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Jane Foreman had been with Terrus Real Estate Group for 15 years before she was laid off in December. At that point in her life, Foreman, 45, realized that she needed to do some soul-searching and figure out what her next career move would be.

“I started looking for jobs, and it’s highly competitive and a very tough market right now,” said Foreman, who was doing marketing and communications at Terrus. So instead of sitting around and waiting for someone to come to her, Foreman opened a marketing consultancy called PlainJane Marketing out of her home in March.

“I had a lot of people encouraging me and I was praying a lot for the right direction in my career, and this was an opportunity that I haven’t had in many years, and it’s what I love and what I wanted to do, especially when other employment opportunities seemed hard to come by,” she said.

So Foreman, who had been doing event planning for a local business on the side, ordered some business cards, created a Web site and gave herself the title of head honcho, specializing in event planning, newsletter writing and writing for the Web.

“My goal in this is to help people who just need that kind of service and can’t afford a marketing person,” she said. “I’m not in it to break the bank.”

Currently, Foreman has three solid clients, with a few more who either use her services part time or are just setting up consultations. She said about 10 more clients would make her start-up consultancy, which targets small businesses, a more full-time operation. Eventually, Foreman said, “I would like to grow the business so I have a staff and an office, but for right now this is where I’ve got to be.”

But even though she’s keeping busy for now, Foreman is still actively searching for jobs on a daily basis.

“The job has to be just right, so all the stars have to be aligned,” she joked. “I had been (at Terrus) for 15 years, so I had built up the vacation and benefits that you don’t typically walk into a new job with.”