Turning on the Light Bulb
Business inspiration comes from a variety of places.

By Ellen Jensen

Although many a person has tried to find inspiration in a pint of beer, Joe Runyan actually succeeded. He was on a business trip in Minnesota, sitting at a bar with some clients when the lightbulb came on.

“I was talking to one of my client’s husbands, a mechanical engineer,” Runyan said. “I’m a marketing guy. I was trying to think of things to talk about, so I asked how bubbles got into beer.”

That led to a discussion about carbon dioxide in cola and beer, its lifting properties and eventually to a technology for using liquid carbon dioxide to clean clothes. Runyan had always thought of dry cleaning as nasty and unsexy, but suddenly he saw a business opportunity.

“The brightest minds are trying to put together software solutions,” Runyan said. “Why compete against them? I thought dry cleaning was antiquated and underserved.”

The Business of Inspiration
Inspiration comes from many places, but if you don’t already have a creative mindset, sometimes you have to learn how to cultivate it. That’s where Sue Mosby comes in. She helps clients find inspiration to improve their business processes through her Innovation Lab. She said she was inspired to help business executives find inspiration through a web of connections that kept leading to the same point.

When she was in the architectural design industry, she discovered that leaders of those organizations thought differently than leaders in creative industries. She thought perhaps they were missing opportunities by leaving that creative aspect out, and could benefit from adding more creativity to their well-tuned analytical process. Then her clients began asking her to help them with non-design issues because they knew she could bring a different perspective to the table.

“I identified a need that was not being met and recognized that I had the skill set to fill that need,” Mosby said.

But how could she deliver that service? The idea of exercising the mind hit her while she was on a treadmill at the gym and stopped her in her tracks.

“Instead of showing somebody how to solve a particular problem, I was going to show them techniques to get ideas and improve ideas—the whole creative process,” Mosby said.

She said she wanted to serve the local community because she felt the creative process was developmental. Just as running on a treadmill for three days won’t make you physically fit, neither do you become creatively fit in three days, she said. It’s a continual development process. You get creatively fit by exercising your creative muscles over time.

For a while, the working name for the Innovation Lab was the “Creative Fitness Center,” Mosby said.

“I even referenced it as a ‘gym for the mind,’ ” she said.

Country Livin’
Those people with an entrepreneurial mindset will find inspiration in a variety of places—on a treadmill, in a glass of beer or right under their own roof. Such was the case for Tim North and business partner Marc Cochrane. The two entrepreneurs grew up together in Kansas, founding several businesses together along the way.

North had just built a new home and office to house their collection agency, but they wanted to find a product they could apply to the buildings that would help put a fire out or reduce the amount of damage.

Cochrane said that in rural areas, the main focus when a fire breaks out is to make sure people and animals get out safely and that it doesn’t spread to other buildings or fields.

“The fire department can only bring so much water,” Cochrane said.

Cochrane and North did some research and found a company called No-Burn that offers fire and mold-retardant products. They treated the house—just in time, it turned out. During the next few months, the house was hit by lightning, and it blew a hole in the roof where flames started to shoot up. Because of the fire-retardant material, the fire was unable to take hold. Instead of facing a burned-down house and office, they merely had to do some repair work. Cochrane said two other houses caught fire from that storm, with worse results.

Cochrane and North did extensive testing on scrap lumber and hay bales and couldn’t get them to burn.

The two were sold on the product and signed up to be a No-Burn dealer for Kansas and Missouri.
    
Health Services
For Sherry Payne, owner of The CPR Lady, inspiration comes from various sources.

“Entrepreneurship runs in my family,” she said. “My mother owns a catering business. One of my children has been an entrepreneur since he was a teenager, and my oldest son and his wife are actively working on purchasing an existing business.”

She also is inspired by the examples that she sees in the community—especially the women who are running successful businesses. One of the assignments in her master’s degree program is to spend time with female executives. She has met with Joy Wheeler of FirstGuard Health Plan and Kathy Dodd of The Corridor Group.

“These women have inspired me to have greater goals for myself and the business, and to think about my business on a grander level,” Payne said.

She wanted to do something that married her interests in health care and business. She holds an instructor certification for CPR and had been exposed to safety training as a nurse.

“I thought, ‘If I get some mannequins, I would have the beginnings of a business,’” Payne said. She financed the business herself, acquiring equipment slowly as she could afford it.

Payne provides certified trainers to teach CPR, first aid and defibrillator training. The company uses American Heart Association materials and guidelines and provides courses for healthcare professionals, lay rescuers who need certification for their work, as well as parents and grandparents. The business has grown from just Payne and a few mannequins to a staff of trainers fulfilling contracts with several local businesses and organizations.

Bag of Beans
Rabbit Creek started with a bag of beans—that and Donna Cook’s penchant for cooking. Cook said somebody had given her a bag of mixed, dried beans, and one day she came up with the idea of pairing the beans with her own combination of spices and packaging them so that customers would only have to add water and ham.

Cook came up with a company name, packaged the beans with spices and instructions in a cloth bag stenciled with the company’s logo, and she was on her way. She sent off samples with flyers and wholesale price sheets to every country catalog she could find. A few weeks later, she got a call from the buyer for Jack Daniel Distillery. They gave her a purchase order to put her soup mix into their catalog. The bean soup mix turned out to be the hottest-selling food item in their catalog that year.

“I freaked out,” Cook said. “There was no way I could do all that by myself.”

Her mom and dad helped her put that first Jack Daniel order together, and the business grew from there. Now, she sells between 150-200 items.

When Opportunity Knocks…
Judy Reyhle learned the art of reweaving 24 years ago so she could stay home with her children. Now, it was time to pass along that knowledge to other young mothers. She said she was inspired to start Amazing Garment Repair by the support of her friends, family and business partner, Linda Knefelkamp.

She wasn’t sure she could find young people with enough patience to stick with it long enough to learn the trade, but she did. Two employees have toddlers at home; the other doesn’t have children yet but is planning ahead to learn a trade so she can stay home, Reyhle said.

“Every day I am inspired by my love of the art, the help of my friends and family, and always the customers,” Reyhle said. “They are so appreciative and amazed.”

At Amazing Garment Repair, they don’t weave fabric on a loom, but rather they repair fabric that has holes—one stitch at a time.

“All we need are our hands, special needles, jewelers glasses and good light,” Reyhle said.

It takes at least a year to become proficient at most weaves, but Reyhle tells her re-weavers that they are going to see new challenges for the rest of their lives.

“You learn to be creative and figure out how to fix each problem,” Reyhle said. “There’s a challenge every week—a different type of eyelet, tear or burn.”

From Inspiration to Business
It’s not enough to be hit with a lightning bolt of an idea. Once inspiration strikes, you have to follow through. When he returned from his Minnesota business trip, Runyan did some digging and found research supporting the bar conversation. A cash-based business with virtually no receivables seemed like a great opportunity. Plus, the idea of using liquid carbon dioxide piqued his interest because it was different. He said cleaning with liquid carbon dioxide has so many things going for it. For example, it does not harm the environment, and it’s better for people to work around.

“Investors in Kansas City liked the idea because it was simple to understand,” Runyan said. “I raised money, quit Sprint, and here we are.”
The environment was also a consideration for Cochrane and North. Cochrane said that some of the reasons they liked the idea of working with No-Burn was that all of its products are non-toxic, environmentally friendly and Underwriter Laboratory tested. He added that the mold-retardant aspect is important as well because insurance companies have excluded mold claims in their insurance policies.

Since becoming full-time distributors in October, their business has blossomed. Their Midwestern work ethic has even drawn the eye of ABC television producers. They have become the liaison for ABC’s Extreme Makeovers and have participated in seven episodes since January, including the project here in Kansas City and another one in Missouri last month.

“We saw this as an opportunity where we could develop our own company using their products,” Cochrane said. “We could have an impact on saving lives and property. If you lose a wedding dress, baby pictures or other mementos from your kids, you can‘t recreate them, and kids are only little once.”

Lessons Learned
The CPR Lady comes on the heels of two previously unsuccessful health care-related businesses. Much to the trepidation of her husband, Payne felt strongly that she should start her current business, even as her previous business was going under.

“I didn’t have any rational way to explain why I was doing this, but my heart propelled me forward,” she said. “I have always tried to share whatever meager talents I have with the community.”

Payne said that this time around her mission is clearer. With the first business, she never settled down to her mission. With the second, she was trying to do what she thought would make a successful business, instead of focusing on her strengths. This time, her mission is to make safety training easily accessible, affordable and consumer friendly.

“I discovered when I was in nursing school that I had a gift for health education—being a part of behavioral and belief change,” Payne said.
This time, Payne said, she has chosen something she likes and has a gift for.

Make Time For Inspiration
The first step in the creative process is insight—getting inspiration, Mosby said. And she added that the search for inspiration should be broad. If your business is in the finance industry, for example, you might look for inspiration in other areas, such as arts or travel.
“Allowing yourself the ability to receive inspiration is critical,” Mosby said. “It’s also important to learn the habit of making time for inspiration.”

Ellen Jensen is the managing editor of Kansas City Small Business Monthly magazine.