Building a Business of His Own | Luke Radick

 

Did you ever have an idea for a business and just not know where to start? That's how Luke felt when he came up with the idea to open his own company. He had no idea where to even begin, but he knew he could make it work if he tried hard enough. 

In July of 2007, Luke went on a scheduled vacation, returning north for the first time in almost two years. The vacation was scheduled to be three weeks, but fate had other ideas. The morning after returning home an old friend of Luke's showed up at his parent's house. She had known only a few hours earlier he would be in the area and she made the trip from her home, two hours south, to meet up. Things turned romantic quickly. During the second week of the vacation, Luke was having issues receiving his paychecks. He found out someone in senior leadership had decided he would not be paid for any accounts he managed while he was gone. 

A trip to visit his older sister started Luke on his entrepreneurial journey. On the drive Luke spoke with another family member about his job, explaining everything he did, how the company he worked for operated, and the issues he was currently facing. This family member turned to Luke and said, "you seem to know everything about this company, why not start your own so you can work for yourself". That statement changed Luke's life forever.

Luke started researching and educating himself on everything related to starting and running a business. After reading and learning, Luke was finally ready to take the plunge! The first step was registering a name for the company with the state and Data Solutions was born. He started working on his new business full-time. He's learned a lot about entrepreneurship along the way and is happy to share what he knows with others who are interested in following in his footsteps. 

After registering the business he needed to set up a bank account to handle the money coming into the company, and for all payments that needed to be made from the company. The bank he chose was very accommodating. Their small business checking account had a nominal monthly fee that would be waived if a monthly balance minimum was met. After receiving seed money from family he was easily able to cover this fee.

The next step was finding a company that would allow him to process credit cards so he could accept payments aside from just checks. This was 2007 so the large companies that now make this a breeze were not yet in business. This took a few days and a credit check but his merchant account was then open. Next, he registered a domain name that was close to his company name and linked an email to this domain name. For the business phone number, he used his own cell phone number. As he was just starting out and unsure if the business would have any success he used his home address as the business address rather than renting expensive commercial space. 

Now he was ready to start getting to work. Standing apart from the competition was the first objective, so he did what always worked for him in the past, honesty. He put together a website with his company bio describing what products and services the company provided and why he decided to start his own company. 

The next step was to create a marketing plan for bringing in businesses that have never dealt with, or even heard of, his company. Once he had the online matters complete he began with the hardest part, cold calling businesses. He stuck to businesses outside of the enterprise space so he could build up a reputation working with smaller businesses and faster sales cycles.

Things took off faster than he could have imagined. Within the first two weeks of being open, he had his first sale. It wasn't much, but it was a start. Over the first few months, he continued to bring in more and more small businesses and help them with their marketing needs. 

Through old connections in the industry and networking, he was eventually able to bring in a few larger clients as well. A large call center based on the west coast, a major mailer based in the Midwest, and a large catalog mailer based in NYC were all brought in before the end of 2007. Things seemed like they could only go up, but again fate had other plans.

At the beginning of 2008, Luke was served with a notice of a lawsuit against him for a breach of a non-compete agreement. The terms of the non-compete stipulated he could not work in the industry as a sales executive for two years but Luke was determined to fight.

Although 2008 was an even better year for sales than 2007 had been, Luke had a lawsuit hanging over him. He fought as much as he could but decided in the end to settle. Terms of the settlement included a monetary judgment and that he close his business. 

By the time he closed the business in early 2009, he had less than a year until he could work in the same role again. Through a connection he landed a consultancy role, helping someone else grow their own business. That will be discussed in the next article.

*Continued in the next post*

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lukeradick/

Company: https://www.azonicdirect.com/