Hardly skating by | New college grad already a seasoned business pro
Photo/Tim Greenway
Troy Williams of York has enjoyed the risks and rewards of entrepreneurship since he was 13
Troy Williams started classes for his real estate licenses during college finals in April. He sold his 9-year-old skateboard company at the end of May. In between, he held auditions for ghostly guides for his York haunted history walking tour, bartended every weekend and graduated from the University of Southern Maine with a bachelor’s degree in business management and entrepreneurship.
Parting with The Line, the custom long board company that he spun out of his parent’s basement when he was just 13 was tough, but he had to make room. The 23-year-old Williams says his life as an entrepreneur is just getting started.
“I’ve got a long way to go before I can say I’ve accomplished anything,” he says.
The journey began early. He remembers his father telling him that he had to be involved in something when he was growing up: Sports. Chorus. Work.
“My ears perked up when he said, ‘Or work,’” Williams says.
At 9, he set up a lemonade stand and got friends to run a second stand on the other side of town, “Before I even knew what a franchise was.” At 10, he was stocking shelves at a local convenience store and walking neighborhood dogs. During trips with his family to Long Sands Beach in York, he’d enjoy himself for a bit, then grab a rake and clear 10-by-10-foot, seaweed-free swaths in the sand for beachgoers for $5, plus tips.
“It was so easy to make money as a kid,” Williams says.
By 13, he’d custom-made his first long board (twice as long and twice as wide as a traditional skatepark skateboard) after seeing one and thinking that, too, looked easy enough.
Popular with surfers, long boards were hot in the late ’60s and early ’70s; they came back in vogue with skateboarders in the early 2000s, he says. For him, it was perfect timing.
“Street surfing is what a lot of people call it,” he says.
He developed three shapes: racing, cruising and all-round. The custom boards, with varnished layers of Baltic birch, took at least 40 hours to make. He charged $35 for the first, then $40, and slowly worked up to $80 (sans wheels and hardware). Williams figures he’s made close to 200 of them. Startup costs were minimal; he used deposits to buy wood. He advertised by fliers and word of mouth. A few years into business, he added apparel to his small company and struck pay dirt. He was lucky to clear 10% crafting long boards, but with clothes, it was at least 50%.
“Everyone needs only one skateboard, one long board, but there are seven days in the week — seven T-shirts, seven hats,” Williams says. “It was awesome. At lunch time, at study hall, at the end of the day, I’d just sell sweatshirts,” (out of the trunk of his car.)
His revenue peaked at over $8,000 in 2005, his senior year in high school.
All through high school, Williams says, he was motivated by the idea of buying a house after graduation. That didn’t quite happen, but he came close: He bought his first house in Wells with a friend freshman year at York County Community College. Then, he bought a second in Eliot on his own in the fall of 2008.
Williams, who didn’t take out a single loan for school, says he’s been a big believer in reinvesting his profits and investing in the stock market. At different times, in addition to working The Line, he’s run a movie theater, a hot dog lunch cart, a retail storefront, a photography business and Ghostly Tours of York Beach, often doing several at once.
With the sale of The Line for an undisclosed sum to 19-year-old Andrew Frost of York — “I look at him and see me. It’s a perfect fit,” — he’s starting to scale back. A little. This summer, he’s doing the tour, bartending and taking classes for his Maine and New Hampshire real estate licenses.
Williams says he can already see himself giving young, prospective home buyers advice, like purchasing a house with a small in-law apartment, then living in it and renting out the main property for income. He hopes to pass both exams and go into real estate full time come August.
“That’s 40 hours,” Williams says of his prospective associate broker job. “I remind myself, there’s still another 40 hours I could be doing something else.”
More from Williams, in his own words:
Mainebiz: What was the moment that The Line went from a basement hobby to “this could be a business”?
Williams: It was probably about a year into it when I received a phone call from someone out of town who had seen one of the boards I made. Up until this point, I had really only sold boards to people I knew in town.
What went into the decision to sell The Line now?
It was a hard decision to make because The Line had become such a big part of my identity. I no longer have the time to shape boards or design apparel because of my new ventures. I realized that I couldn’t water all the flowers in the garden and had to make a decision that was best for my career in the long term. I also wanted The Line to continue on and be taken to new heights, something I couldn’t do.
Don’t be modest — what’s the boldest move you’ve ever made on a long board?
It would have to be a new hill my friends and I discovered [on the border of York and Eliot]. It was steep, so steep you couldn’t see the middle of it from the top. My buddy would only do it if I did, so we both went at the same time. I believe we were clocked close to 50 mph that day. Thankfully no one was hurt that day, but about a week later when we went back with a couple other guys, one of them crashed into a mailbox that was stuck in the ground with cement. It was about half way down the hill and he broke his ankle but the mailbox only moved about 30 degrees because of the cement. The owners were so nice and even offered to take him to the hospital. The mailbox is still slanted to this day.
The boldest move you’ve ever made in business?
When I bought my second property, the economy was in a nose dive and the week I put the offer in, Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy. It was a short sale and it took three months before we actually closed and during those three months there was so much uncertainty. The markets were being killed, unemployment kept rising, but I knew that these are the markets where people can make a fortune and I had to stick with my gut. I haven’t sold the property yet but with the improvements I have made it recently appraised for a decent profit and I was able to refinance at 5%.
Any advice you’d give to your 13-year-old self or any other budding teen entrepreneur?
I love nothing more than seeing young entrepreneurs — they have more freedom than anyone else. I would tell teenage entrepreneurs to work hard, continuously reinvest any earnings and not be afraid of taking risks. They aren’t tied down by a mortgage or a family, which means they can afford to take chances and try new things without hurting anyone else. Most importantly, though, they need to realize that it’s OK to make mistakes and the best time to make them is while they are young. The key is to learn from what you did wrong and ensure it doesn’t happen again.
Kathryn Skelton, a freelance writer based in Litchfield, can be reached at editorial@mainebiz.biz.
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