Thousands take leap into ownership

FROZEN ASSETS: Joyce Bouchard next to her Kona Ice truck. She and her husband launched a business selling shaved ice last summer. / PBN PHOTO/RUPERT WHITELEY
FROZEN ASSETS: Joyce Bouchard next to her Kona Ice truck. She and her husband launched a business selling shaved ice last summer. / PBN PHOTO/RUPERT WHITELEY

Sometimes in business, as in life, when one door closes another opens.
That’s what happened for Providence’s John Shea, after 25 years as executive director of the New England Governors’ Conference, a Boston-based nonprofit formed in 1937 to promote economic development and policy coordination among the six New England states. The organization folded in 2012, Shea said.
“If you do something for too long, it may take away opportunities to be successful at other things,” he said. “I have a lot of other interests and it kind of forced me to take that opportunity,” said Shea. Last year he formed two Rhode Island companies – Sino-American Business Connections LLC and Seal East Asian Languages LLC – along with business partner, Wenjing Li.
They were among 7,121 new businesses launched in Rhode Island in 2012, ranging from custom construction companies, to enterprises to support the development of Chinese and U.S. business partnerships and purveyors of tropical shaved ice.
The count of new businesses marks the second year in a row the Ocean State had an increase in new corporate entities, although it was a modest 4 percent gain over the 2011 total.
“While a lot of these may be one- and two-person companies … it is growth, and people seem to see positive reasons for starting a business in Rhode Island,” said Secretary of State A. Ralph Mollis.
“Watching these starts over these last few years, I do have some cautious optimism,” Mollis said.
“Not only did 2012 see the most business registrations since 2008, we’ve seen back-to-back growth in 2011 and 2012.”
Still, there were business endings, and they saw a slight increase.
In 2012, there were 6,725 corporate entities that disappeared, according to the secretary of state’s office. That’s about a 1.5 percent increase over 2011, when 6,627 companies shut their doors.
“While we’ve seen more companies dissolved this year than last year, we’ve seen the percentage of dissolutions significantly less than when the recession began in 2008,” Mollis said.
In 2008, a record 7,071 companies went out of business in Rhode Island, according to the secretary of state’s office.
Sino-American Business Connections is a facilitator for developing business partnerships and assisting Chinese companies that want to locate on the East Coast, Shea said.

Seal East Asian Languages provides customized training and instruction in Mandarin Chinese at all levels, from kindergarten to business executives.
One of Shea’s areas of expertise is renewable energy, and he said the new company will be able to assist with U.S. regulations, so-called “clean” energy credits and communications.
“We’re still in the process of identifying clients,” Shea said. “We just got started in the fall of 2012.”
He sees a promising future for the two new companies, based on his experience working throughout the region. With the Providence location in easy commuting distance to Boston, New York and Hartford, he said the lower cost of office space and housing made Rhode Island a natural choice for the new companies
“We made sure we took a conservative approach. We didn’t staff it up,” Shea said. With only Shea and Li as staff, the two businesses share office space in Providence.
“I think one of the primary mistakes new businesses make is they start incurring a lot of expenses before they have a lot of revenue,” said Shea.
But some new businesses require a substantial investment, or at least what qualifies as such for the owners. And like the founders of many small businesses, Joyce and Bob Bouchard of Smithfield are a husband-and-wife team who made the investment and took the risk together. They bought a franchise of Kona Ice and launched it last summer.
“We made a big investment,” said Joyce Bouchard, who manages the kitchen at Winsor School in Smithfield. Her husband, Bob Bouchard, is a physical education and health teacher at Park View Middle School in Cranston.
Their new tropical shaved-ice business is intended as a summertime- and retirement-income-producing adventure for them, Joyce Bouchard said. It started with a trip to Cincinnati last summer to pick up their colorful Kona Ice truck and drive it back to Rhode Island.
So far, they’ve had families follow the truck asking to buy shaved ice, and it’s been a big hit with adults and children at business and athletic events, she said.
“I don’t think anyone can afford to retire nowadays,” Bouchard said. “We wanted a business that’s family oriented and different and something that’s going to be fun.”

Some new business owners who took the leap in 2012 said their decision was based on personal timing, forced changes in a job situation or following a dream. Confidence that Rhode Island’s sluggish economy is improving encouraged many to take the leap.
“After a harsh winter, the shoots push out and aim for the sun,” said Joe Gallagher of West Warwick, owner of The Shop Custom, and a military veteran. “I think that’s how people are starting to feel now in Rhode Island. The economy has been like a harsh winter.
“But I think the state is starting to recover a little,” said 32-year-old Gallagher, who started his first business, Dreamscapes Construction, right after high school. He shut it down after Sept. 11 when he signed up for the National Guard and was deployed twice to Iraq, as well as to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.
Finally, after repeated deployments and surviving a hit by a roadside bomb in Radami, Iraq, that caused traumatic brain injury, Gallagher is pushing again toward his dream of having his own company to do useful and unusual projects.
Gallagher is working with customers to plan and budget for home improvements, such as a new roof or a bathroom renovation.
Projects he envisions include installing a glass floor so homeowners could see from the second level down to the first level or building the interior of a ship’s cabin inside someone’s home.
Gallagher started The Shop Custom with sound finances in mind. He’s working a full-time job as a fire marshal on the second shift at Electric Boat at Quonset Point. That gives him some morning time to plan construction jobs, in addition to weekends to do the work.
Gallagher is working out of his home now for planning projects, has a small shop on his property and plans to expand when the business can support it.
He invested approximately $15,000 in equipment, tools, insurance, licensing and other fees to launch the business in February 2012, he said.
“I didn’t want to finance anything,” Gallagher said. “Trying to get a business loan after the market crash is very difficult. Getting back on your feet after being deployed for so many years, you have to build new connections. Paying for everything myself was faster, easier and a lot less paperwork.”

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