Order experts | A conversation with Jim Klein, co-owner of Details in Portland
Photo/Kristen Farnham
Jim Klein, co-owner of Details in Portland
Founded: September 2008
Employees: 2 (Jim and Susan Klein)
Startup costs: $15,000
Projected revenue, year one: $65,000
Projected revenue, year two: $135,000
Contact: 749-8422
45 Beacon St., Portland 01403
www.thinkdetails.net
What does Details do?
Details is an organizational design company. We offer CFO and COO-level analysis to companies by becoming part of the team working with the owners side-by-side to see and understand the challenges that they face. We work with owners to whatever degree of involvement they feel is necessary to help design and implement improvements, whether it be fiscal or physical, systems or financial.
How did the idea to start this business come about?
After about 25 years of working in the business world, I found that what I enjoy most is going into a company and helping them bring order and structure. I have had a number of opportunities to come into companies that were either startups or in need of a controller after an extended period of time, and there’s always a large amount of organizing and looking at the systems and trying to make improvements. Fortunately, Maine is a place with a lot of small businesses with minimal bench-strength as far as how many employees they have or what depth of employees they have. I go into a situation and see what can be done better, work better, flow better. It’s not just about the numbers; it’s about helping to pull it all together for these small businesses.
How did you finance the launch of Details?
Self-financed through personal savings.
How do you market your business?
Currently, we’re going to be marketing through a website and networking with the business networks that are here in the Portland area, the Portland [Regional] Chamber of Commerce and primarily local family and business publications that reach your small business people. We’re also going to get on Facebook, LinkedIn and Entrepreneur.com, and we have a car with our logo on it.
What type of clientele are you targeting and why?
At this point we’re targeting businesses that are probably no more than 10-15 people, businesses where they don’t have a full-time controller. They need someone to come in and help them get to the next level, do a business plan perhaps, or do a real budget and stick with them while they do it.
How has the recession affected your business and your business strategy?
This is an opportunity to work with business people who’ve maybe been backed up against a wall for the first time because things were good for a while or they had enough cushion for a while but now they have to ask some hard questions that they maybe haven’t had to ask before. Oftentimes what happens with companies in these situations is they are asked perhaps by their banker or accountant, “Can you bring somebody in, can you set aside a piece of the budget to have somebody come in and help you solve this problem or get through this problem?”
What has been the biggest challenge in running this business? How did you address that challenge?
The biggest challenge is to vet what you’re going to be and how you’re going to do it. In small businesses, you tend to chase after everything because you want the revenue. The hardest thing has been to keep at the idea of what we’re going to do as far as our expertise and get a focus on that and then take it forward. The way we got over that issue is to bounce the idea off of other people who’ve been in business and run their own businesses and ask them how to help get focus — to get it down to what you can really provide so that people can understand what you do.
Have you run your own business before? Are you applying any lessons learned from that experience to Details?
Yes, it was basically financial consulting for a couple years after we first moved to Maine. So what I took from that was I don’t want to go back and do that again. I love the variety, I love working with different people and industries, everything from the food industry to the stone industry.
Interview by Mercedes Grandin
New Ventures profiles young businesses, 6-18 months old. Send your suggestions and contact information to editorial@mainebiz.biz.
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