JANE APPLEGATE
As the wife of a U.S. Navy anti-submarine expert, Rhonda Mollenkopf was accustomed to military life and moving every few years. But when her husband, Jay, was transferred to Norfolk, Va., Mollenkopf realized she was tired of constantly looking for a new job.
“Every time we would move, I would have to start out fresh,” Mollenkopf said.
That’s when she decided to start her own home-based business with the help of the Military Spouse Entrepreneurial Readiness Program, also known as MSERP. The pilot program was initially funded by the Department of Defense but is now being taken over by the Small Business Administration’s Office of Women’s Business Ownership, which plans to offer it online.
In April, Mollenkopf enrolled in the course and founded Halcyon Hills Studios, a Chesapeake, Va. company that makes prairie lamps inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright’s designs. She sells them over the Internet at www.prairielamps.com, and by phone at (800) 955-1251.
“With an Internet business, it doesn’t matter where I go or where the Navy sends us,” Mollenkopf said, adding that owning her own business allows her to solve another dilemma of military life aligning a civilian work schedule with her husband’s irregular hours.
“My husband travels a lot, and if I had a regular job, I wouldn’t be able to spend time with him when he is home,” Mollenkopf explained.
Her business now gives her the flexibility to spend time with her family when her husband is home.
“Everything I’ve done has been with the help of the class,” said Mollenkopf, whose prairie-lamp company is poised to capitalize on the resurgence in popular fashion of Craftsman-style homes and furnishings.
Although she’s fielding calls from retailers urging her to enter the wholesale furniture business, sales have been slow. Still, her Web site is attracting about 200 hits a day. “If not for the class, I would have been discouraged by now,” said Mollenkopf.
Military wives are among the millions of women fueling small-business growth in the United States. About 9 million women have found that being an entrepreneur provides a rewarding way to balance family and child care with the need to earn an income.
“The No. 1 (business) issue for military spouses is portability,” said Molly Haley, program director of MSERP in Norfolk. The two-year program, which ends in September, was tested in Norfolk and San Diego. It was designed specifically to study portability issues in small business and has been deemed a success by participants and government agencies alike.
“We wanted to discuss with military spouses what constitutes a portable business,” said Sherrye Henry, assistant administrator of the SBA’s Office of Women’s Business Ownership. “We asked, ‘What do entrepreneurs need to know to start something somewhere and not lose it if they are transferred to another part of the country, or even overseas?'”
The result of the pilot program is a curriculum on small-business portability that will be posted on the OWBO Web site, www.onlinewbc.org, on July 23, so that all small-business owners will have access to the information. The Department of Defense, which funded the program, will provide a link from its site to the OWBO site for the military community.
Beth S. Cole, executive director of the Women’s Business Center in Washington, D.C., said the program attracted both male and female military spouses. Many of the students were thinking less about portability than they were about their post-military careers.
“The thrust of the program was to discuss with military spouses how to make businesses portable, but a lot of people were really just interested in finding a business they could create when they retired,” Cole said. “These are very young people when they retire.”
Monica Reed, whose husband, Vincent, is now a retired U.S. Navy submarine cook, founded Mercury’s Gemini Database Marketing Services in Norfolk two years ago. Her initial goal was to work from home so she could care for their newborn son. But with the success of the company, which provides database management and follow-up marketing to the clients of mortgage companies, Reed said her husband has been learning the ins and outs of the business.
He’s now thinking about joining her as a full partner once his military obligation ends.
“It is an option for him,” said Reed, adding that if her husband were to get a more attractive job offer and the family had to move, her business is completely portable.
“I do everything from home on the computer, and I would be able to keep my current client base if I needed to move,” said Reed, who had been working as a database manager for a local real-estate company when she decided to become a work-at-home mom.
Five weeks ago, Reed gave birth to her second son. “I was back to work six days later,” she said. “I have the freedom to make my own schedule. I can stay in my pajamas all day if I have to and still get my work done.”
Reed’s company, which fills a void in her industry by helping mortgage companies retain the business of past clients while they focus on attracting new business, struggled “in poverty” for the first nine months until she in enrolled in MSERP.
Her business, which increased 100 percent while she was in the class, will bring in about $35,000 this year.
“I learned to stay in my niche market and not take on a million different things,” she said. “The class also gave me the courage to do more to grow my business.”
Though the MSERP has met its goals in developing the portability curriculum, Cole and Haley said they hope that funding can be found from other sources so that local agencies and organizations can revive the program and continue offering training courses. Many graduates of the intensive, 36-hour course credit the program with providing them with both the skills and the moral support to make their ventures successful.
“The class made me feel more bold,” said Christine Spano, founder of Horztails in Virginia Beach, Va. Spano makes and sells hand-crafted saddle pads, horse quilts, horseshoe racks and other horse-motif gifts for horse lovers.
Spano, whose husband Ronald is a Navy engineer, is working on developing a Web page and a mail-order catalog. She said the program gave her the skills to build up local business at craft fairs and trade shows.
“Before the class, I couldn’t walk up to somebody and speak to people at craft shows. It taught me not to be afraid,” she said.
Jane Applegate is a syndicated columnist and author of “201 Great Ideas for Your Small Business.” For more resources, visit [email protected].
