Build a business

It’s darn hard being a glass half-full kind of guy these days. Last March the jobless ranks swelled to 13.2 million, pushing the unemployment rate to 8.5%.

Some of those folks will land on their feet in the same industry. Others will re-invent themselves. And still others will head for … their garages.

Recessions have birthed myriad entrepreneurs. Following is the first of three in upstate New York who have used bumps in the road as motivation to back out the Buick and set up shop within walking distance of their mailboxes.

Tim Gardner, 55, St. Lawrence Valley Roasters, Lisbon, N.Y.

For many of us, coffee and the morning paper is part of the daily routine. Gardner, recently retired from a job working with the mentally disabled, had home-roasted his own coffee for several years. He figured he could do the same for a few customers. After a lot of reading, “I eventually started understanding the coffee roasting business and what was involved,” he says. “I talked it over with my wife, and she agreed that I could use the workshop in our garage.”

In June 2008, Gardner borrowed $10,000 from the bank using an unsecured line of credit and got another $20,000 from a local economic development agency in October. The plan: sell coffee to retail customers via his Web site and his wife’s gift shop, and wholesale it to regional gift shops, natural food stores and coffee shops.

Then came the hiccups–like getting a handle on expenses. “I didn’t follow my business plan and purchased too much coffee,” he admits. “I thought having more would help me sell more.” (Gardner recouped part of those losses by peddling his overstock on eBay.) Nor did he properly account for the costs of packaging, utilities and his own time–all of which made pricing his coffee that much harder: “I more or less made up prices with no real basis to start from,” he admits.

Harder still, other start-up costs to outfit the garage were higher than anticipated. A new electrical entrance, to handle the additional power requirements, ran $1,500; adding running water sopped up an additional $1,200; and the duct work used to vent the roaster increased drastically in price because Gardner made some incorrect assumptions about what a vent actually meant.

“State code required a commercial vent system that doubled the price from the residential vent systems for fireplaces that I was familiar with,” he says. “I went from my estimate of $1,000 to over $2,000.” He also ended up buying a different roaster than he originally projected–another $1,000 out the door.

All worth it, he says: “The best part of self-employment is not having to fix problems caused by others’ poor decisions. I can work when I want, try things that I want and learn from my own screw-ups.”

Thanks to some local press, customers are lining up. Several new restaurants and Potsdam College, a local state university with just under 5,000 students, sell St. Lawrence River Valley Roasters exclusively. While the company isn’t churning out enough to live on, it is growing and self-sustaining. For now, Gardner quips, “as long as I am willing to work for free, I get good coffee out of it.”
For more information, visit forbes.com.

Author Elizabeth Gordon helps women entrepreneurs who want to build a profitable business go “from flats to stilettos” in her new book, “The Chic Entrepreneur.” Sharing the five biggest mistakes that women business owners make that their male counterparts are less susceptible to, “The Chic Entrepreneur: Put Your Business in Higher Heels” highlights the essential components that women business owners must put in place to create a successful business.

To build a profitable business, businesswomen must avoid these top 5 mistakes:

1. Sales and marketing: Women fear looking like a pushy salesperson and have a resistance to charging a high price. Selling too softly, and not being willing to go after a premium niche and declare a high price for the value she is providing can handicap a business’s ability to generate revenue.

2. Planning: Business plan? What business plan? Women often go by their intuition when making decisions concerning their business instead of writing out a strategic business plan and sticking to it. While using intuition in business can be a strength, intuition should not be the only decision-making criteria.

3. Measurement and money: Women entrepreneurs often start a business because they seek a greater sense of fulfillment, meaning, connection, or flexibility. Because profit is not always the main motive, the need to put strong financial controls in place is often ignored. As a result, cash flow often becomes a critical issue. Finance is the language of business so women must get comfortable with their numbers. In addition to looking at overall revenue figures, understand fixed and variable costs, know your break-even point and growth rate. Do monthly, quarterly and yearly trend analysis. Examine expenses, and learn how to read a profit and loss statement and balance sheet.

4. Vision: Women in business often do not have a big enough vision for their company. They focus on making enough money to just get by, rather than on creating an asset of real value and maximizing their wealth. Dare to dream a larger vision. There is nothing greedy about sharing one’s business value across a larger spectrum; on the contrary, it is more generous to grow, as women can do more good this way.

5. Long Range Personal Plan: Most women start service-based organizations, but never take themselves out of the role of performing the service. Because most women start businesses with lifestyle considerations in mind, they are not willing to sacrifice their lifestyle to create an organization. It’s not impossible to do both. A woman entrepreneur can still have her desired lifestyle and the financial wellbeing that growing a profitable and large company can provide. The foundation of the business has to be structured properly to enable growth. A businesswoman then becomes the strategic leader of the organization.

For more information, visit chicentrepreneur.com.

Entrepreneur and adventurer, John Simnett, is offering a new service to senior business executives that helps them keep their company together whilst they go on an adventure of a lifetime.

Many CEOs are so trapped into their business, or just loving it, that they never experience real adventure outside their working lives. Taking several weeks out of their business to walk the Arctic wastelands, or to cycle the mountains of Europe, is an impossibility for most. An experienced businessman, John offers an executive life-line in both keeping the business together, and planning the Great Trip.

Working closely with the client business, getting to understand key areas, John provides a low-cost professional service that enhances peoples’ lives and improves their business.

The services, including costs, are outlined in his website.

Today, many people are eager to experience something well beyond the routine of daily work, that an annual holiday just does not provide. For someone who is running a business, they have a responsibility to their employees as well as their future livelihoods. Just think how a business would regard its responsibility to the environment, after their CEO returns from several weeks trekking through mountains and clean air.

For more information, visit simnett.com.