A group of local business owners who spent decades building companies that now employ hundreds of people shared their experiences last week in a discussion of the challenges and lessons they …
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A group of local business owners who spent decades building companies that now employ hundreds of people shared their experiences last week in a discussion of the challenges and lessons they encountered on their way to success.
The Greater Warren County Economic Development Council, in partnership with the Warren County Young Professionals Network, hosted the discussion Oct. 5 as the first in a series of business leader speaking events. The featured speakers of the evening were Wayne Baker, Bob Sellenriek, Tom Kemper, and Butch Hunter.
• Baker is the president and CEO of Warrenton Oil Company and the FastLane convenience store chain.
• Sellenriek founded the utility installation company Sellenriek Construction in Jonesburg.
• Kemper is the head of the Microfinish metal finishing company in Warrenton.
• Hunter founded the Hunter Modular construction company in Jonesburg.
Each of the speakers is an example of someone who grew a small business into a major employer and success story. The speaker event gave other professionals a chance to learn from them through a series of questions about their time in business.
Below are some of the questions that were asked and excerpts from the speakers’ answers.
Hunter and Sellenriek both answered that one of the challenges they had faced was over-reliance on a few big customers.
“We had allowed ourselves to have one client that we were doing 60-70 percent of our work with. That’s something we will never allow to happen again,” Sellenriek said. “We lost that contract, and 60-70 percent of our work went out the door in one day.”
Baker said his business’s greatest challenge other than COVID was a 2007 fire that destroyed their warehouse, office, much equipment and all their records. Employees were wondering whether they would still have jobs until Baker’s staff found spaces for them to work and figured out payroll using previous bank records.
“I told (our HR manager), when you get to the point where you have to guess an amount, guess high,” Baker said. “We made payroll by Friday night to every store and every employee.”
This was a rich vein of advice for attendees. All four owners have been running their businesses for decades and have seen a lot of others come and go.
Kemper advised that business owners can’t ever be comfortable that what they’re providing today will be good enough or in demand tomorrow.
Hunter said he sees the mistake of thinking a small company can compete on price, rather than offering high-quality work and charging for what that work is worth.
Sellenriek warned business owners to never use company money to pay personal expenses.
Baker advised that the most common mistake is undervaluing the need for accounting and management skills. He said it’s also a mistake in the current world to not have robust cybersecurity – a mistake Baker said his company had to learn the hard way only recently.
Sellenriek and Baker both said their most significant risks were in the form of partnerships, many of which didn’t do well. That’s made them cautious about who they’re willing to go into business with.
The most unusual answer was from Kemper, who said his biggest risk was moving his Microfinish business to Warren County in the first place. Kemper is originally from St. Charles.
“I had customers ... and I was confident I could get work, but I didn’t have anything (at the time),” Kemper said. “We wanted to make it work, we wanted to expand ... and this was our best avenue to do that.”
“Mostly it has to be not only something you know, but I think you need to like it,” said Hunter. “I still enjoy what I’m doing. I think that’s key.”
Kemper said an entrepreneur needs to have a business plan and ask some key questions: “What makes your business different from somebody else’s in that area? How will you attract customers?”
Baker, also answering a later question, said a helpful thing for an owner is being willing to learn bits of knowledge and wisdom from anyone you meet and hang onto that learning.
“There’s some smart, smart people in this community,” Baker said. “If you listen to their stories and you pick up the bits and pieces and apply their institutional knowledge and their years of experience, you can put that to work for you sometime in the future when a problem arises.”
