CEO's Notebook

Hand's On

Mentors for hire

You want to start a business, but you lack the expertise. Why not buy it?
By Shane Mclaughlin

Want to learn all you can about starting the business of your dreams but don't have a lot of time? You can do what Iris Shur and Jean Sifleet did: pay experienced business owners to show you the ropes.

Five years ago, Shur and Sifleet set out to open a shop selling furniture and home accessories on consignment. But having no experience, they had to do some homework--fast. From the moment they drove up to the doors of the Stock Exchange, a consignment store in Barrington, R.I., they knew they had stumbled on a fount of knowledge. "It was pouring rain on a Monday, and people were lined up down the street to get in," recalls Shur. "We knew we could learn from them."

So the two rookies approached Stock Exchange co-owners Jan Hess and Sarah Powers, who had launched their business nearly 15 years earlier with no experience. They agreed to spend a day teaching Shur and Sifleet, in exchange for a $1,500 fee and an agreement not to set up shop within 50 miles of their store. It was a pure business decision, explains Hess--just another way to make money.

A few days after the initial meeting, the four met over breakfast at Powers's home to talk about the business. Shur and Sifleet learned how to choose an ideal location, how to identify good workers, and where to advertise. They got lessons in merchandise appraisal, bookkeeping, and store layout--as well as in the idiosyncrasies of the consignment business.

In the afternoon they went to the Stock Exchange. While their mentors worked, Shur and Sifleet had free run of the store, including accounting books and customer files. Although they learned many practical lessons, the customer-friendly atmosphere was most memorable for them. Employees made every effort not to discourage consignors who brought in worthless items, like a cracked vase or a ripped chair. You never know--they might be back with something more valuable next time. "They never looked down on people," says Sifleet. "They'd say, 'This is a very nice item, but we just couldn't sell it in our market."

In parting, Hess and Powers told their students they could call anytime for more advice, which they did over the next several months. Now, five years later, Shur and Sifleet still go back to their notes for advice, although their own consignment business, Tables to Teapots, in Acton, Mass., has grown to $600,000 in revenues. And the two have been hired to mentor a few fledgling entrepreneurs themselves. "If we didn't learn from somebody else, it would have taken us a hell of a lot longer to get to where we are now," says Shur.

Hot Tips
Getting start-up assistance from a bank has never been easy. To make a better case for their temporary-staffing company, Tom and Cherry Householder, the founders of $10-million Staffing Resources, based in Matteson, Ill., submitted to their bank more than 15 letters of reference from various professional colleagues--police chiefs, politicians, competitors--when they opened their first office, in 1993. The results? Staffing Resources secured a $135,000 line of credit. --Ilan Mochari

For the price of a few stickers, Martine Redman, president of Briarpatch, in Millburn, N.J., passes out praise with the paychecks. For the salesperson: a sticker of Dorothy's red shoes accompanied by a note saying, "Click three times to reach your sales goal." For the marketing coordinator: a pig stamp on the envelope and inside, the inscription "This little piggy went to marketing." Redman says the stickers are "a great opportunity to express appreciation on a regular basis." When they stopped for a week while she was on vacation, the staff expressed their disappointment. --Nicholas Colletta

Getting in on the ground floor
The last thing Matt Phelan ever wanted to do was to run a storefront operation. But last year Phelan gave up his fancy office on the second floor of the Atlanta Financial Center and moved his company--Phelan Annual Reports, a $2-million design firm--into a former lunch-counter space in the building's lobby. Surprisingly, the new space has actually helped grow his business.

It all began with Atlanta's often-miserable downtown traffic. Last year Phelan decided to free his employees from commuting hell by letting them work from home. That meant he didn't need as much space, but he still wanted to keep a presence at the tony Financial Center.

So Phelan asked the building's management about moving to a smaller office. The only option: the old lunch counter, a storefront sandwiched in with a newsstand, a dry cleaner, and a barbershop. Phelan was miffed at first. Then he realized that a lobby location might have an advantage: exposure. Every day, thousands of corporate tenants walked through that lobby. A well-presented "storefront" could attract new clients.

So Phelan moved in, installed a large sign, and set up a flashy window display. In the first two months, the company brought in two new clients who otherwise never would have known it existed. "We spent nine years in that second-floor suite," Phelan says. "No one ever knocked on our door." --S.M.

Speeding up government collections
Michael churchman has found himself hamstrung by bureaucracy before. Churchman, who used to work for NASA, owns Rocky Mountain Radar, a $5.8-million electronics company based in El Paso. Of course, getting the government to pay up is never easy. But Churchman has learned to finesse the system. While his first government invoice took three months to collect, Churchman says he now "gets paid in 15 days and makes more money in the process." Herman Holtz, a self-employed writer, and John Hopkins, sole proprietor of Optimal Software Solutions LLC, based in Farmington Hills, Mich., have also mastered government collections. They offer these tips:

1. Personalize collections. Churchman likes to ask the person who OKs the deal for the name and phone number of the accounts-payable person responsible for cutting the check.

2. Raise prices by 11% to cover the potential cost of factoring, which Churchman has resorted to in the past. (Churchman says that his prices were still "an order of magnitude lower than the competition's.")

3. Ship the final product by Federal Express or a similar service that can provide you with a copy of the signature receipt.

4. Mail the invoice with a copy of the receipt. Don't use the telephone, Churchman says. You want to create a physical document.

5. Fax a copy of the invoice to the buyer of your goods or services, and also to the accounts-payable person who's handling your account. "Keep everybody in the loop," he says.