 Sharon
Williams does most of her best work in the middle of the
night, when others are sleeping. Actually, it's not her work.
It is the work of small companies with tight budgets. In fact,
their budgets are so tight that the companies are unable to
hire secretarial
and administrative support. That's where Williams comes in.
She is the founder, owner and one of two full-time employees
of The 24 Hour Secretary, a business support firm that she
started in her house more than four years ago.
Today, she has
three locations, including one she opened last month in the
Business and Success Development Center, a business incubator
in the Rutherford Business Center near Lochern. She grossed
$50,000 last year. And she's not content to stop there.
Williams wants to improve her gross revenue by 20 percent this
year, and plans to expand again, although she won't give
details.
Starting Out
Williams established her business in November 1990 after being
laid off. After being told her services as an administrator
for a municipal agency were no longer needed, she began
delivering pizzas for Domino's, Williams said. "I used the
money that I made from tips to buy a computer and the other
equipment that I needed to launch my company. Running my own
business was something that I wanted to do," she said.
After
spending $800 and enlisting the help of her daughter, Chantal,
Williams turned her Lochern house into an office. As clients,
she sought businesses that needed a secretary and someone to
answer phones but did not have the resources to have their own
offices or paid employees.
"I
started networking immediately," Williams said. "I would go to
a meeting where nobody knew me and hand out fliers. It was a
great way of meeting people, and some of them started to
call."
After
more than a year in business, Williams opened her second
office in Pikesville in January 1992. "After looking around I
discovered that there were many small business owners who
worked out of their homes in the Pikesville area who needed my
services," said Williams. And just as she did when she first
went into business, she started networking.
It was
not long before Williams found her way to the Baltimore County
Chamber of Commerce and the Pikesville Chamber of Commerce.
Not only did she hand out fliers, but she also joined the
"executive dialogue" program, an executive management program
the county Chamber offered that allowed her to meet numerous
business owners. "As a result of my involvement with the
county chamber, my business picked up," she said.
Richard
Aarons, the manager of the county chamber's Small Business
Council, said Williams has made the most of her involvement
with the chamber. "I think that Sharon is very well organized.
She is a great marketing person," he said. "She knows how to
sell her product. She is innovative. I understand why she is
succeeding."
How it works
The company
acts as an answering service; one phone, for example, can
handle messages for as many as eight clients. The 24 Hour
Secretary also prepares legal documents and resumes, does
transcriptions and billing, and prepares computer data bases.
"Our clients receive full-service secretarial support without
the overhead they would have to pay if they had someone in an
office," Williams said. "We handle the mundane, administrative
type of paperwork-related tasks. We will work through the
night for a client, and we specialize in rush jobs.
Actually,
Williams who admits she doesn't get much sleep works through
the night, while Pat Woolford, the other full-time employee,
works the day shift. The company also has 10 part-time
employees who act as contractors on an as-needed basis. The
firm's 50 monthly clients spend an average of $300 each month.
About 100 businesses hire 24 Hour Secretary to do special
projects, such as mailings, each month.
While most of
the firm's clients are in the Baltimore area, she does handle
chores for a few out-of-state firms. Such companies include
New Day Communications, a radio production company in Boca
Raton, Fla., which hired 24 Hour Secretary for billing and
administrative work, and a Rochester, N.Y. sports agency,
EnterStar. It's taken time to build that client base. When she
started, 24-Hour Secretary had one customer. Now, Williams
says she is comfortable handling eight clients at a time.
Although she would like to add customers, she is moving
slowly, "because I want to manage my growth."
Her customers have been pleased
with her work
"I find Sharon
Williams to be very dependable and efficient," said Jerome
Wicks, the president of Secure-It-Fasteners, a wholesaler of
fasteners, nuts and bolts that has been using 24-Hour
Secretary for four years. "Regardless of the time of day, her
business has been there for me over the years. She does all of
our mailing and all of the work that a full-time secretary
would do for me," Wicks said. "As her company has grown and
she has acquired additional customers, she still has time for
people like me who are basically small businesspeople," Wicks
said.
"You can reach
her anytime during the day or during the night," said Esther
Kirkpatrick, the owner of Success Empowerment Enterprises.
Williams, who has worked for Kirkpatrick for two years,
created the design and layout of a book that Kirkpatrick
published on grant writing. And she does the letters that
Kirkpatrick sends out for her grant-writing seminars.
Joseph E. Green-Bishop is a
contributing writer in Baltimore.
Reprinted with permission from Baltimore Business Journal |
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