The Big Break

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Winning your first big client can often mean the difference between fortune and failure. How two local entrepreneurs found their opportunities through networking – and a little bit of luck.

Collette McKenna Parker

August 14, 2008

Say the words "start-up company" and most people picture an underdog: a scrappy little business toughing it out on sweat, nerve and a home equity loan. Maybe even in their garage. And the entrepreneurs labor toward their big break: the magical meeting where the stars align and their two-man show is transformed into The Next Big Thing, proving the idea was spectacular all along, and maybe even making them really rich.

The good news is that the big break can happen, and it doesn't require any sort of astrological tricks: only the right contacts.

Two years ago, Kevin Kilpatrick was working in a marketing consulting firm, telling clients how to sell their products to big box retailers like The Home Depot, Lowe's and Target.

One year ago he had idea for his own product - one that he wanted to give away for free at those stores. It was a Spanish-language magazine for construction pros. Kilpatrick had stumbled across some interesting numbers in his marketing work: While Hispanic men made up 24 percent of the construction workforce across the country (and 67 percent of the new hires in that field last year) there was only one magazine dedicated to this audience. That's in contrast to 38 magazines for English-speaking males in the construction biz.

So he became an entrepreneur, determined to make his vision a reality. He was starting from the bottom – he had never been a publisher before – but he didn't start out small. He leveraged his contacts at The Home Depot, got in front of the right marketing people and pitched his idea. His research showed that in Central and South American countries, people pick up magazines and newspapers for free rather than send out personal information for a subscription, which is how the other Hispanic magazine operated. Kilpatrick got The Home Depot to agree to place his magazine at the contractor services desk.

It was a big break.

While his competitor was printing 35,000 copies of the magazine per issue, Kilpatrick launched with 100,000. This year, his publishing company has magazines at 400 The Home Depots across the U.S., and next year 170,000 copies of his magazine, "Constru-Guia al Dia," will be in 676 stores four times a year.

For Kilpatrick, "Contacts are key," he says. "It's networking. It's who you know to get your foot in the door." For Silver Lake Media, Kilpatrick's company, which now has plans to extend into television broadcast and radio for the same audience, contacts were the difference between struggling for local advertising dollars and catapulting to the top with advertisers like Coke, Pepsi and Chevy paying to get in front of this market.

"I had a relationship with The Home Depot in their pro-marketing team," he says. "All the meetings with big retailers are tough, but I think that the uniqueness of the concept brought us in the door and put it on the table to be discussed."

Bart Foster, founder and CEO of SoloHealth, would agree that big breaks are a combination of a superior idea and good contacts.



While Foster was still working for CIBA Vision, the eye care division of Novartis AG, he convinced his CEO that self-screening eye exam kiosks, placed in strategic locations such as pharmacies and big box retailers – places with lots of public traffic – would help more people have their eyes checked. It wasn't a match for Novartis, but his CEO agreed that it was such a good idea he let Foster become an "intrapreneur" – working on this concept while still employed at Novartis.

Then came his big break: Foster was paired up with Reade Fahs, the CEO of National Vision, a national optical retailer inside Wal-Mart stores across the country, in a local golf tournament. After a few rounds, Fahs agreed that if he had a kiosk prototype he could test market it in his stores. In June, SoloHealth placed its first kiosk in a Cumming Wal-Mart and has seen more than 6,000 people test their eye sight through it.

Of course, it wasn't purely coincidental that Foster and Fahs were in the same golf tournament: It still comes down to contacts. Foster's commitment to healthy eyesight earned him a seat on the Prevent Blindness Georgia board of directors, who happened to be sponsoring the tournament.

But Foster would argue there was an even bigger stroke of luck that prepared him for that golf outing.

In 2007, he and his partners entered a competitive program sponsored by the Technology Association of Georgia (TAG) and the Advanced Technology Development Center (ATDC) – CapVenture, which is, according to TAG, a "boot camp that will educate and equip early stage CEOs and executives for smarter and more productive capitalization of their businesses."

Foster's was one of only 12 companies selected from the 120 that applied to participate in the 10-week boot camp. And (technically big break number one), he was assigned Mike Eckert, the former CEO of The Weather Channel and a CapVenture coach.

"The real big break for me was Mike Eckert," says Foster. "He brought investments to our company, and he became my mentor and personal advisor. He built an information network for me." Foster says there's been nothing like the experience of being able to call Eckert two or three times a day to ask questions and seek advice.

"I really do attribute our big break to that program and Mike Eckert. The funding came in, we got advisors and the management team came together. Those were the big pieces," he says.

And of course it was anything but luck that won SoloHealth a spot in CapVenture. Foster's unique idea and professional experience were what CapVenture was looking for.

And that's the best news of all: The big break isn't so much to do with luck. It's all within the control of the entrepreneur.

With the right idea and contacts, endless opportunities are in the stars.

© Tom Schmucker | Dreamstime.com

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