Would-be entrepreneurs love coming up with excuses to postpone starting the businesses of their dreams. Money – or a lack thereof – is usually the culprit: they fear that unless they can secure a big bank loan or generous investment, the success they seek will never materialize.

Dreamers like these should talk to Mike Ivers and Casey Ruff. The two founded BTM laundry – a New Brunswick-based company that picks up customers’ dirty laundry, has it washed or dry-cleaned, and returns it the next day – on a shoestring budget in 2007. After expanding BTM’s customer base to include thousands of students and families in the region, Ivers and Ruff bought a Laundromat – in cash – last August.

No, Ivers and Ruff are not laid-off investment bankers. In-fact, they were juniors at Rutgers University when they each put up $500 of their savings to start BTM. Their concept was to serve Rutgers students who craved the comfort of home. (BTM stands for “Better than Mom’s.”)

Ivers’ advice to budding entrepreneurs reflects the duo’s circumspect attitude toward growing a venture: “Live with in your means, start making money, and hold on to it so you can grow,” he said.

As Ivers and Ruff built BTM, they supported themselves through an activity similarly rooted in college culture: they managed the popular New Brunswick restaurant Hansel n’ Griddle, helping its owners open a new location on Church Street. Ivers said working for the restaurant ensured he and Ruff could keep BTM’s profits in the business, where they grew into a fund ready to support a future expansion.

By 2011, Ivers and Ruff were looking for laundromats. Ivers said the two sent letters to approximately 30 laundromat owners indicating their desire to buy one. This campaign proved fruitless, but a high school friend of Ruff’s who happened to visit Hansel n’ Griddle earlier this year had a possible solution: an acquaintance of his who owned Laundromat Express in North Brunswick was looking to sell it.

Buying a business can be tricky. The owner will usually base her asking price on a multiple of the business’s revenue, and it’s up to the potential buyer to determine whether the revenue figure the owner cites is accurate. The buyer also must figure out whether the business’s overall health is as good as the owner will likely claim.

Ivers said the self-service laundry industry is an especially difficult one in which to deal: owners rarely manage their businesses day-to-day, and they are somewhat less than eager to enter hundreds of cash (and coin) transactions into a bookkeeping system that produces tidy financial statements.

Faced with an accounting enigma, Ivers and Ruff devised a creative form of due diligence: they got a hold of Laundromat Express’s utility bills from the past two years and focused on water usage. Knowing roughly what water costs and how much water a load of laundry requires, the two were able to determine the business’s reported sales were likely accurate.

Since Ivers and Ruff bought the business in August, it has earned almost twice the revenue they thought it would. And because the two eschewed debt or investors, they get to keep the profit it makes.

In the time BTM Laundry grew into a thriving venture, countless would-be entrepreneurs have deferred their own business dreams in favor of waiting for an elusive bank loan. If they aren’t kicking themselves for waiting, the story of BTM ought to show them they should be.

Check out BTM Laundry online here.

Entrepreneur University graduate Joelle Lynn once thought her job at the large mortgage-lending firm for which she works was secure.

When the housing bubble burst a few years ago, though, the ensuing waves of layoffs within Lynn’s company made her anxious. She decided to cut her hours and indulge her latent passion for entrepreneurship by founding Beautiful Waxing Boutique, a Plainsboro, N.J. waxing salon that opened this month.

Though Lynn had never started a business before, she saw an unmet need in the area.

When she moved to New Jersey from Atlanta in 2009, she noticed her adoptive state lacked adequate options for body waxing. Lynn said most establishments offering waxing here are spas, which she said sell expensive but low quality waxing, or nail salons, which she said often conduct waxing in neglected back rooms that are somewhat less than spic-and-span.

At left, the sign outside Joelle’s salon

Lynn said even salons in the region that specialize in waxing often use harsh chemicals in the process and fail to leave coarser-haired customers with satisfactory results. Lynn said she sought to fill a gap in the market. “I wanted to open a waxing salon that not only offers organic waxing but that leaves a smooth finish,” she said.

With that, Beautiful Waxing Boutique, Lynn’s new venture, was born.

In fall 2010, Lynn enrolled in the Intersect Fund’s Entrepreneur University business-training course. When she graduated, she received a loan from the Trenton-based Isles, Inc. to help secure and outfit a venue for her salon.

After searching for months, Lynn found a suitable space. She got to work outfitting the salon and will hosted a grand-opening celebration on Saturday, January 14th.

When I asked Lynn whether she considers her new venture risky, she answered emphatically in the affirmative. “Yeeessss! Very much so,” she said in an e-mail. She added, though, that the industry research she conducted convinced her that the venture would pay off in the long run.

While it remains to be seen whether Beautiful Waxing Boutique will succeed, Lynn’s preference for the entrepreneurial lifestyle seems clear. “I don’t think things are how they used to be, where you can just work for someone your whole life, then retire and have your 401(k),” Lynn said.

Beautiful Waxing Boutique is located at 11 Schalks Crossing Road, Suite 624, in Plainsboro, N.J.

If your career hits the doldrums, you have two options: resign yourself to gloomy drudgery, or change something.

Earlier this year, Lavon Jackson changed something: He founded with his wife, Carol, a clothing boutique called Style & Swag.

Jackson tended bar at the Marriot Hotel near Newark Liberty International Airport for 15 years before the odd hours wore him out. After a few more years as the sales manager of a gym, he decided he was through agonizing over sales goals that padded someone else’s bottom line.

Seeking to apply his skills to a business whose profits he could keep, he and Carol founded Style & Swag – their clothing boutique in Franklin Township’s Somerset section. The store’s selection runs from quirky to genteel, and its founders strive to offer the kind of personalized service they say is absent from big-box and department stores.

Carol, who admits to loving fashion and shopping, counts creative direction among her duties at the store: “I’m the style and [Lavon]’s the swag,” she said. Her taste guides her toward designers who are distinct if not well known. “If it looks nice, if it’s something unique, I love it,” she said, “I don’t care if it was made by the guy next door or someone who’s been in fashion for 50 years.”

Style & Swag welcomes all customers, but it seems geared toward those seeking clothing to cherish rather than those satisfied by a fancy label. “There’s nothing like purchasing something at a great price and feeling like you’ve gotten the best find in the world,” Carol said. She cited instances like these as the most rewarding part of co-owing the store.

Lavon said that although the store’s selection is small, its pieces are unique and well appointed. “Everyone has that favorite sweater,” he said, “We want what the customer purchases here to be his favorite.”

If a sense of style and a dedication to customer service were sufficient to build a popular retail store, Style & Swag would already be a smashing success.

As the Jacksons have found, though, attracting customers is a challenge. Carol said the store’s mantra – that classy is cool – has so far failed to resonate with many younger potential customers. Lavon said that like many new businesses, Style & Swag lacks the advertising budget for television commercials that could broadcast the store’s existence to a wide audience.

In the absence of a slick marketing campaign, the Jacksons are hoping to build a word-of-mouth network that centers on personalized service. “Customers remember the friendliness and service they got here,” Lavon said, “That’s what keeps them coming back.”

To see if Style & Swag can win you over, visit them at 653 Hamilton Street, in the Somerset section of Franklin Township.

Entrepreneur University graduate Benjamin Schellack is picky about his coffee.

He prefers cups of Joe made from beans grown in ideal conditions, purchased for a fair price from the famers who grew them, and roasted locally, ideally by a small company.

If Schellack lived in New York, Portland, or any number of other big cities, he could easily slake his coffee craving.

But Schellack lives in New Brunswick.

Until recently, Schellack said, he would have to drive 30 minutes to find coffee that met his exacting standards. Even then, he was dismayed to find the coffee he enjoyed had been roasted in New York or Pennsylvania. “It irks me that people see New Jersey as the stretch between New York and Philadelphia where there’s no good coffee,” Schellack said.

So Schellack took action: he and friend Evan Gentry founded OQ Coffee – the initials stand for “Old Queens” – in spring 2009. They purchase beans from farmers in Asia, Africa and South America and then roast them in New Brunswick, in a big, metal contraption called the San Franciscan. “It looks like a steam engine, basically,” Schellack said.

OQ sells the aromatic, roasted beans to upscale grocery stores and cafes throughout the Northeast. Coffee fans seeking to pick up bags of OQ Coffee beans will find them at New Brunswick’s George Street Co-Op, Marafiki Fair Trade in Metuchen, and – interestingly enough, in the Whole Foods Market in Columbus, Ohio.

Schellack said he had been corresponding with the Princeton Whole Foods Market about carrying OQ products; in the process, OQ landed in a Whole Foods inventory database that store managers in several Mid-Atlantic and Midwestern states view to find new products.

The coffee buyer at the Columbus Whole Foods, Schellack said, was glad to find OQ offered coffees from regions rarely represented. The Columbus buyer ordered beans OQ had sourced from the central African nation of Burundi, and others they had purchased from farmers on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi.

OQ secures most of its beans through trusted importers and farmers they meet at trade shows. Sometimes, though, Schellack and Gentry travel to the farms whose beans they roast, seeking to start a relationship with their suppliers. During a trip to Honduras earlier this year, the two checked in on a project to build infrastructure that will eventually allow numerous local growers to sell their beans to American and European roasters.

When Schellack talks about coffee, he becomes as animated by topics like these – coffee as a prospective development tool – as he does by the factors that makes it taste good.

He’s also intent on developing the Garden State’s coffee palate: “New Jersey can really represent good, well-roasted coffee that supports fair-growing practices,” Schellack said, “it has so much potential; it kills me not to see it.”

If OQ can help realize this potential while improving the regions in which its farmers live, Schellack’s pickiness will have more than paid off.

This article originally appeared in the Home News Tribune.

The story of a corporate denizen leaving her cubicle to start a small business has become common to the point of banality.

Usually, the subject sustains years of creative suffocation in a regimented, fluorescent-lit office building before breaking free to start a trendy restaurant or adorable clothing boutique.

The story of Ana Peterson, a professional home- and office-organizer, resembles this narrative arc, but it differs in an important way: she was quite happy as a big-company employee, thank-you-very-much. “I was very much into the corporate world,” Peterson said. “I was motivated and driven to make things happen within my division.”

But when Peterson’s company merged with another, the ensuing layoffs cost the Edison resident her job.

After a months-long searched failed to bear fruit, Peterson founded ACP Consulting, a business through which she originally intended to offer – on a freelance basis – the same audio and visual technology support provided at her old job.

Her plans changed, though, when she met with a business coach who helped consider which business would best fit her skills and interests. Their conversation drifted toward the field of home and office organizing, an industry of which Peterson was previously unaware. She did some research and found organizing can be a viable occupation.

Organizers help clients de-clutter and rearrange their living- and workspaces with the goal of creating a more soothing, welcoming environment. A well-organized space can save money, Peterson said. “If you organize your kitchen, you’re less likely to buy an extra, unneeded container of sugar because you forgot you already had one.”

Peterson added that those who live in a messy kitchen are more likely to let perishable food expire before they are able to find and consume it.

The organizing process can also help children become independent, Peterson said. She explained that kids who develop a system for putting away clothes and toys – and who maintain it well enough to find these items later – are better able to choose their own outfits and take stock of their possessions.

Peterson has served a number of clients in the years since she began organizing, but the transition to delivering a service (rather than receiving one) took some getting used to. “I always used to be the client. When you’re starting your business, you’re trying to get clients, and it’s something different,” she said.

If Peterson’s story adds nuance to the corporate-cog-turned-entrepreneur cliché, it also debunks the notion that only great risk-takers can become business owners. “I didn’t do the business full-time until years after I started it,” Peterson said.

Would-be entrepreneurs, she said, should spend some time mulling an idea before launching it. “My advice would be to do the research and take a class to develop the idea and really go into it prepared and with eyes wide open,” she said.

This article originally appeared in the Home News Tribune.

Bakers often chafe at the challenges their customers’ dietary restrictions present.

But Entrepreneur University graduate Michelle McFadden-DiNicola decided to embrace these restrictions and come up with delicious and creative treats geared toward a thankful niche market.

Before McFadden-DiNicola’s children were old enough for school, the Highland Park resident hosted with a friend daytime classes for mothers and their toddler-aged children.

Preparing daily snacks, among other tasks, was up to McFadden-DiNicola. Offerings like hen- and rooster-shaped biscuits pleased her customers for a while, but when vegan families began enrolling, she had to tinker with her recipe. Soon, she hit another roadblock: “It seems like everyone is allergic to gluten nowadays,” she said.

Dealing with dietary restrictions like these would push many hosts to scour the shelves of upscale grocery stores for inoffensive, hypoallergenic treats. But McFadden-DiNicola relished the challenge of crafting her own recipes free of the allergens and animal products her guests sought to avoid.

When McFadden-DiNicola found she enjoyed baking unique treats more than running parent-child classes, she let her friend and co-founder handle that business. With her newfound time, she started what would become From the Rolling Pin. She soon began selling her line of vegan cookies and biscotti – individually wrapped – at Highland Park’s Nighthawk books, where they are still on offer.

Customers who enjoyed McFadden-DiNicola’s cookies began calling her up to  order custom baked goods. The orders became so frequent, in-fact, that From the Rolling Pin has begun focusing almost entirely on recipe development. “I don’t  think I’ve ever repeated a recipe,” McFadden-DiNicola said.

From the Rolling Pin offers items like custom-baked birthday cakes for kids  whose families maintain diets free of wheat, gluten or animal products.

McFadden-DiNicola is picky with her ingredients even when she caters to clients  without dietary restrictions. “It’s not just about allergies, it’s about good  ingredients,” McFadden-DiNicola said, adding, “Even if it’s a cake, it has to be as  organic as possible, with whole grain – sweet, but not so sweet that you get addicted  to the sugar.”

McFadden-DiNicola said her most unique creation to date is a thick, chocolate  ganache she sandwiches between cookies and spreads on cakes. It came about  when she tried to make vegan icing, substituting butter for canola oil. The oil, she  found, dispersed among the other ingredients, creating a fudge-like treat now preferred  by her vegan and non-vegan clients alike.

Making food everyone can enjoy is a strong motivation for McFadden-DiNicola. Children who suffer from allergies are often unable to share in the treats their classmates bring to school for birthdays, she said, noting that these kids often must travel a long distance to find a suitable first birthday cupcake.

Through From the Rolling Pin, McFadden-DiNicola seeks to make universally pleasing treats. “It’s nice to make people feel included,” she said.

Below are interviews with three of the more than 100 entrepreneurs who have received Intersect Fund loans since 2009. Our clients use their loan dollars for things like equipment, insurance, and supplies. Learn more about our loan program here.

Maximino Rodriguez is a barber looking to open his own shop.

In March of this year, Virginia Sanchez received an Intersect Fund loan to buy a new refrigerator for Danny’s Grocery and Deli, her store. The business is located at 240 Somerset Street, New Brunswick, NJ.

Fernando Gutierrez, also a barber, owners Ferdy’s Barber Shop, located at 412 Kearny Ave., Kearny, NJ.

A formally trained artist and architect, Janis Blayne-Paul puts her skills to work carving custom illustrations into small, stone squares.

Sometimes, the best way to find your niche is to think small.

That’s what Entrepreneur University graduate Janis Blayne-Paul did when she started her business, Karmic Stone, a few years ago. The Lambertville-based entrepreneur and former architect once expressed herself by designing big buildings. Now, she carves precise illustrations into small, flat stones no longer or wider than 16 inches.

On these rough stones, Blayne-Paul etches a number of designs that reflect her customers’ interests, hobbies, or religious beliefs. Some feature yogic images like the “ohm” symbol; others depict Hindu deities or Hebrew good-luck charms. One of Blayne-Paul’s most popular stones features a lithe runner mid-stride.

Some customers come with special requests, Blayne-Paul said: “There are those people that see beyond a stone I’ve created and say, ‘Here’s something meaningful to me, can you capture it in stone?’ ” She welcomes custom orders.

A perfectionist, Blayne-Paul takes pains to ensure each stone meets her high standards, commonly spending 10 hours carving a single stone. This results in a visually stunning product, but it also poses a challenge: ensuring her compensation (profit after the cost of materials and promotion) approaches something like a living wage, she must charge prices from $38 for the smaller, 8-inch square stones to $138 for the larger, 16 by 16-inch pieces.

The stones are meticulous; no one who sees them would doubt their worth. But their prices, Blayne-Paul soon realized, tend to remove them from consideration among the impulse buyers at the vending events she frequents.

This was a frustrating realization, to be sure, but it prompted a constructive change in Karmic Stone’s sales strategy: now, when Blayne-Paul sets up tables at places like Whole Foods Market or the New Jersey Botanical Garden, her mission is to get to know potential customers, gauge their interest and build a relationship that will — she hopes — result in an eventual sale.

Blayne-Paul has learned that merely showing Karmic Stones to potential customers is insufficient to close a sale. She must also talk about the ways in which the stones are used.

Some customers have embedded the stones into kitchen backsplashes; others have used them as stepping-stones in gardens. One used a version of the “runner” stone to decorate the runners’ supply store she owns. To customers still unsure what to do with a Karmic Stone, Blayne-Paul mentions they make great gifts. The holiday-season order increase she notices each year seems to bear this out (customers can find Karmic Stones at Blayne-Paul’s website and on Overstock).

Blayne-Paul’s strategy change represents a renewed focus. Instead of trying to impress everyone who comes to a vending event, she concentrates on the handful of people who express an interest in Karmic Stone. She engages with them, determines what they need, and builds relationships. This results not only in sales, but in satisfied customers who love to spread the word about Karmic Stone.

Thinking small can yield big returns.

Zakiyia Forbes heads the Lounge Society, an event-planning service. In addition, she sometimes sells jewelry, soaps and oils at local vending events.

To land her first job, New Brunswick-based event planner and Entrepreneur University graduate Zakiyia Forbes had to take a leap of faith.

Despite lacking industry experience, she traveled to Manhattan to seek employment with a famous New York film festival. Forbes hoped her strong work ethic alone would win the day, but she didn’t count on it.

Her heart sank when she saw the phalanx of well credentialed, portfolio-clutching film students vying for the same spot as she.

“In my interview, I told the director, ‘I’m not a film student, but I’ll do anything you need — getting the coffee, stuffing envelopes, anything,’” said Forbes.

To Forbes’s surprise, her approach worked. She got the job and spent the next few years organizing a slew of big events: red carpet premiers, A-list after-parties, and opening day galas at Madison Square Garden.

“It was sheer madness, and I loved every minute of it, she said.

But it wasn’t until 2004, when she hosted a massive music and art festival for 400 guests in a three-floor Midtown club, that she knew she was hooked.

Since then, Forbes has focused her efforts on her hometown of New Brunswick. Her business, the Lounge Society, hosts events that connect members of the community to artists, performers and entrepreneurs they may not otherwise encounter.

She has organized events such as a Pre-Valentine’s Day Bazaar at New Brunswick’s Namaste Café. The event featured vegan desserts, hand-knitted mittens, and exotic jewelry, all from local purveyors.

Earlier this year, she hosted her annual Black History Month Festival, a fixture on the calendars of hundreds in the Hub City.

In the coming months, she’ll help the Intersect Fund organize several vending events aimed at helping local entrepreneurs increase their sales. For a list of upcoming markets we’ll host, click here.

Forbes said she worries that as music and art programs fall victim to budget cuts, area students will have a tough time becoming culturally well rounded.

It’s not for lack of cultural offerings, Forbes said. She notes that opportunities to absorb art, theater and music abound in New Brunswick. The issue, in her view, is that too few New Brunswick residents have the means or inclination to partake in these offerings.

Through the Lounge Society, Forbes hopes to help community members lead healthier, more culturally active lives.

“That,” Forbes said, “is the main event.”

Some people start a business because they have too much free time on their hands.

That’s a problem North Brunswick baker Nancy Kluberspies would love to face.

When Kluberspies started her artisan bread venture — Lovely Buns — last summer, she already had a lot on her plate: raising three young children with her husband, teaching culinary arts and adjusting to life in the United States after emigrating from her native England a few years prior.

Most would balk at the idea of starting a business on top of so many commitments, but Kluberspies is the type to embrace constraints. In-fact, doing a lot with a little is part of what attracts her to bread:

“It always fascinated me,” she said, “that a few simple ingredients — none of which amount to much on their own — combine into an integral part of every meal.”

A lifelong foodie, Kluberspies started out as private chef to the top executives of a London bank. Later, she taught English abroad before returning home to review restaurants for a BBC-affiliated radio station in Bristol, England.

Then, while working in the England office of a U.S.-based food flavoring company, she met an American colleague — Frank Kluberspies — whom she would later marry.

The two moved to North Brunswick in 2006. Kluberspies settled smoothly into American life, but she found one thing tough to swallow: the bread. Accustomed to savory, natural European selections, she was dismayed by the pre-packaged, bleached loaves that fill stateside supermarket shelves.

At right, Nancy and Frank Kluberspies pictured on the Lovely Buns logo

So she baked. She made loaves for friends and family, and then baked to raise money for New Brunswick’s Promise Culinary School, a division of the nonprofit Elijah’s Promise, which provides food and social services to low-income and homeless New Jerseyans.

Soon, she began teaching at the School. Elijah’s Promise executive director Lisanne Finston says Kluberspies’s “love of bread, love of the art and mastery of the craft” captivate those with whom she works.

Her customers are pleased, too. They devour her traditional breads, such as baguettes, sourdough loaves and focaccia, and they like her original concoctions even better.

Of these concoctions, her “health loaf” is the most popular. It’s a thick, hearty bread made with whole wheat flour and packed with natural ingredients like honey, quinoa, flax and sunflower seeds.

“We are dazzled by the health loaf,” said Lovely Buns fan Abby Hoffman, of South Brunswick. She added, “It’s delicious and versatile as a breakfast or lunch bread.”

More Central New Jersey consumers are taking notice. Kluberspies estimates that since she started Lovely Buns in July, she has sold nearly 1,000 loaves, each one specially ordered and delivered.

It helps that Kluberspies’s family supports her venture. Her husband Frank, also a formally trained chef, helps with the baking when things get hectic. And the couple’s oldest daughter contributed the playful logo that adorns Lovely Buns’s business cards and Web site (www.lovelybuns.com).

Running a business can be draining and even a bit scary, Kluberspies said, but she’s relieved to have found something she really likes to do:

“You hear people talk about how they really love what they do, and you think, ‘I’d like to say that.’ Well, I can. I really love this,” she said.