1. What inspired you to pursue entrepreneurship?
I have two reasons for wanting to be an entrepreneur. First, I was inspired by my father. He too was an entrepreneur, owning a successful sprinkler installation business. The second reason was the appeal of having control of my success and the flexibility to accommodate my family schedule.
2. How did you go about marketing your service or product?
My business, My business was three pronged. The Identification Source, provided child safety badging, school and employee badging and badging equipment. The child safety badging program, “Kid Printz”, provided parents with a wallet sized ID card that contained the child’s electronic fingerprint, photo, and information regarding specific features, such as the child’s height, weight and eye color. My business model required different marketing techniques for each specific group. For child safety and school badging, my marketing approach was to schedule visits with the school principles to discuss offering the parents access to obtaining the child safety ID cards. Typically, we would start by partnering with the school and participate in events and fairs, allowing parent the opportunity to purchase the safety card. Will partnering with the school, we also participated in mentoring events and career fairs. After establishing a relationship with the school district and the school leadership, we began marketing the school ID card program. When we started the business in 1996, very few school had student ID cards. The lean school budgets didn’t allow them to purchase the ID card systems. This opened an opportunity to offer the student ID card service to the local schools.
Our marketing model for business was a different approach. Typically businesses had the capital and resources to purchase the ID card systems. For small businesses we offered to provide the ID card services directly to them. For larger companies we offered reasonable rates for obtaining the card printing system. For marketing to this group, we focused of mailing and cold calls. Many times, we would meet potential clients for businesses, through the partnerships with the schools, as they too were school partners.
3. What advice would you give to a young entrepreneur just starting their business?
Always start with a business plan. The business plan ensures that you have considered the competition the market, and the cost of your business.
4. If you could illustrate one lesson being an entrepreneur has taught you, what lesson would it be?
The buck stops with you. You are the owner and the responsible party for your business and your employees. Your employees represent you and your brand. Always keep an eye on what is happening and continuously conduct quality control check on the health of your business, your staff, your product and yourself.
5. Do you think collaborating with other business like yours would improve or hinder growth for you?
In my line of business, collaborating with like businesses would not be fruitful, however, collaborating with business that compliment mine can help growth.
6. What is the end goal for your business? Exit strategy?
Our exit strategy is something that I wished we thought more of at the beginning of our business. We are a small business. As time progresses, and technology has changed, larger corporations are entering our space. We have been fortunate to maintain local relationships and contracts with the counties and schools in our district. Our goal is to sell our contracts to the larger corporations that are entering the ID card space.
