The world of business is a competitive place and that goes double for the United States.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, entrepreneurship plays a vital role in the U.S. economy and has been on a growing trend in recent years.
When it comes to starting your own business, it helps to know what you are getting yourself into and who better to ask than a success story?
Bethany Davidson is a successful business owner and has been since 1989, but she did not always want to be an entrepreneur. Growing up, her father had many different side businesses; from roofing barns to cutting trees, she was his primary worker.
“My dad growing up always had a business on the side. There was always something he was doing. So, you know, he was relatively blue-collar. He was relatively low-income in whatever jobs he held. He worked as a truck driver and in a warehouse, but he was always doing something on the side and every few years he would change,” Davidson said.
Right after high school at the age of 18, she went directly into corporate America doing accounting for Anchor Hocking, a company that manufactures glassware. This was during a time when there was a shift from paper documentation to digital, giving her valuable skills when it came to dealing with corporate gigs.
“Then I started a consulting practice helping small businesses set up their accounting systems and as I learned more and more I started to offer more and more services,” Davidson said.
There is nothing simple when it comes to starting a business, not even for Davidson and her consulting firm, but the skills she learned while in corporate America made it all the easier.
“I was lucky because I had a relatively good profile, in the sense that I was already working with small businesses. I would work for them and then they would refer me to other people, so what was the hardest part for other businesses, getting customers, for me happened to be the easiest. Though the hardest part of starting my business was doing everything else that comes with starting a business,” Davidson said.
Though Davidson had already started her business, while working for the University of Minnesota, she found a mentor that gave her invaluable experience.
“I was 27 and I started working there after just finishing my undergraduate. I had this boss who had an incredible vision for what we could do. He was really the person who taught me to write well and do many other things, but the most important thing was that he believed in me and that I could do anything,” Davidson expressed.
Having success in one area does not mean you will have success in another. According to Forbes, 80% of businesses survive their first year and then that number drastically falls within the next five from 50% to 45.4%. Davidson is no stranger to this.
Davidson and a friend had a business where they sold jewelry together, but it ultimately failed due to a lack of communication. Davidson said that when they would talk about the business, they would talk at each other but not to each other.
“We had different ideas of things like, what kind of products we would offer? What were the quality expectations? We pretty much differed on every question and we just had two totally different visions and we ended up not being friends anymore,” Davidson expressed.
Even after this loss, her consulting firm was still going strong, but after Sept. 11, 2001, she would reevaluate what she was doing and what she wanted to do.
“I was actually scheduled to fly to England on Sept. 12 and knowing that I was supposed to be flying internationally the next day, it just hit me really hard that I was 35 and felt like I wasn’t making progress and that I needed a change,” Davidson said.
In January 2002, she drove down to North Carolina knowing only one person. She was doing consulting work and other work for the state of Minnesota while working to expand her business. She finished her MBA at Western Carolina University to later start teaching at WCU in 2004 as an adjunct. She started teaching full-time in 2007.
Teaching was not something she considered until she was asked to do it. She still works for WCU today teaching classes in entrepreneurship at the College of Business.
“If you look at most businesses today [they have] the kind of skills that they want their employees to have, or the kinds of skills that entrepreneurs should have, such as the ability to problem solve, curiosity, being innovative things like that. So I think I am lucky that most of the things I teach have practical applications both in your personal as well as your professional life,” Davidson said.
Teaching for as long as she has means that she had many students come and go over the years who have started a multitude of businesses while in college.
“We have a student who opened a landscaping company and a student who owns her own hair salon. There was a student who got to pitch his business on Shark Tank. There are many stories like that. A lot of times we have students who have businesses on the side and they leverage what they learn in order to take their business full-time,” Davidson said.
While there have been many businesses started by her students, she has yet to invest in any of them stating potential conflicts of interest but has plans to in the near future.
“You can invest in someone’s business in many ways like lending money or being an investor, but I don’t know if I want to take an ownership stake in someone else’s business. I mean it’s their idea so I’d be happy to give them any information they may need or help them with funding, but that is what I am comfortable with,” Davidson said.
Many students are young and hungry who are ready to start businesses and become entrepreneurs, but the idea of the 20-something working in a garage may not be an accurate representation of entrepreneurship.
In an interview with cbsnews.com, professor J. Daniel Kim from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton Business School revealed through a study that the average age for an entrepreneur is 42.
“I think when you’re in your early 20’s, you don’t have the same fear, but you have different goals. You go to college and think ‘I have to get a job in order to leave my parents’ house’ and so on. When you’re in your 40’s, you have a better grasp on what your skills are and what you are confident of and you might have the resources and connections able to support a small business,” Davidson said.
Though she made this point about being older while having more experience and resources, she said she would not advise a young person to wait to start their business.
“I think that everyone needs to understand the type of business they want to start or they need to know something about business if they want to be successful because it is very difficult to be successful when you are flying by the seat of your pants,” Davidson said.
Starting a business is a difficult endeavor. There is a lot that goes into it and your first few attempts might end in failure, but the more you learn, the better chances of success you have in the long run.
Related story: WCU entrepreneur students – what motivates and drives them
