows. Do you think more in terms of risks or more in terms of chances and possibilities? “I just have a customer who is a single parent with two school-age children – and she got it.”

On the way to self-employment, however, almost all managers have difficulties with one thing – including Votteler at the time: “I thought I knew everything best. I fought alone for a long time instead of listening to the advice of others.”

More: You can hear the previous episode of Handelsblatt Rethink Work here

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