Managing Editor
While money, passion and vision are leading requirements for successful entrepreneurism, people top the list.
“Anybody that can find enough money can get the building and product, but you can’t buy the people,” said Nadine Gramling, who bought and sold Southeastern Metals and then started another company, the Bryson’s On The Avenue upscale furniture and accessories consignment retailer.
The challenge for entrepreneurs “has always been, is and will be to find, recruit and get the right people on the bus,” said Brian Barquilla, founder and publisher of the magazine “Jacksonville Small Business Advantage: The Resource for Small Business.”
Gramling and Barquilla joined entrepreneurs Brock Fazzini, Dea Sims and Grace Huxtable-Mount Thursday for the Entrepreneurial Success Panel at the Beaver Street Enterprise Center. The panel was part of the center’s Entrepreneurial Fair and Success Forum.
About 40 people attended the forum and trade show at the center. The facility, near Downtown, offers space for startup and existing small businesses. It is run by the nonprofit Core City Business Incubators as an initiative of Fresh Ministries.
Huxtable-Mount and her husband, Jason Mount, co-founded Huxtable Education Group and operate The Learning Experience Child Development Center in Southside. It serves children from six weeks to 5 years old.
Huxtable-Mount said that investing in the best employees is paramount.
“You don’t want to start with mediocre people and hope to get better people,” she said. While it’s costly to pay for good employees from the start, “in the long run, I am going to keep my customers” because of the quality of the staff.
Fazzini, CEO of Fazzini’s Coffee & Tea, said it was critical to find the people who shared the vision of the company owner. “It has to be a fit,” he said.
Sims also talked about the importance of self-honesty.
“If you think you are going to start a company and spend 40 hours a week there, you are so wrong,” said Sims, who founded Promo Depot in 1996 and sold it recently to Acosta Sales & Marketing. She stayed with the company until May and is taking time with family now.
She said that when she started her company, her main activity outside work was sleep. “Your business will take over your life,” she said.
The panelists warned the attendees against allowing that to happen, but admitted it was a common condition for new entrepreneurs.
Other insights from the panel:
• The owner must be the leader. “No matter how many people you bring on, that passion and that vision have to come from the owner,” said Gramling.
• Entrepreneurs must have a passion for the business. “You can fake it for awhile but passion ... is all you have when you start,” said Barquilla.
• Marketing is critical. “So many people hope customers will wander in and give them money,” said Sims.
• Giving back is important. Fazzini works with nonprofits who identify corporate customers for his business, and he in turn donates back to the nonprofit.
• Don’t expect to break even the first year, or even maybe the second. And build those reserves. “With starting a business, you have to have money before you make money,” said Huxtable-Mount.
• Starting a business during the recession required new companies to be flexible. “You have to be able to constantly adapt,” said Fazzini. The recession was been “a huge filter” for businesses.
• Confidence is critical. “We started at what hopefully is the low point in the economy,” said Barquilla.
“People said, ‘you must be crazy.’ Don’t listen to those people.”
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