Today we’d like to introduce you to Jeff Williams.
Jeff, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
I started my first business just before my 40th birthday after leaving an 18 year corporate career as a MBA trained marketing executive. I initially sold marketing services as a consultant. Within the first few months a former corporate colleague of mine asked if I would come in a look over his franchise business which was experiencing problems. Together we were able to reset his marketing and management and keep his business alive. During this engagement I realized that although my friend was also an MBA he knew very little about how to run a small business. The light went on in my head…I thought that there were other people like him in the Chicago area who needed small business coaching. So, I launched the Go Smart Entrepreneurial Training Center, a walk in coaching and training business located in Skokie. I knew marketing really well but not training so much. After looking around I licensed a business startup program from a professor at Indiana U and starting selling coaching packages at $2500 each. It was quite a challenge the first two years as Chicago was not then a very entrepreneurially oriented city and many prospects didn’t want to invest the time necessary to start a business when they could easily find a new corporate job. My big breakthrough came when I was exhibiting at a trade show on the south side of Chicago and I was approached by three managers from the Private Industry Council of Northern Cook County, a federally funded job training agency based in Park Ridge (the agency no longer exists). They wanted to go after a demonstration grant from the US Dept. of Labor and asked if I wanted to help them land it. The demo program went so well that the agency succeeded in landing seven annual grants to provide entrepreneurial training to downsized corporate managers. In 1992 the program won a national award for its effectiveness. The $350,000 I earned from running this program shot my company ahead. Word spread of what we were doing and soon I also was selling my program to 50 plus Small Business Development Centers across the Midwest. I am an example of a successful business that was launched during a recession (my PIC program started in 1991). By 1997, it was obvious that the funding for the PIC program was running out and enrollments in the live programs offered by the SBDCs was waning. I surveyed dozens of participants of the SBDC programs and discovered that they thought the program was great but driving to a classroom ten times was very inconvenient. It was 1998 and I had just started to learn about the Internet. Using Microsoft Front Page software I launched my first website in late 1998 – it was really just a digital billboard for my live coaching program. About this time I met a fellow at a trade show in Utah who had experience raising venture capital in Boston and who also had teaching experience. He liked what I was trying to do with my new venture and agreed to join as a partner to create a business plan and go shopping for investment capital. Our efforts to land money in Boston failed but a friend http://www.bizstarters.com/of my mine in the Polish business community offered a lead to a private investor. In spring of 1999, at what time we now know was the beginning of the end of the dot.com boom, I hooked up with the private investor to secure $100,000 of startup capital for a new company. I chose the name Bizstarters.com. The deal completed in summer of 1999, which was fortuitous as most web based deals were dead by the middle of 2000. My initial business was selling my startup course packaged as a spiral bound workbook with one on one coaching offered as an upsell. After the 9/11 disaster I was asked by the job training agency to return and to provide self-employment training to United Airlines employees and some from other aviation related businesses, all of whom had been laid off after the disaster. This income helped me successfully launch Bizstarters. By the time this funding ran out I was receiving more and more inquiries from folks in their fifties with interest in looking at running a business after leaving the corporate world. I made the decision in 2002 to start branding myself as ‘the leading expert for starting a business after 50”. In 2007, Kiplinger’s Personal Finance magazine selected Bizstarters.com as “the leading entrepreneurial guide for people over 50” and inquires for startup coaching really started to grow. Today, Bizstarters is well known as a provider of coaching services to new boomer entrepreneurs. In 2010 I created the Virtual Incubator coaching program to offer our unique combination of proven business planning, individualized coaching and all the necessary startup services to boomer clients. I started licensing the coaching program to other experienced business owners in 2012 and now have three other coaches. I expect to license more over the next couple of years. Our brand slogan today is: “From Scratch to Hatch in 90 days”. I frequently blog, publish the “Business Startup for Boomers” podcast (now on our You Tube channel), and write for business websites including nextavenue.com, forbes.com and businessweek.com.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
My initial obstacle was trying to sell entrepreneurial training in a city that was not known for launching many new startups (it is quite different today). I realized shortly after starting use of the licensed program I was selling that it needed to be updated for use in a major city. I tried and tried to get hold of the gentleman who licensed it to me but could not reach him. So, I exercised my “out clause” in my contract and sent him a registered letter that in 90 days I was done using his product. Suddenly, two years into my life as an entrepreneur I no longer had a product to sell. I checked into a hotel room for two days and restarted my company. From this came the Go Smart Entrepreneurial Training Center. My next big challenge came in the late 1990’s as my work with the job training agency was coming to an end and I needed to replace the income. It took me three solid years to pivot to branding myself as an expert in helping boomers launch businesses.
Please tell us about Bizstarters.com.
In 2016 more than 25% of all new businesses in the US were managed by someone over age 55 (more than 115,000). This is being driven to a large extent by the widespread interest among the older boomers to continue working throughout their sixties (and beyond sometimes) but having an alternative to corporate employment. Self-employment is an increasingly popular alternative.
We have learned from surveying hundreds of individuals over age 55 that most are looking for the most convenient and expert process for turning their good ideas into great businesses. They want what one could call “one stop shopping’ for business startup: that is a single contact person to help them access all the process, advice and services they need to successfully launch their businesses.
I have been offering a new business planning course in one sort or another since 1992 .To date, more than 3,000 people have participated in one of our courses and so I have accumulated a lot of user information on what works well. Plus, I work energetically to stay up to date on business technology. I believe that Bizstarters.com is the only company in the U.S. whose full time focus is nurturing new boomer entrepreneurs. Some others offer self-employment training to clients of all ages or offer just web-based resources. But we are the only one that offers both digital resources and live coaching to clients over age 50.
I also know that our typical boomer client wishes to get his or her business up and running as quickly as possible. To deliver both the one stop shopping capability and the quick launch capability, I have systematically built our Virtual Incubator coaching program to today offer what I call a “dual track approach”.
While our client works one on one with a Virtual Incubator coach to craft a strong marketing and selling strategy and action plan, our support team completes a series of organizational decisions for the client, ranging from domain name registration, to website design and launch, to installing and using accounting software.
We typically work with a client for 12 weeks. Because of our dual track system this means that we are able to give the client the equivalent of 24 weeks of pre-launch work in this calendar period, and so we are confident that we will help the client launch his new business in in 90 days or less.
If you had to go back in time and start over, would you have done anything differently?
1. Seek out partners to grow more quickly.
2. Work with people smarter than you are.
3. Show sincere care for your clients.
4. Find some joy each and every day…or find some other kind of work to do.
5. Keep learning.
Pricing:
- Business Concept Development $750
Contact Info:
- Website: www.bizstarters.com/vi
- Phone: 847-305-4626
- Email: jeff@bizstarters.com
Getting in touch: VoyageChicago is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.
