Finding the 'Right' Business Opportunity

By Andrew Koshner

Long before starting my own business, I felt certain about one thing: I didn’t like having a boss. After receiving my law degree and Ph.D. from Washington University in St. Louis, I was employed as both an associate attorney, branch manager of a staffing company, and as a college professor. Although I enjoyed and learned a great deal from them all, I still yearned for an entrepreneurial challenge.

Andy Koshner

Thus, once committing to the idea of leaving academics and the practice of law, it became just a matter of finding the “right” business opportunity. Having grown up in a family-owned St. Louis staffing company, I conceived of JurisTemps, Inc., a legal staffing and recruiting company, by meshing my inside knowledge of the staffing industry with a perceived under-served niche market in the St. Louis legal community.

The idea of a staffing and recruiting service for the legal community provided a perfect opportunity – blending my professional knowledge and technical expertise while offering an entrepreneurial challenge and addressing a market need. Thus, the summer of 1997 marked the inception of JurisTemps, Inc.

However, as I quickly learned, the start-up of this business, or any business, was no easy task. In fact, it was quite the opposite. Waiting six-months for that first pay check, making due with outdated technology, and asking for favors from friends and vendors made for many nervous moments. At the start, I signed a lease, printed business cards, bought office furniture, initiated an advertising campaign, met with many local attorneys and law firms, and started recruiting for applicants. Admittedly, several of my early placements didn’t work out and I made more than one embarrassing mistake. I now use these early errors as examples, of what not to do, when I train new employees.

Fortunately JurisTemps, like other successful new ventures, quickly learned from early mistakes and was able to pull out of the red fairly quickly. Seven years later, it might be easy to sit back and say that JurisTemps has been a smashing success. By any objective standard it has been. Now the oldest and most experienced legal staffing service in St. Louis, JurisTemps remains the only locally-owned and attorney operated staffing service. It has seen its sales increase in each and every year of its existence, and it was listed by the St. Louis Business Journal as one of the city’s top 20 fastest growing businesses.

While I now have the satisfaction of being my own boss, the pressures and responsibilities associated with it are almost always intense. Not unlike other small-business entrepreneurs, I am forced to wear many hats. From negotiating a new lease for office space to laying out a new web site, I face an array of daily challenges. One day it is managerial, others it might be architectural, IT, HR, or legal. Once, right in the middle of negotiating a deal to send 10 contract attorneys out to work on a large class action case, my receptionist announced that she was just accepted into veterinary medicine program of her dreams and would be leaving in two days. Similarly, one day I was working hard to meet a deadline for an article I was writing when a call came in from my accountant requiring my immediate attention to deal with some changes that affected the company’s profit-sharing plan. These situations are not unusual. The key, I’ve learned, for any small business entrepreneur is to find reliable business advisors (accountants, attorneys, investment advisors, IT consultants, graphic designers, etc.) who can help guide you through the plethora of issues that wind up on your desk.

While I don’t need to ask for anyone’s permission before instituting a new marketing plan, expanding our range of business services, or buying a flat screen monitor, it’s ultimately my responsibility if a temporary employee is caught napping at his desk or fails to show up for an assignment. When the copy machine dies or the internet connection lapses, it only takes a minute for someone to knock on my office door. My former three week family vacation to Sarasota has become almost impossible and when the first snow storm of the year hits, guess who is the only one who manages to get to work.

For the average attorney who is used to specializing in one niche area, this type of entrepreneurship can be quite a challenge. On the other hand, for the average attorney who is bored to tears by specializing in one niche area day after day, this can be quite a refreshing change. I never really leave my work at the office and I never lose the fear that, one day, clients might just stop calling. It is all just part of the package. For some, it raises their blood pressure, increases their dose of anti-anxiety meds, and keeps them popping antacids. For me, and other small business entrepreneurs, we simply couldn’t have it any other way.