Three area business owners led a panel discussion on what it means to be an entrepreneur during the Cape Girardeau Area Chamber of Commerce’s First Friday Coffee at Isle Casino Cape Girardeau.

Dana Thomas, George “Skip” Wrape and Chris Carnell each shared what inspired them to strike out on their own.

Thomas, founder of BOLD! Marketing, said she was pretending at entrepreneurship by the age of 5, tacking dresses on the wall to turn her bedroom into a boutique she called “Dana’s Dilemma.”

“I knew I had a passion for making things grow,” she said, adding she also was helped by a natural comfort with uncertainty.

Carnell, co-founder of the tech coworking space Codefi, said his father and grandfather were entrepreneurs, so by the time he read Napoleon Hill’s “Think and Grow Rich” about the time he turned 20, his ambitions already were forming.

Wrape, whose businesses include River City Biologicals, said his start was borne of opportunity. He saw a spot for a niche business and “took the lead.”

He said being an entrepreneur largely is misunderstood; people often assume a person is after money or fame when, in reality, the day-to-day process of starting a business is mostly consumed by staving off failure. Striking out on your own, he said, is more desperate than glamorous.

“You’re scared to death. You’re running hard,” he said. “That’s the start of it.”

All three panelists emphasized the importance of teambuilding.

“The best thing I could say I’ve done right is surrounding myself with good people,” Wrape said.

Thomas, whose business is 9 years old this year, has about 20 employees. She said she’s had to learn tough lessons about the teambuilding process.

Fantastic people, she said, can be bad hires. Some businesses, she said, struggle to address such problems.

“Get the right people on the bus and in the right seats,” she said. “And if they’re not, move them out.”

“What are you good at?” Wrape asked the audience. “Do the best you can and hire the rest.”

Thomas said keeping a long view is good practice, and will help emerging businesses weather the ups and downs of starting out.

“Don’t look to the next six months,” she said. “Look to the next six years.”

And looking to the future, Carnell spoke about how he anticipates technology will affect the local economy and how it may change the nature of entrepreneurship.

He cited his success with a startup company, as well as his past failure with a previous venture, as experiences that taught him the virtue of perseverance. He said as a region, some jobs aren’t coming back, and tech can afford some displaced workers entrepreneurial opportunities.

tgraef@semissourian.com

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