The Art of the Entrepreneur - Pluggz Art of the Entrepreneur Are They Born That Way, or are They Made? Written by CINDY CLARKE As a contemporary culture magazine that celebrates dreamers

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The Art of the Entrepreneur Are They Born That Way, or are They Made?

Written by CINDY CLARKE

As a contemporary culture magazine that celebrates dreamers who

become doers, we’re passionate about passion. We thrive on the

excitement of discovering a new talent or rediscovering an iconic one,

giving equal time to the stars who have made it to the top and those

whose stars are rising. Our conversations with them are ultimately

personal, uniquely unscripted, and always motivated by the desire to

have what they’re having and take a peek at the world through their

eyes. What drives them has made cars fly, bodies knot, art speak and

endless other entrepreneurial feats of heart and mind that we’ve profiled

in Venü that truly change the way people live. Which begs the question:

are entrepreneurs born that way or are they made?

We took our query to Sharon Whiteley and her identical twin sister,

Sheila, and her family of entrepreneurs, Rachel and Jenny Shechtman.

“From there on out life was serendipity,” Sheila recalls. “We never

set out to create an enterprise but we’d get tapped on the shoulder,

stirred in the gut, and our hearts would go to our brains. The lure was

irresistible, irrefutable and as seductive as sirens luring sailors.”

For Sharon it manifested in a number of never-seen-before home

runs that were immediate hits out of the gate. In addition to those now

iconic specialty push carts and the motivational message cards and

“positive aging” gift category created in her first company, Peacock

Papers, some of those included being the first to merchandise bulk

candy in Plexiglas cylinders in retail stores, creating the multi-million

dollar metalized confetti category for the party industry and colorful

accordion-like recycleable paper stuffings, now a packaging staple.

Others included the first online Ivy League job fair and Personals site for

Baby Boomers during earlier online venture days. Those and a number

more firsts followed – along with co-authoring a book targeted to

helping woman turn their passions into businesses and co-creating the

first angel funding network for women, 8 Wings Ventures. Most recently,

she’s stepped out, literally, with her revolutionary new “grounding”

shoes called pluggz™, along with reinventing a modern day pushcart

in the form of a pluggzmobile to transport her comfortable footwear to

a reinvigorated version of a home party which she calls “social selling.”

And she’s co-authored another soon-to-be published book to help

everyone, entrepreneurs included, get and stay grounded.

Sheila is similarly gifted. Her first on the job experiences focused

on advertising and photography, along with the gourmet food

merchandising techniques she mastered during an apprenticeship at

the flagship of fine food boutiques, Dean & DeLuca, in the late 1970s

SPOTLIGHT

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Sharon Whiteley literally walks her talk with feel good products like

her proprietary grounding shoes, pluggz™, that are good for

people body, mind and “sole.”

A business builder, author, speaker, and founding CEO of Listen Brands,

her 6th company launch in half as many decades, Sharon has made it

her business to introduce the next best market-worthy product before

anyone else has a clue they need it. With several high profile notches

on her belt – think Boston and Faneuil Hall’s specialty pushcarts, retail

boutiques on wheels she rolled out back in the 70s and still moving

into the spotlight today… get your mind around the first ever printed

motivational sayings that made pillows talk and cards write their own

thought-provoking, positive messages… imagine shoes that heal as

people heel… and pure silver cloths that kill germs, smiting countless

microbes with every reusable swipe. Sharon is one of those can-do

people who actually does what she envisions by putting her ground-

breaking ideas to work.

By definition, Sharon is, on all counts, a serial entrepreneur. And

so is her twin, Sheila Shechtman whose two daughters, Rachel and

Jenny, have followed suit and already taken the streets and media of

Manhattan by storm with their breakout business, STORY. Having that

entrepreneurial gene is unequivocally a family affair.

When asked to elaborate on the question, Sharon says she sees

it as a bell curve. “On one end of the spectrum are those that no

matter how many business degrees or mentoring, they will never look

at entrepreneurial life through the finely calibrated lenses needed or

have the iron clad stomachs to persevere in the face of adversity,” she

adds. “Then there are those in the middle, who, if they have a credible

business plan, develop the needed skill sets, and have resources, they

will flourish. At the other end of the spectrum are those that just can’t

live their lives any other way.” It’s in this family’s DNA, answering the

question I posed regarding nature versus nurture.

Sheila, whose business legacy played out in irresistibly packaged

gourmet gift baskets and artisan chocolate, concurs. “We grew up in

an entrepreneurial family,” she told me. “Our dad worked long hours

so we didn’t see him at home much,” she remembers, adding that

she and Sharon first worked in the family department store at age

13 filing dressmaking patterns and also getting a firsthand view of

the transactional side of business. “But Thursday nights were strictly

reserved for family and dinners were never missed by any of us.” It was

during one of these roundtables that the twins witnessed something in

their father that resonates with all true entrepreneurs: the absolute joy

of coming up with a great idea, building it and making it a success. One

of their father’s pioneering Eureka moments came with his discovery

and subsequent import of a then unknown fabric from Finland, called

Marimekko, that would not only burst into the textile scene with a

brilliance not seen before, but one that today retains strong brand

recognition around the world.

While Sharon and Sheila never had any big plans or conscious

desire to go into business on their own growing up, they both created

opportunities right after college where their inherent entrepreneurial

genes kicked in. They not only formed businesses of their own, they

created the innovative concepts and products behind them. Passion

was a key driver.

“We never set out to create an enterprise but we’d get

tapped on the shoulder, stirred in the gut, and our hearts would go to our brains.”

Twins Sharon Whiteley (on right in above photo and on left in photo at right) and Sheila Shechtman (on left in above photo and on right in photo at right) share more than their identical looks. They both grew up to be prolific entrepreneurs with a legacy of successful business ventures to their credit.

Photograph courtesy of echostarmaker.com

Photographs courtesy of echostarmaker.com

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SPOTLIGHT

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during their early hey-day years in New York’s SoHo district when they

first introduced their high-end edibles with a panache not before seen

in the food world. Her eye-candy vision and penchant for experiential

marketing led her to open and successfully run a suburban gourmet

emporium Nanshe’s, for more than a decade, before being further

inspired to launch her own corporate branding and specialty custom

gift basket business that later turned into a large wholesale operation.

While coming up with the idea for a business came to her easily, the

financing did not. She was turned down for a loan by 10 banks that

called her a “housewife from the suburbs” whose business would fail.

The 11th bank she went to came through. This initial venture fueled

her passion and the profits enabled her to launch two more integrated

promotional branding businesses Giftcorp and Gifted Expressions. Like

many entrepreneurial pursuits, what started as a basement business

evolved into a multi-million dollar corporation whose elite and long-

standing clients read like a who’s who of the Fortune 50, among them

premiere car makers Mercedes Benz, Jaguar, Audi and BMW followed

by retail giants like 1-800-Flowers, Costco, Saks 5th Avenue, FTD,

Neiman Marcus and others who outsourced many of their distinct

gourmet gifting SKUS to her company. In addition to being the first

to package customized marketing solutions in creative “keepsake-

oriented” containers, Sheila’s insistence on top quality – from product

to execution – kept her top of mind for discriminating businesses. Most

recently she was tapped to be CEO and to transform and turn-around a

heritage chocolate company, while continuing to run her own business,

a double duty role that die-hard entrepreneurs assume as second nature.

Not surprisingly, she exceeded expectations in spades.

While fun and fulfilling, being an entrepreneur is not for the faint of

heart. It takes persistence, determination, dedication and a doggedness

that separates the risk takers from the safety seekers. Belief in an idea

and a vision sustains them. Fear is not a factor. And a lack of money?

Sharon chimes in, “you’ll hear many an entrepreneur say there have

been days they’ve ‘hung over the edge by a fish line with passion and

tenacity their only capital and fuel.” Defying the laws of gravity is par

for the course.

There’s a particularly distinct difference for entrepreneurs in this family

that suggests genetic mapping is at hand. They are not followers, or

just motivated to create their own businesses. That gene they were

born with enables them to give birth to brand new ways of doing things,

new products, and new concepts that all have become game-changers.

Take Rachel Shechtman’s retail phenomena she calls “STORY,” a

2,000 sq. ft. brick and mortar space in New York’s Chelsea neighborhood

that has the point of view of a magazine, merchandised content that is

displayed like a gallery, changed every four to eight weeks, and sold like

a store. The idea behind her breakout concept was further ignited by her

role as a natural-born matchmaker. This fourth generation self-starter is

the consummate networker, building a career out of matching brands

to consumers and integrating marketing, merchandising and business

development strategies in one cohesive enterprise. Her vision for

cultivating new ideas and brands is what also makes STORY unique.

After wrapping up a partnership with her mother in Giftcorp, Jenny

Shechtman was recruited to work in tandem with her sister, keeping

the stories going and seamlessly handling the operational side of the

business with the grace under fire calm that’s inherent in successful

entrepreneurial ventures. Without this operating glue, no ever-changing

venture can sustain itself, let alone soar. It takes an entrepreneurial

mind along with the self-same fortitude to operate at STORY. It is

not a traditional business model nor business structure, and not for

the faint at heart.

Rachel thrives on connecting things with people and always has.

“Always full of new ideas, it’s not in her to let a missed opportunity go

by,” her mom adds. Her intuition for new and timely products has

grown business for everyone she connects, especially through STORY.

Coveted corporate sponsorships for new in-store content launches,

including American Express, Target, and Pepsi, numbering 28 at press

time, have more than tripled since the concept store first opened in

2011 and attract an ever-growing impressive flow of real-time consumers

through their doors. Eschewing the online sales today’s retailers shoot

for, STORY goes for the person-to-person marketing experience that

has fallen by the wayside in our virtual world, building community

along the way.

Which is another key character trait of these entrepreneurial women:

delivering goods that are not only good for consumers, but are good

for building and nourishing consumers as a whole.

The gourmet gift baskets Sheila created through Gifted Expressions

and Giftcorp were designed to foster group interaction and shared

delight, while promoting her clients’ company brands and satisfying

a consumer need. Sharon’s products are all irresistible conversation

starters with a promise and delivery on making consumers get and

feel better. Rachel and Jenny are all about showcasing products,

content and people that deserve their shot at fame and bringing

joy to their always-delighted visitors. Dream makers, they take the

risks and consumers relish the rewards.

Whether through the hard-earned, hands-on advice Sharon shared

in her book, The Old Girls Network or the delectable team-bonding

brands Sheila built for clients or the possibilities and in-store debuts

storytellers Rachel and Jenny offer budding entrepreneurs with new

ideas, they believe in believing in others. It’s in their blood.

This Page: To say that Sheila Shechtman is gifted is just part of the story. She has spent her professional career innovatively packaging branded marketing visions that speak volumes about her clients’ brands.

Opposite Page: Fourth generation entrepreneurs sisters Jenny (left) and Rachel (right) Shechtman are writing their own entrepreneurial tale with their breakout retail phenomena called STORY, changing the way today’s consumers shop.

That gene they were born with enables them to

give birth to brand new ways of doing things,

new products, and new concepts that all have

become game-changers.

They not only formed businesses of their own, they created the innovative concepts and products behind them. Passion was a key driver.

Ever-changing themed merchandising vignettes at STORY in NYC’s Chelsea neighborhood celebrate new ideas and note-worthy brands to connect consumers with content in extraordinarily engaging debuts.

Photograph courtesy of STORY

Photograph courtesy of STORY