2001: An Entrepreneurial Odyssey

"Will you have the chicken or the beef?"

Twenty thousand feet in the air, as Randy Grim gave his passengers their choice of entrees, he was regretting his chosen profession. "I wasn't the ideal flight attendant," says Grim. "I'm kind of shy, and I didn't like talking to strangers." But Grim, 36, had always loved animals, and as he flew across America from the mid-1980s until 1991, he rescued wayward cats during his layovers, paying for their medical care and finding them homes. (Average annual out-of-pocket cost for these gestures of goodwill: $8,000.) Even in foreign countries, Grim did what he could. "I remember feeding my dinner to the stray animals in Istanbul," he says.

Eventually Grim came back to earth and apprenticed at a dog grooming shop until 1994, when he opened one of his own: Bark Avenue. The St. Louis business brought in a respectable $100,000 last year. And in the summer of 1998, Grim stopped spending his own $8,000 each year to save strays and instead started a second enterprise, the nonprofit Stray Rescue of St. Louis.

In the coming millennium, Grim plans to expand both businesses, creating something of a nonprofit "halfway house" for homeless pets and a for-profit day-care center for dogs. His for-profit companies, he hopes, will not only support him and his staff but also fund his nonprofit ventures. "I might save a million dogs," Grim says, "but I won't ever make a million dollars."

Don't count the old-style entrepreneurs out, however. There's plenty of room in the 21st century for entrepreneurs of the more capital-focused persuasion.

Jeremy Kraus's company has already made its first million, and its owner is only 23. Kraus started his company, Jeremy's MicroBatch Ice Creams, while he was a student at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, majoring in entrepreneurial management. "I view myself as a career entrepreneur," says Kraus.

Kraus' company, which has four full-time employees and five part-timers, makes six ice cream flavors that are sold in 3,500 regional outlets. By summer, Kraus expects his ice cream to be sold nationwide. His 1998 sales topped $1 million, and his projected sales for 1999 should approach $10 million.

A millennium ago, both Kraus and Grim would have likely spent their lives doing whatever their parents had done, be it as anvil salesmen or farm peasants. And 20 years ago, Kraus would have earned a conventional MBA. But some things never change. Grim's reasons for becoming an entrepreneur are probably no different from his predecessors': "I wanted to be able to make my own decisions," he says. "I had a vision in my mind of what I wanted to do. I wanted to have the freedom and control to do it the way I wanted to do it."

And Kraus, who has almost no experience as an employee, seems to hunger equally for that freedom and control. "I think the seed for entrepreneurship actually comes a lot from your family and what values are encouraged there, like a strong work ethic and independence--specifically independence--where being independent is seen as noble," says Kraus. "You have to have the confidence to be different."

Kraus' flavors are different--Classic S'mores and Fuzzy Navel sure aren't reminiscent of your father's ice cream. "This is a calculated maneuver at a market opportunity," says Kraus, who promises Jeremy's MicroBatch won't be the last company he creates.

Entrepreneurs create their own destinies for profit or pleasure--and frequently for both. While being an entrepreneur has allowed Kraus to shape his own economic destiny, Grim observes, "I'm more fulfilled now than I've ever been, and I probably make less money now than I ever have."

So the entrepreneurs of the new millennium may be whoever damn well wants to be an entrepreneur. Let the robots go fetch the Big Macs. There's money to nab and personal growth to grab. The entrepreneurial millennium is almost here.

To read about another entrepreneur of the 21st century, turn to "Dell On," page 121.

This article was originally published in the April 1999 print edition of Entrepreneur with the headline: 2001: An Entrepreneurial Odyssey.