The Spirit Of Independence; Connections

It is only half an hour's drive by freeway across Kansas City, Mo., from Tallgrass Technologies Corp. to East Bottom Salvage. But it feels, at first, like a visit to another country. Tallgrass founder David Allen works in a high-tech industrial park, a Midwestern outpost in the Silicon Valley style. East Bottom Salvage's Jim Cox does business among the junkyards and truck lots of Missouri River bottomland. Allen met me in a carpeted conference room, surrounded by the accoutrements of a thriving electronics company. Cox's office is an abandoned bus in a deserted salvage yard. To keep warm, he burns a scrapwood fire in a pot-bellied stove.

Yet for all their apparent differences, the two share similar battles. David Allen, shipping $47 million worth of product in 10 months, may worry about an eight-figure cash flow, while Jim Cox strips cars for $20 bills. That is, of course, an enormous difference. But the two men have something even more important in common. Both have put everything they have at risk -- not just their financial futures, but their faith, courage, and imagination as well.

Time after time in my months on the road, the Allens and the Coxes reminded me that the cliches about the lonely struggles of the entrepreneur have their basis in the solitary realities of everyday life. Large or small, high tech or low, a business's uncertainties are real, and losses are more likely than gains. Fail or succeed, no one who dares such risks can stay the same.Starting a business, and trying to make it grow, stretches people's sense of who they are, and of who they would like to become.

For all their feelings of isolation, however, none of them seems to struggle alone. To build a company, most must also build to team; that's both the genius of entrepreneurship and the challenge the entrepreneurial style poses to established companies. But there are other connections that matter, too, connections that are more fundamental and more personal -- ties to a family and a history, to memories of a father or dreams for a son, to a husband or a wife across a desk, or to a grandmother whose lessons lie in the distant past. Probe just a little below the surface, and the similarities you find are likely to run deeper than the differences.

"I had figured the harder you work, the more you're going to make. But there comes a time when you can only work so hard." -- Jim Cox

Jim Cox, 38, started East Bottom Salvage in Kansas City, Mo., in January 1984.

When I was a kid, my dad junked cars, and that was something I always liked. But then we moved to the city -- he moved up here to get work. A few months ago, he was killed.

He always told me that the thing to do was to have a job and a steady income, but I figured that he never really got a whole lot that way. The hassle of working for myself is worth the time and trouble, I guess. A man's got to do something to support his family, and you try whatever feels right.

I got two kids, and one more on the way, so this is a family operation here. My wife is almost eight months along, but I could hardly make it without her. She can still answer the telephone. I've got a hundred dollars' worth of ads in the newspaper; if I'm out in the salvage yard and the phone is ringing, I'm out. My boy, he's 12, he's getting to the age where he's a lot of help, too.

I quit school when I was 16 years old, but I went down to trade school and learned body and paint work. I've done that off and on for 20 years, working for various dealerships, and there were times I made a pretty good living at it. But when you're out there working on a percentage, you're thinking, Man, I'm working hard, and the harder I work the more money that guy is making. So I figured it's better working for yourself. The harder you work, the more you're going to make. The only thing I'm missing out on is insurance, and benefits. But look at my dad -- killed after 20 years on the job, and my mom can't get a thing out of them, you know? So what's workmen's comp and all that worth? And what's it worth going to a job like that every day? All my dad got out of it was hard living.

Anybody that's worked around cars, like myself, you're going to figure out ways to make money working on them, whether it's selling parts off of them or whatever. Or get into the scrap-metal business. I found out it's pretty easy to go out here and buy a car -- or it used to be -- for $35 or $40 and take it over here to Prolerized Steel and sell it for $60 after you've taken a lot of parts off of it. I found out I could make money that way. So here I am.

But it is just an everyday hassle. You've got to be here every day. You've got to be here the time that you put down on your license that you're going to be here, and you better not leave before that. Then, with every car you buy you have to turn it in to the police station. It's a lot of paperwork, and everybody knows your business, everybody knows how much you pay for something, how much you get out of it.

My only real problem is money. I don't have the money to do things right. If somebody called me right now and wanted to sell me a car, I don't have the money to go buy it. If I had some money, I could go out there and hustle for a couple of days, load a load of scrap cars after I get the good parts off, and take them over to the shredder. Then I'd have $200, or $300, or $400, enough money to buy that many cars again.

When I started, I started with nothing. And I still got nothing. I had figured the harder you work, the more you're going to make. But there comes a time when you can only work so hard. If you ain't got any money, you've got to sit back and think, well, I've got to figure out something else here to do to get some money so I can make some more.

"If have to be there five hours, we're going to talk computer supplies." -- Gale Sayers

Gale Sayers, a Pro Football Hall of Fame running back who played with the Chicago Bears from 1965 to 1971, started Computer Supplies by Sayers with his wife, Ardythe, in 1984.