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'Try, try again' is the message here for entrepreneurs

A new book chronicles dozens of entrepreneurs, many of whom fell before succeeding. Several are Florida businessmen.

By CHUIN-WEI YAP
Published September 4, 2006

Brent Bowers began getting calls from John Heagney in 1992.

Bowers, now a 62-year-old writer, was then a business editor at the Wall Street Journal. Heagney is a publicist in Holiday, at the time eager to pitch a story to break one of his clients into the national business daily.

Heagney used something called the "tickler system" to get Bowers' attention, Bowers recalled.

The tickler system was Heagney's hallmark: When someone says no, ask to call back in 60 days, and then do.

Three tickler cycles later, the story that Heagney pitched to Bowers made it onto the Wall Street Journal's front page.

Now, 14 years after Heagney's first call to Bowers, that tickler system has found its way into Bowers' new book, If at First You Don't Succeed ... The Eight Patterns of Highly Effective Entrepreneurs.

In it, Heagney joins the ranks of other Florida businessmen like airplane parts refurbisher Richard Wellman, medical entrepreneur Paul Brown and vFinance founder Tim Mahoney.

They are four among 32 others from across the country, celebrated in a book about the never-say-die spirit of entrepreneurship.

Bowers scoured his own resources and other media to come up with some 300 candidates, before the shortlist.

His book, released in April, is a collection of instructive, often inspirational anecdotes from entrepreneurs like Kevin Plank, the founder of moisture-absorbing sportswear Under Armour, and Greg Herro, who found a way to turn cremated human remains into diamonds.

"This is a truly entrepreneurial country," said Bowers, who also covered entrepreneurship for the New York Times. "In most parts of the world, if you fail at business, you feel disgraced. In this country, it's almost a badge of honor."

Wellman, in an interview with the St. Petersburg Times, told the story of how he lost a lucrative deal to broker the sale of refurbished Boeing 767s to the Tampa Colombia airline, because a competitor used its existing ties to Tampa Colombia to force its hand.

"If you don't throw enough stuff against the wall, nothing sticks," said the 68-year-old Fort Lauderdale businessman.

Heagney's successful pitch to the Wall Street Journal was about Fletcher Music Centers, which now has offices from Bradenton to Zephyrhills.

But in Bowers' book, it is Heagney's own story that finds its voice.

It tells the story of a man with his back against the wall, after he was fired as a reporter from the St. Petersburg Times 24 years ago.

"As I told Bowers in the book, if I were the editor at the time, I probably would have fired me too," Heagney said. "My heart wasn't in it. But getting fired was the best thing that ever happened to me, aside from my wife."

Struggling to survive, Heagney took stock of his own qualities and made the leap into what he still calls "the dark side" - a journalistic joke in reference to public relations.

It was not until 1986, when he scored Tampa Palms as a client, that Heagney finally felt like he was on stabler ground.

"I remember when I started the business, I didn't have a vacation for six years," he said. "I was working weekends and seven days a week. I thought my wife was going to leave me."

Today, his portfolio is a smorgasbord of boldfaced regional and national names, including Newland Communities, Crown Community Development, Gulfview Motors, Tampa Bay Builders Association, Hannah-Bartoletta Homes, Lennar builders, Palm Harbor's Fountain of Youth plastic surgery, Taylor Woodrow developers and the venerable 153-year-old Steinway & Sons.

Each account has its own remarkable genesis, including a full-dress Boston Tea Party re-enactment Heagney organized to secure the Steinway account.

But it is Heagney's own childhood, with an abusive father who called him stupid and lazy, and from whom he craved approval, that shines a softer light on his hard-edged drive.

Family influences and gene theories are issues of entrepreneurship that Bowers' book briefly explores.

If at First also explores the notion that entrepreneurs want to be in charge of their own lives.

"That's the best way to get out there," Wellman said. "When you're working for someone else, you may not be able to tell the customer what he wants to hear."

Bowers, who spent a year writing the book, started by talking on the phone with most of his sources, and then meeting them in New York.

Many later become friends.

With Heagney, their bond deepened partly out of a shared appreciation for the absurd.

They would e-mail each other funny bloopers, like one newspaper headline that said "Suspect Had Slain Partner's Watch."

Paul Brown, founder of West Palm Beach-based HearUSA hearing care providers, still swings by Bowers' Brewster, Mass., home to tell Bowers of his latest pursuits.

"He's pushing 70 now," Bowers said. "He visits me in the Cape. He gave me a demonstration of hand-to-hand combat in this cafe at a chic resort here."

Entrepreneurship, as Bowers tells it, never really stops.

Mahoney, who built one of the first and most enduring Internet-based venture capital success stories out of www.vFinance.com, is now running for the U.S. House.

Wellman, another nonstop go-getter, said he spent the first quarter of this year in the Middle East trying to drum up new business.

"What's next? I can't really see myself retiring," Heagney said. "Actually, I can see myself doing this until I'm embarrassing myself by falling asleep in the middle of a meeting or an interview."

Chuin-Wei Yap can be reached at (813) 909-4613 or cyap@sptimes.com.

TITLE: If at First You Don't Succeed ... The Eight Patterns of Highly Effective Entrepreneurs

Author: Brent Bowers

Publisher: Doubleday

Price: $24.95

Copies in print: 14,724

Source: Doubleday

[Last modified September 3, 2006, 23:29:30]