Chris Hurn is CEO of Fountainhead, offering SBA 504 loans, SBA 7(a) loans, and low loan-to-value conventional loans.
getty
“Sweet Tooth Ltd” was once a fun side hobby in a two-stoplight town in downstate Illinois that transformed into a successful small business spanning three decades. After picking up some helpful tips from a neighbor, my mother, Suzanne Brinker, started handmaking chocolates.
As her business grew, the variety of treats evolved into peanut brittle, wedding mints, chocolate-covered cherries, fudge, chocolate-covered pretzels—you name it. I grew up helping my mother run her small business and learned valuable lessons I still apply to my own business every day. Here are a few:
There Are No Shortcuts
My mother didn’t take the easy route when making her candies; she took on the labor-intensive task of handcrafting each one. Through observing her patiently pour hot chocolate into molds, letting it settle, placing the molds into the freezer for hours, then hand-painting each layer of chocolate (sometimes multiple layers if different colors were involved), I saw firsthand the amount of effort she put into her products.
When helping my mother set up her booth for local fairs or events, I was meticulous in arranging the product displays and inventory. Attention to detail is a skill I still carry with me to this day while running my own small business.
Building a solid foundation for a small business requires attentiveness. Over my more than two decades of experience in Small Business Administration lending, I have found there’s nothing more powerful in business than when you can ensure entrepreneurial dreams with strong execution and smart money.
Diligence Is A Virtue
While raising my brother and me, my mother worked countless hours around the clock to fulfill orders. Her work didn’t end even after selling all day at local events or festivals or after filling call-in orders (this was before websites). On her way home, she would stop at the store to pick up supplies and flavorings (lemon or grape, for example) to continue producing candy through the night for her next booking or order.
Today, I look for strong work ethics in each employee I hire. During the pandemic when we were processing Paycheck Protection Program loans, I averaged over 120 hours per week for many months to help provide vital resources to keep small businesses afloat. I’m an entrepreneur: What drives me each day is helping other small businesses grow to keep their American dreams alive.
Get Out From Behind The Booth
Most of my mother’s customers came back time and time again, often finding out about the business through word of mouth or friends of friends. Making a good first impression can make or break any business. When she wasn’t a vendor, my mom worked entirely off referrals. This is a testament to the quality of products she was delivering and the brand she had worked tirelessly to build from scratch.
Much of my own business has grown from referrals, and my team and I hope to leave a lasting impression on each client we serve. Our team abides by “The Five S’s”: speed, service, specialization, sincerity and soul, which can help your team put its best foot forward, too.
While helping my mother at her pop-up events from the age of 8 onward, I realized how important it is to truly connect with customers and organically build lasting relationships. I often found myself getting out from behind the booth to promote what we were selling—a vital lesson for all entrepreneurs.
Go Big: Be Imaginative And Innovate
Every entrepreneur has a natural gift of ingenuity. One of the signature candies my mom made were called “All-Day Suckers” (lollipops with a 9-inch radius, made to last). No matter what she charged for these candies, customers always came back for more because it was such a novelty at the time. Similarly, be ambitious with your ideas: You never know what will stick.
My mother was also a master at resourcefulness and found an innovative way to not waste candy materials. Instead of throwing out broken “All-Day Suckers,” she devised a plan to put the pieces of hard candy into a bag with an array of different flavors, creating yet another product to sell.
I carry this sentiment with me today by continuing to evolve. No one could have predicted what 2020 brought us, and I leveraged my experience in SBA lending to take on PPP loans. But innovation doesn’t stop there. We are redeploying the technology that helped quickly process hundreds of thousands of PPP loans to our regular SBA lending so we can better serve and support the growth of Main Street businesses.
To apply this lesson to your own situation, consider what products or technologies you can repurpose to boost your business.
The Bottom Line
I learned these essential business lessons simply by working side by side with my mother during my childhood years. As entrepreneurs, we should look to the people around us both in the workplace and in our personal lives and absorb the lessons and values they pass onto us each passing day.
For the next generation of small-business owners, my mother has this advice: Take entrepreneurship one step at a time, and let your business grow. Don’t expect to achieve a lot right away. That way, when you do meet your goals, they’ll be like little presents.
Sweet wishes to you on your entrepreneurial journey from my mom and me.
Forbes Finance Council is an invitation-only organization for executives in successful accounting, financial planning and wealth management firms. Do I qualify?
