The year was 2009 and Jason McCrea had just been laid off from his job writing software for a multi-national insurance company. While he began looking for his next job, he also did what was natural for him during times of stress: he began making comfort food from his home. A self-proclaimed candy junkie, Jason began playing with different candy recipes in his kitchen. It was all too much for one family to indulge in, so he began giving it away to neighbors and friends. It was the caramels that everyone raved about the most. They were slow cooked with natural ingredients and no corn syrup.
Jason's good friend and neighbor, Jim, suggested that, perhaps, Jason had already started his next career without even realizing it. Jim encouraged Jason to write a business plan, and for the first time, Jason understood that there could be a market for the one candy he could make better than anyone else; caramel. With the help of his wife, Kate, and his friend Jim, he cashed in his retirement account, rented out a space at Commonwealth Kitchen, a test kitchen in Boston, filed his articles of incorporation, and officially launched McCrea's Candies. Today, McCrea's has expanded to two locations, including a caramel kitchen and separate distribution and shipping facility down the street. They produce more than 15,000 caramels a day and McCrea's sweet treats can be found in grocery, gift, and candy stores around the country.
I recently spent a morning in the McCrea's Candies caramel factory in Boston, Mass., where I talked about entrepreneurship, fast growth, and caramels with Jason and Kate McCrea. The dynamic duo at the helm of McCrea's offered three simple strategies to building a business that sticks:
Build Your A-Team: The McCrea's credit much of their success to the team of people who have helped them navigate entrepreneurship, including financial advisors, attorneys, employees, and other entrepreneurs. Kate notes that entrepreneurship is overwhelming and it's difficult to know where your time is best spent. She says that if you are not careful, you can end up spending a lot of time worrying about something that is totally unimportant to your business. She shared how essential it is to talk about opportunities and challenges with the people in your circle because they will help guide you to your goal. Jason agreed that the team helps keep perspective. When the candy wrapping machine goes down, for example, or there are not enough hours in the day to get everything done, it's your team that will remind you how far you've come in such a short time. The McCrea's say that, in general, others around you want you to succeed, so let them help you.
Understand Your Eco-system: According to Jason, every business has its own eco-system; a bubble within which the business breathes and grows over time. Understanding that eco-system is essential to creating controlled growth. He says that when it comes to making the best caramels in the world, they have learned to create and execute a strategic growth plan. For example, a faster candy wrapping machine can address one bottleneck but can cause others to materialize. Jason explains that you have to make sure that creating efficiency in one department does not create a byproduct of inefficiency in another. It's a careful balance of simultaneously maximizing efficiencies within all the departments so that you can increase candy output without compromising the integrity of the candy (which is why people are buying it), or the quality of customer service (which is why they keep coming back).
Intellectual Capital: The McCrea's never had a master plan that involved creating a massive candy empire. Their business was truly a result of Jason getting laid off from his software development job, which gave him the additional time to indulge in one of his favorite pastimes: making comfort foods. As a result, they had never spent a great deal of time learning about building a business. At least not until they had one of their own. Now the couple invests regularly into learning because they agree that you don't know what you don't know, and the only way to mitigate risk in business is by learning as much as possible.
At the beginning of their journey the two participated in a Streetwise MBA program for food producers offered through a partnership between Boston University and Interise. Not only did they learn how to create and implement a five-year strategic growth plan, they also met other entrepreneurs on the same journey. According to the husband-wife team, the classes they participated in, coupled with the online tools made available for ongoing use, and the network of other entrepreneurs they obtained through the program have been priceless.
Another resource that Kate discovered and Jason discussed is the Tugboat Institute, a network of "evergreen" CEOs from around the world. Evergreen businesses, as defined by the institute, put their people first and avoid raising capital that puts money before mission. The McCrea's bootstrapped their business from the start and intend to scale at a pace that they can control without the need for outside investors. They say that building a business that makes fantastic caramel and positively impacts their community for the long term is important to them, and private ownership is often the key to maintaining that kind of business. So private equity or venture capital ownership is not something they are currently considering.
Jason and Kate McCrea are talented at their craft of making the best caramels in the world and are strategic in how they are growing it. They say that if you build a phenomenal team, understand your ecosystem, and invest in intellectual capital, you are well on your way to building a business that sticks.