Creative entrepreneurs teach WSU the “Art of Business”

The government does not fund hobbyists.

That’s what Gilda Snowden, an award-winning artist whose works grace the walls of the Detroit Institute of Arts, learned ten years ago when undergoing an IRS audit. In an attempt to prepare her, Snowden’s accountant asked her why she made art. Art was her “passion,” she of course replied, her “reason for living.”

Her accountant stopped her cold.

“No,” he said firmly. “You make art to make money. If you saying anything else to the IRS guy, you will be termed a hobbyist, and you can’t deduct anything.”

Snowden shared this story with WSU students at “Art of Business,” a workshop sponsored in March by Wayne State’s business laboratory Blackstone LaunchPad. Funded out of New York City by The Blackstone Group’s Blackstone Charitable Foundation, the LaunchPad brought several successful artists to Bernath Auditorium to share tips on running a profitable business – a notoriously difficult feat for right-brained people.

Snowden made it through the audit, she said, but has been a meticulous record keeper ever since. Her three degrees, studio space, and place on the Center for Creative Studies faculty do much to establish her as a business person, she noted, but she also documents everything she buys, wears or eats in her studio, runs credit cards through her iPad, maintains a mailing list, sends monthly invoices to clients, updates her portfolio and resume on a routine basis, and keeps her business bank account separate from her personal one. Because she has declared art her business, all Snowden’s studio expenses – right down to her magazines subscriptions – are tax deductible.

“It felt kind of strange to say I make art for money, because I make art for myself,” Snowden said. “I make choices about my paintings based on not whether it will sell, but how it makes me feel and what I want to say and how happy I am.”

Nevertheless, she told the audience, artists must attend to business to stay in business.

A time to DIY, a time to delegate

“Art of Business” was the brainchild of Blackstone LaunchPad student intern Kelly Guillory, who as a budding artist learned the hard way how difficult it is to manage a career without business training.

“I lost $400 due to a bad investment in a venue a few years ago,” she said, “but since enrolling in Blackstone Launchpad’s program, I've learned a lot about risk assessment and budgeting for projects.”

Using strategies learned at Blackstone LaunchPad, Guillory raised enough money to fund a graphic novel she is producing. Most importantly, she’s secured preorders for the novel – a pulp fiction romp with a sprinkle of the supernatural set in Detroit – ensuring there will be no risk up front for production while maximizing resources for marketing and advertisement.

“This workshop was my way of trying to get others to come together and talk about the speed bumps that stop us from succeeding in the art field,” Guillory said.  “The kind of knowledge we share concern the things everyone needs to know.”

Ashlie Lauren, a WSU senior who approached Blackstone LaunchPad for help establishing her business as a photographer and makeup artist, told attendees that smart business practices can help artists grow their business, not simply maintain it.

“I knew how to do makeup, but I didn’t know how to run a business. Since working with Blackstone LaunchPad I’ve been able to take my business so much farther,” said Lauren, who recently got her work into Vogue Italia’s PhotoVogue program. “I had to do create a business plan, and I learned that I can do what I love and earn a living.”

Lauren shared with audience members a few hard-earned lessons. First, don’t book gigs without a contract and deposit. Inking a date in your planner means you’ll probably turn down other work for that day, she said, and if your client cancels without paying a deposit you’ve forfeited your chance to make money.

Another common mistake? Undercharging your clients.

“Don’t start out as a bargain artist,” Lauren stressed. “You might think your work isn’t worth as much as it is.”

Artists who see the light after undercharging clients can always up their rates, she said, but they will have to rebrand – which can be expensive – and almost always need to find new clientele.

Megan Pouncy, a Detroit-area graphic designer who started her own business after serving in executive positions with Target, Home Depot, Bed Bath & Beyond, and Michael’s Arts and Crafts, agreed, saying artists must be attuned to the importance of “a proper quote, a contract, and a high level of professionalism.”

“Don’t undervalue your services,” said Pouncy, whose expertise includes the design of restaurant and retail spaces, such as Midtown’s Curl Up & Dye salon. “Have courage in your own abilities.”

A common theme among the workshop panelists was the danger of paying too much for advertising. In this day of social media, they said, artists can get extensive publicity through Facebook, Twitter, and aggressive networking.

“Do everything you can for free,” said Pouncy. “If it’s over $100, don’t do it. Because when you are a small company and you try to look like a big company, sometimes you bite off more than you can chew and you don’t get the return that you expect.”

And don’t forget there’s always the work itself to get the word out, said Snowden.

“The more shows you have, the more your work works for you,” she said. “Any time I sell a work, that work is in a client’s house working for me, because people will inquire where they got it.”

Still, said Snowden, whose prints appear in Neiman Marcus stores nationwide, a key aspect of running a successful business is knowing when to delegate tasks. Galleries charge a 50% commission to sell her art, she said, and it’s worth every penny.

“I’ll gladly pay somebody to sell my work for me and give them 50% because that gives me more time in my studio to do my work,” Snowden said. “Selling yourself and selling your art is a major job. And when I’m selling, I’m not making art.”

Snowden offered two other pieces of advice for working artists. First, make sure potential clients know that art is an investment.

“Art always appreciates,” she said. “I can show clients pieces of my work I sold 20 years ago for $2,000 that are now selling for $17,000.”

Second, offer to sell work on an installment basis. People are used to buying cars and property that way, she said, and a payment plan can make a purchase more affordable.

Finally, said Pouncy, creative jobs are often never advertised, so it’s important for artists to attend tradeshows and keeping connected with people personally as well as professionally.

“It’s different building something from the ground up then it is walking into something that’s already been developed and nurtured and cultivated,” she said. “Keep a list of clients, but also stay close to friends. You’ll see how valuable networks and relationships that you’ve built up in the past are when you start a business.”

When it comes to leadership in corporate America, achieving gender parity will require a broader, more inclusive definition of leadership behaviors, a panel of women entrepreneurs told a Wayne State audience last month.

Women tend to excel at collaboration, panelists said, but bringing people together to accomplish goals in participative formats does not fit society’s traditional – and masculine – concept of authoritarian leadership. Consequently, girls must be guided from a young age by successful women and told that “feminine” skills such as listening, cooperating, and dividing tasks based on one another’s natural abilities, can lead to personal and professional success.

The panel discussion was part of “Stand Out,” an April 10 workshop on women leadership co-hosted by WSU’s business laboratory, Blackstone LaunchPad, which is funded out of New York City by The Blackstone Group’s Blackstone Charitable Foundation. Moderating the discussion was Margaret Williams, interim dean of the university’s School of Business Administration, who observed that “often the stereotypical perceptions of leaders are not the behaviors that come most naturally to women.” Opening remarks at the workshop, co-sponsored by Kappa Delta Sorority, WSU’s The Front Door, and the women’s professional organization Inforum, were delivered by WSU Deputy President Phyllis Ivory Vroom.

Addressing a predominantly female audience in the General Lectures building, Vroom drew parallels from her own career when describing key components of leadership. Unable to find employment during the “Eisenhower recession,” Vroom applied to Wayne State University in her mid-teens. She rose through the ranks at the university’s School of Social Work, retiring as its dean in 2011. Her skills as a leader, she said, came from her ability to “connect with people and marshal them behind a compelling interest.”

“Some people think of leadership as power over people, but I admire the ideal of servant leadership,” Vroom said. “Success is a generative process, in that leaders are only successful when they cultivate new leaders whose accomplishments are greater than those who mentored them.”

The workshop featured four veteran executives: Nancy Philippart, chair of the Engineering Ventures program within Wayne State’s College of Engineering; Carla Walker-Miller, president and CEO at Walker-Miller Energy Services; Blaire Miller, CFO and co-founder of Eaton Rapids Castings, and Nabelah Ghareeb, chief strategy and administrative officer with The Children’s Center.

Philippart, who is chair of the Girl Scouts of Southeastern Michigan’s board of directors, said Girl Scouts Research Institute in 2008 identified an alarming discrepancy between girls’ self-identified skills and the skills they associate with leadership. As Philippart noted, the study found that only one in five girls believes she has the qualities necessary to become a leader, a disturbing finding that prompted Girl Scouts of the USA to launch “To Get Her There,” an initiative to establish gender-balanced leadership in one generation. Sadly, said Philippart, while the girls surveyed believed they were good at listening and collaborating, they did not associate these skills with the “command and control” behaviors that historically have been the hallmarks of leadership. But leadership must be self-styled and authentic, she stressed.

“Leadership is about practicing,” said Philippart, whose first taste of leadership came in middle school when she ran successfully for a student council position at a teacher’s urging. “You start, you’re scared, but you plunge in and then you find your own authentic style.”

Philippart said she learned early that she could not “emulate men.”

“I’m collaborative,” Philippart said. “I’ve always thought that the strongest testament of leadership is the ability to bring out the best in others so you can leverage the talent of the group.”

Walker-Miller said her first impressions of leadership were “bigger than life” and formed by early workplace experiences, such as the time a male manager threw a chair out of a window in a pique. Naturally shy, Walker-Miller found she had to cultivate her own innate strengths to be a leader, namely “willingness, vision, and compassion.”

Willingness comes from accepting the “perks and the risks” of taking the helm.

“The risk of leadership,” she said, “is that when you lose, you lose big and you lose publicly.”

Vision is a commitment to doing a task “bigger than it’s been done before,” and compassion enables a leader to consider carefully decisions that impact people’s lives.

Echoing Walker-Miller’s call to be open to failure was Miller, who said her associates in California’s Silicon Valley “wear failure like a badge of honor.”

“We haven’t yet gotten in Michigan that failure is a good thing,” Miller said. “You have to be resilient and crowd out all the noise. And you have to be able to pivot when something’s not working.”

How does one afford this failure? By robbing Peter to pay Paul, Miller said.

“Go as far as you can with something, then go back to something that will make money, then try again,” she said. “Jump to the things that make money when you see an idea that’s percolating but isn’t there yet.”

Risk-taking also entails accepting positions or promotions that present a sharp learning curve, Ghareeb said. Her first professional “break” came shortly after college, when she was a financial analyst for Toledo Public Schools. An administrator and mentor took a chance on her by appointing her director of purchasing on a six-month trial basis despite her lack of experience. Ghareeb excelled, and stayed on for eight years.

While Ghareeb said she takes a “conservative” approach to counseling college students about entrepreneurship, encouraging them to get career experience before launching a business, Philippart and Walker-Miller told students to seize upon current conditions that are favorable to starting a venture. Citing resources like Blackstone LaunchPad and college-based groups like the College of Engineering’s Collegiate Entrepreneur Organization, Philippart said “there has never been a better time than now in this university to explore your options.”

 Wayne State’s Blackstone LaunchPad is giving away $35,000 to student entrepreneurs who can prove they have the mettle to make it big.

 The university’s business laboratory last week launched its annual Warrior Fund, a competition that provides pre-seed funding for scalable student-owned ventures. At a Feb. 5 information session in the Student Center Building, Senior Program Administrator Aubrey Agee said the competition is designed to get students “VC-ready,” which means ready for venture capital.

 “This is a chance for you to get really good at pitching your idea,” Agee told a room full of students from a range of academic disciplines that included business, law, medicine, political science and graphic arts. “To really make a go of a business takes perseverance, so we’re going to make you jump over hurdles to improve your business.”

 The competition, which is restricted to Wayne State students, consists of several Blackstone LaunchPad-sponsored coaching opportunities, with only the most prepared entrepreneurs advancing to a make-or-break round during which they pitch their idea to a panel of expert judges. Blackstone LaunchPad, which is funded out of New York City by The Blackstone Group’s Blackstone Charitable Foundation, will award grants of up to $5,000 to contestants that excel at this pitch. Consequently, there will be a minimum of seven winners ($5,000 each), and possibly many more if smaller grants are awarded.

 This year’s grant money has been provided by The Michigan Initiative for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (title sponsor), Lakeland Ventures Development (main sponsor), Detroit Venture Partners (professional sponsor), and Bizdom and NextEnergy (supporting sponsors). Agee stressed that even those entrepreneurs who don’t win a grant will come out ahead as a result of the advice they will receive throughout the competition.

 “It’s never a ‘no,’ it’s a ‘not yet,’” Agee said, noting that several past Warrior Fund winners were entrepreneurs who did not receive an award in their first pitch attempt.

 On your mark, get set, prepare!

 In order to compete for a Warrior Fund grant, students must join Blackstone LaunchPad by completing an online profile and venture assessment form (http://wayne.thelaunchpad.org/). Next, the contestants will meet with Blackstone LaunchPad staff to pitch their business plan pitch. The best pitches demonstrate an understanding of the target market, production costs, and competition, Agee said. They will also employ the passion and emotional appeals necessary to persuade venture capitalists to invest.

 If their initial pitch is solid, contestants will schedule one-on-one sessions with Blackstone LaunchPad staff to identify and improve weakness in their business plan, their pitch, or both. From there, select contestants will be invited to attend one of several official preparation sessions scheduled for March 1 (changed from Feb 22), May 11, Aug. 17 and Oct. 19. Those who are deemed ready will be invited back a few days later for the “big” pitch.

 You + 10 Minutes = $5,000

 Finalists in the Warrior Fund competition will have 10 minutes to pitch their business model to a panel of Blackstone LaunchPad sponsors, industry leaders, and WSU staff. The pitch is followed by a rigorous “grilling” from the panel intended to find “holes” in the business model, Agee said. While intense and often uncomfortable, he added, it provides invaluable grooming for real-world meetings with venture capitalists who won’t easily part with their money.

 Nilesh Joshi, who won a Warrior Fund grant of nearly $5,000 in 2012 for his biochemical company, told the audience the “not yet” he got his first year of competition was as valuable as the “yes” he got months later.

 “I understood the value of it much later,” Joshi told the room of contestants, adding that scientists-turned-entrepreneurs typically struggle with calculating production costs and market research. The feedback he got the first year of competition forced him to get a better handle on these aspects of his business plan,  he said.

 And while $5,000 is a modest contribution to a biochemical venture, Joshi conceded, the Warrior Fund grant brought him something far more valuable: “instant credibility.” Quite simply, he observed, it’s easier to get funding when you’ve gotten funding.

 “Initially you are selling an idea – nothing else,” said Joshi, adding that he had no business management experience when he joined Blackstone LaunchPad. Winning a grant, he said, “is a show of confidence that there are some things you’ve done right.”

 For more information on the Warrior Fund, visit http://wayne.edu/blackstonelaunchpad/warriorfund.php.

Student brings networking savvy to New York investment banks

A WSU finance student and entrepreneur spent the holiday break networking in the Big Apple to position himself for a future career with one of the nation’s top investment banks.

Patrick Bresnahan, a third-year undergraduate pursuing a major in finance and minor in Chinese, spent a week in New York City in the halls of Goldman Sachs, where he shadowed experts in sales and trading and capital markets,and at The Blackstone Group, where he attended informational meetings to learn about summer analyst programs and future career options. The experience allowed him to better understand the industry, Bresnahan said, and to make professional connections that might help him land a coveted internship. It also gave him valuable insight into the professional dynamic that drives sales and trading.

“I was really inspired to see the camaraderie and the emphasis on teams and teamwork,” Bresnahan said. “They were very committed, very passionate, and they put their best foot forward on the projects they were working on.”

Bresnahan won access to these high-level mentors the old fashioned way: by asking. Since July, Bresnahan has requested and received audiences with executives at the Chicago office of the Bank of Montreal and UBS and several boutique firms in Detroit, and believes success comes from “putting yourself in front of people and showing that you’re passionate and capable.” Simply put, he’s a young networking maven who knows that big opportunities come from introductions, emails, phone calls and simply knocking on doors.

“If you express interest and passion in this industry, people are willing to give you a little bit of their time to talk about what it is they do and answer questions you might have,” Bresnahan said, adding that these conversations can yield invaluable advice about what it is like to work in the industry and to see the qualities and traits of people working at the firm.

To wit, Bresnahan’s invitation to visit Goldman Sachs stemmed from a conversation he struck up with a company team member at a wedding and their subsequent email correspondence. His private meetings at Blackstone grew out of his involvement in Wayne State University’s business incubator Blackstone LaunchPad, which is funded by The Blackstone Group’s Blackstone Charitable Foundation. Bresnahan, who with his partner launched the mobile technology firm PickOne Productions with assistance from WSU Blackstone LaunchPad, sought out a Blackstone executive at an event in metro Detroit.

“I caught him as he was leaving and made my two-minute pitch,” Bresnahan said. “I told him I would be in New York at Christmas and asked if I could have 15 minutes of his time when I was there. From there we emailed back and forth, and he was able to get me a few minutes in front of members of the firm’s investment groups.”

 Using Wayne’s resources

Bresnahan credits his ease with networking to past sales jobs, “where income comes from being proactive and contacting people you may not know,” and from family members in sales work who modeled assertiveness. He’s also an avid reader of investment banking literature and participant in Wayne State’s Business School activities.

“This is a great training ground to approach strangers with whom you share common ground and have a quick conversation,” he said. “A lot of Business School events are focused on networking, encourage you to make connections in a friendly environment, and give you the experience needed to network effectively.”

Connections are great, but connections that lead to business are better. And that’s where Blackstone LaunchPad comes in, notes Bresnahan. The incubator this summer alerted PickOne Productions to a high-profile mobile application competition in the city and helped Bresnahan and his partner develop and pitch their bid. The two made it to the final round of selection, and gained invaluable experience creating a budget and timeline for a corporate bid.

“Blackstone LaunchPad is a phenomenal companion to the university,” Bresnahan said. “The support they give aspiring entrepreneurs is tremendous, particularly when it comes to helping you locate the resources to move forward with your idea.”

By Christine Snyder

Published by Crain's Detroit Business, October 28th, 2012

"Entrepreneurship was the furthest career path from Nilesh Joshi's mind when he was a master's degree student in chemistry at Wayne State University. The recent graduate said he envisioned a future in academics. But he had these ideas....

That's exactly what Blackstone LaunchPad, on the Wayne State campus, is intended for, said Aubrey Agee, the LaunchPad's senior program administrator.

"We provide an outlet for students to explore their ideas," Agee said." ........

Program at WSU gives students a launchpad to entrepreneurship ...

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