These may not be the best of times to start or run a small business, but Christopher Hazlett’s struggle to hang tough through one crisis after another may hold lessons for the legions of entrepreneurs caught between a stumbling economy and crippling credit squeeze.
At the very least, his upbeat attitude should offer them solace, and maybe even a bit of inspiration.
It has been a rough year for Hazlett, founder and president of Integrate Consulting L.L.C., a software design firm in Hoboken, N.J. First, during the market turmoil last January, Johnson & Johnson, Merrill Lynch and almost all his other clients walked away from their contracts in just two weeks. His company’s revenue projections for 2008 fell from six figures to close to zero.
Then, he spent a disheartening four months trying to find new business.
Admitting defeat, he made a big gamble to save his company by switching from his comfortable perch of doing software design for Fortune 100 companies to the uncharted territory of developing a Web product for a market that includes churches and synagogues.
His timing is not optimal. He is introducing a software program called Event Clipboard on Friday in the midst of the American financial system’s current nervous breakdown.
Is Hazlett, 31 years old, nervous?
“Most of all, I feel exuberant,” he said. “I wake up in the morning saying, ‘Yes! I wonder what’s going to happen today?’ ”
In 2006, with all his energies centered on Integrate, he prospered. He signed a big contract with Merrill Lynch and a few smaller deals. He hired an assistant, who, like him, worked out of her home. The money rolled in – in the low six figures in 2006 and again in 2007, with phone bills his biggest expense.
Photo by Integrate Consulting L.L.C..