You’ve heard Benjamin Franklin’s saying “A penny saved is a penny earned.” Well Jeffrey Byer might have another saying “A penny saved is a necklace.”
The economy is putting families into a real bind. More and more people are forced to find more creative ways to support their families. Entrepreneurs aren’t different. They must find a way to stretch the impact of their dollars. While we have heard numerous ways from entrepreneurs how to increase the effectiveness of their money, Jeffrey Byer has developed an entire business around this concept.
Excerpts from the interview with Jeffrey Byer are below:
Let’s Hear Your Story!
When I retired as a correctional social worker, I was looking for something to do and wanted to see if I could make lifelines out of coins. After researching and testing many polishes, my wife came up with the idea to polish the coins in a certain way which makes old one cent coins look like gold. We developed the ‘lifetime bracelet' out of love and since that time we have developed about twenty different jewelry designs.
We also hope to use our knowledge of numismatics in the scrapbooking industry, business opportunities and numismatics.
Tell us about your business!
We are hoping to be the next great invention for women over fifty, our target market for the bracelet, because they are the group who have ten years of unique happenings in their lives and our bracelet helps them celebrate them by focusing on these years using coins to highlight them.
We came up with the name, Reminicents, in a swimming pool in the Wisconsin Dells. My wife Bonnie thought the name reflected exactly what we do and we decided to go with it. We immediately secured the domain name and started a one page website which has been expanded recently to about fifteen pages.
What things make your venture unique?
Our company not only has unique jewelry items but can provide a vast inventory when the items start selling into the thousands. Reminicents is currently the only lifetime bracelet on the web which actually provides the coins along with the bracelet. This has taken us years to come up with this inventory and it is very doubtful any other company will be able to compete.
When the lifetime bracelet is given as a gift to a woman or ordered by our customers they are immediately stunned by seeing their life come to fruition in coins and no two bracelets are ever alike.
What advice would you give to an aspiring entrepreneur?
Obtain as much practical knowledge of business as possible but be able to dream that they will succeed even when the odds seem against them and the business models show otherwise.
What trait(s) do you feel successful entrepreneurs possess?
A successful entrepreneur must first and foremost must have a love for what they are doing and realize success may not come immediately. Also turning off the negative energy some people have of projects they do not understand.
What is the most exciting thing about being an entrepreneur?
When one is an entrepreneur they wake up in the morning and feel that the day is going to make them rich and famous. Granted that there will be many days of disappointment but an entrepreneur will always carry that dream in the back of their minds and it keeps them going forward with hope and anticipation.
How do you stay motivated to continually work on your venture?
I know my product is going to succeed because when I do sell or give one away the response is always what I anticipated.
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