03:19 PM EDT on Monday, June 12, 2006

BY ARTHUR KIMBALL-STANLEY
Journal Staff Writer

Some people don't look for jobs. They create their own.

They stick it to the man, ask "who's coming with me?" and stop doing what they hate and start getting to work doing what they love. It's the American dream, it happens all the time, and it's one of the hardest things someone can choose to do.

Having a hobby, being good enough to get paid for doing it, and having the courage to jump ship and go out on your own are just the beginning, according to Rhode Islanders who have done it. Starting your own business means doing the research to find out if your idea can be a viable business, and then working 80 hours a week, hiring and firing employees, and learning there is much more to making a business work than creating a product.

In 2004, according to numbers from the U.S. Department of Labor, there were 3,932 new businesses started in Rhode Island. There were also 4,250 business terminations. While many of these were people who retired or got out of their business for any number of reasons, some are simply failures. In 2004, there were 74 business bankruptcies in the Ocean State, up 54.2 percent from 2003.

But, for those that have the courage of their convictions and can make their own luck, there are few things better than being your own boss and creating something out of hard work and vision.

"You need to be one hundred percent committed and really passionate about what you're doing," said Lary Norin, coowner of the Rhode Island Rock Gym.

About eight years ago, Norin and his partner Nadav Minkin bought a small indoor rock-climbing gym in Pawtucket. The two had met only a few years earlier at an English class at Johnson & Wales University. Both avid rock climbers, they spent some of their free time hanging out at the Pawtucket gym.

With a low ceiling and a climbing wall made of plywood, Minkin said, the facility was not much more than a gathering place for rock-climbing enthusiasts.

In 1998, the pair found out the climbing gym was for sale and decided to buy it. The owners, who were friends with the hopeful young climbers, gave them a good price.

"We were eager to start something up, and it seemed like a manageable move," Minkin said. "The owners wanted to make sure it got in the hands of people who would turn it into something community based. They wanted someone who would grow it the way they would if they could."

Minkin used savings from his current job, and Norin borrowed money from his family. The first thing they did was print up fliers and work to expand the climbing gym's customer base.

"My mom thought I was nuts," Norin said.

Instead of turning away people who didn't know how to climb, the two worked to create instructional classes. They expanded hours and tried to create a more family-oriented atmosphere for the gym. They hired a business coach to help them develop a business plan and persuade banks to give them a loan. They kept costs low and put any money they made from the business back into it.

"We ate a lot of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches," Norin said. "We also put in way too many hours. We were working almost every single weekend and every single holiday."

Minkin said that in the beginning the biggest challenge was anticipating the amount of growth the business would see. The Rhode Island Rock Gym is the only indoor rock-climbing facility in the state, and as the sport became more popular nationally, Rhode Islanders flocked to the only place they could try it.

In 2002, after taking out a substantial bank loan, the Rhode Island Rock Gym moved into its current home in Lincoln. The new facility had 10,000 square feet of textured climbing walls and 30-foot ceilings. Today the gym has hundreds of members and a full-time staff of 18. With summer camps and an outdoor climbing school, as well as a retail store and a portable wall it can bring to clients for parties, business is booming.

Looking back, both men say what made them successful was a combination of the work they put in and the fact that they found a unique business.

"We knew we were one of a kind," Norin said. "To find your niche you need to find something outside the box, but you also have to talk to your customers to make sure they are responding to what you are doing."

NORIN AND MINKIN found a business they could build up to meet a growing demand. Others have to figure out that a demand exists in the first place and start from scratch.

Kurt Harrington, the founder of Something Fishy Aquarium Service, started his business at the age of 15 when a customer at the pet store he worked at inquired about having a fish tank cleaned. The next thing he knew, Harrington said, he was cleaning fish tanks at houses around his neighborhood and at his dentist's office.

"I started promoting the business to residential and commercial accounts," he said. "I thought cleaning aquariums would earn me a few extra dollars so I wouldn't have to work while I was in college."

By the time Harrington was 17, his company was grossing $50,000 per year. Despite the company's success, he didn't get to spend college slaving away in the library or drinking from the keg.

Instead, he took morning classes so he could spend his afternoons cleaning aquariums and his evenings doing administrative or bookkeeping tasks. He would wake up at 5 a.m., before classes started, to do his studying. Despite the hard work, business was growing so fast that he had to hire two full-time employees.

"We were doubling our sales every year," Harrington said. "We never had to have any funding from banks because I was able to use profits from the company."

Today, Something Fishy Aquarium Service has 10 full-time employees and does business all over New England. Not only does it clean aquariums, the company has also begun selling full-service aquarium design services to companies, which include Pfizer and Foxwoods.

"We've created a little bit of a new market," Harrington said. "We're basically selling people beautiful pieces of artwork to put in their homes and offices."

In 2004, Harrington finally did take out a bank loan and opened a retail space for his business at the company's Warwick location. Even now, more than 10 years after he began doing business, Harrington is working 80 to 90 hours a week.

"My goal is to start transitioning down to 40 to 50 hours a week, Monday through Friday," he said. "I've worked very hard, but hopefully I've built something that will allow me to have a more lenient schedule in my 30s."

The best advice Harrington said he had for those who wanted to start a business is not to quit your day job right away. "Maintain your career and start performing your hobby for a fee," he said. "Once you start making a sufficient amount of money, start saving your salary from your job. If you can go six months without using any of your salary from your employer that means you don't need him anymore."

SO, WHERE do you begin? How do you take an idea and turn it into a business plan and then go about getting financing?

Well, the first lesson, as Norin, Minkin and Harrington explained, is to start small and build quickly enough so you don't need to take out a loan right away. But, the other important factor in starting up a company is using the resources society makes available. Among those is the United States Small Business Administration.

The SBA offers resources on everything from writing a business plan to learning about legal matters. You can even work with the SBA in developing your business plan, and, if it approves it, the SBA will guarantee a certain percentage of your bank loan.

"Using the SBA is the only way you can go as a small business," said Brent Ryan, cofounder of the Coastal Extreme Brewery in Middletown. "Without them, banks will just tell you to go pound sand."

Ryan and a group of his friends from Colby College in Maine turned their interest in home brewing into a viable business, they said, by doing their homework.

When they began, Ryan explained, all they knew was that they wanted to start a brewery. So, they began doing research: figuring out how much brewery tanks cost, how much brewing supplies cost, how to market their product, even basic things, such as how to brew beer. It took about a year of looking into the idea, he said, before they even began putting together a business plan and looking for investors.

They called beer distributors and other brewers and started asking questions. They didn't know exactly what a limited liability company was, but they figured that out too.

"We basically just had to fill out a bunch of papers," Ryan explained. "It doesn't take some kind of genius."

Starting a business, Ryan said, doesn't take years in school working toward an MBA. You learn by doing.

"Everything is an issue if you have never done it before," Ryan said. "So you don't worry about it. You just do it. You figure it out as you go along."

They decided to base their business in Rhode Island because it was a state that didn't have many micro-breweries. They found a cheap set of brewery tanks from an Internet ad.

"It wasn't reinventing the wheel," Ryan said. "People have started micro-breweries before. The information is out there. We just did our research and figured it out. It was basically a lot of common sense."

Today their brewery puts out about 5,000 barrels of beer a year and sells to about 300 liquor stores in Rhode Island, Connecticut and Massachusetts.

Were they worried at the beginning? Sure. But they were young and determined, and didn't mind putting in the long hours.

"We figured we would try our hardest, and if it didn't work we would go do something else," Ryan said. "Nothing ventured, nothing gained."

akstanle@projo.com / (401) 277-7485