Silver City, NM- The School of Business for Western New Mexico University hosted Global Entrepreneurship Week at the GRC building. Global Entrepreneurship is a national effort to promote entrepreneurship among universities and motivate students to become entrepreneurs. WNMU invited five local entrepreneurs to tell their stories about why and how they became involved in entrepreneurship.
First to take the floor was Teresa Dahl-Bredine. She and her husband own ‘Little Toad Creek’ which is located on 200 N Bullard St. Before making their business into a successful brewery that currently holds 25 employees and is still expanding, it began as a small hotel, restaurant, and brewery located near Lake Roberts. Teresa Dahl-Bredine had little knowledge of business, for she has a degree in theater, which made the business tough to run until her sister told her to seek a business consult. This would later help the business gain some momentum and the numbers do show because they’ve recently opened a gift shop within their business.
Second to speak was business owner David Del Junco, who owns the business tile company ‘Syzygy Tile,’ located at 106 N Bullard St. His wife supervises the business communications, while he and 20 to 30 other employees create the tile by hand. David first learned of the idea when he and his wife were visiting a tile store in Pennsylvania called ‘Moravian Tile Works’ and was fascinated by the works. Not long after, he learned that making this type of tile is very cheap to produce, and now his business is doing very well, selling tile nationally.
Lisa Jimenez, who spoke next, owns the business company ‘Regalos de la Tierra’ with her husband, which can be found on 515 W. 7th Street and has 13 full time employees. Neither Lisa, who has a degree in journalism, nor her husband had experience in the business world. However, because her husband is a 4th generation Indian who made pottery, Lisa saw an opportunity arise by deciding to sell his pottery. When this began in 2004, both of them were just playing around with the job, but in 2007 they started to the business more seriously and enter into tradeshows in places like Chicago, Portland, and Dallas. Things started to look positive for both, since they were not a national company, though when the economy fell in 2008, Lisa had to move her company locally. Today, their business is back into shape, where they sell the pottery to garden and nursery companies in Arizona, New Mexico, and Colorado.
Simon Ortiz was up next. Simon owns the business company ‘El Gallo Pinto,’ located on 901 N Hudson. Simon Ortiz did not have a choice in entering the business industry because he purchased the building seven years ago and the owner of the building did not pay rent. Simon, who was once an insurance agent that worked right next to the building, took command and became a restaurant owner to pay of the debts.
When describing the situation he said, “It was like jumping from a frying pan into the fire.”
Today, his business is doing better than he expected because the restaurant is now at its break-even point, which means he is finally starting to earn a profit.
Last to speak was business owner of ‘Lawley Toyota’, Paul Leetmae, which can be found on 2750 Highway 180 E. Paul is well educated in business because he has a bachelors in Business and administration, but started from the bottom up. He first landed a job in Colorado, where he washed cars for a car dealer. On his first day of work, he met his future business partner. In 2010, Paul moved to Silver City to open up his business, which today is doing very well. The company grew 8% in 2013 and 23% in 2012.
After an audience Q&A, Dr. Miguel Vicens-Feliberty, a professor at WNMU, said that all these entrepreneurs had one thing in common, which is hard work.
As Paul Leetmae said, “Persistence is the way to make it in the business world.”
