Building Business, One Obstacle at a Time

Despite recent economic downturns, some people have managed to stay afloat – even thrive – and Eric Mintz is one of them.

of Tucker’s Heck Yeah! introduced Mintz as a man who has successfully grown a business during these downturns. Mintz has owned and operated EM Squared since 2001, but until last year, he was a one man operation. Tucker Patch met with him last week.

Mr. Mintz, how did your business begin?

“I've actually been in business since 2001, but until a few years ago, EM Squared was just me as a freelancer. I'd get most all of my business through staffing agencies, and then I would work onsite for six to 12 month projects for clients. It wasn't until 2007 that I started getting most of my business directly. I had a great year that first year. I knew then that I wanted to have a real business working for my own clients. Then when the bottom fell out, I still had my loyal clients but they didn't have any money. I knew I had to figure out a way to get new business or it was over.”

What steps did you take to bring business back, and what obstacles did you face trying to do so?

Learning to sell himself and his services was one of the biggest challenges Mintz faced. “I never thought I could sell. I had two other businesses before EM Squared where I had partners who were sales people. I was convinced I didn't know how, couldn't learn how and wouldn't be good at it. This time around, I didn't have a choice. I had to learn.”

Mintz tried cold calling, soliciting more work from existing clients, and “none of that panned out,” he says. “Then I joined the Metro Atlanta Chamber at the suggestion of my wife, Ann. I didn't know the first thing about networking but I had to learn. It took me a few months to really understand the dynamics of getting to know people personally, letting them know who I was and [assuring them] that they could trust me with their contacts.”

After his networking and expansion efforts, “new work began to trickle in,” says Mintz.

How have you grown your business since then?

The work continued to improve, and the business burgeoned for several years. “Then I got overwhelmed with business, and I had to hire my first employee, Rocco (Rocky) Cutri in January, 2011. Then I got overwhelmed again with new business and had to bring on my second employee, Michelle Johnston in September, 2011. Then I brought on my third, Leslie Richardson, (new president of the ) as a part-timer in December, 2011."

“In short,” Mintz says, “networking, good customer service and a great product kept me afloat and then got me going full bore.”

Tell me a bit what your company specializes in today.

“EM Squared creates custom content management system websites with Joomla, Wordpress, Drupal and DotNetNuke. Our websites are search engine optimized, very polished, professional and they compel visitors to engage with the business,” says Mintz. He also emphasizes the value they provide to the business owner who can easily manage and update his or her own website.

We also build custom software solutions - software to help run and organize the business. Typically, clients we develop software for are managing their businesses from spreadsheets or small Microsoft Access databases - which is fine for a new business. But, when the business grows and brings on employees, spreadsheets and Access databases can get unwieldy really quickly. Other clients have systems that are not integrated, like an ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system that's separate from their CRM (Customer Relations Manager), that's separate from their financial system - and they need all of these systems to work together. We can write the "glue" software to connect them, and we can also write a custom software solution that has all of the functionality of the separate systems.”

Do you focus on one aspect over the other?

Mintz says no. Although he began on the software side of things, meeting Benevento and bringing employees on board has allowed him to expand into the creative side of the business. “Today, we do about 50/50,” Mintz says – half website creation (including SEO and content generation) and half custom software construction.

What advice do you have for people struggling to keep their businesses running in a poor economic environment, or what advice would offer to someone thinking of starting his or her own business?

“Be willing to work twice as hard and make half as much,” says Mintz, somewhat jokingly. “You just don’t fail – it’s not an option. It’s sort of like skiing behind a boat when the driver is trying to knock off – you can’t give up. You’re going to run into situations again and again where it looks like the end, and you have to make the dedicated decision to keep going.”