There is a phrase we hear a lot in business: Find a need and fill it.
It sounds simple.
Of course, anyone who has ever owned a business knows there is absolutely nothing simple about actually doing it.
As I read through the stories in this month’s issue of Kitsap Business, something kept jumping out at me. Again and again, the women featured in these pages saw something missing — in their industry, in their community or sometimes in their own lives — and decided to do something about it.
That takes more than a good idea.
It takes the willingness to bet on yourself.
Our Executive Q&A this month features Anna Bressi, managing partner of Restaurant Lola in Bremerton. Anna and her fiancé, chef John Hall, didn’t originally set out to open their restaurant in Bremerton. Their plans changed, an opportunity presented itself, and they decided to take a chance on building the kind of neighborhood restaurant they wished existed in their own community.
What I especially appreciated about Anna’s story is that she doesn’t romanticize entrepreneurship.
She talks candidly about risk, sacrifice, margins, changing consumer behavior and the reality that the business you originally imagined may not be the business the market ultimately needs.
One thing she said stuck with me: Your original business plan is a hypothesis.
That’s a pretty good description of entrepreneurship.
You start with an idea. Then your customers, your employees, the economy and occasionally circumstances completely outside your control begin editing it for you.
The entrepreneurs who survive are usually the ones willing to listen.
You’ll find that same willingness to listen in our story about Katrina Sudduth, who recently opened Evertide Pelvic Health in Poulsbo.
Her business grew from something deeply personal. After experiencing pelvic floor physical therapy herself following childbirth, Katrina eventually moved her career into women’s pelvic health. She saw firsthand both the difference specialized care could make and the gaps that still existed.
Eventually, she reached the point familiar to many entrepreneurs: Once you see the opportunity clearly enough, it becomes difficult to ignore.
So she built the practice she believed women in her community needed.
Then there’s Loren Erickson of Erickson Event Design on Bainbridge Island. Loren saw another kind of opening in the marketplace. There were plenty of resources devoted to weddings, but far fewer for the birthdays, anniversaries, family gatherings and smaller celebrations that make up so much of our lives.
She built a business around that opportunity.
Different industries. Different customers. Different paths.
But there is something remarkably similar about all three stories.
Each woman paid attention.
They noticed what people needed. They recognized where an existing model wasn’t quite working. And instead of waiting for somebody else to solve it, they stepped forward.
That’s entrepreneurship at its best.
I’ve spent most of my career around locally owned businesses, including owning a few myself, and I’ve become convinced that communities are shaped as much by these individual decisions as they are by any grand economic development strategy.
Someone decides a town needs a better restaurant.
Someone believes women deserve another option for specialized health care.
Someone sees an opportunity to help families spend less time managing life’s important moments and more time actually experiencing them.
One business doesn’t transform a community overnight.
But enough people making those decisions certainly can.
This issue celebrates women in business across Kitsap County, and I hope you’ll notice something beyond the individual success stories.
Look at what these women are building around them.
They’re creating jobs. They’re filling gaps. They’re supporting other local businesses. They’re introducing new services and ideas. They’re creating places where people gather, work, receive care and connect.
And they’re taking risks.
That last part shouldn’t get lost.
It’s easy to look at an established business and see the finished product. It’s much harder to see the sleepless nights, the bank balance, the missed family time, the uncertainty and the hundred small decisions that came before it.
Every locally owned business begins with someone deciding the possibility is worth the risk.
Sometimes the timing isn’t perfect.
Sometimes the original plan doesn’t work.
And sometimes the thing you set out to build becomes something completely different.
You listen. You adjust. You keep going.
And every once in a while, you look around and realize that the thing your community was missing is there now.
Because you built it.
Terry Ward
Publisher, Kitsap Business
