By Entrepreneurship Campus
From 0 To Their Own Hero!
Baked By Melissa
Up until 2008, baking was just a pastime. It was during this time, a life-changing moment helped Melissa Ben-Ishay turn her love of baking into a business.
She was fired from her job.
In tears, she went straight to her brother, Brian. In the business world himself, the solution seemed like a no brainer. He told her to go home and start baking. In one night, Ben-Ishay made 250 cupcakes. She sent them to work with a friend in public relations and was soon working in the catering business. By 2009, her company, Baked By Melissa, was open with her brother as CEO.
Known for its bite-size cupcakes, Baked by Melissa has a number of unique flavors, including chocolate chip pancake, tie dye and peanut butter and jelly. “You get to taste and enjoy more sweets that way without feeling guilty,” she says.
When asked what the best advice she's ever received was, she says, "To not let emotions get the best of you. Baked By Melissa is something I love and am so passionate about, so it’s hard to keep my emotions in check sometimes. It’s the single most important thing for me to do to be effective with the things I do every day."
Wheelys Cafe
Two years ago, 27-year-old Maria De La Croix applied for a barista job at a Starbucks in Stockholm. She didn’t get the job, she says, because her hair was “too blue.” The rejection inspired her to set out to sell her own coffee, so she founded Wheelys cafe, a solar-powered bike café franchise. She’s managed to participate in the Ycombinator accelerator and start a global company in a matter of two years.
Wheelys aims to simplify the experience of those who may have trouble, say, coming up with half a million dollars to open a Starbucks franchise. Startup costs have ranged from $3,000 to $7,000, depending on the Wheelys bike model, and the monthly franchise fee (which includes access to the Wheelys branding materials and other support) is $200 per month. “Everyone working on our cafés, they own their café, their heart is in the café,” De La Croix says.
“They decided that this is what they wanted to do. They invested in it. They put a lot of time and effort into it. It’s not like they applied for a job.” Jared Friedman, Wheelys investor and Y Combinator partner shared his thoughts, “For the Wheelys members, Wheelys is not just a job, it is a social movement. Which fits, because the Wheelys founders are the natural leaders of that kind of movement. They are gutsy, high-spirited and entertaining.” Ultimately, Wheelys’s defiance is meant to call others to action: You can start a business with minimal funds and materials, and you can sell high-quality goods. You don’t have to be limited by corporate constraints.
Dry Sparkling
Before you start shelling out, consider the advantages of having limited resources: It can make you more creative and resourceful -- two things every startup needs. What opportunities are you overlooking?
Sharelle Klaus found hers out of necessity. When she launched her sparkling-beverage company, Dry Sparkling, in 2005, she took out a $15,000 home equity line of credit and set aside $3,000 for brand identity, a meager fee to launch a brand. But she found a former colleague’s spouse who’d just opened a branding agency and was seeking its first clients. “We had to be scrappy,” Klaus says.
The agency, Turn style studio, took a chance on Dry becoming a loyal, long-term client and swung for the fences -- creating award-winning consumer packaging that helped both client and agency. In the decade since, Klaus has paid the agency hundreds of thousands of dollars. That was, finally, marketing money she was happy to spend.
Wireless Zone
At age 15, Molly Martin took a part-time job at a mobile-phone store in Greenville, Mich. She was a natural and quickly worked her way from intern to sales associate, then sales manager and, eventually, at the age of 21, division manager. By the time she was 22, she decided to go into business for herself. “I started looking at different franchises in the mobile space and eventually signed on with Wireless zone,” says Martin, who took ownership at 23. “This industry is growing more into a tech industry -- there’s so many ways to expand.” Now 26, she has opened two successful units, in Fremont and Whitehall, north of Grand Rapids.
Q: Why did Wireless Zone take a chance on a 23-year-old you?
A: I’d been in the industry so long that I had good support from Verizon, the carrier Wireless Zone works with. I’d worked with account managers and district managers for years, and they had my back. I was fresh out of college, where I studied business and marketing and entrepreneurship. I learned how to manage the back end of a company and how to run the sales floor. In fact, with my experience, the training period was cut to 10 days from 21.
Q: When did you add your second store?
A: Within six months of opening my first store, in Fremont, a second location opened up, in Whitehall, 20 miles away. That area really needed a store, and I simplified operations by replicating everything I’d done with my first store.
Q: What was your biggest struggle as a franchise owner?
A: I opened my third location, a kiosk, in February 2015 in the Grandville mall, but I didn’t really know anything about how malls work. The whole experience was outside my comfort zone. Staffing in the mall, for one, was difficult. The employees were really “mall employees” and not salespeople. The kiosk took up a lot of my attention, and my other stores suffered, so 11 months later I closed the kiosk. In two weeks, the numbers in my original two stores were back up. I learned that if you’re not comfortable, there’s no reason to waste your time and energy on it.
DingMan Group
Ten years ago, Chris Dingman launched his company on the flimsiest of grounds. It’s called DingMan Group, and it relocates professional athletes -- so, say, if a guy is traded from the Miami Heat to the Cleveland Cavaliers, The Dingman Group would arrange to sell the house in Miami, pack it up, move the stuff and find a new home in Cleveland. It’s a clever, one-of-a-kind service, but there was a hitch: The “Group” was just Dingman, and he had no experience in real estate or professional sports.
Also, he was damn near broke -- and it took him almost a year and a half to find his first client. “It was gnarly,” he says. “No matter how much you’re struggling as an entrepreneur, you have to put a face on.” His fortunes are considerably different now. When he spoke to Entrepreneur one day in early April, The Dingman Group -- now a five-person outfit in Newport Beach, Calif.-- was in the middle of relocating 115 athletes, coaches, personnel and entertainers, plus opening offices in Denver and London.
He has much to be proud of, but here’s one of his biggest sources of pride: “When it comes to PR and advertising, we’ve never paid for anything, ever,” he says. “I dig my heels into that. I really enjoy being able to tell people that.”
Source & Photos from Entrepreneur Magazine
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eduheal
7/15/2020ReplyAs a young person I am encourage and hope that every campus member reads this article. It has further encouraged us not look at capital before we can start business but to look at letting clients understand what we are offering or what to offer among other factors.
Campus members need to be motivated by reading this article
togeda
7/14/2020ReplyThis article is a wonderful lesson for us entrepreneur. This is because many of us look at funds before we can start a business. Going through these stories will motivate us to forge a head in our dreams to be successful entrepreneurs. I encourage campus members to read this article as it will help us us to stay motivated even in the face of challenges and difficulties.
