cts through her volunteer work with her son and daughter’s organizations in high school. Guy Lawson, however, had no customer base; his only contacts were his employees who had worked with him at Texas Instruments. He was able to get his first customers through cold calls, and slowly build a customer base from there. After the first three years, he had a number of customers but seventy-five percent of his business came from one corporation: Bijitsu Cellular. They were a Japanese company who were not making profits in America but were in Japan. The Clinton Administration eventually forced them out of doing business in the U.S. because they had not shown profits in five years. When they went under Lawson almost filed for bankruptcy, but was able to go back to making cold calls and rebuild his customer base.So, why did these two people decide to be entrepreneurs instead of working for larger companies? For them the positive aspects of entrepreneurship outweighed the negative ones. Brenda loves the fact that her morning commute is walking downstairs and Guy just recently moved his company to an office, but misses working out of his own house. Guy Lawson is also comforted by the fact that he can never be laid off from his own company. The rewards to owning a business are immeasurable both financially and personally. There are also numerous pitfalls and hardships to be endured when being an entrepreneur. Brenda ran into trouble because of the lack of health benefits normally received when working for a major corporation. She decided to pick up a part time job working for Continental Airlines because of the health benefits and the discounted traveling costs. In Brenda’s case if she were to get very ill or have something happen to her, her business would go down the drain. She is the total value of the company and without her working everyday it would go under. That is quite a big risk to take for a forty-plus year o...
