Doing it their way These young entrepreneurs prefer running things to working for someone

Paper: Plain Dealer, The (Cleveland, OH)
Title: Doing it their way These young entrepreneurs prefer running things to working for someone
Date: May 10, 2004
Section: Business Monday
Page: E1

Some people believe they are born entrepreneurs. Others pick up the entrepreneurial bug by watching parents run small businesses.Regardless of how they get that way, entrepreneurs often get frustrated or bored in conventional workplaces. Many of them leave their first or second employers to start businesses of their own.

So most entrepreneurs are between 25 and 44, according to the fifth annual Global Entrepreneurship Monitor by Babson College and London Business School.

And contrary to popular belief, entrepreneurs are not gamblers, says the Center for Entrepreneurial Management, a clearinghouse for entrepreneurial information in New York. Rather, they are calculated risk takers who are sure of their skills – even now, as the Northeast Ohio economy tries to crawl out of recession.

The U.S. Small Business Administration’s Office of Advocacy estimates that two-thirds of new businesses survive at least two years and that about half survive at least four years. If you make it to five years, your business is considered a success. But as these entrepreneurs could tell you, it takes a lot of soul-searching, sacrifice and hard work to get there.

Issues of control

Shanessa Jackson quit her job as a Web designer at NASA Glenn Research Center in November because she wanted more control over the process and product of her craft.

Jackson had been “obsessed” with NASA, becoming an intern there in 2000 and a permanent employee in 2002. But by late last year, she was ready to set off on her own as a free-lance multimedia and Web designer under the name Shanessa.com.

The 27-year-old Oberlin native always knew she would be an artist. Jackson fell in love with computer animation in the 10th grade when her mother, an artist, brought home a Packard Bell computer and connected it to the Internet.

Before graduating from Syracuse University, she got an internship after her aunt put in a good word during an educational presentation at NASA. Jackson’s first real project was redesigning the Web site for NASA’s educational programs office.

Once Jackson made the “leap of faith” to her own business, she got a little nervous. “You don’t have that constant knowing that you have a steady paycheck,” she said.

Jackson had done some free-lancing before leaving NASA, and she used that money to buy a laptop and a tablet that digitizes free-hand drawings. Other savings are carrying her through ebbs in business.

“I’m not making as much money as I was before,” Jackson said. But each time she got a little concerned about her finances, more jobs came in.

She is getting used to the “ebb and flow” of free-lance work. “You can pick and choose your projects,” she said. She does much of her work at her Elyria apartment, which she shares with her 6-year-old daughter, Alexandra.

Jackson’s goals for this year include writing business and financial plans for the business she recently renamed Zarya Consulting. “My problem is, I’m very good at marketing myself. Then all of a sudden, I’ll have more work than I can handle.”

An early start

Alec McClennan figured he would go to work as a civil engineer after earning his degree from the University of Pennsylvania. Then the 29-year-old from Chagrin Falls did an internship at the MidTown Corridor project in Cleveland.

“I liked it,” McClennan said. “But that’s where I made the conclusion that I couldn’t make a difference” by doing traffic studies or finding new uses for old buildings.

He liked starting businesses. As a teen, he sold lemonade to golfers at neighboring Tanglewood Country Club. In high school, he and his brother sealed asphalt driveways.

So he made a list of jobs he might like. Starting an organic lawn care company was near the top. McClennan had spread bags of chemical fertilizers and weed killers on his dad’s two-acre lawn for years. He noticed the chemicals seemed to do more harm than good.

Challenged by his father to find another way to care for the lawn, McClennan read books and talked to natural lawn care experts. He tried everything from dried sludge to dried seaweed. Nothing seemed to work. Then he learned about aerating – poking holes in the ground to allow the water and nutrients to penetrate.

In 1999, McClennan used $3,000 saved from a previous job to buy a trailer and a couple of bags of organic fertilizer to start Good Nature organic lawn care. Sometimes, he borrowed his dad’s truck to do a job. And he saved by living with his parents. He also had another job.

“I had a lot of help,” McClennan said. “I didn’t have college loans to pay off. That gave me a unique opportunity.”

Now, McClennan makes his own fertilizer, mostly with food-grade grain and vegetable products. He and his seven employees have about 750 customers. “We’re trying to create a system that we can duplicate,” said McClennan, who sets sales, profits and customer goals each year.

He keeps a side job selling promotional products, such as pens and golf shirts, for his father. But he wouldn’t trade his lawn, tree and shrub care company. “I end up working more than if I had a regular job,” he said. “But I have control of my schedule.”

Sister act

Vittoria Colantuono and Francesca DiBiase didn’t think much about children’s clothing until Colantuono had her first daughter, Silvana, in 2001.

The sisters had a lot of fun buying cosmopolitan kids’ clothes in Toronto, where their mother grew up in an Italian family with nine brothers and sisters. But the two couldn’t find the same kind of European-style clothing in the Cleveland area.

So they fulfilled a long-held dream to run a shop together by opening Baci – it means “kisses” in Italian – in Chagrin Falls in 2002.

The sisters rented a shop on North Main Street, bought unfinished cabinets and shelves from Lowe’s, painted them sage green and bought a “conservative” inventory of children’s clothing. “We both had money saved up,” DiBiase said. “We did everything in the store ourselves.”

The two have similar tastes, so they quickly agreed on clothing lines from countries such as Italy, France, Spain, the Netherlands, Germany, Canada and Peru. Colantuono, 29, is the main marketer. And DiBiase, 27, who has a public accounting background, is keeper of the books.

Both sisters are licensed Realtors, walking in the footsteps of their mother, a top-selling local agent. Their father owns a transmission shop in South Euclid.

Naturally, the DiBiases motivated their daughters to start a business. “I was on the fence a little bit,” confessed Colantuono, who has since had a second daughter, Olivia.

Colantuono’s husband, Anthony, also is a Realtor. And DiBiase’s husband, Hany Elhibir, recently started an advertising company in Beachwood when he sensed the slow economy could cost him his job.

“The scary part is we tried this when the economy wasn’t so good,” DiBiase said. “But everyone said, if you can make it now, you can make it later,” Colantuono added.

The two said they learned more by having to earn their success, rather than have it handed to them by a strong economy. “If it ever gets tough, I’ll get an evening job,” DiBiase laughed.

Loyal customers

Mike Fischer walked away from a four-year stint at a small information technology consultant in 1997 because he was dissatisfied with its poor customer service.

“I recognized the company wasn’t going anywhere,” said Fischer, 33, who earned a degree in management information systems from Bowling Green State University in 1993. He also has a master’s in business administration from the executive program at Ohio State University.

Fischer set up shop as Thinsolutions LLC, an information technology service provider, in a bedroom of the West Side duplex he owned. Fischer lived upstairs. His business partner lived downstairs.

Customers found him quickly. “I quit on a Friday. On Monday, I got a call from two of my former customers,” said Fischer, who did not have a non-competition agreement with his former employer.

Fischer got his startup money from “mostly credit cards,” he said. He leased office equipment from CompUSA.

Thinsolutions moved out of the duplex after a year. And five years ago, it moved to the Keith Building at East 17th Street and Euclid Avenue in Cleveland.

The company added services along the way, becoming a soup-to-nuts service provider that acts as a virtual IT department for some of its 70 small- to mid-size business clients. It also added staff members, for a total of 18.

Fischer is learning about the next generation of application service providers through the trials and errors of a group of similar IT firms that are geographically distinct. The firms can share information about best practices without competing for customers.

Fischer also has learned from some of the investors he took on four years ago to help him invest in technology. And he belongs to the local chapter of the Young Entrepreneurs Organization, a national group that brings together entrepreneurs who are 42 and younger and whose companies have at least $1 million in annual sales.

Fischer said he would have taken on investors or advisers earlier if he had known how much they could help his business grow. “Sometimes, it’s not so bad having someone looking over your shoulder, pushing you,” he said.

To reach this Plain Dealer reporter: mvanac@plaind.com, 216-999-5302

BOX 1

A quiz for budding entrepreneurs

If you think you’re one, take this shortened quiz by Joseph Mancuso, president of the Center for Entrepreneurial Management in New York, to find out. “Answers” are on E3

1. Fill in blank: “I am the __ child in my family.”

A. Oldest.

B. Middle.

C. Youngest.

D. Other.

2. What is your primary motivation for starting a business?

A. To make money.

B. I don’t like working for someone else.

C. To be famous.

D. As an outlet for

excess energy.

3. You tend to “fall in love” too quickly with:

A. New product ideas.

B. New employees.

C. New manufacturing ideas.

D. New financial plans.

E. All of the above.

4. You accomplish tasks better because:

A. You are always on time.

B. You are super-

organized.

C. You keep good

records.

5. Given a choice, you would prefer:

A. Rolling dice with a 1-in-3 chance of winning.

B. Working on a problem with a 1-in-3 chance of solving it in a set time.

6. In a competitive game, you are concerned with:

A. How well you play.

B. Winning or losing.

C. Both of the above.

D. Neither.

(Find the full quiz at ceoclubs.org/main/resources.htm. Scroll

almost to the bottom of the page to “The Entrepreneurial Quiz.”)

BOX 2

Answers to the quiz on E1

How to score your entrepreneurial quiz. (This is a small sample of the 26 questions in the entrepreneurial management center quiz.)

Question 1:

A = 15 points, B = 2 points,

C = 0 points, D = 0 points

(All studies agree that entrepreneurs are most commonly the oldest child.)

Question 2:

A = 0 points, B = 15 points,

C = 0 points, D = 0 points.

(Entrepreneurs don’t like working for anyone but themselves.)

Question 3:

A = 5 points, B = 5 points,

C = 5 points, D = 5 points, E = 15 points.

(One of the biggest weaknesses that entrepreneurs face is their tendency to “fall in love” too easily. These love affairs with new employees, products, suppliers, machines, methods and financial plans often are over as suddenly as they begin.)

Question 4:

A = 5 points, B = 15 points,

C = 5 points

(Organization is key to an entrepreneur’s success.)

Question 5:

A = 0 points, B = 15 points.

(Entrepreneurs are participants, not observers; players, not fans.)

Question 6:

A = 8 points, B = 10 points,

C = 15 points, D = 0 points.

(Entrepreneuring is a competitive game, and an entrepreneur has to be prepared to run out of time occasionally. The right answer is “C,” but the best answer is the game itself.)

And your entrepreneurial

profile is:

74 - 90 points = Successful.

63 - 73 points = Entrepreneur.

59 - 72 points = Latent

entrepreneur.

49 - 71 points = Potential

entrepreneur.

SOURCE: Center for Entrepreneurial Management

BOX 3

Getting started

Here are some tips for first-time entrepreneurs:

Borrow from family and friends. Despite popular belief, most startup money does not come from venture capital firms or banks.

Dip your toe in. Don’t walk away from your full-time job until you can afford to. Start your business part time so you can rely on a regular paycheck and benefits. Or consider temping.

“Go, Grandma, go!” Age is no barrier. Many high school kids have clever ways to fill voids in the marketplace. And give grandmother your blessing if she wants to open a sports shop that sells active wear for seniors.

Frustration = idea generation. Stop feeling sorry for yourself if you can’t come up with an idea for a business. Concentrate on what irritates you. That gadget that never worked right could spark a winning idea.

Know thy “unexpected” enemy. Opening the only family arcade in your town? Great idea, but don’t think you’re free of competitors: The local movie theater, mall and bookstore are competing for your customers’ dollars.

SOURCE: Rieva Lesonsky, author of “Start Your Own Business: The Only Start-Up Book You’ll Ever Need” (Entrepreneur Press, Third Edition, $24.95), and editorial director of Entrepreneur magazine.