I believe in honesty and hard work. I’ve always been entrepreneurially-inclined but when I first got into this business, my purpose was not to make a lot of money.
I worked for a small web development shop and heard countless stories from small business owners who had gotten shafted by their original web developers. It was not uncommon to hear comments like, “We paid $8,000 for a website and it doesn’t even do what we want it to do.” As a website developer, I could do my best to provide quality services at affordable prices but there was something missing…guidance.
These are people who were just trying to make their business work and had had some bad experiences along the way. They deserved better than to have some programmer convince them that they needed a message board, and Flash animations. So, I resolved to do my part to help these business owners.
I opened StarPointe Marketing in April of 2004. My purpose? To provide small businesses with just the right mix of services to help them be successful on the web. No bells. No whistles. No fancy coding. Just the tools that would actually contribute to the success of their organization.
I signed as a reseller with the local hosting company ($100) and bought a cheap graphics program ($25 on Ebay). It wasn’t Adobe but it was plenty powerful for web design. I already had a computer and Microsoft Office so I got to work. I started telling everyone I knew that I was starting my own web development business. People came out of the woodwork. There was a real need for a quality company with reasonable prices.
Fortunately, I haven’t had a nausea-inducing crisis. Sure I’ve had a couple of frustrating experiences when services didn’t work correctly and vendors began to blame each other, but luckily I was able to quickly resolve the problem and get things running smoothly again.
My dad (John Jenkins) was laid off from his corporate job in 2003 and started his own business coaching practice. He took time out of his schedule to have coaching calls with me and let me report on my progress. I can’t tell you how valuable that was. All he had to do was ask just the right questions to get me fixing my own problems and clarifying my business’ vision. He taught me the importance of having a long-term plan and not getting too distracted by the day-to-day details.
Technically, because I didn’t have to invest much to get started, profitability was achieved with my first completed job. However, it was still several months before I was able to really pay myself. There were other costs that I had to incur before I could really call myself a professional including an accounting system, some better hardware, etc. Now I’m looking at doing more outsourcing so I can focus on growing the business.
I really enjoy the fact that I don’t need to “get permission” when I want to go on vacation for a week or two. Don’t get me wrong, vacation isn’t what it used to be. I still get emails or calls on my cell now and then from leads, clients, vendors, etc. but I’ve got a system for dealing with them. If there’s something that needs to be taken care of right then, I call someone who can do it.
If I were starting over again, I would focus more on sales from the beginning. It’s so easy to get distracted by actually running the business that you forget to build the business. But with a constant flow of new customers coming in, I would have been forced to become more efficient, sooner.
The hardest part about being an entrepreneur is convincing my wife that I have a real job. She just can’t resist coming into the office (spare bedroom) and interrupting me several times an hour. Don’t get me wrong, I love it. It’s just not the most productive use of time.
Advice I’d offer to someone getting started? “Just do it.” If you think you have a good idea, start researching it and, if it’s feasible, do it. Too many would-be entrepreneurs think they need to have a world-changing idea to be successful. Just do something common, but do it 5-10% better than the next guy.
