Ten years can fly by like a week and a half, or feel as long and drawn out as a lifetime, depending on perspectives and circumstances. For most entrepreneurs, the phrase “time flies when you’re having fun” is apropos because the circumstances and work are of our own choosing.
Having profiled 130 or so entrepreneurs in this column over the past decade, I can attest to the “flying by” stance. In tracking down a few previous subjects to see what they’re doing now, some have retired or moved away; others are still doing what they have been doing all along. Here are three of them with an updated story.
Logan Gardner
When he was a senior in high school two years ago, Logan Gardner founded Kids for Kids: Youth Social Ventures, a nonprofit that raises funds for young people to get involved with socially minded service projects. Gardner is a sophomore in college now, at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business.
“I am studying management and marketing and am on the executive board of both the Wharton Undergraduate Energy Group and Wharton Leadership Ventures,” he said. “This summer I am traveling to Amman, Jordan, where I will be continuing my work in the nonprofit space by completing a consulting project for Generations for Peace, a global, top five-ranked peacekeeping NGO, before traveling to Sydney, Australia, to study abroad.”
Since 2014 Kids for Kids has raised $15,000 for organizations in Lexington and in Boston. Gardner has passed the CEO position to his younger brother, Austin Gardner, who has started a Kids for Kids chapter at Phillips Academy Andover, a boarding school outside of Boston.
Melia Hord
When she was profiled in September 2005, Melia Hord was about five years into her gift basket business. The former CPA named her company Elegantly Handled, which specialized in relationship marketing by way of corporate baskets. A simple gold bow was used as her logo at the time because, she said, “Elegance and class are always simple.”
Hord had 22 part-time employees and a storefront when she sold the business in October 2006. She spent the next few years as an independent jewelry distributor, for the schedule flexibility it provided while still allowing her to be involved in relationship marketing. Then she helped two companies launch nationally before deciding to pursue a career in real estate. She got her license at the end of last year and started working with residential listings at the Keller Williams Greater Lexington office in January.
“My family has been in real estate forever,” Hord said. “It was a natural fit to bring all my expertise in real estate and relationship marketing to my clients, connecting with them and finding out what their needs are.”
Having worked in corporate America, retail sales and direct sales, and her family’s commercial real estate business, Hord added, “I think it was all part of the process, to understand all aspects of the sales end to bring it back into real estate.”
Emily Ho
A self-proclaimed multi-passionate entrepreneur, Emily Ho entered the world of self-employment in early 2012 with her business, Authentically Social. She started with one ongoing client and a few straggler projects, then added a second major client in 2013 and by last year she embraced one niche and learned to say no to other projects without apology.
“The adoption of technologies like Skype and Google Hangouts means our potential client base is no longer geographically limited,” she said. “If you told me fi ve years ago that I could live in Lexington but work with companies in the fashion industry [my current niche], I wouldn’t have believed you.”
None of her major clients are in Kentucky, not by design but by coincidence. If she had the opportunity to pass along some advice to her pre-2012 entrepreneur self, Ho would have started her business sooner.
“Let go of the fear and focus on the possibilities,” she said. “There will never be a perfect time; if you keep waiting for it, you’ll never do it.”
In the past three years she has learned that flexibility and strength are two of the most important skills for an entrepreneur to have.
“You need flexibility to pivot, recalibrate and right the ship when things don’t go as planned,” she said. “Strength isn’t necessarily being able to hold everything together all the time (that’s an unrealistic expectation); it’s something that comes from your core that guides the business you accept and the work you produce. If you can remain flexible but focus on your core strength, the rough seas are quick to calm.”