Sunday, May 09, 1999
ENTREPRENEURS
Need led to financial successes
BY JOHN ECKBERG
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Linda Horn rarely tires of telling her story.
With a family of three teen-agers at home, and facing destitution when her late husband became ill in 1984, she knew she had to find a way to bring income into the household. She studied for and later received an insurance license.
At the time, Ms. Horn would care for her husband by day and go door to door at night to sell insurance policies. The illness soon depleted the family's savings for the mortgage and food, and finally Ms. Horn raided the family's college fund.
The former stay-at-home mother became a widow in 1987 when her husband died while awaiting a heart transplant. But by then, she had received a securities license so she could sell stocks, bonds and mutual funds.
“Starting my own business was the only way I could see of not limiting my income,” she said. “When you become an entrepreneur, you can starve to death or become extremely successful.”
Ms. Horn and the company she founded, Capital Concepts Inc. of Harrison, have been honored with an Entrepreneurial Excellence Award by Working Woman magazine. She was awarded top honors in the “Excellence in Overcoming Obstacles.”
“I remember buying a little rinky-dink two-drawer file cabinet, and my goal was to fill it up with clients,” she said. “I thought about how everybody makes mistakes and how you need to learn from those mistakes. Now I'm here to teach people not to make the same mistakes.”
The company provides accounting, payroll and financial planning services to more than 2,000 clients. Gross sales in 1998 exceeded $6 million.
When Bank One, a Chicago-based lender, contacted her last year — and 1,400 other clients — to apply for the award, Ms. Horn figured she would humor the bank and fill out the form. After she won the award, she told bank officials that she was “humbled” because of the stories of the women who did not win.
“I think she didn't expect to win,” said Vanessa Freytag, director of the Women Entrepreneur Initiative for Bank One.
Ms. Horn, who was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis the same year her husband died, still keeps that two-drawer file cabinet around to remind her of how far she has come in the past decade.
Nothing is in the file cabinet anymore. Company records are in a records room today and fill up five — not one — cabinets. Her company's growth mirrors the growth of women-owned businesses.
At the time she founded her company, women-owned businesses in Greater Cincinnati were on the brink of a new era. From 1987 to 1996, the number of women-owned firms increased by 85 percent in Greater Cincinnati. Sales firms grew by 249 percent and employment more than doubled, according to the National Foundation for Women Business Owners, a research organization based in Silver Springs, Md.
Ms. Horn has a suggestion for companies that have grown through the years. Hang onto a symbol of how things used to be — something like that original file cabinet. Nostalgia is not the only reason to keep it around, though. “Having that little file cabinet, well, it kept me focused,” Ms. Horn said.
John Eckberg covers small-business news for the Enquirer. Have a small-business question, concern or quandary? E-mail him at jeckberg@enquirer.com, and he will find the expert with the answers.
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