The forum featured local business owners, from left Paul Leetmae, Simón Ortiz, Lisa Jimenez, David DelJunco and Teresa Dahl-Bredine, looking serious before the session began.

By Mary Alice Murphy

The first entrepreneur to speak at the "My Entrepreneurial Life" event at the Western New Mexico University Besse-Forward Global Resource Center on Wednesday evening was Teresa Dahl-Bredine, owner with her husband David Crosley of Little Toad Creek Inn & Tavern and Little Toad Creek Brewery & Distillery.

"Four years ago, we began the Little Toad," Dahl-Bredine said. "I had no business experience, just a degree in theater.

"First, we started with the Inn and Tavern at Lake Roberts," she continued. "It was a hotel, restaurant, bar. We were doing everything ourselves-cooking, cleaning the rooms, paying the bills and taxes. We were exhausted. My sister talked me into getting a business consultant. That was the best thing we did. If you stop shoveling coal, the train will stop, he told us. He encouraged us to get on the top deck and to find other people to help us, with the rooms, the cooking and other chores.

"At the Little Toad downtown, we have a tasting room now, and will be opening a retail shop next door," Dahl-Bredine said. "Letting other people help was my biggest lesson."

David DelJunco, co-owner with his wife, Lee Gruber, who was out-of-town, of Syzygy Tile said: "We make ceramic tile and sell it nationally. After we were married we visited Moravian Tileworks, which produced turn-of-the-century tiles patterned after the Arts and Crafts Movement. The founder, Henry Chapman Mercer's house has fascinated me. It was encrusted with tiles. The tile works next door was closed for years, but the state of Pennsylvania had resurrected it. Lee and I watched them make tile, using molds into which the clay was pressed. 'How hard can that be?' we asked. 'We can do this.' I was living here and when she joined me here, we said we wanted a job that was fun and interesting, so we started making tiles."

"It became clear we couldn't just sell to Silver City," DelJunco said. "At the time the Santa Fe look was in. Our customers are showrooms. They doubled the price, so we asked: 'Why can't we sell direct to people?' There was an art tile movement, and we breezed into it. We make single tiles by hand, which is a tenet of the Arts and Crafts Movement. My wife's the extrovert. I make the things other people use to make the tiles. They glaze them individually. Everything gets shipped in and then shipped out as tiles.

"We have fabulous people working with us," he continued. "My wife's and my skill sets interlock. She does what I don't want to do. It's been kind of easy."

Lisa Jimenez of Regalos de la Tierra said she sees a lot of similarity with the two preceding speakers and their stories.

"When we started Regalos de la Tierra, we had zero business experience," Jimenez said. "I was a journalist and political scientists. My husband is a fourth generation Zapotec potter. When we moved to Silver City, he was doing odd jobs. He's a hard worker, so I said: 'Why don't we start selling your pottery?' In 2004, we were kind of half time trying to sell the pottery. We both came from humble backgrounds. We started with a $10,000 CD that he had built up from his former job. We sold our extra vehicles. In 2007, we formed an LLC and were doing trade shows. We were on an upward trajectory and then, in 2008, the economy tanked. We had to retract to regional distribution.

"The pottery is all done by hand," she said. "They mine the clay by hand, create the pots by wheel and coil by hand. Our company is primarily wholesale in New Mexico, Arizona and Colorado. We are just getting into California and into Mexico. Our retail outlet is here at the Marketplace. We also do shows in Texas and in Ann Arbor, Michigan. We employ 13 people full time in Oxaca in the winter and spring, which is our busiest season.

"The greatest challenges have been the cultural differences," Jimenez continued. "It's hard to get the Zapotecs to understand deadlines and quality control. For us, we're not only bringing the product to market, but also preserving the Zapotec tradition of pottery making."

Simón Ortiz, owner of El Gallo Pinto, said he found it "funny that we're talking about entrepreneurship. I was a successful insurance agent next to El Gallo Pinto. I sold the business. I had bought the restaurant building, but the renter was not paying the rent. It was my executive decision to boot him out. The building was in a horrible state of disrepair. I couldn't sell it, so I sunk money into it to bring it up to code. I became a restaurant owner, not willingly, but I had debt to pay off.

"From a good insurance business, I jumped from the frying pan into the fire," Ortiz said. "By default I was a restaurant owner with no experience, except as a dishwasher in high school.

"Being an entrepreneur is too flattering a word," he claimed. "In a short time, we started breaking even, and I can see the end of the tunnel, although it's a long tunnel. With a graduate degree in business, I have an idea of the risk, and I don't like it. It tests one's ability to think straight, but we must take the challenge, especially if we have a mortgage. I'm learning to make the priority that of making a profit.

"I have a good location and some friends in the marketing club, who have helped me hope for what I can achieve. I look forward to the day of reporting a profit."

Paul Leetmae, owner and manager of Lawley Automotive Group in Silver City, was the final panelist to speak.

"I went to high school in Colorado, got a degree in business administration from the University of Northern Colorado, spent time in Arizona and I've been five years in Silver City."

He said his father came to the U.S. as a refugee from Estonia in 1944. In 1950, he was picking beans and peas in Seabrook, N.J.

"The car business pulled me in," Leetmae said. "A dealership needed summer help. I was washing cars so I could put myself through college. I met my business partner, who was also washing cars. By our mid-20s, we were running the dealership. In 1992, I got a five-year degree. I went to job interviews and didn't like what I saw. By age 29, I was the general sales manager and was also doing real estate and repping a golf line. All this time, I was saving money. The business partner called one day and said there's a Chevy dealership for sale in Arizona. We were there for 10 years. In 2010, I moved to Silver City.

"Last year, we sold 909 vehicles, new and used, which was 8 percent growth over 2013. We will finish 2015 about the same as 2014," he said.

"The No. 1 challenge is workforce and human resources," Leetmae continued. "I have built a good team by bringing in some who now live here. In customer satisfaction, we are No. 1 in the 70-dealership region. My No. 1 mentor is my dad.

"Consistency and persistence are the only way to make it in the business world," Leetmae said. "You have to give your best today and come back and do it tomorrow, next week and next month."

Miguel Vicens-Filiberty, WNMU associate professor of management in the School of Business, said what he saw as things all the speakers had in common were hard work and challenges. "Little Toad is a favorite of our international students. David and Lee just did it. Lisa's challenges were that she had to do it. Simón has a seven-day-a-week job and Paul 365 days 24/7."

"What do we see as things that we need to change to grow businesses and our quality of life?" Vicens-Filiberty asked.

Ortiz said training the workforce is one thing that needs to be improved. "We lack a willingness to work, especially from the young. The work ethic no longer exists. We also have a drug problem, which is a challenge for us and for our community. I'm not sure what Silver City can do to take social responsibility to increase the work ethic."

A student said he was getting the general consensus that work force is a challenge. "I think it's a concept of leadership and self-perception. It's hard to find good people if you have the negative perception to start with. I was homeless and had someone help me. Now I'm in school and working. Try to see what a person is capable of."

Dahl-Bredine said when one can find a good person, it can be hard to keep them. "It takes leadership. The challenge, especially in the restaurant business, is to pay enough. We pay the same food prices, as in big cities, but we have to keep our prices low for people in Silver City."

Jimenez agreed that the issue is particularly difficult in the food industry, but is common all around.

A woman in the audience asked how marketing plays into a business plan.

Jimenez said she wishes she had more money for advertising. "We do guerilla marketing in trade shows."

A student asked if the entrepreneurs would allow their businesses to get big or "do you want to keep it small and simple?"

Ortiz said he did not want to grow. "I just want to get to the point to reach a reasonable profit, so I can leave or sell, so I have to continue to grow some. I don't want to franchise it. I have a short-term objective."

To another question, Ortiz said he has eight or nine employees, none of whom is part of his family. "A lot of restaurants in town are family-oriented, but we started from ground zero. I would like to make enough to pay a manager or sell the business."

Jimenez said all the pottery is made in Oxaca, Mexico, where the artisans and the clay are. "We have 13 full-time employees and it expands during the winter months for spring delivery."

A man asked about the challenges of financing a small business. "We started with nothing except the $10,000 certificate of deposit. Despite our strong sales, we were not attractive to traditional loans," Jimenez said. "We turned to a micro-lender, WESST, out of Albuquerque. We have paid off the majority of the loan and we are now self-sustaining after using our credit cards, too, and paying them off."

Leetmae said: "Save your pennies, pay your bills on time and keep good credit. Develop a good relationship with your banker."

Ortiz said traditional borrowing for a small business is a "dinosaur. I think the new law changes make it problematic for small businesses to get traditional loans. I prefer to use my own money."

Linda McArthur of the Small Business Development Center asked Jimenez what challenges she has had with importing the pottery.

"The manufacturing is not the challenge," Jimenez said. "The challenge has been more logistical. I'm in the transportation business. I am working with Jerry Pachecho (of the International Business Accelerator) to expand our list of transportation options. Custom brokers have to be paid. It's expensive."

Francisca Reyes, WNMU assistant professor of economics, asked what each person's one piece of best advice would be.

DelJunco said: "Follow your bliss. Do what makes you happy."

Jimenez said: "Tenacity and persistence. You have to love what you do, because it's a lot of hard work."

Ortiz said: "Other than a huge business plan, understand the risk. Scrap the business plan."

Leetmae said: "My advice is if you wake up on Monday morning dreading going to work, you're in the wrong business. And you have to have consistency and persistence. By the way, we're hiring, looking for good people to join our team."

Vicens-Filiberty ended the session, saying: "It has been amazing to hear your stories."