From the category archives:

Business Owners' Stories

Some Lessons We Learned

by Guest Author

Renae Hart­son shares her story

Renae Hartson, Out of the Box Web Solutions

Renae Hart­son, Out of the Box Web Solutions

We are all taught at a young age to go to school, get good grades, get into a good col­lege and then grad­u­ate and take the world by storm when you land the per­fect job. Hap­pily ever after, right? Unfor­tu­nately, life doesn’t always work out that way. Some­one for­got to tell our employ­ers that they can’t change those rules.

When you hear the garage door open at 9 a.m. on a Thurs­day morn­ing, it’s never a good sign. And, when you see your hus­band car­ry­ing a small box, it’s even more omi­nous. Iron­i­cally, just days before we were com­ment­ing on how sad it was that our neigh­bor was let go the week prior to Christ­mas. We never thought it would hap­pen to us. After all, Steve got the com­pany to a very sig­nif­i­cant level of achieve­ment the year before. He has an M.B.A. and was a hard worker, ded­i­cated to the com­pany to the point of relo­cat­ing to another state only 9 months after start­ing with the com­pany at their request. I was a work from home designer/​manufacturer in my own busi­ness and was strug­gling. The long hours, the stress of busi­ness own­er­ship and the debt was tak­ing its toll. Bou­tiques and brick and mor­tar stores weren’t buy­ing, plan­ning for another sea­son was out of the ques­tion and Steve’s salary was the only thing keep­ing us afloat. [Read More]

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A good business experience

by Norma

Busi­ness plan saves the day

BusinessSuperHeroIn the fall of 1996, our graphic design com­pany took a hit from the explo­sion of inex­pen­sive desk­top pub­lish­ing soft­ware. It seemed that every company’s switch­board oper­a­tor was knock­ing out newslet­ters and brochures while never miss­ing a call. No one appeared to care about dou­ble spaces after peri­ods or saw a dif­fer­ence between inches and true quote marks.

At the same time, our city rede­vel­op­ment agency was look­ing to develop tourism. They needed accom­mo­da­tions for the flood of tourists sure to head this way.

Oppor­tu­nity was knock­ing or maybe, rear­ing its ugly head? I talked it over with my hus­band. “This is too hard. We need new com­put­ers. We need new clients. Let’s apply for rede­vel­op­ment funds to open a bed and break­fast,” I said. [Read More]

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