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The Entrepreneur’s Source: A Blast From The Past
The Entrepreneur’s Source: Blast From The Past: Terry Altieri. It was the mid-90s, and Terry Altieri saw the writing on the wall.
“At the time, I was working for a hardware company, and Home Depot had just moved in and started taking our business. By 1995, I was looking to get out of the company,” Altieri says. “I lost 50 percent of my sales by then.”
If you’ve ever seen the light at the end of the tunnel, only to realize that it’s an oncoming train, then you have some idea of the concerns Altieri was facing. The Entrepreneur’s Source® calls it the New Career Economy® — when downsizing or the impending threat of layoffs forces people to reevaluate their professional situations.
Unsure, but knowing he needed to act, Altieri found help from an unlikely source: his teenage daughter.
“I knew Terry Powell from church, but really it was from my eldest daughter who went to school with his daughter,” Altieri says. “She told me she thought he helped people own their own franchise, so I thought I should probably talk to him about it.”
Powell had started his groundbreaking business only 10 years before, in Southbury, Connecticut. The Entrepreneur’s Source® and Powell’s team of alternative career coaches are successful because they help those who dream of a better life for themselves and their families by facilitating their journey of discovery.
“The very foundation of The Entrepreneur’s Source® comes from the fact that I am an entrepreneur myself! That’s why we can help people achieve their dreams,” Powell says.
Altieri says self-employment had always been a dream. “I always ran the business like it was my own anyway, even though I was just the manager. He (Terry Powell) got me started on being my own boss and running my own business, rather than doing all of that work for another corporation.”
After going through his own process of discovery, Altieri was presented with a business he wouldn’t have thought about for himself in a million years: a dry-cleaners. “I wasn’t sure I had the aptitude for it, but I decided, ‘What the heck!’ I’d give it a shot.”
Terry Altieri is the first to say he knew nothing about the dry-cleaning business, but he didn’t let that deter him.
“They had a training program and I was able to open a store right here in my own hometown. I think it attracted me because I could see the profit potential. There was no lack of business in this town for a dry-cleaners.”
There were long days and a lot of hard work (“If the work is there, it has to be done!”), but there were unexpected benefits too.
“I was able to have all of my children work for me while they were in high school,” Altieri enthuses. “It gave them extra money and they were good workers! It was fun seeing my kids in a different situation. I think it was a good experience for all three of them.”
Altieri no longer has the dry-cleaners that started his journey to entrepreneurship. He has since sold that business for a tidy sum and moved on to another self-employment opportunity. But it all started for Terry Altieri in the same place it started for Terry Powell — Southbury, Connecticut. Now, 35 years later, The Entrepreneur’s Source® has spread to more than 120 offices in the United States and Canada.
But Powell says one thing has remained the same over the past 35 years: “We’re still helping people.”
Are you interested in exploring your own possibilities, options and dreams and building toward self-sufficiency, just like Terry Altieri? Get started here: www.entrepreneurssource.com.