Multimillion Dollar Business Started with less than One Hundred Dollars

Jera and Brad Deal of Peoria, Illinois really put the “accident” in ”accidental entrepreneurs.” After successful careers in business — he in management and she in marketing — it’s not surprising that Jera and Brad would eventually go into business for themselves. But how they did it is one of those amazing “only in America” stories with a side of good-old fashioned hard work and perseverance.

The Deals are the owners of Sticks and Stones,  a multimillion dollar company that makes framed keepsakes created from photos of letters, which are sold on-line, in catalogs, and in about 40 select boutique retailers. What makes the Sticks and Stones products different is the pictures are of letters found in nature (Sticks) and architecture
(Stones).

What started off as a game they played with their daughters became an Entrepreneurial Adventure. As the girls were learning the alphabet the family would take walks in nearby parks or neighborhoods and point out objects that looked like different letters. They started photographing the letters to help the girls learn to read and remember the adventure. The story might have ended there had Jera not happened to be the class mom the year their middle daughter’s preschool teacher happened to be getting married.

Jera wanted to give a unique gift, something that would always remind the teacher of exactly where it came from. Brad suggested using the letters to spell out the teachers new last name and putting it in a frame.

The response from the teacher as she opened her gift was priceless. As other mothers were admiring it and asking how to get one themselves, Brad had the “aha” moment that all Entrepreneurial Adventurers have: They could be onto something. “We were thinking small at that point,” Brad says. But from that original $100 investment in the teacher’s gift in 2005, the company has grown to $10 million in sales in 2011, according to CNBC. After the first quarter, Brad says they are on track to double sales in 2012.

The moral of the story: Entrepreneurial Adventures often begin with their passion. What is your passion? Have you begun your adventure and now feel stuck? TLC Virtual Assistants can help you get “unstuck”. Why not schedule your free 30 min call today?

*This story was taken in part from Yahoo News April 19th written by Aaron Task