Upstart entrepreneur | A savvy twentysomething captures BusinessWeek's eye
Photo/Jan Holder
Web designer Beck Stockbridge McKinnell has earned recognition as a top entrepreneur under 25 from BusinessWeek
Becky Stockbridge McKinnell is young, in a hurry and knows what she wants. She was too busy growing iBec Creative, her startup web and graphic design firm in Portland, to apply to be considered a top entrepreneur under age 25 in BusinessWeek’s annual competition — something else she’s long wanted to do. On the cusp of “aging out” as her 26th birthday approached, she finally submitted the necessary paperwork last year.
Paradoxically, her sense of timing was exquisite. While other businesses were slashing workers and closing shop in a calamitous economy, she was adding new employees and clients, boosting business 87% in 2009 over the previous year. BusinessWeek took notice, and in October named her one of 25 young entrepreneurs in the country to watch.
Not everything in her career has gone as planned. “I went to the University of Vermont my freshman year, majoring in business. I’ve always been interested in art, and started taking art classes, but the major was so demanding there wasn’t much opportunity for electives,” she says. McKinnell found that the University of Southern Maine was one of the few schools that offered an art and entrepreneurial studies program, so she transferred.
She capped her studies by entering the USM business plan competition as a senior and was named a finalist, which earned her free office space for a year. Coupled with a $5,000 grant from the Libra Foundation as seed money, she set out to execute her business plan.
Following the sage advice of a professor to focus on a niche market with a clear need, McKinnell zeroed in on medical practices — an untapped market in terms of adopting web marketing strategies. The problem was, though, doctors didn’t yet perceive a need to harness the pervasive power of the web.
McKinnell had been keeping busy, however, with website development for other small businesses. “Customers started recommending me to others,” she says. “It took me about a year to realize my original business plan wasn’t working. It was really hard to let go. I’d worked so hard and believed there was such a huge need. But once I made the switch, it was easier to grow my business.”
An adaptive, creative mindset meshes perfectly with web dynamics. “I ended up in the right place and a good place,” she says. “The industry changes so quickly. And it’s fun. It encourages creativity.”
Though McKinnell is drawn to the creative aspect of online marketing, “there is also a precision to it. You can be so exact with coding — there’s an element of perfection to it,” she says.
Unlike traditional marketing, “where you might spend thousands of dollars to print a brochure, yet it’s hard to determine the impact, if you spend $500 on Google Adwords, Google Analytics makes it easy to measure effectiveness in terms of attracting website visitors and measuring conversion” to business transactions, she says. In web-speak, the difference is outbound/push marketing vs. inbound/pull marketing. “It’s all about community, especially employing social media like Twitter and YouTube and Facebook. People decide if they want to be in touch and what they want from you,” she says.
A Massachusetts native, McKinnell says Maine is a great place for business. “Maine offered me a lot of helpful assistance getting my business started. I definitely want to stay in Portland. I want to grow my team to about 10 people, and [grow] the business to $2 million to $5 million in the next four years.”
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