Originally published: VISIONS Magazine, Fall 2009

For Jennic Law it was the lone store-bought toy of her childhood.

 

For Danny O’Neill it was the ultimate cup of joe.

 

For Dan Welk it was living life on his own terms.

 

For ISU’s alumni entrepreneurs, inspiration comes in many forms. But the tie that binds them is a willingness to grab it and run – fast.

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“It’s not the money,” says O’Neill (’83 political science & international studies), who has owned The Roasterie coffee company in Kansas City for more than a decade since quitting his job as a corporate sales executive. “Happiness, happiness, happiness. At the end of the day, when you think about it, that’s what it’s all about. There are going to be dark days. It’s not the dollar signs that are going to pull you through. It’s this intrinsic passion that comes from deep within, knowing you’re doing what you’re supposed to be doing.”

 

O’Neill is confident that what he is supposed to be doing is sharing the joy of the world’s best coffee with others. He uses a special air roasting technique to produce celebrated custom blends for retailers and restaurants. And in 2005, he opened The Roasterie Café in Kansas City’s Brookside neighborhood, further expanding the reach of what has grown into a multi-million-dollar company.

 

While O’Neill is crazy about coffee, Law’s passion is child’s play.

 

A cancer survivor who grew up in rural China with only a cheap wind-up zebra to play with, Law (’00 chemical engineering) started the eco-friendly toy company KangarooBoo with her husband two years ago after being inspired by beautiful wooden toys they saw on a vacation and the desire to be the best parents possible to Sebastian, 6, and Fiona, 4.

 

“We were just in love with these things,” she says. “They were simple, classic, and made children think.” Using her passion for providing families with non-toxic toys (and, she admits, something of a desire to relive her own childhood) in concert with husband Justin’s Web design skill, the couple launched an online business that has thrived and grown. They recently opened a storefront in West Des Moines’ Valley Junction neighborhood.

 

“I define an entrepreneur as someone who takes risks and someone who has a dream and goes for it,” Law says. “We have taken a big risk by selling our house and putting all our savings into this business. We sold our comfortable home in the Twin Cities and moved back to Iowa to make the dream come true.”

 

And now, Law says, she owns a business that allows her to truly focus on what’s most important to her: her children. “The first and foremost reason why we started KangarooBoo is so that we can spend more time as a family with our children,” she says. “We can work while the kids are here at work with us. We are a two-person operation – well, we do have the help of our [little] toy testers.”

 

Parenthood is also what snapped Welk (’00 journalism) out of a seven-year career coma. While standing in a “horrible” line at a portrait studio on daughter Claire’s first birthday, the full-time corporate radio journalist realized that the photos he had taken of Claire were much better, anyway. “The light bulb came on that day,” he says.

 

It was a bulb his wife, Renee (’00 speech communication), had twisted into place a few months earlier.

 

“She was tired of how unhappy I was and said, ‘You need to do something about this,’” he recalls. “She just gave me a deadline, like, ‘This is the date when you need to come up with something else you want to do.’ Renee is more of the entrepreneurial one of the family, and she’s sort of infected me with that spirit. I probably would have been content to keep working and complaining about it if she hadn’t been there to push me. She’s the kind of person who doesn’t make the best out of situations – she changes the situation.”

 

So in October 2007, Welk launched Click Photography out of his Des Moines home. When second daughter Mara was born last summer, the business became his full-time job. He takes portraits and photographs weddings, does freelance photojournalism, and sells artistic pieces. He sets his own schedule and cares for his daughters. “If you love your job and get a lot out of it,” he says, “that’s your life. But if you don’t really like your job, you’re sacrificing a third of your life just to pay the bills. That’s never felt like a good way to live to me.”

 

If home is where the heart is, entrepreneurs certainly put a lot of heart into their work.

 

“My wife is also starting her own business,” Welk says. “And our house is nuts right now.”

 

Law and O’Neill both started their businesses in their basements – Law using hers in West Des Moines to stash e-commerce inventory and O’Neill literally using his to roast coffee. (He drew some stares back in the days when he was stinking up the neighborhood, he recently told the Kansas City Star.)

 

Entrepreneurship is a career path that constantly blurs work life and personal life, but none of these alumni have ever been big time-clock punchers.

 

“For [my wife and me], it’s about lifestyle,” Welk says. “It’s about having that control over our lives and being in charge of our time. Maybe we’re control freaks; I don’t know.”

 

Dane Pigott (’09 architecture) recently launched the Chicago-based recreational company Weekend Products with his brother after designing the “Bev Barge” at a family reunion. As a recent graduate in a difficult job market, Pigott says he has enjoyed the opportunity to create his own career path and his own working style – even if he was forced to do so by outside circumstances.

 

“It’s a big risk and a significant financial investment,” he says, “but most of my friends still can’t find jobs. There’s not a lot of opportunity out there right now to work for others, so I’m just jumping into it myself.”

 

“You know, the other day we came up with a marketing idea,” Pigott adds. “We didn’t have anyone telling us, ‘You can’t do that.’ It’s exciting to feel like I’m taking charge of my life.”
“As an entrepreneur, you can’t tell me I can’t,” says O’Neill. “Even if it’s against my best interests, I’m gonna do it. I’m not proud of that, but it’s so much an entrepreneurial trait. The more I heard ‘can’t,’ the more I was dead set on doing it.”

 

For most entrepreneurs, the word “can’t” is not really an excuse for anything. And a “can-do” attitude toward customer service plays a big role in separating out the successful.

 

“The whole idea is customer service,” O’Neill says of The Roasterie. “People say we’re nuts offering all these custom blends. It’s complex, but it’s always been our intent to give [customers] what they want, when they want, how they want, where they want. And find a way to do that successfully and profitably.”

 

And even after 16 years, O’Neill’s company still guarantees same-day roasting and shipping to its customers.

 

KangarooBoo is also a pioneer in customer service and fast shipping, becoming when it launched almost two years ago the first in the online toy industry to offer “same-day or next-day” shipping. “When people order online, they wanted it yesterday,” Law says. “It is always our focus to make it easiest for customers. Justin and I started with e-commerce because we wanted to bring ‘mom and pop’ customer service to the Internet.”

 

Another trail Law’s and O’Neill’s businesses have in common is a spirit of philanthropy. KangarooBoo’s customers can choose a children’s charity to which portions of their toy purchase proceeds will be donated. (“I appreciate life so much more since cancer,” Law says.) And O’Neill has used The Roasterie’s international coffee connections to create such projects as a preschool in Brazil and an entrepreneurial school in Rwanda.

 

A spirit of community is common among entrepreneurs. A recent survey of more than 5,000 ISU alumni conducted by Robert Jolly, Li Yu, and Peter Orazem in the university’s Department of Economics found that Iowa State’s alumni entrepreneurs are more active and social in their communities. It goes with the job, Welk says.

 

“You sort of think you can put yourself out there and people are just going to hear about [your business],” he says. “But it’s hard to take that next big step and make yourself really well known. I do a lot of networking.”

 

Marketing is a common challenge for entrepreneurs, often solved by good old-fashioned trial-and-error approaches. Many, including Law and Welk, have found social networking tools like Facebook and Twitter to be good for business.

 

“I’m very much connected to my computer,” Law says.

 

Of the estimated 19,442 businesses created by ISU alumni in the past 25 years, 13,756 were still operational at the end of 2007, according to the Department of Economics study. Identifying resources that can help, especially for the many who lack formal business training, is key.

 

Tom Spanier (’00 interior design) started his own interior design firm in Chicago, TZS Design, after getting laid off from his job with a larger firm in January. He admits that writing his own contracts, sending bills, and making spreadsheets was a little scary at first, but his motivation to succeed trumped the concerns about his number-crunching know-how.

 

“I’m always thinking about my business; I’m always thinking of ways to get better,” he says. “It’s just the kind of person I am. I go and read articles, read books. You become much more interested when it’s your own business and not someone else’s.”

 

Welk also says he had to climb a steep knowledge hill when it come to the business side of things; he has utilized online services and resources at the Small Business Development Center but admits he has much more to learn.

 

“We’re still figuring it out as we go,” he says. “I think we get better at it all the time, but I think the more you learn the more you realize you have to learn, if that makes any sense…you start to find out what you don’t know.”

 

But a true entrepreneur is hard to scare off, O’Neill says.

 

“You always find a way to do it,” he says. “If you’ve got an entrepreneur on the other end of the line, it’s ‘You bet. You know what, we’ll make it happen; yep, come over and we’ll take care of you.’ You hang up the phone and you have no idea how you’re going to do this, but [you] find a way.

 

“I don’t preach to anybody that you should be an entrepreneur. If you’re not up for it, you shouldn’t be. Not everybody is up for it. But if you are, if you dream, dream big. Go for it. You’re the only one who’s going to hold yourself back.”