|
|
 UNDERGRADSMain Page2007 RankingsAdmissions Q&AsCareer Q&AsUndergrad ForumReading ListRecruiter Q&AsSchool Report CardsSchool ToursUndergrad 24-7Undergrad VideosNews HeadlinesPREMIUM CONTENT
| |
MBA INSIDER: ALUMNI INSIGHTS Starting Over as a Startup Launcher Brad Cassiday's '92 MBA hardly prepared him to become an entrepreneur, but that's just what he wound up doing
When Brad Cassiday graduated from the Eli Broad College of Business at Michigan State University in 1992, he took a job in manufacturing, where he had always planned to make a career. By the time he reached his fifth post-B-school job, as a materials manager at Ingersoll-Rand in 2001, he thought his career cards were fully dealt.
That changed last October, when he left the company (following a dispute that's now in litigation) and found himself with a new hand to play. Cassiday, 37, was suddenly out of a job, and he knew all too well that opportunities in the Pacific Northwest were scarce, even more so in a down economy. Faced with the choice of relocating or switching fields, Cassiday did something he, a professed company man, had never imagined he would do: He became an entrepreneur. An MBA student at a time when entrepreneurship coursework wasn't really up to par, Cassiday is now -- 10 years later -- among the three-quarters of the class of 1992 alumni who have been involved in some sort of business launch. But he didn't do what many entrepreneurs might -- that is, get involved in an industry they know well. Instead, he got started in a rather offbeat endeavor: gourmet dog biscuits. How did the man who always planned to build a career in manufacturing end up baking puppy treats? "I HAD TO BEG." It started as a hobby of sorts, while Cassiday was still toiling away at his full-time gig. On weekends, he and his wife, Lola Michelin, often walked their dogs, a Jack Russell terrier named Gorilla and a Brazilian terrier named Shanny, at Marymoor, a 40-acre off-leash dog park near their Redmond (Washington) home. The outing always included a stop for coffee and dog biscuits, which were sold from a green 1972 GMC van at the park's entrance. When they heard through word of mouth that the business was for sale, van and all, they snagged it. Cassiday, the more conservative of the duo, was reluctant to make the purchase. He was still working full-time, as was Michelin, who was an animal massage therapist. "I had to beg him" says Michelin, who they both agree is the risk-taker in their partnership. They spent late nights and weekends learning to cater to the peculiar nature of canine taste. "Dogs either like it, or they don't," says Cassiday, who says the initial biscuits that were too dry, too fragile, or made without enough garlic. Within three months, they hit upon the perfect recipes, hired two friends to do the baking, and increased their sales from up to 600 biscuits per weekend to nearly 2,000 at times. With white script signaling Axl Snaks, the (same) truck now boasts biscuits in ginger, rice flour, carob, cheese, and the canine favorite, peanut butter. INSTANT PROFIT. When Cassiday left Ingersoll-Rand last October, he decided to delve deeper into the world of animal care. The state legislature had just approved a licensing process for practicing animal massage requiring therapists to complete 100 hours of training. The catch: Washington had no state training program. So Cassiday and his wife started the Northwest School of Animal Massage. Michelin taught the classes, while Cassiday brushed up his accounting skills and began to balance the books. "There were virtually no startup costs," says Cassiday, who sunk no more than $3,000 into the project to get it off the ground. He runs his end of the business out of their home, while Michelin and the two teachers they've hired work on-site at local farms. The couple turned a profit after their first class, and in the year since they began, business has taken off. The school has 12 classes, the most recent containing 20 students -- a big leap from the six or seven students who found their way into the first two classes. B-school may have done a great job of preparing Cassiday to be "a middle-manager" in the corporate world, working for someone else, he said, but in 1992 he recalls that MSU offered only one class on entrepreneurship. Cassiday has drawn from what he learned about accounting, marketing, and process flow, as he watched their project expand. But he said his MBA hardly prepared him for the challenges of running a business. IDEAS EVERYWHERE. To keep up, he often reads textbooks at night, many that he might have read had he been in B-school more recently. He consults his peers, and sometimes he learns the hard way. "Mistakes," he sighed. "There've been plenty of those." The entrepreneurial spirit is addictive, and Cassiday sees the seeds to a business venture in every new idea. He's fast becoming a serial entrepreneur. He and Michelin still operate their concession stand, which now employs four people. And Cassiday has expansion and mass marketing on his mind: He just invested a portion of Axl Snak's profits in a marketer, and he plans to create a line of gourmet dog biscuits to be sold in specialty shops nationwide. As profits from the animal massage school accrue, Cassiday hopes to bring the marketer on staff full-time to promote several school-related products as well. Of course, even though he puts in 80-hour workweeks balancing the books, manning the shops, and cooking up new ideas, Cassiday's new life goes far beyond his daily animal antics. Being his own boss allows him to do things he couldn't do as a workday employee. When a friend comes to town, he takes a day off. And last winter, Cassiday was able to volunteer with an Ecuadorian humane society where he worked to develop a profitable line of dog biscuits that now helps fund the group's activities. Like many entrepreneurs, Cassiday hopes that freedom is on the same growth track as his businesses. "We're waiting for the crops to come up," he says. His grand plan includes dreaming up a few more ideas, selling some of the smaller ventures during the next five years, and stabilizing the school. If that pans out, Cassiday and his wife are itching for the ultimate reward -- working six months of the year and traveling the rest of the time. He's already planning his first trip, to the Galapagos Islands -- where he wants to teach English to fishermen.  By Jessi Hempel in New York
BW MALL
SPONSORED LINKS
Buy a link now!Get BusinessWeek directly on your desktop with our RSS feeds.  Add BusinessWeek news to your Web site with our headline feed. Click to buy an e-print or reprint of a BusinessWeek or BusinessWeek Online story or video. To subscribe online to BusinessWeek magazine, please click here. Learn more, go to the BusinessWeekOnline home page  | | SEPTEMBER  =MBA Insider content
[an error occurred while processing this directive]
Learn about your online education options |
 Copyright 2003, Bloomberg L.P.Terms of Use | Privacy Policy |
Printer-Friendly Version
