October 26, 2007

Advantage looks back at the year

By Sarah K. Winn

Charleston Gazette Staff writer

Advantage Valley will travel to France in December, officials said during the 11th annual Advantage Valley dinner on Thursday night.

The meeting, held at Charleston’s Embassy Suites hotel, capped off a year of success for the organization. Advantage Valley will partner with the West Virginia Development Office for the foreign trade mission. Representatives from the Charleston Area Alliance, the Putnam County Development Authority and the Huntington Area Development Council will meet with French businesses during the five-day trip.

By working together within the Advantage Valley region — which includes 12 counties in West Virginia, Kentucky and Ohio — foreign businesses will be more likely to invest, said Mike Herron, president of Advantage Valley.

“We are going to hit France hard for five days,” he said. “French businesses, international businesses will take us more seriously as a player when we have a larger geographical region.” The Advantage Valley region is within 500 miles of where 63 percent of French investment in the United States has been made in the last 10 years, according to an Advantage Valley news release. These investments have been in auto parts, machinery, primary metals, metal products, chemicals, plastic resins and aerospace products.

For Advantage Valley, this kind of regional thinking and economic development support is the mission of the group, said Ellen Cappellanti, chairman of Advantage Valley’s board of directors.
“Let’s promote regionalism and a regional identity,” she said. “It’s a concerted effort.” This year has been a year of transition, with Herron joining as president in March, she said. Also, Advantage Valley is proud of its work with regional entrepreneurs through its Entrepreneurial League System, which was begun in 2003.

The system coaches more than 70 businesses, which employ more than 300 people and bring in more than $30 million in revenues, said S.K. Miller, who serves as a business coach. Some of the successful entrepreneurs were on hand Thursday to tell their success stories.

“To be truthful, I didn’t think I wanted to do this,” said Brenda Hudson, of Hudson-Gillmor Associates. Her company had already been in business five years when they joined ELS. Her business partner, Lisa Shinn, called the program “the best kind of business group therapy I could have.”

Vickie Pullins, of LinguaCare Associates, said her 17-year-old speech pathology business was growing when they decided to join ELS. Their business coach helped the group of speech pathologists create a business mission and vision, even though they didn’t think they needed it.
“We resisted, we rebelled, we asked ourselves, ‘What are we doing?’” Pullins said. Then, she had an epiphany, she said. For the first time, a business decision was made using this mission and vision.

“I realized that that vision and mission is our compass,” she said. Now, LinguaCare has seen a 20 percent increase in gross revenue, she said.

For Dr. David Clayman and Clayman and Associates, the ELS kept him from making the same business mistakes he once made. It helped keep him away from bankruptcy, something many entrepreneurs will face. “There are a lot of people with great ideas,” he said. “There are a lot of people filing [bankruptcy] because of these ideas. They just don’t have the structure.”

ELS gave him that needed structure, he said.

Gov. Joe Manchin, who gave the keynote address at the dinner, lauded Advantage Valley’s support of entrepreneurship and its push for making West Virginia a better place.

“West Virginia and Advantage Valley have the opportunity to make a difference,” he said, “and I look at what Advantage Valley has been able to accomplish while working together.”

To contact staff writer Sarah K. Winn, call 348-5156.