Baiter's parents kicked him out of the house at age 17 for having a bad attitude. In teenage terms, that means he was out "cavorting" until all hours of the night, sleeping late, skipping school and barely passing his classes. This hardly sounds like the background of an ambitious executive who'd become a millionaire before he was 30 years old. But that's exactly what happened.
Forced out on his own. Baiter had to find a way to make a living. An excellent carpenter, he put his talents to use converting his neighbors' messy closets into custom-built bastions of organization. Working from the back of his van, he ended up grossing $60,000 in his first year of business. Twelve years later, he sold his highly successful California Closet Co. to Williams-Sonoma Inc. for $12 million.
It helped Baiter tremendously that he had a mentor: a "believer" in the form of a friend's dad who fronted him the $1,000 and van he needed to get started in exchange for a piece of the action. A few years later, Baiter's "fairy godfather" sold his share back to Neil and his dad-with whom he made amends-for $20,000.
It was sorely needed financial and emotional support. Like many new ventures, Baiter was pitifully un-dercapitalized and highly dependent on "sweat equity." Along the way, he met up with many doom sayers, accountants and lawyers who were convinced no 17-year-old kid could make the concept work, no matter how great his carpentry skills might be. (Let's face it: There are lots of carpenters who never become millionaires.) But Baiter had that odd combination of ambition, drive and naiveté that sometimes outsparkles the more judicious voices of conventional wisdom.
Nonetheless there's something to be said for preparation. While Baiter can argue for the "school of hard knocks" over traditional education, most of today's more successful entrepreneurs are formally educated.
When one well known magazine compiled its 1994 list of America's 500 fastest-growing private companies, it found that nearly half the entrepreneurs listed have four-year undergraduate degrees. More than one-third hold advanced degrees, but not necessarily in business.
Tim Prince typifies this sort of entrepreneur. Prince started out, though, as a traditional corporate ladder-climber. Right after college, he joined Airmax, a transportation management company in Chicago. It was an exciting place for Prince to work because it was growing quickly. In five years, he worked his way up the ranks from customer service to marketing to sales management. Along the way, he was inspired by the vision and leadership of Ken Ryan, his boss and mentor there. It was from him that he caught the entrepreneurial bug. Soon, Prince decided to try his own hand at business ownership.
At 28 years old, though. Prince didn't feel he had enough confidence, skill or credibility to go it entirely alone. Having been well mentored, he really appreciated the value of such a partnership. It seemed to him that buying a franchise might be a good way to test his entrepreneurial wings. After researching the marketplace, he decided on Service Master, because the systems and mentors were already in place.
Prince liked Service Master's policy of teaming new franchisees up with more experienced owners to help you through those rocky first years. He knows that, as a newcomer to business ownership, he's bound to make mistakes. But to him that's the price of the experience - the cost of trying something new.
"This is my MBA," he says. "I'm really going to learn how to run and grow a business."
Now that he's just getting started, he finds the process both scary and exhilarating.
"Airmax taught me that you can't be afraid of change," says Prince. "If you're afraid to change, you won't make the moves you need to make to keep growing."
