Chris Weenig

        I interviewed Chris Weenig. He is good friend to my wife's side of the family. He is a very successful entrepreneur, but it the most down to earth person that I have ever met. I don't have as close of a relationship with him as my wife and her family, so I was very interested to get the personal details of his story and what I could learn from chatting with him. Growing up he didn't know exactly what he wanted to do or study. During school he still felt the same way, and ended up getting his degree in exercise science. He thought that it would leave the door open for medical or dental school.
         He ended up working with his uncle who had a construction business after graduating for about a year. He had decided that he was not going to work in the medical field. His decision was not easy for him. He took off a month of work and traveled and cleared his mind so that he could make the best decision for him. He told me that he felt that he should just go with the flow and see what opportunities presented themselves. This went on for about a year or so and then he decided that he would be the one that had to find the opportunity. He looked online at several different businesses and idea, and came to the conclusion of he would open copying and scanning business particularly for documents.This may seem a little outdated now, but he was the pioneer to the industry. They now offer man fine products from mutli functional copiers, data security solutions, It support, interactive presentation boards, and etc. His growth was very slow and steady, but he said that he never aggressively leveraged his business and this helped. There were good times and bad times and he didn't want to incur large amounts of debt, and then have a bad year that would put him out of business.
He talked about how having a supportive and loving spouse is key to starting your own business. He credits his wife to a large amount of the success. He said he always made time for his family, when he could have been doing something for the business. He wouln't neglect either one of the two, but he always placed family first. I'm starting to see that this is common advice from the entrepreneurs that I have interviewed. I will be sure that I make sure that my priorities are in line when starting and running a business as well. I thought this family picture of his is very fitting for my closing