What Do You Know…?

Friday, August 25, 2006 at 11:28am by Evan Prieskop in Start-Ups

It is story time. Every Friday I will tell another piece of a growing story centered on one or more fictional young entrepreneurs. Throughout the story we will watch every minute step of our protagonist’s journey, examining the necessary choices made in the founding of a small business and how those choices are made.

Elise has an idea. She wants to open a fashionable used clothing store near her community college campus.

At first she is filled to bursting with plans. She wanders around in a daze dreaming up fashion racks and trading schemes. She bores her friends with a constant stream of imagined details about the store’s ambiance, background music, and layout. Only after a week of this is she confronted with the terrible question (asked by one of her friends, more out of annoyance than curiosity), “What do you know about starting a business?”

Elise’s only answer is, “Nothing.” As her excitement ebbs, Elise is faced with the hard truth that she has absolutely none of the qualifications she feels a business owner needs. She has heard of double-entry bookkeeping, but has no idea what it means. She does not know what is required to get a business license. She does not understand the difference between a sole proprietorship and a corporation, let alone the difference between an “S” corporation and a “C” corporation. In truth, most months she cannot even balance her own checkbook, let alone a business’s finances.

What is a girl to do?

Elise talks the problem out. She talks to her friends. She talks to her friends’ parents. Eventually, she even talks to her own parents. It is her mother who gives her the best idea. “Sweetheart, you know that music store you used to spend hours in after school? The young man who owns it has been there for years. He can’t have been much older than you when he started. Why don’t you ask him how he did it?”

Of course. Elise has been hanging out with Dave at Syncopate Records since high school. He has run small, counterculture store for most of a decade, and he is not even thirty. She immediately drives down to his store.

“I think it’s a great idea,” Dave answers brightly, “But starting up a storefront is a crap-load of work. You kinda have to give your whole life over the beast.”

Elise, perhaps a bit too blithely, answers that she is totally ready…if Dave is willing to help.

Dave frowns at her, “I am pretty busy, I don’t know how much help I can be.”

Elise responds with her best lowered-chin, pouty-lipped, batting-eyelashes look.

Dave, not unfamiliar with Elise’s wiles, bursts out laughing at her false-mawkishness. “Alright, kiddo. I’ll walk you through the stuff I did. If you are willing to do the work, I’ll tell you what you need to do.”

Elise swings behind the counter and surprises the wryly-smiling Dave with a hug.

Elise has a Mentor. Next week: Step One.

Keep up with Elise and her story of becoming a successful entrepreneur:

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