Aug
1
Aspiring owners try their wings at entrepreneur school
by SARA FITZPATRICK
Associate Editor
“I used to do real estate. Now it’s doing me,” joked Gerri Ware.
Luckily, she has other talents – not the least of which is an ability to make people feel at home with her sense of humor. She can do hair, she has been a tutor. And on one Wednesday night in July she looked right at home in a cushy, executive-type office chair sitting around a conference table.
Two others around the table tried the scene on for size – but it wasn’t a board meeting.
It’s Entrepreneur School.
And they’re finding out if they’ve got what it takes to be in the driver’s seat of their own business.
Leaving the nest
Ware is exploring the possibility of opening a beauty salon. Chip Knox, laid off from Hewlett-Packard, hasn’t yet landed on a new career direction. He’s looking for something that will “energize” him, that he has “a passion for.”
A third student, who asked not to be named, works in the electrical industry, but is exploring the possibility of owning a small saloon. However, he’s finding the prospect of paying for a liquor license, which has become notoriously pricey, is imposing its own brand of prohibition on his dream. So maybe he’ll start an electrical service company of his own.
Facilitating the discussion is Tom Scott, who in unguarded moments – which seems to be always – refers to himself as the “grampa,” which is to say director, of the Southwest Florida Enterprise Center. He sits with an easy posture, allowing the discussion to take a natural rhythm. Don’t let his casual manner fool you, however. This is serious stuff.
“This is basically a highly condensed version of a semester’s worth of material,” he said.
And he definitely knows his stuff.
Leading the flock
From his 20-year experience in retail management, Scott learned a little bit about being at the mercy of other people’s decisions. He watched the stores he worked for get bought up twice, people got fired, and he decided to wash his hands of the industry. He and his wife headed back to their farm in Indiana. He expected to be a farmer the rest of his life – not because it was easy – it wasn’t, and he knew it wouldn’t be. Just ask, and he’ll tell you farming is one of the most difficult entrepreneurial propositions around.
Fortuitously, Purdue University was a close neighbor and asked him to teach students how to run their own businesses. His stint as an entrepreneurship instructor there lasted no fewer than 10 years. His wife, meanwhile, began her own career in retail, which ultimately brought them to Southwest Florida.
Just as Scott had no illusions about the life of a farmer, part of his job as entrepreneur instructor is to ferret out the inconsistencies between students’ expectations and reality. He acknowledges that in every session during the school’s three-year history, there are dropouts. He doesn’t see it as a negative thing. Rather, the students are doing themselves – and the business community – a favor.
“What the world does not need is another lousy business owner,” Scott said. “There are enough of those to go around.”
Classes run every Wednesday evening for six weeks. The time makes it accessible to a working person, and the cost, at $53 total, is easy on an aspiring business owner’s pocketbook. The curriculum is divided into four areas of discussion: characteristics of an entrepreneur, the necessity for and elements of a written business plan, marketing and financial considerations.
The latter item is saved for the last session because, Scott said, “I don’t want anybody to get scared about that at the very beginning.”
Preparing to fledge
Scott presented the first section, characteristics of an entrepreneur, as a self-evaluation process. A lot can be learned, but some basic qualities are requisite for success, and they are either there, or they’re simply not.
Said Scott, “A shy person is not going to have the internal drive that’s necessary in order to ask questions that have to be asked of strange and scary people.”
Besides bravado, focus is key: “the persistence to dig through information to get the real important pieces and not get enamored by the things that don’t make a difference but sound real flashy.”
During the business plan section, the dream gets converted from the abstract into concrete, actionable facts and figures. When it comes to marketing, Scott emphasizes “guerrilla” tactics, public relations and good old fashioned networking – approaches that are accessible to anyone, regardless of funding.
Finally, when the inevitable can’t be put off any longer, Scott brings out the big guns: finances.
Fight or flight
“We use an example and build a scenario: start-up costs, an opening day balance sheet – not that I would ever expect these guys to worry about a balance sheet,” Scott said, “but I want them to know what it is, where it comes from and why it’s important.
“The third piece is a one-year operating statement for the business, a projection, a plan of how the numbers are going to shake out. That’s when you see the eyes getting bigger all the time – because it does take some money, there are significant costs involved and when yo u’re dealing with people who have never managed any aspect of a business, the costs associated with it are sometimes very frightening.”
At any point in the class, students have the opportunity to back out, without shame. Scott estimates about 70 percent of the students who make it through the session decide, “This is nothing I want to be involved with at this point in time.”
Scott said that’s OK, because it leaves 30 percent who have taken a hard look at the realities, and still have the drive, focus, and commitment endemic to the fabric of an entrepreneur’s makeup.
“The other 70 percent would have been flops anyway,” he said.
Mary Hagemann is a former Entrepreneur School student. After looking at the hard facts, she had decided to put off owning a business, at least for a while.
She described Scott as “very honest.”
“If you’re going to own your own business, and you’re looking for something that’s going to be on easy street, that’s not going to happen,” she said. “If you own your own business, you’re going to be working more hours than you probably do now at a regular job.”
Her vision involved selling flip flops. Scott encouraged her to think about expanding her product line, she said, to include other foot-related items. The funding considerations, she said, are primarily what have kept her plans on hold.
Getting grounded
Far from being a jaded pessimist, Scott simply knows his statistics. Think of him as a seasoned alpha bird who knows how best to fly south in the winter. It’s in nobody’s best interest to soldier on simply because they’ve nurtured and invested time in a golden vision if they don’t have the right stuff. That’s why he keeps the cost of the class so low.
“I would rather someone spend $53, a little pencil and some paper examining whether they are truly interested in making the kinds of commitments they have to make to be a small business owner before they start spending tons of money,” Scott said.
“It’s the best dollar-for-dollar value I’ve ever had, ever,” said Jan Clark, owner of Full Circle Designs in Fort Myers. “It’s remarkable, even if you’re just thinking of starting a business. You could triple that (the cost) and it still wouldn’t be the value of what I got out of the class.”
Clark’s business specializes in rentals of large-scale silk flower arrangements for that “Martha Stewart look without the Donald Trump price tag.” Unfortunately, she said, she was one of those who spent money, rented a place, and then attended Entrepreneur School.
She believes in her product offering and has had a clear vision about being a florist since she was a child. However, she acknowledged she would have done things differently in starting her business if she had had the benefit of the class beforehand.
Nevertheless, she is in business today, and says after the class, there were things she changed for the better, including her advertising plan.
“Instead of putting big dollar advertising in one area,” she said, “I diversified the advertising and spread it out in smaller areas, and I believe I’ve gotten more business as a result of it.”
Staying airborne
In addition to the low cost, Scott’s approach also makes the class accessible to everyone. He may have come from a university background, he said, “but there’s nothing academic about this, it’s very simple and straightforward.”
As theoretical as he’ll get is in terms of the Pareto Principle, or the 80/20 rule, but he uses it to illustrate a very practical reality in business ownership.
From his experience in retail, he said, “I know that to be an absolute fact: 80 percent of our sales volume came from 20 percent of the items we had to sell. Same thing works with a small business person; you’ve got to worry about things that make a difference and not all of the things. Focus is critically important. Sometimes they get lost in the details instead of on the big elements. ”
Andy Gillis is a broker for Gilman Yachts at Legacy Harbour Marina in Fort Myers. He took the class to explore a future in the boat business. In working on a 100 percent commission basis, he needs to apply the same principles as any business owner. He especially has experience with the 80/20 rule, in this and his past sales jobs.
“Sometimes I’m not successful, like with cold calling,” he said. “But I’ve pretty much always gone by the 80/20 rule. If I talk with 10 people, I’m already ready for an 80 percent rejection, and these are with new contacts, then with the 20 percent I’d have some sort of positive result.”
Gillis has a business degree already and a long history in sales and management. Moreover, he has those characteristics of an entrepreneur.
When he first met Scott, he was working in construction sales. He even seized the networking opportunity to sell the metal studs that form the foundation of the new Enterprise Center buildings. Still, he benefited greatly from the class.
“I received a lot of good marketing ideas and local resources to get help when I need it. I have the confidence, I know that I have a mentor on my side businesswise. When I do have an issue,” he said, “I can get help and ideas through Tom. I am a sales and marketing type of person (already), and he helped increase my knowledge.”
All of the alumni Southwest Florida Business Today interviewed were effusive with their praise of the class, the teacher, and the Enterprise Center.
“Just take the class,” Clark said. “Just take it.”
But is there room in this crazy, mixed-up economy for another small business?
More on the wing
Scott thinks the climate is just fine for entrepreneurs.
“For the good ones, for the ones who have really studied their place in the market, who have clearly identified a spot in the market that they’re going to try to serve, it’s very good, because the big people are backing off,” he said. “They’re doing things more general; that leaves a lot of room for the specialists, the entrepreneurs.”
In fact, some are turning to small business ownership opportunities because of the economy. Scott said that, with unemployment, folks are looking for a way to take control of their own futures.
“Lots of those people are not going to be good as entrepreneurs, but some of them are going to be outstanding,” he said.
If they fall into the latter category, chances are good they will get that way while perched around that conference table, with Tom Scott leading the discussion.
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How do I get in touch with the Enterprise Center?
Mike, the Enterprise Center is located at 3903 Dr. Martin Luther King Blvd
Fort Myers, FL 33916
http://www.swflenterprisecenter.com
239-321-7085
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