Don't Scrimp on Professional Financial Advice

Helen Driscoll opened Fine Paper Company in 1995 when she decided she wanted to reintroduce the forgotten art of fine papermaking to the public. By designing and printing wedding invitations, stationery, and other custom paper products, she's created a thriving $400,000-a-year business.

But it hasn’t been without struggle. Driscoll has made several sacrifices — and a few mistakes — along the way.

After an initial investor backed out, Driscoll was left without any startup cash. Instead of looking for other investors, she decided to liquidate the profit-sharing and pension plan from her previous job selling rare books. "After all the penalties and taxes were paid, I had about $13,000 to lease, repair, fixture, and stock a 2,500-square-foot store," she says. And that's not including the money she needed to live on. "I should have had $250,000," she admits.

To save money, Driscoll refurbished the storefront herself. "I had so little money that I painted, repaired and fixtured the whole place by myself," she says. She found turn-of-the-century fixtures and created an ambience that would make customers rethink their assumptions about paper. "I designed the interior to overwhelm the senses of the unsophisticated visitor," Driscoll says.

It took her about a month and a half to finish the combination workroom/showroom, but she was pleased with how it turned out. Her shop has even been featured in several television commercials and feature films. Still, it didn't help her come tax time. "I couldn't deduct my own labor. If I had hired people to do this for me, I would have opened a month earlier and been able to deduct the cost from my taxes," she explains.

Driscoll advises hiring professional financial advice from the start, and even having an accountant look over your startup plan. This is also extremely important when rolling over a pension plan and borrowing against it, like Driscoll did. "Don't trust the information your employer gives you, even though they are the only ones who can give you the information," she says. "Make them back up every point and give you all the information you requested in writing. Have your accountant or lawyer come in and go over it all with them."

Because Driscoll got some bad information from her employer, she lost thousands of dollars. "My employer told me I would get the fully vested year payout (from my last year of employment) the following year. I decided to liquidate and pay all the penalties to get about $4,000 more than if I borrowed against the fund," she says. "The information from my employer was wrong." Her last year of vested benefits went directly into the owners' share.

Luckily, determination runs in Driscoll's family. "My dad was a maverick colonel in the Army. I adopted a bunker mentality," she says. To help her prepare mentally for running a business, she hired a personal trainer for extremely intense workouts. "Then I just put my nose down and dug in."

— Kim Wimpsett