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The following article was published in the Charleston Post & Courier's Business Major, a featured monthly column in the Business Review Section on December 22, 1997. Methods to reduce riskBy DOROTHY P. MOORE Special to the Post and Courier To entrepreneurial women inside the organization or who aspire to own successful businesses of their own, what is certain is that the future can be guaranteed to be uncertain. But there are ways to cut the risks. Starting out by working for an organization in one's target field that has a strong training program and a favorable nurturing environment offers opportunities to gain marketing, financial, new technology, and management experience. Taking advantage of every educational and training opportunity broadens horizons and addresses niches. Deborah Hueppeler, now an independent financial consultant in Dallas, mapped out a career on Wall Street with an ultimate goal of landing in the Sunbelt. "Here I started with financial services to gain the financial background and familiarity with a lot of different companies and industries. This would provide an important building block for the company I later created." One advantage of an organizational incubator is the security it provides while the prospective entrepreneur is preparing for the new venture launch. "I began by developing a clientele and working insane hours for about three years prior to striking out on my own," said Julie Thomas, a Chicago architectural design company co-owner, "so when I left, I had a client base." For another entrepreneur, the new business allowed incubator skills to be used in a setting free from organizational headaches. "In a nutshell," she said, "we design licensed apparel. Requests from licensers allowed us the opportunity to spin ourselves off from the company. It also got us out of the loop of the manufacturing and its frustrations and so forth." Still another entrepreneur started her business while fully employed. "I received telephone calls from attorneys in the state who I had worked with. They said, you know, could you help us out? This led me to starting a business." A number of women business owners had not thought of entrepreneurship initially, but after accumulating knowledge and expertise through an array of organizational experiences they saw opportunity. Says Elizabeth Morris, a Dallas owner of a research firm that has contributed to location decisions effecting the workplace of more than 1.3 million workers, "I think the business kind of came and got me. It developed out of the previous work I had done. I spent seven years in city management. We were responsible to everyone. Everything we said, everything we did was screened through different filters to be sure it conveyed accurate information. I had moved from that position into real estate brokerage where I saw a totally different business pace but very little research to accompany it. So on one side we had extraordinary levels of research and on the other side we had none. I moved to a corporation that developed office buildings, warehouses, and apartment complexes. I was in on the ground floor. Inside three years I had an opportunity to build an office building, a shopping center and a 120 unit condominium complex virtually unsupervised because the company was growing so fast. I got a real quick education as a developer. Because I did an extraordinary amount of research on my projects, people kept asking me if I would help with theirs." In case after case in our study entrepreneurs reported that the organizational experience allowed them to accumulate a wealth of knowledge of irreplaceable value. Our findings support a generalization that a major role of the incubator is its importance in gaining survival skills, learning to cope with setbacks, and dealing with special challenges. After corporate life, said one entrepreneur, "I had the experience and the confidence to be able to go out and really market myself. I had a lot to sell and I had a very strong network." Reported another, "The biggest thing I gained was credibility. I can go into an important client and say I have done this for an industry leader. Then they listen." Says Gee Tucker, "My husband can sell an Eskimo a refrigerator. But I have put the system in place that enabled this growth based on what I learned working in my former organization." A Cincinnati entrepreneur flatly says that she gained the self-confidence she needed from her organizational incubator. "I felt that the company had been a wonderful training ground; I started seeing that I wasn't helpless." Some entrepreneurs were not able to follow this path. Michele Babineaux today owns two Cajun restaurants and a nationally recognized catering service. Disney World schedules parties in her establishment, and there are long lines to get on her list for Sugar Bowl parties. She has been honored as both a New Orleans and a State of Louisiana entrepreneur of the year. She came to entrepreneurship via a route of training and experience on the job without the advantages offered by a college degree. "I thought it would be wonderful to go to college," she says. "When I did go, I was older. I sat there in the classroom and all I could think about was how I needed to be out working and making money. I asked the professor if I could get what she was saying on my own. She said, 'Yes, you have worked all your life. You can take the book and learn what I am teaching in this class.' It was such a relief. It would have been a luxury to sit in the class and learn, but I decided that I would take the book and learn on my own. So I brought the book back to the restaurant. Every day I got my employees together and we had a lesson from the book. We all learned the material together. All of my new employees have college degrees, especially in sales and management." Michele's story lies at the heart of preparing for entrepreneurship with all the tools one can muster. Her best wisdom is to get the most out of your education and to realize that you are going to have to work extremely hard if you want to succeed. Know the financial and managerial aspects of the business before you start, she recommends, "Luck is nothing more than labor under controlled knowledge." The education and experience to be gained from an incubator are portable commodities, useful to either corporate advancement or a transition to entrepreneurship. The organizational experience at someone else's expense becomes a great training ground, an incubator, for opening the business of one's dreams. The roads to the dream are many. For those currently in organizations, it is important to recognize the company attributes that enable you to accomplish career objectives, whether that be in owning your own business or advancing in the corporation. For Questions/Comments about this site, contact moored@citadel.edu. Site designed by Jackye Cocoros. |