Working smarter, not just harder

Entrepreneur of the Year addresses Chamber

By Tom Fink

May 29, 2009 — Rogers County resident Bruce Parks may have been named the Rogers County 2008 “Entrepreneur of the Year,” but he would be the first to admit it took him several years to learn the difference between “working harder” and “working smarter.”

“On my grandfather’s porch, there used to be a sign near his woodpile that read ‘He Who Cuts His Own Wood is Warmed Twice,’” said Parks, founder/owner of Parks Custom Cabinets of Chelsea. “Most of my life, that was how I looked at becoming successful — the harder you worked, the more you accomplished, and the more of a success you were.

“Not that hard work isn’t an important element of success, but there’s much more to it than that,” he continued, addressing the crowd at Thursday’s Claremore Chamber of Commerce luncheon. “Just because you may possess a skill or are able to work with your hands, that doesn’t automatically make you a candidate to be a business owner — I learned the hard way that’s not necessarily the case.

“I’m not actually a speaker, but I do have something I want to tell you all about, which is the resources available right here in this area, in this town, in this county, to the small business owner, such as myself,” he said.

Parks told the audience of his background, beginning with his ministerial great-great-grandfather through his own father, with whom Parks learned the trade of carpet-laying, a hard work ethic, and the mindset that “when something has to be done, you just do it — you don’t think about whether or not you know how, you just pitch in and work hard, whether it’s building a house, helping someone build a barn, or laying carpet — if it needed doing, you did it.”

Unfortunately for Parks, “working harder” only served him to a point when he later started his own business.

“I grew up laying carpet, so I fell into the carpet installation business, but eventually broadened into cabinet making and home renovations,” he said. “So, we built a shop, took on employees and began doing commercial construction in Claremore, and eventually in the Tulsa area.

“Things were going great, or so I thought — we had all this work going on, I was employing 10 or twelve people, I had trucks on the road, full of tools — I thought I was the ‘diamond of success,’” he said, “but as it happened, the business grew at such a rate that it demanded itself to be run like a business, and what I could do extremely well with one man, I was having trouble managing with 10.”

Managing his growing business eventually led to a “crisis,” Parks said, forcing him to narrow his projects to strictly cabinet making.

I didn’t know what I was doing wrong,” he said. “I knew I was working as hard as I could and in my mind that meant I was doing what I was supposed to do. One year, we had a very, very good year — when we figured it, we’d grossed over a million dollars one year, and yet, I’d lost money — I was living modestly so I could not figure out why.”

But there were those who could help him find out why.

“I met Dell (Davis, Claremore Chamber of Commerce president) at a Home and Garden Show — which was itself a tremendous resource for small businessmen such as myself,” Parks said. “We talked for some time, and I realized she was interested in helping me as a business owner. I wound up joining the Chamber, and from that, several good things happened, including my making several connections with other business owners in the community — all of whom were willing to share their experiences and advice with me.”

One of the key connections which Parks made through the Chamber was the Rogers State University Innovation Center, a resource focused on the fostering of economic development in the community.

“The Innovation Center really helped me turn my business around,” he said. “I think this was in 2005, when Lynn Wilson and Jeri Koehler were starting there, and I just told them I needed help — I needed someone to look at my finances and tell me what I was doing wrong.”

“As an entrepreneur, Bruce really does everything that we promote and encourage entrepreneurs to do,” said Jeri Kohler, RSU Innovation Center. “He’s continuously educating himself, whether through reading books, researching, attending seminars, or some other way to learn more about business. He’s always a student, and I know that’s what’s helped him to have a successful business.”

“To me, my financial information was just a bunch of numbers, I really wasn’t interested in them, I just wanted to work hard,” Parks said, “but the people at the Innovation Center were able to help me see where money was being spent, where it could be being spent more wisely, and how to make the business a financial success — they were really a lifeboat for me.”

Parks also was introduced to representatives from the Oklahoma Manufacturing Alliance, Northeast Technology Center, and the Rogers County Industrial Development Authority, among others.

“Some of these places — like NTC and RSU, for example — are sort of in competition with one another, but when it came to offering me advice and guidance, they’re goal was to help me,” he said. “The Scripture tells us there’s safety in the multitude of counselors, and I received outstanding counsel from all of these people.

“It just amazed me that these resources were so readily available right here in Claremore and Rogers County — not in Tulsa, not in Dallas, not in Oklahoma City, but right here,” he said.

Parks ended his address encouraging those thinking of starting their own business to start where he wish he had himself.

“If I was starting a business today, knowing what I now know, I would start at the RSU Innovation Center,” he said. “I got into my own business totally backwards — I’m so glad to have found the Innovation Center.”

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