Grand Rapids, Michigan: An Entrepreneurial, Bootstrapping City by Rod Kackley

Amway-The Foundation

(Excerpt from Last Chance Mile: The Reinvention of an American Community)

Grand Rapids is a West Michigan — almost a Lake Michigan shoreline — community that is defined by it’s entrepreneurs, many of whom would be considered to be bootstrappers.

Two of those entrepreneurs are Rich DeVos and Jay Van Andel —  conservative, religious men — that are best known as the co-founders of Amway Corp.

(left to right: Jay Van Andel and Rich DeVos)

They were best friends at Grand Rapids Christian High School, separated only by World War Two. 

Rich and Jay stayed in touch through those years and almost as soon as they arrived home, they opened their first partnership — a flight school that mostly catered to military veterans who wanted to learn how to fly.

(Rich Devos and Jay Van Andel at their flight school)

Military veterans also get hungry. Sensing an ancillary business opportunity, the DeVos-Van Andel team also opened a drive-in restaurant to feed their students, serving butter-fried hamburgers, using their mothers’ recipe.

Jay and Rich were taught a lesson that almost all entrepreneurs may have to learn. Failure is a part of the experience. 

Neither of their first businesses did very well. Both were sold. 

Jay and Rich didn’t stop. They began another adventure.

(Rich Devos and Jay Van Andel on the ill-fated Elizabeth schooner)

Even though these entrepreneurs were the first to admit they knew nothing about sailing, the pair set off for South America in 1949 on the schooner, “Elizabeth.” It sank off the shore of Cuba. The pair had to be rescued by an American freighter. 

Was this yet another DeVos-Van Andel failure? The answer was “no,” at least not as far as they were concerned.

“That is part of our folklore,” Steve Van Andel, one of Jay’s two sons, told me. “For most people, once the boat sank, it would be the end of the story. For them it was just half-way through (the journey).”

The logic is astoundingly simple.  “Their boat had taken them as far as they needed it to take them. They didn’t need that boat anymore.”

Rich and Jay eventually got to South America.

(left to right: Steve Van Andel and Doug DeVos in front of portraits of their fathers)

Steve still has the bell from the “Elizabeth” in his office at Amway Corp. where he serves as chairman of the corporation his father and Rich created, sharing leadership duties with one of Rich DeVos’ sons, Doug, who is Amway’s president.

“People may say, ‘Rich and Jay were great visionaries’ but they were just trying to feed their families.  And our dads would even say, ‘all we did was go to work every day,’” Doug explained as he, Steve and I spent an hour together in Amway’s Ada Township corporate offices. “But they went to work every day with an attitude that they were going to make the business better.”

Amway had a humble birth in 1959, launched in the basement of Jay’s home, selling a product billed as “an all-purpose household cleaner.” Hardly glamorous, but this was the business that would make them billionaires.

“It was 1959, when it was Castro versus the United States and communism versus free enterprise,” said Doug.  “Freedom was an idea they wanted to have a piece of.”

A direct selling and manufacturing operation, Amway (which is meant to be an abbreviation for “American Way”) eventually went global. It now has more than 21,000 employees around the world and better than 3 million distributors.

Steve believes you tend to hit what you are aiming at. “And if you are aiming low that is probably where you are going to go. But if you aim high, you are probably going to go there. I think as a business you need to keep aiming up and you will eventually get there.”’

Doug agreed believing that things will get better, and if you aim high you will score high, are basic, core entrepreneurial beliefs.

“There are a lot of people doing it right now, people who are building a better mousetrap, coming up with a better idea,” he said. 

“Look at our iPads and with Steve Jobs passing, we celebrate the way that entrepreneurial spirit thought of a way we could live our lives better.”

(c) 2014 Lyons Circle Publishing Inc.

(Rick DeVos)

Start Garden, founded by Rich DeVos’ grandson, Rick, is helping a new generation of entrepreneurs. Read More.

For the latest business news and more stories of BYOB entrepreneurs go to the free Rod Kackley app for iOS and Android mobile devices. Download through the App Store or Google Play.

Last Chance Mile: The Reinvention of an American Community by Rod Kackley tells the story of how the DeVos and Van Andel families entrepreneurial heritage helped create a cluster of prosperity in Grand Rapids, the Medical Mile. It is available wherever books are sold online including Abbott Press as well as on the shelves of Barnes & Noble-Woodland Mall, Schuler Books & Music-28th Street and West Coast Coffee-Monroe Center Grand Rapids.

Read More

The Apartment Lounge: Building an LGBT Community by Rod Kackley tells the story of two men who did what was at the time unthinkable in Grand Rapids, Michigan: they opened a gay bar. Afraid to even put the name of the establishment on their front door, Milt and Ed not only kept it open, they helped lay the foundation for this West Michigan city's LGBT community.

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Grand Rapids Needs Talent by Rod Kackley: This article examines the need in the Grand Rapids, Mich. information technology community for software and app developers, and what the business and educational communities are doing about it. 

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Michigan Could Miss the Next Wave of Automotive by Rod Kackley: This article examines the problem of the “Missing Middle” being faced by the Big Three in Detroit. It’s a talent problem. Find out what the auto industry is doing about finding its Lost Generation. 

Read More.

Build Your Own Business: Grand Rapids Brewers Used Relationships To Become Beer City USA, By Rod Kackley

Grand Rapids Brewers 

Used Relationships

To Become Beer City USA

(Social Media Helped, Too)

By Rod Kackley

"Whenever there is a need, before long, you will find an entrepreneur with a better idea."

Brewers in Grand Rapids didn’t like the feeling of a tie, so they used a well-orchestrated local social media campaign, along with an old-fashioned retail political blitzkrieg of local celebrities and politicians to claim the top prize in Brewers Association President Charlie Papazian’s annual contest.

As a result of their better idea, Grand Rapids is Beer City USA, one year after sharing the crown with Asheville, North Carolina.

Let's begin with the question, what does it mean to be Beer City USA?

This was Charlie Papazian's better idea.The president of the Brewers Association created the contest about five years ago through his column on the Examiner.com website. 

“The craft beer community gets inundated with so many statistical facts about volume and size and how many of this and per capita of that,” he said, “and they are useful tools, but I wanted to address a little bit more fundamentally what is really going in the relationships that brewers have with beer drinkers and beer drinkers have with breweries. That was at the core of things.”

Then he asked, just what is it that makes any city, a Beer City?

“What I found is that it isn’t just about taste, or volume, or dollars cents. It is kind of a relationship that is hard to measure."

Relationships between beer drinkers and the people who make their beer may be hard to quantify, but brewers in Grand Rapids were able to use their relationships with customers and each other to mobilize voters.

The 2013 Grand Rapids campaign began when Wob Wanhatalo, the head brewer at Mitten Brewing Company in Grand Rapids and one of the founders of the Grand Rapids Society of Brewers formed an alliance with Janet Korn, the vice president of marketing at the Experience Grand Rapids Convention & Visitors Bureau, the organization that has been leading the effort to market Grand Rapids as a beer-tourism destination.
This was their better idea. The first phase was traditional. Experience Grand Rapids created T-shirts and billboards to celebrate the 2012 Beer City USA first-place tie.

Social media was to play an important part of the 2013 Beer City USA campaign in Grand Rapids just has it has for the city’s craft brewers because it is relatively inexpensive, simple to put together and is very flexible.

“Starting up a Facebook page is kind of a useful tool for them to use as a communication vehicle,” Korn said. “It is inexpensive of course and it gives them a place where they can bring this group of people together. The platform really works for building that audience.”

Quenching The Thirst tells the stories of the craft brewers who have helped to change the way the world sees Grand Rapids, Michigan.
For a free preview of this ebook essay, please go towww.rodkackley.com

The marketing strategy included content specific to the beer industry to “tell the Grand Rapids beer story from an informational perspective and included pieces of content that people could take and share,” Korn said. “I think it was the sharing among the fan base that was part of the 27,000 votes for Grand Rapids.’

For social media platforms, they chose the Experience Grand Rapids blog, Facebook and Twitter.

However, the campaign would not rely strictly on social media. Some very traditional point-of-purchase elements were thrown into the mix.

Experience Grand Rapids made table coasters that read, “Vote Grand Rapids Beer City USA” that were handed out at all of breweries and beer bars in Grand Rapids. 

Then feet hit the street.

A grassroots, political style campaign was the final piece of the Beer City USA effort. MiBeers.com organized three “Tap The Vote” pub crawls featuring local celebrities, Grand Rapids Mayor George Heartwell and other supporters who targeted the beer bars in the Grand Rapids area.

“We knew we had the breweries supporting us, so we went to all of the beer bars in town that served Grand Rapids or Michigan beer,” Wanhatalo said.

Social media still played a role. They used the hashtag#Beer City GR on Twitter during the pub crawls. 

“We made sure people knew the voting was happening, and reminded them to vote, too.”

Of course, they didn’t forget the importance of beer. Wanhatalo said they decided to create some special for their customers. 

The Grand Rapids brewers collaborated on four “project” beers which were brewed on a single idea or theme. The first was Beer City Pale Ale.

“The guys all pointed at me and said, ‘You come up with the recipe and we will brew it,’” said Wanhatalo.

After that they did the Grand Pumpkin beer. Brewers could do whatever they wanted for that one as long as the recipe included pumpkin.

“The way we look at it as brewers and owners is a shared celebration. We are all in this together,” Wanhatalo said. “The more cooperation, the better.”

That was their best idea.

To order your autographed hardcover or softcover edition, please to gowww.rodkackley.com