FairfieldNow
By Alejandra Navarro
At one point in everyone's career, the prospect of running a business emerges as an alluring dream. We long to taste what it's like to be our own boss, to develop a product or service and make it a profitable enterprise. For most of us, the risk of failure outweighs the appeal. For others, however, healthy doses of research, planning, and sacrifice - coupled with a whole lot of faith - make dreams happen.
Building better businesses
Ed Rodriguez, MBA '05, is in the business of helping other businesses flourish. As president of Sandoval Associates (www.sandovalassociates.com), a Stratford, Conn.-based management consulting firm, Rodriguez is dedicated to giving companies the direction and strategy to succeed. He and his partners, Fred Cook and Jorge Irizarry, founded the firm in May 2001, each bringing his own expertise: Cook in operations, Irizarry in finance, and Rodriguez in strategy development. Since then, the firm has added two professionals to the team.
Rodriguez recognized the value of the services his firm provides during his own climb up the managerial ladder. After graduating from the University of Puerto Rico, he became a chemical engineer and eventually ran a $50 million global business for Union Carbide Corp. as general manager. "I was groomed to be a corporate manager," explains Rodriguez, who was expected to complete a minimum of
40 hours of training each year. Typically, he spent even more hours refining his skills.
When he moved to a smaller company to become head of a division, its resources for training and education were limited. It quickly became apparent to him that businesses can put themselves at a disadvantage by not investing in the right areas. "If you don't have the resources to help your employees, what chances do you have to succeed?" Rodriguez asks. "It doesn't matter how good your ideas are, or how hard you work. Unless you are constantly educating your employees, they won't have the tools to succeed. I try to help clients understand that it's not a cost, it's an investment."
Employee development is just part of a business strategy, Rodriguez says. He emphasizes the importance of a business plan, which is essential in driving to profitability and growth, as well as the use of technology to put a company ahead of the competition. However, even his expertise in assessment, organizational alignment, sales and negotiation training, and work process analysis did not completely take the edge off his fears when he decided to found his own company.
"Having worked for corporate America for over 20 years, the notion of not having a paycheck coming every other week was at best disconcerting," he explains. "However, we had done our homework (meaning market assessment and research, business plan, strategy, etc.), which tended to mitigate some of the concerns, although a plan in-and-of-itself is not a panacea. Going into the process we knew it was going to take time, patience, faith, a lot of work and commitment, and luck."
Rodriguez recently invested in himself, earning an MBA in 2005 from the Charles F. Dolan School of Business. He wanted to ensure that he was on top of current business trends and ideas. "Once I started the consulting business, I thought it was important to have every tool available to me, in order to be fair to my clients and give them everything I could." Sandoval Associates' clients include Verizon and Motorola, as well as smaller companies that benefit from their guidance even more. "As an entrepreneur, you need to be sure that you get out there and network, and network, and network, because that's what's going to drive your success," he says.
A gift that became a business
Geralyn McBride '83 and her husband, Douglas Tolles, parlayed a holiday hobby into a fun soapmaking business. The Bethlehem, Conn., couple used to give away their handmade soaps as Christmas gifts. The soaps were so well received that friends encouraged the couple to sell them for profit. It wasn't until McBride ran out of their homemade soaps and the couple returned to store-bought brands that they recognized the difference in the quality of a soap made with all-natural
ingredients. Their friends' advice, the couple realized, had some merit. "I thought, this could be an interesting opportunity," says McBride, who knew that entry into the market was somewhat easy and something she could do from home.
In March 2004, McBride and her husband founded Sterling Botanicals. She already had a strong science background, having graduated with a degree in biology (CAS) in 1983. After graduation, she focused on the computer skills she had learned while at Fairfield and began working for GE. Today, she remains a part-time computer consultant but is devoting more time to her burgeoning business.
McBride and her husband have developed more than 30 recipes for soaps, and have narrowed them down to the 12 most popular, which include honey oatmeal, Dead Sea salt (avocado oil, lemon, and lime), and mango butter. In the last six months, the couple has sold several thousand bars online, at craft fairs, in specialty boutiques, and in the wholesale market. "The business is not yet where we would like to be," she admits, "but we've worked very hard to get where we are today."
The couple runs the entire operation themselves, doing everything from making the soap and designing the packaging to distributing the product and attracting new clients. They divide responsibilities based on their strengths. Her husband, for example, took on the task of making their business a limited liability company and adding liability insurance. The most difficult part of her business, she says, is the marketing. Creating a demand, only requires getting the product into the customers' hands. With a hint of pride she says, "Once we sell it, we get a lot of repeat customers."
Competition in the market has increased tremendously in the few years since they opened shop, she says. To gain an advantage, they are members of nationally recognized professional organizations, such as the Handcrafted Soap Makers Guild. "There are some people who go at it with huge capital and hit the ground running," McBride says. "We're taking the slow route."
But that doesn't mean McBride doesn't have big plans. She describes in detail - down to a possible location - a small country store with a soap production facility in back. It would have large windows for tours of the soap-making process. The shop would introduce the public to the product she once gave as a gift. In a sense, she still feels like she's giving a gift. "It's really a pleasure when people come back and tell us how our soap makes them feel."
The online business adventure
Travelers, whether they are vacation-bound sunbathers or adventure-bound mountain climbers, want an easy way to find information about their destinations. That was clear to Brian Harniman '94 back in 1997, when he developed Travelsites.com, a directory on the Internet that still receives about 3,500 visitors a day.
Eight years later, when he was asked to help develop a new Web company - one that would have an innovative way to gather this information online - Harniman was in. After three years as a project consultant, Harniman joined founders Bejul Somaia and Matthew Berk as Open List's chief executive officer in January 2006. The website (openlist.com) is a content aggregator in the travel and entertainment industry. In other words, it's a website that retrieves information from other websites, combines it, and structures it. Then it publishes the information on Openlist.com in a format that makes it easier for people to find exactly what they are looking for on the Web, such as services, ratings, reviews, maps, and other information. Want a Chicago hotel with babysitting services and a good gym? Open List can find a hotel that meets your needs and route you to the online agent to purchase it.
Despite the techno-bubble burst in the late '90s, Harniman continued to view the Web as a profitable venue. "It provides you with a platform to reach the masses, yet talk to individuals on a personal basis." he says. "It's amazingly powerful when you execute it the right way." Because the cost of running their online business was inexpensive, the trio was able to finance it with their own money and run it alone. "When people ask me, I tell them we have an extremely efficient staff, rather than talk about the numbers," he laughs.
As part of a small venture, Harniman has learned the importance of working toward specific goals. Often, that requires prioritizing work, he says. "In our case, there were many projects that were really attractive and maybe even easy to do, but the prudent thing was to invest time and money into those things that would increase the value of the enterprise for the long term." That value has increased to an impressive $13 million. That's what the online ad seller, Marchex, paid for Open List in spring 2006 - a coup for Harniman and his partners. He will stay on to integrate Open List into the parent company.
Harniman has never been shy about taking chances. In 1997, he was so smitten with the ideas of Priceline's founders that he quit his job at another retail website that very day. While at Priceline, Harniman built the company's online marketing department, as well as its car rental, vacation, and cruise services. After nine years, he left his secure position and paycheck to become a key player at Open List. "It was a hard decision because Priceline and I had really grown up together," Harniman explains. "But the opportunity at Open List was simply too good to pass up."
Harniman may have inherited his entrepreneurial drive from his father, Richard, who commuted from New York to Boston where he pursued his own startup ambitions. He also credits his Jesuit education with helping him define his personal and professional goals. "The ability to question who I was as a person, to challenge that view, and then to extend that idea to challenging the way things are - these things have really stayed with me," says Harniman, who graduated from Fairfield with a bachelor's degree in English (CAS).
Is there another startup in Harniman's future? "Definitely!" he responds without missing a beat. "Building a team is one of the most exciting and rewarding things you can do."
Success with security
After 9/11, when Americans learned that terrorists had slipped into the United States illegally and undetected, border security moved into the spotlight. Over time, Lynn Ann Casey '90 began thinking about how she might bring years of related expertise to bear on the issue - work she had been doing well before the threat of terrorism prompted governments to keep a watchful eye on who and what crosses their borders.
In 2001, Casey was working for the management consulting and technology services company Accenture (formerly Andersen Consulting) as senior manager in the field of homeland security - an expertise she had developed on the job. "I took seven months off to decide what to do with my life," she explains, noting that she had been with the firm for 14 years. "I knew I wanted to continue with the homeland security area, immigration, and customs."
So Casey founded Arc Aspicio (www.arcaspicio.com), a global management-consulting firm that specializes in homeland security, border management, and law enforcement. The firm's clients include the United States and European governments and private companies that work with governments on border issues.
Arc Aspicio, based in Arlington, Va., designs new business processes and technology solutions related to homeland security, including immigration and citizenship-benefits processing, cargo inspection, and assessing the risk of people crossing borders. Her work with the government has increased steadily. "We have something to do with a lot of the work that's going on related to all that," she says.
For example, Casey has applied her immigration experience to the Department of Homeland Security's US-VISIT (Visitor and Immigrant Status Indicator Technology) Program, which uses digital finger scans and photos to track foreign visitors and verify their identities. Most of her work, however, is classified.
Her business has grown quickly because she has a specialized expertise, has tapped into a niche market and, throughout her career, has cultivated good business relationships. "I had built up a strong network of people," explains Casey. "When you're working with the government, sometimes it's a small world."
Casey has been able to excel in what has traditionally been a male-dominated field. "I often find myself being one of only two women in a room with 40 men," she says, unfazed. Security and law enforcement have always interested Casey. Her uncle, a corrections officer, and her brother, a New York City police officer, greatly influenced her career path.
At Fairfield, she majored in English (CAS) and minored in sociology with a focus on law enforcement. Her leadership qualities were evident even as an undergraduate. As the editor of the Mirror, she increased advertising and arranged for new computers. She also encouraged the University to offer course credit to students on the Mirror staff. She impressed the folks from Andersen Consulting in a mock interview she attended for practice, and eventually received a job offer that launched her career.
Her husband, Rob O'Keefe, recently joined Arc Aspicio as chief technology officer. Together the couple has learned about the nuts and bolts of business and the logistics of hiring new employees. "Sometimes we have more work than we have staff," says Casey, who has five employees and also uses subcontractors. "That's a challenge."
Running the business has given Casey and her husband the flexibility to balance work and family. "We have the freedom to choose our clients and choose what we want to do," she says. Still, they have plans to grow the firm. "We're convinced it's going to do well."
