Developing her business ‘is really a leap of faith’

(The first installment in an occasional series about the issues and challenges that confront enrollees in the Center for Women & Enterprise’s 13-week Power Up! course.)
Gerri Feldman’s new business is taking off so quickly, she’s almost not ready for it. She designs clothes for people practicing yoga and already has sold more than 1,000 pieces.
But she’s on a fast track to get ready as one of seven enrollees in the current session of Power Up! at the Center for Women & Enterprise (CWE) in Providence. Power Up! is an intensive 13-week course that teaches novice entrepreneurs the ins and outs of starting and owning a business, particularly preparation of that all-important, bank-ready business plan.
“We will help you start and grow your business and connect to resources in the community,” said Carol M. Malysz, CWE director, during welcoming remarks at the first class on Sept. 17. “You will connect with a whole network of people who will be with you for the rest of your business life. We are only a phone call away.”
The current September-December segment is the 22nd time Power Up! has been offered by CWE since it started nine years ago. More than 460 people have graduated (about 1 percent of the graduates are men, according to Malysz). Classes are held at the George M. Cohan Boulevard headquarters of CWE off Wickenden Street, with video-conferencing connections to similar classes taking place simultaneously at CWE centers in Boston and Worcester.
Paula M. Nordhoff, a life, business and career coach with Grow Coaching in Westport, Mass., has 25 years experience as an entrepreneur, coach and corporate executive, and is leading the Providence classes. The course runs for three hours every Wednesday until Dec. 17, except Thanksgiving eve, with guest speakers scheduled most weeks.
Feldman, 55, of Barrington, is a former high school art teacher who is now a yoga instructor, teaching yoga classes at several sites in Barrington and Bristol. Always interested in fashion and clothing, she designs garments for women and men to wear when doing yoga, such as T-shirts, tunics and hooded shirts made of what she described as “super-thin, breathable fabric.”
Wild Buddha Designs is the name of Feldman’s business. She’s one of three enrollees, along with Sonya Bradford and Kelly Klein, who have agreed to share their experiences with Providence Business News as they navigate through the program and experience the ups and downs of running or starting a business.
On a recent day after the first session, Feldman was excited because her Web site – www.wildbuddhadesigns.com – was up and running, a project that she found required more attention to detail than she had realized. “There [are] a lot of details to work out on the Web site,” she said, such as deciding how to handle returns, payment and shipping options. Plus, “you need merchandise in stock to get the Web site going,” she said. “This is really a leap of faith. Make the shirts, and they will sell.” She needed the Web site because just a few days later she was scheduled to promote her wares at a yoga event in Boston.
She started her business in April, designing T-shirts for yoga that “sold right away,” she told the Power Up! class. Then, she sold 150 shirts to Baptiste Power Vinyassa Yoga center in Cambridge, Mass., which is affiliated with yoga studios all over America, and it placed an order for a whopping 1,000 more shirts. “It’s the first time I’ve had an order that big,” she said. It took about one month for her to get the order filled. Feldman restricts herself to designing the clothes, with others actually manufacturing them.
While negotiating over the price of the 1,000 shirts, she told the class, she realized she needed to know more about “the nuts and bolts” of financing a business. A friend who owned a successful business referred her to CWE, telling Feldman that Power Up! “will change your life.” She also hopes to learn more about trademarks and legal issues.
Bradford, 36, of North Dartmouth, Mass., started an enterprise called
Green Gal Catering that specializes
in planning events and preparing meals that are healthy, organic and made
of locally grown produce. Green Gal (www.greengalcatering.com) will even recycle or compost the waste.
She has worked as a waitress and for catering companies. For 12 years, Bradford worked in various executive capacities at a company that made children’s clothing, including vice president and credit manager. She handled the large corporate accounts, she said, and assessed the creditworthiness of about 200 boutiques across the U.S. “I was always putting out fires for other people,” she told the class. “I really want to do this for myself, without the emergencies.”
Despite her corporate experience, Bradford never had to work on financials or do marketing before starting her own business, so she hopes to learn these skills in the CWE class. She is designing her business cards but her enterprise, like Feldman’s, already is off and running. Using the Dartmouth Grange as her kitchen, she is licensed and insured, and recently booked her first Christmas party. She also will be catering an event in October for Lt. Gov. Elizabeth H. Roberts and has several events booked in February.
“I love doing catering,” she said. “Even though the economy isn’t great, this is the perfect opportunity for me to start a business because it is not imperative that I make a ton of money at first.”
Klein, 29, moved to Providence from Wisconsin in August, because her husband is attending graduate school at Brown University. She is a doula, a specialist in providing prenatal and childbirth support services to expectant mothers, with more of an emphasis on education and counseling than a midwife might have. She worked in Wisconsin as a self-employed doula, doing business as Empowered Mamas Doula Care, and wants to start a similar business here. She has undergone basic and advanced training with the Doulas of North America, International and the Association of Labor and Childbirth Assistants.
Particularly helpful if one’s partner is almost paralyzed by the idea of giving birth, a doula “helps make sure moms have all the information they need and supports whatever choices they make,” Klein explained. If the client wishes, a doula will attend and assist at the birth, along with the usual medical personnel.
Klein is completing the requirements for formal doula certification. The final piece is to take a childbirth-education class, which she decided to do in Providence while forming her new business. She has attended more than 20 births, she said, ranging from high-risk to normal to natural childbirth. She also has been director of a rape crisis center and a shelter for domestic violence victims in the Midwest, so she is used to dealing with women in crisis.
She learned about the CWE class “from a business card I picked up at Hudson Street Market” in the West End of Providence. During her previous work as a self-employed doula, “I realized what some of my weaknesses were,” Klein said. “The financial aspects of running a business were my most challenging.” She also hopes to get out of the Power Up! class “a sensible business plan,” she said.
Nothing in the Power Up! classes will prove more important than the bank-ready business plan, “a road map,” Malysz said, showing the financial milestones that must be met and exactly how each novice entrepreneur will reach those goals. First draft is due Dec. 5, but there will be many more.
Building a business is a lifelong endeavor, and just as the business and the owner will change over the years, so too will the business plan.
“It’s a living document,” Malysz said. “It never will be static.” •