Career Tracks: Ex-Banker Glories in Freedom of Consulting

Robert A. Carper has proven, to his own satisfaction, that there is life after banking.

Seven years ago, Mr. Carper turned his back on a career that had taken him to the top marketing position in retail banking at Atlanta's Bank South Corp.

In doing so, he renounced all his perks, including the lofty title of executive vice president, a huge office with a private bathroom, a company car, paid vacations and stock options, and two club memberships.

Mr. Carper chucked all that for a perk-free career as a consultant. He says he hasn't regretted the decision.

Though he now drives his own car and works without a secretary amid Spartan surroundings, he often finds himself commiserating with unhappy friends who remain locked in the corporate grind.

"There are a lot of people who don't like a lot of what they do every day," he said in a recent interview. "But for me, no two days are alike. I never know, when that phone rings, what's going to be on the other end."

The story of Mr. Carpers's career switch might hold lessons for bankers who have long dreamed of giving up the security of a corporate job for the risks and rewards of self-employment.

Mr. Carper, 48, seems well suited for this move. He's good at winning people over with a healthy dose of cheerful vitality, breaking the ice with humorous stories topped with booming laughter.

But for most of his career, Mr. Carper had to keep his spirit in check to pursue a more traditional path in the corporate world.

In 1969, right after receiving his bachelor's degree in marketing from the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, he joined Atlanta's SunTrust Banks Inc. as a management trainee. He remained at SunTrust for seven years, rising to second vice president and advertising manager. The job put him in contact with a large number of ad agencies, one of whom made him an attractive offer.

The solicitation from Atlanta-based Cargill Wilson & Acree threw Mr. Carper into a quandary. "It forced me to say: Do I want to be a banker in marketing, or do I want to be a marketer in a bank?"

After much soul-searching, Mr. Carper finally opted to leave the security of SunTrust. But the move didn't entirely represent a leap into the unknown, since Cargill Wilson was then one of the largest ad agencies in the Southeast. Mr. Carper spent five years there, handling both financial and nonfinancial clients.

The call to return to banking came in 1981 from then-executive vice president Robert P. Guyton at Bank South. Mr. Guyton was looking for a marketing director and prevailed upon Mr. Carper to take the job.

Mr. Carper hit it off well with Mr. Guyton, who was soon to be promoted to chairman and chief executive. He also recognized the marketing opportunities at Bank South, which had just changed its name from Fulton National Bank.

"It was a marketer's dream job," he recalled. "We were creating a new brand. You already had the distribution system in place - the employees, the computers - but nobody knew what the Bank South name stood for."

Mr. Carper built his marketing theme for Bank South around the concept of service quality, using the phrase "That's what I like about the South" in all of the bank's advertising.

Moving rapidly up the corporate ladder, Mr. Carper was appointed head of retail banking and advertising in 1985. The future looked even brighter the following year, when an Atlanta-area acquisition brought in 30 branches in Kroger supermarkets.

"I like to say I went to bed one night a traditional banker and, by the stroke of a pen, woke up the next morning with the largest up-and-running supermarket banking network in the country," Mr. Carper said. "We really changed overnight."

Mr. Carper continues to use his supermarket banking expertise in his work as a consultant.

In the late 1980s, troubles came home to roost Bank South in the form of soured commercial real estate loans. Mr. Carper decided it was time to pursue his long-cherished dream of an independent career and left Bank South in November 1989.

His move mystified friends, but the timing couldn't have been better. Within a year and a half, most of Bank South's senior managers, including Mr. Guyton, had resigned or been fired as the bank's stock price collapsed.

After blowing off steam during a golf vacation with his brother-in-law, Mr. Carper hung out his shingle as a consultant in January 1990 and worked out of his own house for the next 18 months. The assignments began trickling in, but Mr. Carper's wife, Carol, continually begged him to get another corporate job.

"From the minute we met and married, he was always with a large organization," Mrs. Carper explained. "I had always been used to that. I guess I had a 1960s kind of mentality - a big company meant security."

Mr. Carper got to the point where he had to show Carol his checks every time he got paid. Her fears gradually diminished as he demonstrated he could bring in a steady stream of income, eventually moving into leased office space.

Mr. Carper knew he had won his wife over when one day, about a year into his new career, she asked him to stop working so hard. "From that point on, she's been great," he said, "although I think, in her heart of hearts, she'd still prefer I had a W-2."

Mr. Carper's business has its uncertainties, the chief one being that he can never tell what work he'll find when he looks out beyond the next 18 months. But each year, he does manage to generate more income than the year before.

While he still works with financial institutions, particularly through an affiliation with the Atlanta-based consultant U.S. Banking Alliance, Mr. Carper's list of clients includes a major power company and ventures in publishing, insurance, and real estate. He's even consulted for a retailer of women's cosmetics.

For Mr. Carper, the constant challenge of his work and variety of personal interactions provides a satisfaction he never felt in the corporate world. And he certainly doesn't pine away for the "security" of corporate life in this era of layoffs and downsizing.

"None of us has a guarantee," Mr. Carper said. "If I have seven clients and lose one, I've still got six.

"But if I've got one job and lose it, I've got zero."

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