Entrepreneurs are visionaries with a brainstorm and a goal, yet they encounter skeptics who perceive them as hopeless daydreamers without a lick of sense.
Wayne Beasley and Alan McIntosh started out as businessmen by selling T-shirts from their car trunks, to the great dismay of their families who encouraged them to seek more stable employment.
Entrepreneurs succeed, however, by listening to themselves — their most captive audience. Today Beasley and McIntosh are co-owners of WayToBe, a Hayward promotional products and uniforms business with international connections.
Stop into McDonald’s, and the uniforms of employees serving you Big Macs were designed by WayToBe. Or you might see Virgin America baggage handlers wearing WayToBe apparel while loading or unloading your suitcases.
WayToBe designs and distributes — and not just uniforms. It produces gift bags, watches, pens, calculators, clocks, beach towels, flip flops, etc.
“Franchisees buy these as gifts for loyal customers,” Beasley explained.
Beasley, 49, and McIntosh, 42, worked for McDonald’s, though not preparing Happy Meals. They were accountants who sold T-shirts on the side. The two bonded immediately. McIntosh admired Beasley’s honesty and integrity, while Beasley was taken with McIntosh’s intelligence and his daydreamer/ believer personality.
Ah, the dreamer vs. visionary quandary.
“You have to be a dreamer first,” Beasley said. “Then you evolve into being a visionary because you formulate what you want to do. Otherwise, you’re just a dreamer, and it becomes a nightmare.”
“At work, we’re visionaries,” McIntosh said. “But we still have to be dreamers. We still want to do things that go beyond the scope of this business, beyond these 27,000 square feet.”
That’s the size of the warehouse these co-owners of WayToBe moved into in January 2008. They now have 19 employees. WayToBe has 10 consistent clients, including McDonald’s, Virgin America and Auto Desk software.
“We basically complement the marketing and purchasing departments of these companies,” Beasley said. “They get the best of both worlds because they can have a marketing presence without the risk, because we own the inventory. We built the Web sites. And we ship merchandise literally anywhere in the world.”
Though their families fretted, these two had the know-how to get ahead. Beasley has a business degree from Saint Mary’s College, and McIntosh earned a finance degree from the University of Tennessee, then a master’s in business from the University of Texas.
It was 1991 when they launched themselves gingerly as entrepreneurs.
“It was an evolution,” Beasley said, “from selling out of our cars to our first office in 1994 in South San Francisco. We first knew we were really onto something when we got our national supplier license with McDonald’s in 1996.”
“I felt great,” McIntosh added, “when we were able to pay ourselves for the first time in 1998 — no side jobs.”
What’s remarkable, aside from their progress, is how well the two get along.
They rarely disagree, and when they do, it’s without rancor. Even the company name, WayToBe, is a play on words on the first few letters of Wayne Beasley’s first and last names — which the egoless McIntosh happily approved of without demanding that the “to” in his last name become the bridge between “Way” and “Be.”
Both are Hayward residents and married — Beasley has three children, McIntosh two.
So is WayToBe destined for Fortune 500 fame?
“We’re not that big a business,” Beasley said, “but the dreamer part of us aspires to reaching that down the road.”
So what do their once-reluctant parents think now of their business leap?
“They’re excited and proud,” Beasley said. “There are always enough reasons to quit in business, so you really have to believe in your heart what you’re doing.”
“They are thrilled,” McIntosh echoed. “In fact, my sister works for us, and my parents are happy.”
Way to be.
Source: Mercury News, Oakland, CA, December 20, 2009
