Entrepreneurs: David Helfrich vs. Chuck Simms

The chapter I read from Starting from Scratch was on the entrepreneur David Helfrich. David started his business career as a student at Michigan State University doing what he hated most, laundry. He never had to do his own laundry before college, and as soon as he had to do it, he instantly developed a hatred for it. His first thought was to find a way to not do his laundry. After research, he found out that everybody hated doing laundry as much as he did, and he most certainly did not want to pay for somebody else to do his. The end result was his first company called The Clothes Line. With this business, he would go from dorm to dorm collected people’s clothes and dropping them off at the laundry mat. He would then pick the clean clothes up and drop them back off to the students. For his services, he would charge students $300 per semester. David used his love for making money to overcome his hatred of doing laundry, the end result was profits of $15,000 his first semester.

After college, David sold his business for $50,000 and started working for corporate America with IBM. It was a great job for a 24 year old, a $50,000 salary and amazing traveling benefits. However, his salary was maxed out and even though he saved the company millions on several occasions, he could not receive any more pay for his position. This pushed him to leave the corporate world and get back to his entrepreneurial roots. So he bought a master franchise from Colorworks which is a house painting company.

 He spent the first couple of years driving around recruiting students to work for him while still working full time at IBM. Once he got his painting business up to speed and making money, he quit IBM. He was skeptical at first; he left a stable job and took a leap of faith. It was all worth it though, in the first year of business, David’s Colorworks pulled in over $300,000 which put him making about the same he had made at IBM. However, the second year, the company pulled in over half a million and over $1 million after the fourth year.

Once he felt like this business had reached its limits, he sold his portion of Colorworks and invested his profits into CW Construction and Development. This turned out well for David; he helped grow profits of his section of the CW from $100 to $200. He did this by targeting the “echo boomer” population by building luxury student apartments for major universities throughout the southeast.

David and Chuck Simms are two successful entrepreneurs, but are completely different in almost every aspect. They do share similar personalities that allowed them to succeed. Both turned something they hated doing (laundry and splitting firewood) into a profit. Both also took several risks throughout their careers in order to grow and turn their businesses into successful ones.

The biggest differences between the two business men would probably be with their business goals. Chuck started his business so he could make his own decisions. He never got a taste of the corporate world and started his business at age 17. He took what he had and ran with it, knowing that he could provide better stability (insurance and retirement) for himself with what he had started then what any other company could provide, especially with his only job experience being a snowboard instructor. David was and is still all about the money. He gave the corporate world a shot but saw he could grow much quicker and larger on his own. David did not focus as much on the stability, taking much larger risks than Chuck did. This resulted in a very high return for David. 

Today, Chuck is content with what he has; he is actually trying harder to keep his business small than he is at marketing and growing. Chuck never wanted and never will grow to where he would have to hire help to meet demand. David is the opposite, as soon as he started growing he hired managers to do the work while he went on to look for more opportunities. Both of these entrepreneurs are successful in their own ways. They have achieved their goals and have turned their businesses into exactly what they wanted.