Wright Fitness & Cycling

Last Fall my friend April Wright decided the time was right to fulfill her dream of having her own personal training gym. April is a popular Ithaca, New York based personal trainer and indoor cycling instructor. She reached out to her friends and the entrepreneurial business community for support, and the result was that six weeks later, she hosted the grand opening of Wright Fitness & Cycling!

Wright on!
Here's a portion of the list that she knocked out to go from concept to grand opening in just six weeks:

• Find retail space
• Negotiate lease
• Spec out gym equipment
• Negotiate equipment price
• Incorporate
• Open bank account
• Design logo
• Build 5 year budget
• Find lenders
• Negotiate terms of loan
• Securing funding
• Design retail space
• Oversee build-out
• Assist with labor for build-out
• Get URL and build initial website
• Build Wright Cycling and Fitness Facebook page
• Install stereo system
• Install gym equipment
• Buy and install furniture
• Create class and training schedules
• Notify all customers and friends of new business
• Throw grand opening party!

I should also mention that she did all of this while still teaching cycling classes, working with clients, and juggling the needs of 3 kids with her husband. An impressive feat in such a short amount of time, and a testament to what can be done with the right mindset and support.


Congratulations April!

The Efficiency of the Trade Show

This month I attended my tenth Consumer Electronics Show in a row. This trade show is a massive catch-all for thousands of technology products, with thousands of companies setting up booths and over 150,000 attendees. Mezmeriz had a small booth in an area dedicated to small technology companies.

The show was a good one for us. We made a lot of good new contacts, reconnected with some folks we've known for years, and got a little press exposure in Entrepreneur Magazine and Raleigh's News and Observer.

Trade shows are an efficient way of making a lot of contacts in a short amount of time, and especially important for startups: without spending a lot of money on travel. Many people are surprised that tradeshows can cost thousands of dollars to present at, and some even cost $1,000+ just to attend, but from an efficiency and overall cost standpoint, they're worth it.

I regularly advise aspiring entrepreneurs to find the trade show for their target market. There is a trade show for EVERYTHING. Really. I've been to some bizarre ones, big ones, tiny ones, and have traded stories about wacky things seen at trade shows, but they all exist because of the efficiency of having so many of your customers, potential customers, potential investors, competitors, industry analysts, and the press all in one place at one time.

Theory of the Gold Miner

Having done startups on both coasts, I have a theory of why people have different perceptions of an entrepreneur who has to close his company, and by extension, indicates why there are significantly more California startups. All things being equal, i.e. you worked long, hard hours, stayed current with the market and technology, and ran an honest business, there are still plenty of reason good business people close a business. Here's the difference in perception:

On the East Coast, closing your business means you are a failure. People don't want to be associated with a failure

Failure

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One the West Coast, closing your business means that you weren't able to make it work for what's likely a combination of things you can control, and things you can't control, but you learned a lot along the way. People will work with you the future because your experience can be invaluable.

Experienced

I hear this in just the casual conversations with people. East Coasters regularly used the phrase "failed", whereas the West Coast folks say "shut down". So where does this come from? I think it's from the gold miners.

In the early days of gold prospecting in California, finding gold was an inexact science that involved a lot of hard work, persistence, and a fair amount of luck. When a gold miner didn't find gold, they would only be perceived as a failure if they didn't work long, hard days. If their fellow gold miners did hit a big vein of gold, they'd look around to their peers who had not been so fortunate, and bring them into their mine. The other miner had learned the art of mining, but had just not found the vein of gold. They weren't failures, but they did have enough sense to know when to stop digging in an empty hole, and work where the better opportunity arose.

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I like to perceive closed startups as "shut down". There shouldn't be such a social stigma against an honest, smart, hard-working entrepreneur who didn't make their company soar. If they learned how to run a business, they're likely to help someone accelerate their growing business, and will likely use the experience to start and grow their own company in the future.

Wells College Entrepreneurship Dinner

Recently a few of the practicing entrepreneurs from Ithaca were invited to a dinner at the Aurora Inn in lovely Aurora, New York to meet faculty, administration, and students from Wells College who are actively teaching, supporting, and learning entrepreneurship.

President Ryerson and Wells College students thinking I look funny when I am talking
The format of the dinner was a sort of round-robin where students changed tables at each course of the meal. This gave them a chance to meet different entrepreneurs, and for us to meet different students. Since there were more tables then courses, some of the students made a point of making the rounds to meet everyone once coffee was served - a move I applaud.

The center point of the evening were the presentations by the two teams that won the Wells Entrepreneurship Week. In the not-for-profit track was a business concept to allow professors to loan their pets to homesick and stressed students. In the for-profit category, a unique new concept for a golf training aid was demonstrated and explained, with the additional good news that the team has a commitment of seed capital funding from an angel investor!

Wells College has a great entrepreneurial history, dating back to its founder Henry Wells, who was the entrepreneur who founded Wells Fargo and American Express. This tradition has been continued this year with the announcement of a $5MM donation from Wells College alumni Susan Wray Sullivan to endow the Susan Wray Sullivan '51 and Pike H. Sullivan Center for Business and Entrepreneurship. As a liberal arts college, business and entrepreneurship has not been a traditional focus, but students and educators are keen to the changing winds and now see these skills as part of a well rounded education.

$85K Ithaca College Business Idea Competition

This Fall Ithaca College launched their inaugural Business Idea Competition. This competition is designed to encourage and accelerate the new company formation for all of their students, in all parts of the school.

Get your good ideas reved up!

This competition was made possible by Ithaca College alum J. Christopher Burch. Chris is a wildly successful entrepreneur himself, who successfully launched his first multimillion dollar company while a student at Ithaca College, and is now well known as the cofounder of Tory Burch. He has also made a number other successful investments, including Jawbone, Voss, and PowerMat .

The competition format is simple to explain, but hard to do: You have 4 minutes to explain your entire business idea to a panel of judges that will include Chris Burch. You then get 4 more minutes to answer their questions. 8 great minutes is all it takes to get the seed capital needed to start a business.

Good luck students!

Lawyers, Accountants, and Insurance Brokers I Trust for a Startup

I am often asked about which service providers I use at Mezmeriz and would recommend for other startup companies. Therefore, I have compiled my official list of the people and firms that I use and trust. Even though we're based in Ithaca, New York, I've found that not every service provider needs to be local. Furthermore, I think most of this list is applicable for startups in New England and on the east coast of the USA.

Corporate Insurance

I have been with the husband and wife led team at McManamey & McManamey for over ten years and three companies. They are based in Virginia, but do a bang-up job regardless of where you are. They now do the corporate insurance for a number of Cornell and Ithaca startups and treat you well regardless of size. They'll take good care, do all the heavy lifting of the complicated stuff, and do it at a fair price.

Legal: Corporate & Patent



We have been with the firm of Choate Hall & Stewart for a number of years. However, I would really say that we're with the firm that employs David Rickerby. I have had a number of different lawyers from small boutique firms as well as from Washington DC and Silicon Valley's elite firms. I have found that it's really about the relationship and quality of your main contact and how well they manage the people at the firm who are working on your issues. David is a great contracts and licensing guy, but he's also a great manager of corporate, HR, and patent attorneys. On an hourly basis, these guys can be expensive. The message I tell aspiring entrepreneurs is that a cheap lawyer per hour will often turn into an expensive invoice, whereas closely working with an expensive lawyer per hour results in much lower invoices.

Accounting: Bookkeeping

I use Intuit Quickbooks Online. It's a good solution for it's accessibility and universal familiarity. It's accessible because you can get to it through any browser, and that it really nice when traveling or when you need to allow access to your accountants. Its universal familiarity means that when you need to upgrade to a fancier accounting system, or have your books reviewed and audited by an outside firm, the process doesn't involve everyone relearning a brand new system.

For the actually data input and record keeping I have a contract bookkeeper, Leslie, who comes in a few times a month. I have a big box-o-bills that she sorts through, and then makes sure all the new data gets entered, checks get cut, bills get paid, and all invoices and receipts are filed in an organized manner. I do make a point of personally signing every check. It's a bit old-fashioned, but it's a good way to enforce the discipline of knowing where each dollar goes.

Accounting: Payroll

Seamlessly integrated with Intuit's Quickbooks Online is Intuit Online Payroll. They take care of all of the taxes, filing, direct deposit, and forms.

Accounting: Tax


I use the local Ithaca firm of Sprague & Janowsky to do our corporate tax work and general accounting help. They take care of all the tax issues - which in New York can be amazingly complicated - as well as help us out whenever our accounting gets complicated. For example, they made sure that our books were in a professional format prior to use sending them out to potential investors.

Banking

I am a strong advocate of having a local banker. We work with the folks at Tompkins Trust Company. A local banker is like a solid defense: They won't score you any points, but they'll make sure the important stuff gets done right. I have heard first hand of incidents where entrepreneurs had a standard banking transaction screwed up by a faceless person in a massive call center at one of the mega banks. I like to know that for the big stuff, I'm going to sit across the desk from my personal bankers Matt and Kim and they're going to get it done right.

Employee Health Insurance


The newest addition to this list is our employee health care brokers, Tompkins Insurance Agencies. Excellus BlueCross BlueShield has been the actual providers, but he had to change brokers after our first broker passed away, and the second broker ignored us. We went with Tompkins Insurances because they showed that they actually cared, and based on our positive experiences with the bank, we made the switch. So far, so good.

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If you want a formal introduction to any of these folks, please don't hesitate to ask. I don't mind helping drive business to people who are doing a good job. If you happen to contact them directly because you read this, please let them know. That sort of good will has a way of coming back around.

Text Me a Cab

Earlier this year my friend Paul launched Collegetown Cab. His goal was to use technology to make a better taxi cab company. They use mobile phones, GPS, email, text messaging, electronic meters, and credit cards. While many businesses have been using these technologies for awhile, this innovation has been slow to come to commercial taxi services in small towns like Ithaca.


You can also wave your cell phone in the air for a pick up

One of the programs that made it possible for him to launch was the Small Business Administration 7(a) loan program. This program is administered through banks, but is backed by the Federal Government. The Feds basically co-sign the loan with qualified entrepreneurs. It's like having a rich uncle, except in this case it's Uncle Sam. This program helps with the problem that most entrepreneurs have when starting: No capital and no collateral.

Things are going well at Collegetown Cab and it looks like the bank will get repaid. Paul's working long hours, and even drives a cab sometimes, but he's learning a lot about the business. Give him a hand by calling 607-588-8888 the next time you're in Ithaca and need a ride.