Taking Healthy Risks
Experiences of Four Marriott School Entrepreneurs
By Grant R. Madsen
Photos by Brad Slade

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Entrepreneurship is, in many ways, the lifeblood of our economy. Each year, more than half a million businesses are started, and millions of jobs are created in the United States alone. Additionally, the entrepreneurial itch helps advance technology and diversifies the economy.

The innate drive to create new ventures and build new enterprises has led the United States out of many recessions. According to a recent USA Today1 article, in the previous nine recessions since 1948, self-employment rose as laid-off workers started their own companies. This increase in businesses produced jobs and innovation, providing a vital shot in the arm to a floundering economy.

However, during the past two years, new business startups have been slow to aid in the recovery. The share of all self-employed workers has actually fallen since March 2001.2

Experts attribute this recent trend to rising health insurance premiums, lack of readily available financing, and a decrease in investor confidence. Despite such obstacles, many are still counting on entrepreneurs to nurse the economy back to health.

With a strong tradition of entrepreneurship, Marriott School graduates are reinventing traditional businesses and creating innovative ventures—nourishing a hungry economy.

These are four stories of Marriott School alumni garnering entrepreneurial success. Common among them is a desire to help others succeed, reliance on the gospel of Jesus Christ, and application of skills acquired at the Marriott School.

Discover Nathan Gwilliam's path to start Adoption.com, one of the world's largest adoption media web sites; how Chris Lansing converted a local building supply company into the national Ted Lansing Corporation; what prompted Marva Sadler to restart Baron Woolen Mills and join new venture eLeaderTech; and why Stephen Jenkins believes his newest startup, CheatCodes.com, is honest work and a lot of fun.

Nathan Gwilliam
Adoption.com

Pivotal Moment

Banging on the doors of the post office at 12:45 a.m., former BYU business student Nathan Gwilliam couldn't believe his luck. Tired and overworked, he had postponed finishing a business plan entry until earlier that evening. Procrastination had caught up with him.

After hearing about a U.S. West-sponsored competition with a $10,000 prize, he resolved to give it a shot. His new company, Adoption.com, had experienced minor success generating revenue through advertising, adoption attorney listings, and parent profiles, but was still unable to meet its expenses.

The company had just downsized and moved from Provo (where it started in 1995 in a BYU computer lab and won the BYU ACE Business Plan Competition) to Arizona, where Gwilliam could save rent money living with his parents. The warm glow of CNN and MSNBC cameras that followed the young entrepreneur at the site's launch had faded, and the cold realities of running a business remained.

"There's a standard rule they tell you in business school—the rule of threes," Gwilliam says. "It will take three times as long, cost you three times as much, and generate a third of the money you think it will. That was pretty true."

Earlier that evening, he had decided to grab something to eat before returning to the office to finish the business plan entry, which had to be postmarked that night for competition eligibility.

"Looking back, we were at a pivotal moment of the company," Gwilliam says. "We could very easily have folded. All the credit cards were maxed, and there wasn't enough revenue to meet our needs."

On the way to dinner, his automobile was rear ended—the first accident of his life. By the time he returned to work, got the business plan in a workable state for submission, and drove to the post office, he had missed the postmark.

Standing in front of the post office's locked doors, Gwilliam noticed several postal workers exiting the side door. Hoping for a miracle, he nearly pounced on them, passionately explaining his situation.

"I told them it had to be postmarked before midnight. They told me, ‘It can't,'" he says. "I explained to them that this was to help kids get adopted, and it was for a really good cause." His sincerity swayed them.

"When they came back out—minus the package—they said, ‘You are so lucky. The lady in charge of turning over the date stamp is having a baby shower, so she hasn't done it yet.'"

His entry properly postmarked, Gwilliam went on to win the competition. The prize money arrived in time for Adoption.com to pay critical obligations and garner more media coverage. More importantly, it attracted the attention of financiers.

A Helping Business

Under Gwilliam's leadership, Adoption.com is now a profitable network of more than two-hundred web sites related to adoption, foster care, infertility, and crisis pregnancy. Aside from catering to people hoping to adopt, the Adoption.com network also serves women facing crisis pregnancies, adoptive families, adoptees, and birthparents.

Popular sites include AdoptionWeek.com, an online magazine sent via email weekly to 220,000 readers; AdoptableKids.com, a photo listing with nearly 2,000 children in foster homes and orphanages; ParentProfiles.com, a service allowing hopeful adoptive parents to build online profiles and pregnant mothers to access those profiles; and AdoptionRegistry.com, the largest mutual-consent reunion registry that helps adult adoptees and birthparents find each other.

Privately owned by Gwilliam and his father, the world's biggest adoption media company employs twenty people and creates revenues from advertising, directory listings of adoption attorneys and agencies, listings of parent profiles, and from sales of adoption books, music, videos, and other products. "A lot of people said you couldn't make money in the adoption world," he says. "But I knew it could be done."

Guiding Principles

Important to his accomplishments has been the foundation he gained in Marriott School classes.

"Rick Farr's marketing class was wonderful," he says. "It was so practical. I've used almost everything I learned there."

Key to his success is three principles upon which Gwilliam bases business decisions: (1) Do the right things for the right reasons, and worry about revenue second. (2) Pay outright for everything needed to run your business, but make all of your revenue streams recurring. (3) Give credit where it's due.

"We are very open in our business culture that we could not do this without the Lord," Gwilliam says. "He gets the credit, not us. We need to make all of our decisions in ways we can be worthy of that assistance."