Opportunities and Challenges of Small Business Entrepreneurship: A Conversation with Daniel L. Eberly, RLA

Abstract

College graduates may see their dream job as being employed by a large business- one with more than 500 employees. This career path is sometimes assumed as the best way for a college educated person to become wealthy and lead a happy life. While this route to success may be the right one for many, a small business alternative should also be considered.Many college graduates seeking employment fail to realize that "small business is big business." According to the Small Business Administration (SBA), businesses with 500 or fewer employees account for 63% of new jobs and 46% of the U.S. private non-farm GDP. As reported by the SBA, U.S. Census Bureau data for 2011 indicated that "there were 5.68 million employer firms in the United States. Firms with fewer than 500 workers accounted for 99.7 percent of those businesses, and businesses with less than 20 workers made up 89.8 percent." So, college graduates needing employment, which has recently been somewhat hard to find, should not just focus on getting a job with a large firm-there are a lot more of the small ones.In addition, working for a small business is good training for starting your own business; for "learning the ropes" before taking the entrepreneurial route to financial success. In their excellent book titled The Millionaire Next Door: The Surprising Secrets of American's Wealthy, Thomas J. Stanley and William D. Danko indicate that while only 20% of the population are self-employed, 66% of U.S. millionaires (those with a net worth of over a million a dollars) come from this group: "three out of four. . .who are self-employed consider themselves entrepreneurs." Most of the others are self-employed professionals such as doctors and accountants. In addition, the majority (80%) of this group of small business entrepreneurs are college graduates.Millionaire entrepreneurs may operate small businesses in the trades, such as plumbing, electrical, heating and air conditioning, welding contractors, etc.; own businesses in professions such as law, engineering, and medicine; or own start-ups in innovative businesses such as in the computer/high-tech area. In other words, successful and lucrative small business entrepreneurships are not limited to white collar endeavors. While small business entrepreneurship can be quite challenging, it can also be very rewarding-both extrinsically in the form of financial rewards and intrinsically in the form of the satisfaction that comes with being independent and developing and growing a business.Dan Eberly is an example of such a successful small business entrepreneur in the field of engineering. Eberly & Associates, Inc. (EAI), which he founded in 1982, was started as a land planning firm but within 6 months added site civil engineering to its list of services. In a basic sense, Eberly's business can be described as a firm that designs land to receive buildings. Throughout his career Dan has stressed the advantage of having both civil engineers and landscape architects on his staff. The synergy developed by combining practical engineering solutions with aesthetics has driven the firm's success. This philosophy has resulted in a team of engineers who can visualize site assets and develop them into an economically viable and aesthetically pleasing finished product.In 1975 Dan earned a Bachelor of Science in Landscape Architecture from Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. He is a Registered Landscape Architect (RLA) and the past president of the Georgia Chapter of the American Society of Landscape Architects. He is a founding member of the CoreNet Global Sustainability Community and served as a member of its Task Force on Organizational Structure and Content. Dan is known in the industry as a consummate networker and has direct responsibility for the overall business development and marketing strategy of his firm.Authors: What was your first entrepreneurial experience?Dan Eberly: My first entrepreneurial experience was as a teenager at 16 years old. …