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.

Read More

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. 

Read More

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.

Selling Everything But The Gobble, Bootstrapping the Michigan Turkey Producers Cooperative by Rod Kackley

The way Dan Lennon tells the story of Michigan Turkey Producers Cooperative; he leaves you wondering how this company could have wound up with a top line on its financial statement of more than $200 million, thirteen years after its launch.

He and his partners started without a business plan, without a computer, and without a banker who would even talk to them.

“Banks all asked, ‘who are you guys?’” Lennon said. “We spent more than a year just trying to get a bank to talk to us.” 

Two dozen turkey growers in in the Grand Rapids, Mich. area who were making a good living supplying birds to the Sara Lee plant in Zeeland, Mich. about 45 minutes south of Grand Rapids, were told in October 1998 there was no longer a market for the birds.

They all lost their contracts.

Ten of the turkey growers went out of business. Fifteen stayed, banded together, and formed a cooperative. They decided if Sara Lee wouldn’t process their birds, they would do it themselves.

But they had to build a processing facility. Without that, they had no hope.

Entrepreneurs are often advised to seek out ‘friends, family and fools’ for financing in the opening days. Lennon struck out with them too. “One potential investor said he could double his money in the stock market and it would safe there. So, he wouldn’t invest with us and we didn’t fit into any of the government programs.”

The outlook was grim. However, they were able to work out a loan package with CoBank to finance the $20 million construction of a turkey processing facility. But when the bank decided it needed 50 percent down instead of thirty, they had to scramble.

Growers who had purchased stock at $1.50 per shackle — the hooks that would be used to hold turkey carcasses in the plant — increased their investments to $2 per shackle to cover the difference, and they were able to start construction of the Michigan Turkey Producers facility in Wyoming, Mich., near Grand Rapids,  in 1999.

The project was finished in eight months, and turkeys began being processed in March 2000.  But that high point was followed by some rough years. Lennon said they lost money in 2003, 2004, 2007 and 2008 because of the volatility of corn prices. MTPC couldn’t raise its prices fast enough to compensate.

What a difference a decade can make. When the MTPC-Wyoming, Mich. plant opened, it took workers all day to kill 200 turkeys. Now they can process 200-thousand birds a day. “We processed 4.8 million turkeys last year and we have the ability to double that,” he explained to an audience in May 2012. 

Like any CEO, Lennon has to sing two songs at the same time. While extolling the virtues of MTPC and expressing optimism for the future; Lennon also spoke about the challenges that are on the horizon.

Lennon said MTPC was “very lean” at the executive and sales levels of the company. “When you find good people it is tough to get them to relocate (to West Michigan),” he explained. 

MTPC was also having trouble getting good people to work on the plant floor. It wasn’t a hesitancy to relocate that was causing the problem in that case, according to Lennon. His company just couldn’t find enough people who want to work.

“Unemployed people are making almost as much sitting home as we would be able to pay them,” he said. “We are struggling to find people who are willing to come in, work hard, and advance to a position where they can make more money.”

Describing his company as entering its “teenage years,” he also warned that puberty would not be easy for MTPC if only because a flat consumption market would “complicate the future. We need to make more value-added products with higher price points. We need to do more cooking.”

The main sales target for the immediate future: national chain restaurants that already have turkey on their menus. The way Lennon sees it, turkey cold cuts don’t make it. MTPC’s future will be built on turkey served hot. That is the way turkey tastes best, Lennon explained and he wants to find restaurants that agree with him.

“National chain restaurants love turkey,” he said. “We could probably chase McDonald’s or Burger King or Wendy’s until we are blue in the face and not get anywhere. We are going after restaurants that have turkey on the menu. Arby’s does a nice job. We are talking to them, but that may take a few more years.”

Michigan Turkey Producers Cooperative has discovered another new revenue stream in partnership with the people building the nation’s first biomass gasification system where turkey litter is transformed into 300 kilowatts of electricity. bio-digester in Howard City, Michigan, north of Grand Rapids.

Lennon said that means the Cooperative will be “able to sell everything but the gobble.”

Michigan Could Miss the Next Wave of Automotive Technology by Rod Kackley: The article tells the story of the talent shortage facing the Detroit Three in Michigan. Read More

Grand Rapids Needs Talent by Rod Kackley: This article explores the problems facing the information technology community in Grand Rapids, Mich. as it search for new software and mobile app developers. Read More

Last Chance Mile: The Reinvention of an American Community tells the story of how entrepreneurs, politicians, educators, artists and even zombies, came together to chance the way the world sees Grand Rapids, Mich.

Last Chance Mile 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, Mich.

For more books, articles and essays by Rod Kackley, click here.

Build Your Own Business: Funding a movie about dogs and sidecars through Kickstarter

The latest project by veteran indie filmmakers Eric Ristau and Geneva Liimatta is an upbeat documentary that also focuses on a worthwhile cause. OK, the subject matter is a little bit out of the ordinary – but who cares?

This husband-and-wife team from Missoula, Mont., is putting together a film about motorcyclists who bring their dogs along for the ride. No, these easy-riding pups don't sit on the seat, clasping their owner's midsection. They ride in sidecars and wear specially designed dog goggles (called "doggles"). Fittingly the movie is entitled Sit Stay Ride: The Story of America's Sidecar Dogs.

"Seeing a dog in a sidecar brings a smile to everyone's face," says Liimatta. "Our film explores the relationship between sidecar dogs and their motorcycle-riding humans. The dogs and humans we've met while shooting this project are amazing characters. You'll love them all."

So far, footage for Sit Stay Ride has been shot in Washington, California and Montana. "We've found other amazing sidecar dogs in other parts of the country," Ristau says. "We really want to include them in the movie."

Traveling around the country to produce a film is an expensive proposition, however. Ristau and Liimatta have a budget of $28,000 for travel, a soundtrack, sound mix, color correction, DVD manufacturing, distribution and promotion.

In order to defray these costs, they have launched a Kickstarter campaign, encouraging dog-lovers, motorcyclists and anyone else to support production of the film. Thus far, about $10,000 has been raised. Information about their Kickstarter campaign, including sample clips from the movie, can be viewed at www.sidecardogs.com.
The Kickstarter campaign has three distinct objectives:
• Help fund production of the film
• Solicit additional subjects for the film
• Promote animal welfare organizations
"Many of the dogs featured in this film were adopted from the Humane Society and other incredible organizations," points out Ristau. "This is an important message we're trying to send. We want people to adopt dogs and other animals, and also to support agencies that find homes for these pets."

Anyone interested in appearing in Sit Stay Ride can contact Ristau and Liimatta through their Kickstarter page.

Depending on their donation level, Kickstarter contributors will receive thank-you gifts that include behind-the-scenes photos, bumper stickers, on-line previews of the movie, DVDs, T-shirts and viewing parties.

"It's a great story," says Ristau. "The film shows how dogs and their owners came to ride together, the adventures they have and how they connect with the greater community when they're out on the road."

Grand Rapids Needs Talent: Grand Rapids, Michigan has a growing tech community with one big problem: there isn’t enough talent to go around. Learn what the tech and education communities are doing about that in this article. Buy Now

Michigan Could Miss The Next Automotive Technology Wave: Again the problem is a lack of talent. The Detroit Three and its supply chain needs more engineers. Who doesn’t? However, the larger problem is the “Missing Middle.” Find out more about that in this article. Buy Now

Last Chance Mile: The Reinvention of an American Community: Michigan’s economy was crashing. Grand Rapids was afraid of becoming the next Detroit. What did they do? Find out in this book. Buy Now.

BYOB: Indie Tech Talent: More Entrepreneurs of Grand Rapids, Michigan by Rod Kackley

(Mike Williams, CEO of Springthrough)

Mike Williams the founder and CEO of Springthrough in Grand Rapids said the issue of talent is on the minds of everyone in the West Michigan technology industry.


When the tech bubble burst, he said, technology people started leaving Grand Rapids to find better opportunities on the west coast. 


“But there is a resurgence these days, and a lot of it seems to be around the startup community,” he said. 

(Chris Ake, co-founder of Grand Apps)

One of those startups is Grand Apps, a company formed by Chris Ake and a partner in late 2011. Ake said they saw a niche opening in mobile marketing for small businesses that could not afford top dollar developers. At the same time, the business owners didn’t want to settle for do-it-yourself app development.


Ake did not have a bit of app development experience. However, since he had worked as a server in the restaurant industry “for years” Ake and his partner started building mobile apps for the restaurant industry.


“We got a couple sales, did a real-life feasibility test and found out it worked.”


Grand Apps had no outside funding. The operation was “100 percent bootstrapped,” Ake said.“It was tough. I was flat broke.” 


Money wasn’t all they were short of. Ake freely admits he had no sales experience, no management experience, and no startup experience. 


“I had nothing. All I did was serve (in restaurants).”


The drive to survive fueled his passion. Ake was tending bar on the weekends to pay for his attention to Grand Apps Monday through Friday.


“Life is so short, why would you want to do what someone else thinks you should do?” he said. 


Read more about Grand Apps.


Read more about Springthrough

This is only the first of several articles I will be writing on Indie Tech Talent I have found in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Have ideas about who or what I should be writing about. Please be the first to let me know via the Contact Me page, or rod@rodkackley.com.
(c) 2014 Lyons Circle Publishing Inc.

Quenching the Thirst is an ebook in the Restore The Roar: Manufacturing Renaissance series that tells the story of the beginning of the craft beer industry in Michigan. Available for download now through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and iTunes.

More Build Your Own Business (BYOB) stories are on my mobile app, which you can download for free through Google Playor the App Store.

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

Build Your Own Business: Learning To Be An Entrepreneur By Example, By Rod Kackley

Build Your Own Business, Be Your Own Boss, By Your Own Bootstraps — is inspired by a Paul Graham quote in The Launch Pad: Inside the Y Combinator by Randall Stross, which tells the story of Silicon Valley’s most exclusive school for entrepreneurs.  

Graham runs that school and is a legend in the Valley.

Stross asked him why Europeans seem to be less entrepreneurial than Americans. Graham said it is not  because they have “less balls” than Americans. Graham said Europeans just don't have the examples of entrepreneurs that Americans have to learn from.

Examples of entrepreneurs from which we learn.

Yesterday, I told you about how I found myself surrounded by examples of young entrepreneurs inside Start Garden, a startup business incubator in downtown Grand Rapids, Mich.

They filled the Start Garden’s lobby that day, and they are everywhere in Grand Rapids every day. It isn't that Grand Rapids’ balls are bigger or brassier. It is just that this community not only has entrepreneurial examples, this community applauds those entrepreneurial examples. 

Grand Rapids sees itself as a community of entrepreneurs.

It is the same for the Detroit area,especially with the rebuilding effort underway there, except maybe they are not applauded like Grand Rapids’ entrepreneurs because of the Motor City’s Big Three, big company mentality.

What’s it like where you live? 

Build Your Own Business will help today’s entrepreneurs tell their stories, along with looking at the history of entrepreneurs not just in Grand Rapids, but wherever there are stories to be told.

The idea is to learn by all of their examples, and yours too. Let us know what you are working on, dreaming of, and who is inspiring you. Please share and help us learn by your examples, too.

For more examples of entrepreneurs, check out the BYOB section of the Read Tab in the free Rod Kackley app that you can download for iOS or Android devices, or go to www.rodkackley.com.

Quenching The Thirst tells the stories of the entrepreneurs who started Grand Rapids craft brewing industry.

Download your ebook through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or iTunes.

Farm To Fork tells the stories of the agricultural entrepreneurs in West Michigan. 

Download your ebook now through Amazon, Barnes & Noble or iTunes.

Last Chance Mile: The Reinvention of an American Community tells the stories of how the people of Grand Rapids changed the way the world sees their community and the way they see the world. 

Order your hardcover, softcover or ebook edition from Abbott Press, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, iTunes or your favorite bookseller.

Build Your Own Business: Grand Rapids' Start Garden, An EcoSystem Helping Ideas Become Businesses

Grand Rapids' Calder Plaza

Start Garden, in Grand Rapids, Mich. is a $15 million investment fund and business incubator where ideas become businesses every week. 

It's an incredible concept that is really very simple. Create an ecosystem that is friendly to those with ideas and help those people bring their ideas to market.

Walk into Start Garden in downtown Grand Rapids, take two steps on the wood floor and you will find yourself in the midst of what is heaven to an entrepreneur. 

You have space to work, space to think and like-minded people with which to interact.
I took part in one of their Lunch 'N Learn programs. It was focused on public relations for the start-up company. 

So you see, Start Garden is about more than just money. They are not throwing cash at people who believe they have found something even better than sliced bread nor is Start Garden trying to take over controlling interest in what is better than sliced bread.

Start Garden helps these entrepreneurs build their businesses, and is smart enough to tell them when an idea is not going to work.

So there I was at this Lunch 'N Learn surrounded by people who all had the dream of building their own business. A young couple sitting behind me had invented not a better mousetrap but they believe, a better water dish for dogs.

A young couple in front of me was developing interactive video games. I met a man who has invented a toilet that closes the lid for you, and a woman creating medical devices for Third Word countries, real Bottom of the Pyramid stuff.

What did I learn from the public relations class? How about this? It gave me the insight to actually lay out on paper, what I want my new company to do. After months of wrestling to create a plan, I was able to put my ideas together in fifteen minutes.

Incredible. But, that's what happens when you surround yourself with people who have a vision, and it is a shared vision, of building their own business.

Want to learn more about Start Garden? I think everyone should, so you would be well advised to Read More.

Build Your Own Business, Be Your Own Boss, By Your Own Bootstraps is not intended to show you the "ten secrets to success" or "how to be more productive while raising a baby," or even "how to get rich quick."

All I want to do is tell you the stories of the entrepreneurs I have met over the past twenty-five years, those who have succeed, those who have struggled, those who have failed, those who share the same dream and vision; to build their own business.

To begin reading their stories, please download the Rod Kackley app for Android or iOS through the App Store or Google Play, and start reading BYOB in the Read Tab.

And please tell me what you dream is. What business do you want to build? 

For more books, articles and essays by Rod Kackley, please visit www.rodkackley.com or go to www.lyonscirclepublishing.blogspot.com and read the story of my epiphany.