From Riddles to Building a Business
Linville Architects is known for their fabulous prairie style buildings, several of which were featured in the 2004 “Wright and Like” tour. Ed was the featured speaker at the 2005 Frank Lloyd Wright lecture series at Monona Terrace. You may be familiar with some of the Madison area restaurants designed by Ed; Eldorado Grill, Bluephies, Monty’s Blue Plate Diner, Hubbard Avenue Diner and Sai-Bai Thong. Housing projects include Yarmouth Condominiums on Fish Hatchery Rd, Tuscan Place, Park East Condo, and the townhomes of 6800 Frank Lloyd Wright Avenue. Please visit www.linvillearchitects.com for the full list.
Early Business Development
Growing up as a farm kid in Iowa, Ed said he always found building to be captivating. As though studying a puzzle, he would look at buildings with curiosity, pondering how the pieces fit together. He was fascinated by the riddles and possibilities he found in buildings. Two weeks after he graduated high school, he applied for a job “running blueprints” with a local architect, apprenticing and learning to draw.
 |
|
After serving in the military during the Vietnam war he took a job in Chicago as a product designer. Inspired by the lyrics of a popular song, he and a friend came up with a design for a product of their own: the rubber ducky. The rubber ducky was an immediate hit with consumers and orders started coming in from retailers.
Unfortunately, the ducks couldn’t be produced quickly enough to meet the demand. The pair had invested $3000 and ended up losing $3500. He said that experience taught him two things: first, that timing is everything and second, that you need to be in a business for the long haul, because “you can’t rely on trends to create success; you have to please your market first and foremost.” Ed then shared his story of his first foray into business as a 10 year old: “I was selling earthworms as bait, my initial investment was $30 but I spent $50 trying to keep them alive. The shelf life of my product was pretty short and I ended up having to refund frustrated fishermen.”
In 1975 Ed moved to Madison and went to work for Herb Fritz, a Frank Lloyd Wright inspired builder. He had an opportunity to design a kitchen that was well received resulting in new projects coming his way. He wasn’t a licensed architect at that time describing himself as “more like a member of a garage band” - making ends meet by driving a school bus and planting trees while he honed his skills doing the work he loved in architecture and design. He later collaborated with Joe Krupp, a building contractor and developer who led him to new contacts and resulting in more projects. In 1981, Ed launched his own business, picking July 4th as his official start date because he was, as he put it: “declaring independence for the rest of my life.” He created a niche for himself doing “home design” and became a liaison between the home builder and the home owner. He’s grown from a solo-entrepreneur to a small business with 9 employees.
Ed’s secret to success is simple and smart: “keep your overhead low and work day and night with total commitment to doing, learning, and promoting your product or service,” and because there are always people in our lives who are worried that we may fail, we have to “have faith, it supports persistence and creates resilience.” Looking back, would Ed have done anything differently? “I’d identify my personal strengths and weaknesses early on so I could be freed up to do my best work, where I am creating the most value."
Work with the UW-Madison Small Business Development Center
Ed attributes a good deal of his success to the information and support he gathered at the Small Business Development Center in Madison (SBDC). As a new business owner, he found himself struggling with accounting and administrative issues. “The Business Fundamentals classes were a good reminder of what I needed to do and an inspiration of what I could possibly accomplish,” says Ed, “whenever I ask a question at the SBDC, I always feel they work to give me good answer”. Ruth Mathe, Linville Architects’ Business Manager concurs; “classes are taught by instructors with real world experience, which is hugely helpful!” She particularly found the Human Resource Legal Series to be relevant and she and Ed both took the seminar on Business Valuation. “The business expanded to the point where we knew we needed to bring on another person so the business could function efficiently if Ed needed to be gone for two weeks.”
PeerSpectives - Peer Learning for Owners
Peerspectives, a facilitated forum of non-competing business owners, is another program offered through the SBDC that Ed finds beneficial. “The beauty of this gathering is that you are equals in the sense that no matter what business you are in, we all have some of the same challenges and can share solutions. It is a perfect blending of entrepreneur and executive thinking. As independent business owners, we have to think executively and holistically, “Not just how to administrate the business, but how our decisions impact everyone else.”
Looking at things from a holistic vantage point is reflected in Linville’s green philosophy and commitment: “I believe that among the high core principles we find in green building is respect; respecting clients for their goals, respecting the site, respecting the building employees and patrons, respecting our current and future resources. It is also about appreciation for the green movement, and the choices we make such as how high to raise the green bar, each project has its own sense of that bar. Each in its own way contributes to the progress of sustainable design.”
By Dee Relyea - Small Business Development Center - UW Madison
If you have any questions or comments about this page or any of our other pages, e-mail us at sbdc@uwex.edu.
All material Copyrighted @ 2007 by the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System, University of Wisconsin-Extension, Small Business Development Center, all rights reserved.