Pariscope

Roth also enjoyed trips to Geneva, a small town about 15 miles away, where she and her sister Ellen delighted in touring the town's quaint shops. As an adult, antiques became a passionate hobby for Roth, though she also developed an interest in the homebuilding business.

Her plan for her general contracting business was to buy a vacant lot in an established neighborhood, then hire architects and contractors to design and build a house (figure A). If it didn't sell, she could always move into the home. But the homes had to be fairly conservative designs to sell, and she felt this limited her creativity.

Roth proved to be an apt businesswoman, and before long, she was putting up four to five houses a year. She built a thriving business over the next 14 years, and found it a thrilling yet risky way to live. She had to borrow a lot of money from banks, and if the home didn't sell, she was left paying a mortgage on an empty house.

Soon after starting the business, she got married to Gordon Roth, who operated a scrap-metal business, and they had a son, Alex, in 1987. Roth began to feel dissatisfied with her job, and a trip to France in the early 1990s helped her to decide what she should do.

Ellen, the sister who shared Roth's love of antiques when they were growing up, had spent some time in France. After returning to the United States, she opened a shop on the East Coast specializing in Gallic antiques. Roth wanted to do the same thing, so she bought a building in St. Charles, Illinois, and opened an antique store in 1996 (figure B). She hedged her bets, though, by continuing to work at her contracting business.

Roth finally committed to her dream of bringing "a French flea market" to northern Illinois, and pinned her financial future on Pariscope when she moved into a space nearly five times as large in the summer of 2000 (figure C). Though it was a risk, she felt a greater risk would be not acting on her idea and later regretting not pursuing a dream she loved.

The store, billed as a "French Department Store," is called Pariscope and offers books, antiques, stationery and other interesting merchandise (figure D). Roth has seen sales grow each year, and she has two full-time employees, two part-time employees, plus she subcontracts some work out.

She also has a dual mission when she makes her quarterly trips to France. Besides scouring Paris flea markets and the French countryside for inventory for Pariscope, she also searches for interesting items for her beautiful old house.

Roth describes her home as having a sort of 1920s eclectic European style (figure E). The woman who lived in the house prior to her furnished it with items that she found in her own travels, including an Italian fireplace and a large wooden wall unit from Portugal.

Roth enjoys gardening in her free time--she's even restored an old serpentine brick wall and garden on the south side of her house (figure F). She's also created small, square French-style gardens on the north lawn. In fact, she's delighted by nearly anything that is French--especially the antiques.

"They're just the best. I just love French antiques. There's just something where they have a lot of whimsy to them," Roth says. She also loves other aspects of French culture and style, including the food and gardens. "They just do a lot of great things."

She says one of the great joys of her new career is being able to take her son, Alex, along on her trips to France (figure G). "He understands and enjoys going into the shops, and he's learning French."

She's also mastered the dual roles of mother and businesswoman. "It's very challenging, trying to do them both well, trying to be available for my son at home after school, and in the morning," Roth says.

The good life, she adds, is the freedom she now has to allocate time for her family, and finding something she's really good at that she also enjoys. "If you can find out what that thing is, that you're really good at and that you really love, and do it or make it into a business, I think the money and the rest follows."