Easing Out Into Own Business

HIS CHALLENGE: After 20 years in the aerospace industry, Zertuche was managing a staff of 26 and earning $65,000 a year overseeing contractors for Rockwell International in El Segundo. When layoffs began in the mid-1980s, he realized the business was shrinking.

HOW HE COPED: Zertuche’s son, a business school graduate who worked a pool service route, suggested that the two of them go into a pool business. But after getting started and realizing it wouldn’t generate enough income, Zertuche returned to Rockwell as a contract worker and later took on a nonprofit management job.

*

Jose Zertuche and his wife, Esther, who was also working at Rockwell, left in 1987 without benefit of a buyout and used $120,000 of their savings to start Hacienda Pool Supply in Industry with one of their sons.

The move shocked his co-workers, Zertuche said. His division manager asked if he was sure of what he was doing. The couple went from 50-hour workweeks to 90-hour ones. Belatedly, they discovered that the business’ proceeds wouldn’t cover the store lease and the mortgages on their house and their son’s.

Jose Zertuche turned the pool service business over to his son, who later sold it, and started his own company out of his home. In 1990, he returned to Rockwell as an independent contractor, working a series of six-month stints. Soon he was earning the same income as before but with fewer hours and the freedom to earn more money with other companies.

That arrangement lasted until late last year, when defense orders dwindled at Rockwell and the need for contract work was reduced.

Now, in addition to running his own manufacturing auditing and subcontracting firm, Zertuche works as executive director of the Long Beach Atlantic Community Economic Development Corp., a nonprofit agency seeking to revitalize Atlantic Avenue.

“Right now, I’m putting in 11 or 12 hours a day and I’m having fun,� Zertuche said. “You wake up every morning and say, ‘It’s another opportunity to do something,’ instead of, ‘Oh God, I’ve got to go to work.’ �