Following her bliss

For Kathy Klein, the road to a better life led out of corporate America.

by Jennifer Bagwell
5/24/00

"I try to think long and hard before buying anything."

"A philosophical shift is taking place."

Two months ago, Royal Oak resident Kathy Klein was spending at least an hour and a half each day on the freeway, commuting in her minivan to and from a corporate job in Washtenaw County.

She would often long to pass the mornings slowly, perhaps with a coffee at one of the many cafés near her home. But as a market development representative selling waste-disposal services for Browning-Ferris Industries (BFI), she was married to her date book and trapped on the 9-to-5 treadmill.

But in April, Klein’s life – and lifestyle – changed.

She left the security of her job (and a salary of between $50,000 and $65,000 a year) and took out a huge bank loan to buy a downtown Royal Oak boutique, Lotus Imports, which specializes in merchandise with an Eastern, spiritual twist.

It was a frightening move, with no guarantee the business would survive. If all goes well, Klein estimates she will have taken about a 35 percent pay cut.

Still, she seems content working among the imported art and clothing, trickling fountains and fat little Buddhas. Her modern-day, peaceful oasis is only a seven-minute walk from home.

Now, Klein is able to live more in line with her growing conviction that modern life is moving way too fast for most people, and all for the sake of materialism.

"Everyone wants to do online investing, get rich quick and retire at 35," says Klein, 39. "The world is really running faster than is healthy right now, and I got off that ride."

Klein isn’t the only one taking the leap. By one estimate, 12 percent of Americans are now downshifting their lives in some way [see sidebar].

The corporate climb

Unlike some who enter corporate America ready to shed their values for the almighty dollar, Klein insists that she never really sold out. Instead, she says, her goal when she entered the corporate world was to achieve self-sufficiency.

After graduating from Michigan State University, she moved with her husband to Indiana, and worked as a bank secretary until they split in 1987. Klein moved back in with her parents in Oakland County and went into her ex’s field: industrial sales.

"I thought, I can do that. If that’s the way to make money, that’s where I’m going to go."

She sold wiping cloths and safety supplies for ITEX, a small independently owned industrial supply house, before joining BFI in 1989.

During her 10 years there, she would typically set out early each morning, with "high heels and perfect hair," to sell landfill services.

"In my old job, I could never have left the house without eye makeup," she says now, sitting in her tiny office at Lotus, wearing minimal makeup, sandals and a tie-dyed cotton dress with a beige linen jacket. "Call it war paint."

In order to impress clients while at ITEX, she stopped driving an old Escort station wagon with duct tape on the tailgate and bought a tiny red Dodge Shadow, "brand-spanking-new!"

She laughs about it now. "It landed me three speeding tickets and crapped out on me after 60,000 miles!"

However, she says the financial setback, six months into her new job at BFI in 1989, taught her to be a more practical consumer, and she’s bought dependable used cars ever since.

"I try to think long and hard before buying anything," she says. "It’s kind of funny now, because I’m in a business now where I see customers going through the same angst, or not at all and just buying."

Lotus caters to a diverse array of budgets – selling everything from incense, soap and 35-cent tin pins to expensive jewelry, art and clothing such as a raincoat priced at more than $200. In that sense, the store could be seen as surviving thanks to the consumerist lifestyle she eschews. That doesn’t bother Klein.

"Our high-end customers are often people who have done well for themselves and are now enjoying the fruits of their labor, which is kind of how I am," she says, adding, "I’m not responsible for how they spend their money."

Accidental activist

At first, Klein says, she liked her job at BFI, which she viewed as environmentally progressive. Part of her duty was to give tours twice a month at the Washtenaw County landfill, where garbage is buried, composted and recycled. She credits the experience of selling waste-disposal services to city and county governments with teaching her political and business savvy.

Then, during the summer of 1997, Klein had an unexpected chance to use her political knowledge in a different way. She joined other Royal Oak residents in fighting a condo development poised to be built in their neighborhood on the south end of the city.

"I used to joke that I became an accidental activist," she says.

Klein says she and other residents were told the development would increase property values. They were more concerned with preserving their community’s social fabric and a group of historic homes which were eventually sacrificed to the development. The condos went up a year later, right across Park Avenue from Klein’s wooden bungalow.

Klein says the experience fighting the condos added to her growing sense of values, as did changes at BFI in the mid-1990s. BFI and other waste-disposal companies, feeling pressure from Wall Street to show more profits, began merging and downsizing. At BFI, Klein says, a middle layer of management was eliminated, and more and more decisions seemed to be flowing from the top down.

"Even in the corporate reorganization, we were powerless to do anything," she says. "One thing became more and more clear: Money talks, and those that have less of it have to work very hard to be heard."

Cosmic events

Back when the condos were still in question, Klein presented the residents’ concerns to city commissioners at a televised meeting. Linda Hawkins, who owned Lotus at the time, happened to be watching.

"She was good!" says Hawkins, who recognized Klein as one of her regular customers. The next time Klein was in the store, Hawkins complimented her on her presentation, and the women became acquaintances.

Meanwhile, Klein was becoming increasingly dissatisfied at BFI. One of the last straws came in March 1999, when the company was acquired by a smaller company, Allied Waste Industries, Inc., with the federal government’s caveat that certain segments would have to be resold to avoid a monopoly.

"I don’t know if I could have gone through another corporate indoctrination," Klein says.

Hawkins had owned Lotus for 14 years when, in December 1999, she told Klein that she planned to sell the store and move back to San Francisco, where she’d attended college in the ‘70s.

Hawkins, an original founder of Royal Oak’s AIDS walk, says she was impressed by Klein’s activism and public speaking ability – factors that eventually helped convince her that Klein could be a suitable new owner for Lotus.

"I wouldn’t have wanted a chain store to come in that didn’t have any commitment to Royal Oak," said Hawkins, 51, who spoke with Metro Times from her San Francisco residence.

"I knew (Klein) would keep the integrity of the store – the peacefulness, the quality of customer service."

By late 1999, following the sale to Allied, Klein’s Washtenaw office was in limbo. Regardless of where Klein turned, she faced uncertainty. She wasn’t sure she’d be able to work for her new bosses, whoever they might be. But it was also terrifying to toy with the idea of becoming a first-time business owner, not knowing whether her new business would survive.

"I joke that I didn’t have to just wrestle my fears: this was big-time wrestling. We’re talking bodies slamming against the ropes."

In January of this year, Klein and Hawkins agreed on the price for Klein to purchase Lotus. Klein spent the next two months doing her homework. She went to bankers, accountants and lawyers, consulted her father, drew up her own financial plan. Still, Klein was uncertain.

"She really did a lot of thinking about whether this would work for her," Hawkins recalls. "I know she wanted to (do it) in her heart."

Although Klein declined to disclose the purchase price, she says everyone – from the finance professionals to her father to Hawkins – kept mentioning that same round number. It was affordable, and something Hawkins could live with.

"All indicators were that everything was magically coming together," she says.

Then, in the middle of negotiations, Klein went downhill skiing for the first time. It reaffirmed everything she’d been thinking about.

"There was no going ‘whoa!’" she says. "It was full speed ahead. I thought it was really uncanny how I was learning this aggressive sport when all of these other circumstances were going on."

Retail refuge

"Most people come here seeking refuge," Klein says, adding that the calming atmosphere of the drugstore-turned-boutique has long made it more of an escape for some people than strictly a shopping experience. And Hawkins says when she made her decision to move, patrons told her they couldn’t bear to see the store close.

An example of how the store inspires devotion is that two salespeople have been there for 10 years, and another for four years.

"The customer relationships these ladies have developed over the years is invaluable," Klein says. "When it comes to our clothing, sometimes people come here because they like how our ladies help them put outfits together."

Klein sits in her office facing a mirror which reflects both the sales area and what’s happening outside. Even though she once couldn’t imagine herself owning a business, she says if ever there were a business she would’ve wanted to own, it would’ve been this one.

"The whole thing has been really mystical and magical for me," she says. "If Linda hadn’t been watching a council meeting on the night I was presenting, I probably wouldn’t be here."

"Oh, a BFI truck just went by!" she says, looking out the window. "I’ll be darned!"

Epilogue: Living dreams

"People have dreams. Maybe sometimes people need to just go with it instead of taking the safe route all the time," Klein says.

Still, she readily acknowledges that quitting a good job isn’t something just anyone can afford. In her case, she says, she feels lucky the way things came together. She was in the right place when a good opportunity came along, had saved her money, had "a healthy 401(k)."

She is also free from the responsibility of marriage and kids. "I opted for me and my dogs," she says, speaking of her rescued greyhound and a mixed breed she picked up as a stray.

Klein’s flexible hours let her walk her dogs in the morning, instead of at night, when she’s tired. Rather than frequenting local coffee shops, where she once longed to linger, she usually does her morning sipping on her front porch. Staffers cover the store until Klein comes in around noon. She often stays late doing paperwork.

Over Klein’s desk hangs a calendar depicting Buddha’s suffering in past lives. "It’s when we don’t listen that we have to suffer again and again," she says.

On her desk is a computer – a sign that she hasn’t completely escaped technology. And her brown date book is still thick, but she no longer lives by it. In fact, she admits to sometimes missing appointments.

Even so, she’s still learning to relax. For instance, she’s taking a class that involves practicing smooth meditative motion – something she hopes will help her get more into the store’s calming vibe.

For now, Klein can only wait and see. She hopes to save enough money to travel and do her own buying for the store, hopefully in places such as Bali and Tibet.

And, if everything fails, she says she can always go back to sales, knowing she took a shot at her dreams.

It sort of goes along with the Rob Brezsny horoscope she cut out when she was deciding whether to buy Lotus. Under Pisces, it says, "I believe fate is now asking you to determine once and for all which type you are: the kind that can only succeed if you follow your bliss, or the kind that can thrive by selling out first. Make your choice, then walk the path with all your heart."

Jennifer Bagwell is a MT staff writer.