Sunday, July 27, 2008
Huntsville Times
Joanne Randolph approaches her work with entrepreneurs not only as a mentor who is passionate about business success, but as someone who embodies the entrepreneurial spirit, no matter what she's doing.
She parlayed a background in information technology into a career that has spanned work for NASA and the for-profit and nonprofit sectors. She has worked as an international marketing director for a government contractor, manager of a computer store and a telecommunications consultant.
She has also run a business, serving as co-owner of a property management company responsible for a 219-unit condominium complex.
From 1997 to 2002, Randolph served as director of BizTech, Huntsville's business incubator. For her next project, she helped launch the Women's Business Center of North Alabama and in 2005 became its first executive director. In that role, the center and Randolph have won a number of awards.
Thanks to $80,000 in grant money and donations, the WBCNA recently opened an office in Jackson County. Last week, the organization received $100,000 from the Valley Innovation Alliance.
In her spare time, Randolph counsels students at J.F. Drake State Technical College who are interested in starting a business.
"What I like about it is, when you work for small business, you wear lots of hats," she says. "But the reason I think I enjoy it so much is because you can get things done and make things happen."
Randolph, 54, found time recently to talk with business writer Gina Hannah. The conversation has been edited for space and clarity.
Do you sleep?
(Laughs) Oh, yes. I have to get my sleep.
How long have you been working with entrepreneurs?
A little over a decade, from the launch of BizTech in the '90s.
Who was the first entrepreneur you worked with, and where is he or she now?
I believe it was Capstone Technologies, the company that monitors criminals on a personal computer. They were our first client company at BizTech and our first graduate. They were acquired by a Canadian company.
What is the biggest challenge for entrepreneurs in Huntsville?
Having the human capital and the financial capital to make a technological idea come to fruition. By human capital, I mean the experienced management team. We have a lot of brilliant engineers and scientists in Huntsville, and engineers that have excellent backgrounds and lots of experience, but very little business background.
We know it takes an "A" management team to bring a product to market. A lot of venture capitalists say they'll take an "A" team with a "B" technology any day over an "A" tech and a "B" management team. I think the community has taken great strides in developing teams and wrapping those people around the technologist.
What is the mission of the WBCNA?
I believe that we're serving a segment of the community that has been traditionally underserved. While our focus is women, a small percentage of our client base is men. We wanted women to have a place to get support, training and nurturing and become successful businesses.
Is it more difficult in this community for women to start a business?
Most of the business issues that women experience I don't believe are gender-specific. But since women business owners are relatively new to the world of business, they don't have the networks developed over the 20 or 30 years like their male counterparts. This is why the Women's Business Center can help small businesses get connected in the right circles and point them to the resources that they need.
In the mid-1970s, women owned only about 10 percent of all privately held businesses in the U.S. Today that number is closer to 50 percent.
What challenges do small-business owners face in the current economy?
Probably the same challenges that we all have as individuals. With the economy being down, sales are down, so working capital is becoming harder and harder to get. We're seeing an increase in requests for small-business loans. And certainly the price of gas is an issue for a lot of our clients who have to be in their cars a lot for travel or delivery services.
What type of work did you do for NASA?
I started my career at NASA, fresh out of high school. I went to work at Marshall on the arsenal as a GS-1 clerk/typist. I was out there for about 17 years. I went to school full-time at night and got my bachelor's degree from UAH and left (NASA) in 1988 as a GS-13 aerospace computer systems and mathematician. Then I went to Grumman (now Northrop Grumman) in Washington, D.C., to put in a system for then-Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney.
What is your typical workday?
I usually try to do paperwork in the morning hours, then client sessions are typically scheduled for the afternoon. We are available to see clients in the evenings or weekends if need be. We do have another business coach that helps with client counseling, and we probably counsel 10 or 12 clients a week.
Typically we meet with the client for an hour the first session, and we ascertain what they're trying to do, what kind of help they need, then we develop an action plan. It could be to write a business plan, (or) they may need a marketing plan, (or) they may need help setting up QuickBooks.
If you started a business today, what would it be?
I would like to get into real estate investing: wholesaling, flipping residential houses. That would be fun in my retirement.