Chapter 4. Myth No. 4: It Takes a Great Deal of Business Experience to Start a Successful Business
Truth No. 4: Successful Businesses Are Started by People with All Levels of Business Experience

Introduction

One of the most pervasive myths that inhibit people from starting their own businesses is the notion that it takes a great deal of business experience to start a successful business. It’s easy to understand where this notion comes from. Most of the businesses we deal with are established companies with employees, customers, well-established processes, and track records of success. Because we didn’t see these businesses when they were young, it’s easy to believe that they’ve always run as smoothly as they do today. In addition, most of the business founders we know about, such as Bill Gates (Microsoft) and Michael Dell (Dell), seem to have done everything right in building their businesses. If someone told you that each of these individuals had substantial business experience before they started their companies, there would be no reason to disbelieve them.

The problem with these depictions is that they create misconceptions about the way businesses start and evolve and the amount of expertise it takes to start them. Most businesses start small and grow over time—it’s just that we rarely see them when they’re first getting started. Wal-Mart, for example, started with a single store in Bentonville, Arkansas. And there are many examples of firms, including Microsoft and Dell, which were started by people with no business experience at all. In fact, most of the businesses we profile in this book were started by people with little or no prior business experience. Examples include darynkagen.com (started by a former CNN reporter), Dynamic Interventions (started by three school psychologists), Flavorx (started by a man working in his parents’ pharmacy), and The Pampered Chef (started by a homemaker).

There are businesses that do take a substantial amount of experience to successfully start and run. Most financial services and medical product companies, for example, are started by people with deep industry backgrounds and business expertise.

There are also technical aspects of starting a business such as finance and accounting, which take time and effort to learn and perfect, regardless of the type of business. In these instances, people who have business experience have a leg-up on those who don’t. It’s also easy to envision the advantage that someone who has managed people and run a successful business before might have over someone who hasn’t.

Still, there are many examples of people who have started successful businesses without prior business experience. In the absence of knowing their individual stories, however, it’s easy to believe the myth. Regrettably, this misconception causes capable people to never seriously investigate starting their own businesses. Without having information to the contrary, however, it’s easy for people to assume that their lack of business experience is too difficult an obstacle to overcome.

To further dispel the myth that it takes a great deal of business experience to start a successful business and to provide suggestions to people who remain uneasy about their lack of business experience, this chapter is divided into three sections. The first section provides insight into the role that prior business experience plays in the business start-up process. The second section focuses on business opportunities that minimize the need for substantial business experience. The third section focuses on techniques that help people overcome the lack of prior business experience as they launch their own businesses.

Insights Into the Role That Prior Business Experience Plays in the Business Start-Up Process

In most start-up situations, there are two benefits to having prior business experience. The first is the acquisition of specific skills. If you are proficient at accounting or know the ins and outs of hiring and managing people, those skills are helpful in starting and growing a business. The second benefit is a simple assimilation of how businesses run and what makes them successful. Simply by being part of the business world, people gain a sense of what works and what doesn’t work in particular business situations.

The question then becomes how valuable is prior business experience in a start-up setting and how much of an obstacle is not having this experience. Would Dell, darynkagen.com, and the other companies we’ve highlighted that were started by people with no business experience be stronger today if they had been started by experienced businesspeople? In addition, are there forms of business experience that might be a detriment rather than an advantage in a start-up setting? And how much does practical experience count? If I’ve worked as an auto mechanic all my life and would like to open a store that sells customized auto accessories, am I capable of starting that business, or do I need to get some business experience first?

The sections that follow provide three insights about the role of prior business experience in the start-up process. As you read through each, give careful thought to how the insight affects your own views on the topic. Many people overcome the fear that a lack of business experience is too large an obstacle by becoming more familiar with the start-up process and by gaining a better appreciation of the value of the other skills and capabilities they possess.

Nearly Everyone Feels Inadequate on Some Level

The first insight regarding the role of prior business experience in the start-up process is to keep the role of business experience in perspective. It’s only one type of experience. There are many forms of experience that potentially affect the success of a new business, including business experience, practical experience in the specific area the business will operate in, sales experience, and leadership experience. Virtually no one has an ideal set of experiences as a foundation for starting a new business. Because of this, nearly everyone feels inadequate on some level. While the auto mechanic who wants to open a store to sell customized auto parts might feel inadequate because he doesn’t have business experience, a seasoned business person with the same idea could feel inadequate because he doesn’t know as much about repairing or modifying cars.

Feelings of inadequacy are also prompted by the sheer number of tasks people realize they’ll be responsible for if they start their own businesses. This facet of business ownership causes people with business backgrounds to question whether their range of experience is adequate. For example, you might be a graphic artist who wants to open your own shop and have experience managing a staff and overseeing a budget, but might still feel uneasy because you have no experience in marketing or sales.

The overarching point of these observations is that nearly everyone feels inadequate in some aspect of starting a business. This emotion is so strong that some business owners say that their innermost fear is that their customers or employees will discover how much they really "don’t know" about the business they’ve started. The first step to overcoming fear of inadequacy is to give yourself credit for the experiences you’ve had. If you think about the jobs you’ve had, the volunteer work you’ve done, the work you did in school, your family experiences, and so forth, your breadth of experience is probably more expansive than you first imagined. The second step is to boost your own self-efficacy for starting a business. Self-efficacy refers to your belief that you can perform a specific task (like starting a business). Several steps for boosting your self-efficacy for starting a business were discussed in Chapter 1, including reading books and articles about ordinary people who started successful businesses and participating in small business workshops and events where you get encouragement from business owners.

Certain Types of Business Experience Might Actually Hurt Rather Than Help You

The second insight is that there are certain types of business experiences that might actually hurt rather than help in your efforts to start a business. This heads-up refers to the difficulties some people have transitioning from a corporate environment to a small business, so these circumstances might not apply to you. Still, for those fitting this profile, it is important information to have.

The primary complication that occurs when people from corporate backgrounds try to start their own businesses is they have trouble adjusting to the constraints inherent to the start-up setting. It’s easy to envision the frustrations that someone might experience coming from a resource-rich large firm to trying to launch a business on a razor-thin budget. In addition, the skills that a person develops in a corporate setting are often not a good fit for a small firm. This point is made by Guy Kawasaki, a well-known investor and entrepreneur:

"Success in a big organization doesn’t guarantee success in a startup. The skills needed in each context are different. A vice president of Microsoft (with its established brand, infinite resources, and 100 percent market share) may not be the right person for a ’two guys in a garage operation.’"¹

This mismatch of skills can also extend to management techniques and business processes. A person who has worked for IBM, Hewlett-Packard, and Motorola might have an impressive resume, but there is no guarantee that the IBM, Hewlett-Packard, or Motorola ways of doing things is appropriate for a specific small business. One silver lining to having limited or no business experience is that you’re able to approach the challenge of starting a business with fresh eyes and no preconceptions. In some instances, simple commonsense management, applied by someone with limited or no business experience, might be more effective than the more sophisticated techniques that would be applied by someone with more business experience.

Domain-Specific Experience Is Often as Important as Business Experience

The third insight regarding the role of business experience in the start-up process is that domain-specific experience is often as important as business experience. Domain-specific experience is experience in the specific area in which your start-up will compete.

There are many companies that are started by people with unique insights into specific areas as a result of their jobs, hobbies, family responsibilities, or intense interest in particular areas. These people may or may not have business experience, but it’s their domain-specific experience that is the motivating factor for starting the business.

An example of a business that was launched and is now being successfully run largely as a result of domain-specific experience is provided by Tish Ciravolo, the founder of Daisy Rock Guitars, a company that makes guitars just for women. Daisy Rock guitars are stylish, have feminine names (e.g., Atomic Pink, Power Pink, and Rainbow Sparkle), and incorporate design features that accommodate a woman’s smaller hands and build. Ciravolo started playing the guitar when she was in high school and has devoted a large portion of her life to playing in bands and helping girls and women become acquainted with the guitar. The motivation for Daisy Rock grew from Ciravolo’s desire to provide her own daughters and other females with something she didn’t have when she was growing up—a guitar designed specifically for women. Commenting on this desire, Ciravolo said:

"When the time comes, I want their experience [referring to her daughters Nicole and Sophia] as musicians to be different from when I was growing up, when every guitar available was designed with men in mind. I want them to be able to walk into a music store anywhere and be able to find something made with them in mind. Daisy Rock is not about making me rich and famous or being a hero to anyone. It’s simply an opportunity to leave a legacy for my kids and provide females with great instruments designed with them in mind."²

This exemplifies how domain-specific knowledge, like Ciravolo’s familiarity with the difficulties women face in playing guitars designed for men, provides insights that can lead to business ideas and actual products. No amount of business experience would have provided Ciravolo the insight she gleaned about guitars through her actual experiences. Founded in 2000, Daisy Rock’s annual sales are now in excess of $2 million.

There are many other examples, some of which have been highlighted in this book, of people who have drawn upon domain-specific experience to get their businesses off the ground. An example is Doug and Lisa Powell, the business owners introduced in Chapter 2 who started Type 1 and Type 2 Tools, the company that provides age-appropriate motivational and educational material for child diabetics. It was Doug and Lisa Powell’s familiarity with their daughter’s disease and their skills as graphic designers that provided them the insights and capabilities needed to start the company.

Opportunities That Minimize the Need for Substantial Business Experience

One approach that people utilize to compensate for a lack of business experience is to pursue a business opportunity that minimizes the need for business experience. Many businesses require their founders to basically develop the businesses from scratch. In these instances, if the founders do not have prior business experience, they have to quickly get up-to-speed and learn the basics of starting a business. While business owners are often able to accomplish these objectives, there is an alternative. The alternative is to pursue a business opportunity in which the fundamentals of the business have already been thought out, and the business owner’s responsibility is to run the business. Some approaches that fit this profile are franchising, direct sales, and businesses that have well-established business models.

Franchising

Franchising is a form of business ownership in which a firm that already has a successful product or service (franchisor) licenses its trademark and method of doing business to other businesses (franchisees) in exchange for an initial franchise fee and an ongoing royalty. The cost of buying into a franchise system varies, as shown in Table 4.1. The total initial investment includes the franchise fee, the costs associated with getting the franchise up and running (which vary by franchise), and any other fees that are part of the franchise agreement. The ongoing royalty fee, which is usually around 6%, is based on a percentage of weekly or monthly gross income.

Table 4.1. Initial Cost to the Franchisee of Opening a Franchise

There are two primary advantages to buying a franchise as opposed to opening a business of your own. First, franchising provides a small business owner the opportunity to own a business using a tested and refined business system. This attribute reduces the amount of prior business experience needed to participate in most franchises. In addition, the trademark that comes with the franchise proves instant legitimacy for the business. For instance, if you’re interested in opening a fitness center for women, you’ll likely attract more customers by opening a Curves or Contours Express franchise than a new, independently owned business. The second advantage to buying a franchise is that the franchisor typically provides training, technical expertise, and other forms of ongoing support. For example, if you buy into a Contours Express franchise, your initial investment gets you Contours Express’s exclusive 16-piece line of fitness equipment, cue tapes, wall charts, training on all business systems, and the support of a fitness professional who will help you open your center and run it for the first few days. Moving forward, you have access to a quarterly marketing package, an annual convention, and periodic training seminars. This type of training and support is what attracts people that lack business experience to the franchise option. According to Daren Carter, Contours Express’s founder, 99% of the company’s franchisees had no formal fitness training before they purchased a Contours Express franchise.³ This level of inexperience is typical for a franchise system. In fact, some systems shy away from people with prior experience in the field the franchise operates in, fearing that they could have too many preconceived notions about how to run the business.

The main disadvantages of buying a franchise are the costs involved and the loss of some of your independence as a business owner. As shown in Table 4.1, there are substantial costs involved with buying into most franchise systems, and the royalties are permanent. While there are costs associated with opening an independent business, you get to keep 100% of your profits. In regard to independence, many franchise systems are sticklers about doing things in a very specific manner. McDonald’s and other fast-food franchises, for example, are very strict in terms of their restaurants’ appearance and how their food is prepared. As a result, franchising is typically not a good fit for people who like to experiment with their own ideas and are independently minded.

Ultimately, franchising represents an attractive middle ground for many people. So says John Cummings, the purchaser of a PostNet franchise. A PostNet franchise is similar to a FedEx Kinko’s store. After a 21-year career with Bristol-Myers, Cummings took a buyout and spent a year deciding on what to do next. Commenting on why he settled on a PostNet franchise rather than opening his own business, Cummings said:

"I wanted to get what I call the best of both worlds—the support of a proven system in an environment that’s really entrepreneurial. I felt a franchise was the best way to do that."⁴

One note of caution—you should be careful if you decide to buy into a franchise system. While there are many excellent franchise systems to choose from, some systems never live up to the level of support promised. The best way to check out the merits of a franchisor is to ask for the names, addresses, and phone numbers of several of the franchisor’s current franchisees and then call these individuals and ask them about their experiences. You can also ask for a copy of the franchisor’s Uniform Franchise Offering Circular (UFOC), which is a document that contains 23 categories of information about the background and financial health of the franchisor. Section 20 of the document contains contact information for all of the system’s current franchisees.

Direct Sales

The second type of business opportunity that minimizes the amount of prior business experience that’s needed is direct sales. While most people cringe when they hear the words "direct sales" (or multi-level marketing), there are legitimate direct sales opportunities. Currently, there are over 14 million people in the United States involved in direct sales (full-time and part-time), and the industry generates roughly $30.5 billion in annual sales.⁵ Well-known companies in the industry include Tupperware, The Pampered Chef, Avon, Mary Kay, World Book, and Discovery Toys.

Many people have negative feelings toward the direct sales industry because they have either personally been subjected to a high pressure sales pitch or know someone who has. Although the industry as a whole suffers as a result of these types of sales tactics, not all direct sales firms fit this stereotype, and there is an increasing number of highly legitimate opportunities. An example of a direct sales organization that exemplifies the good in the industry is The Pampered Chef, discussed in Chapter 2. The integrity and stature of the company is such that it was acquired by Berkshire Hathaway in 2002. Berkshire Hathaway is controlled by Warren Buffett, one of the most respected and well-known investors in the world. In the foreword to the book, The Pampered Chef, in which Christopher chronicles the history of the company, Buffett writes:

"The Pampered Chef is truly loved by its customers because it has found a need and filled it exceptionally well, helping everyday home cooks to become masters of their own home kitchens and making mealtime preparation quick, easy, and fun. It also offers its consultants an incomparable business opportunity, allowing men and women to build a home-based business of their own, based on Doris Christopher’s personal blueprint for success. When you read the profiles of The Pampered Chef’s Kitchen Consultants in Chapter 8, you may wonder what you’re doing in your nine-to-five cubicle while these folks are happy cooking their way to fame and fortune."⁶

Most people start with an organization like The Pampered Chef part-time and only make it a full-time job if they do extremely well. The sales typically take place through in-home sales demonstrations or parties, although an increasing percentage of direct sales is taking place online. In addition to selling the product, you’ll also recruit others to sell the product for you. You then receive a percentage of your recruits’ sales, just like the person that recruited you receives a percentage of your sales. One of the lures of direct sales is that you can usually get started for a few hundred dollars, which gets you your initial inventory and sales material. Most direct sales organizations provide you with training, marketing material, and ongoing support. You also get a mentor and champion in the person that recruited you. The person that recruited you has a vested interest in your success, since he or she receives a commission on your sales.

If you go the direct sales route, make sure you associate with a reputable organization. One way to minimize the chances that you’ll select a company you will later regret is to restrict your selection to organizations that are members of the Direct Selling Association (www.dsa.org), a highly respected industry trade group. To become a member of the Direct Selling Association, a firm has to go through a rigorous one-year application process and abide by the organization’s Code of Ethics. Only 216 of more than 1,000 direct sales organizations that exist are currently members. If an organization is not a member of the Direct Sales Association, and you are still interested in joining, you should, at a minimum, check the company’s history with your local Better Business Bureau, your state’s Attorney General, and the Federal Trade Commission.

Businesses That Have Well-Established Business Models

The third type of business opportunity that minimizes the amount of prior business experience that’s needed is starting a business that has a well-established business model. A firm’s business model describes how it operates and makes money. There are a number of businesses that have a fairly standard business model. Following these models negates, in part, the prior business experience needed to launch and run one of these businesses.

An example of a business with a well-established business model is a bed & breakfast. There are literally dozens of books available that provide advice about how to open and run a successful bed & breakfast. These books are very hands-on and contain worksheets and formulas that help estimate the cost of opening a bed & breakfast and provide instruction for how to manage day-to-day operations. To illustrate the strength and diversity of books that are available, a sample is provided in Table 4.2. There are also workshops held periodically across the country about how to open and operate a successful bed & breakfast. Several trade associations support the industry. An example is the Professional Association of Innkeepers (www.paii.org), which was founded in 1988 and now has over 3,000 members.⁸ There are also bed & breakfast organizations that service smaller areas. Examples include the Wisconsin Bed and Breakfast Association (www.wbba.com) and Inn Virginia, the Bed & Breakfast Association of Virginia (http://innvirginia.org). Both organizations offer seminars for people thinking about opening their own bed & breakfast. A similar assortment of books, workshops, seminars, and trade associations is available for other businesses.

Table 4.2. Books That Provide Instruction for How to Open a Bed & Breakfast

Another example of a business that someone with minimal prior business experience could open is an eBay store because there is an established method for opening one. eBay has a physical location on the eBay Web site (www.ebay.com) that a person can utilize to list the things he or she has for sale and to interact with customers. While you don’t need an eBay store to sell items on eBay, most serious eBay sellers have one. eBay makes it extremely easy to set up a store. An easy-to-follow set of instructions is available on the eBay Web site, and the company offers a complementary selling consultation to anyone in the form of a one-on-one phone conversation with an eBay consultant. In addition, eBay makes forums available for eBay sellers to ask questions and discuss ideas with one another, and eBay University (www.ebayuniversity.com) provides access to training material and lists the itinerary for eBay seminars that are held in over 30 cities each year. There are also a large number of books that have been written by independent authors that provide instructions and tips for how to open an eBay store. The net result is that there are now reportedly over one million people worldwide making their living selling merchandise on eBay.

The overall point of this discussion isn’t to draw attention to bed & breakfast businesses and eBay stores. The larger message is that there are many business opportunities, aside from franchising and direct sales, where the nuts-and-bolts of the business have been carefully thought out and are documented in easily accessible forms. This set of factors lessens the need for prior business experience in launching and running these businesses.

Techniques That Help People Overcome the Lack of Business Experience

Another approach that people take to compensate for a lack of business experience is to partner with someone who has business experience or join a support group. In fact, one of the most common reasons business partnerships form is that the individuals involved realize that they don’t have sufficient experience and skill to launch businesses on their own. In addition, there are a growing number of social networks and forums that business owners can join to get support and advice from more experienced business people.

The two techniques covered in this section that help people overcome their lack of business experience are forming business partnerships and joining support groups/participating in online forums.

Forming Partnerships

An important decision a business owner faces is whether to start a business alone or whether to include a partner. A total of 56% of the firms included in the 2007 Inc. 5,000, which is the 5,000 fastest-growing private companies in the United States, were started by two or more people.⁹ In general, it’s believed that new ventures started by two or more people have an advantage over those started by an individual, because a team brings more talent, resources, ideas, and professional contacts to a new venture than does a sole business owner. In addition, the emotional and psychological support that the partners in a new business can offer one another can be an important element in a firm’s success.

The ideal partnership brings together people with complementary experiences and skills. For example, an individual with technical skills, like a computer programmer, might want to seek out a partner who has business experience to create a more well-rounded team. This scenario played out for Kabir Shahani and Chris Hahn, the cofounders of Appature, a software company that targets the healthcare industry. In this instance, Hahn sought out Shahani to create a partnership in which their respective skills complement each other’s. Shahani recalls:

"He [Hahn] had a lot of faith in my skills, and I feel really fortunate that he did. I’ll never forget that conversation. We were sitting in a Thai restaurant in the International district [of Seattle], and he said, ’Look, I can build anything, and I think you can sell anything, so let’s do it.’"¹⁰

The biggest mistake people make in forming partnerships is partnering with others who have the same skills and same deficiencies that they have. The reason this happens is that people tend to draw from their circles of acquaintances when selecting a partner. Engineers know other engineers, physical therapists know other physical therapists, cooks know other cooks, and so forth. Try to resist the temptation of partnering with one of your peers. The best partnerships are the ones that bring together people with complementary skills.

You should be careful when selecting a partner because starting a business with another person is a major undertaking and places a strain on the best of relationships. This is why picking a business partner is often compared to selecting a spouse—it’s a long-term relationship that is painful to terminate. One necessity in forming a business partnership is to create a written partnership agreement. You can get help doing this through your local Small Business Development Center, SCORE chapter, or an attorney.

There is also a full complement of small business legal forms, including a standard partnership agreement, available at www.findlaw.com. If you don’t have a formal partnership agreement, you leave yourself open to the possibilities of serious disagreements down the road.

Joining Support Groups and Participating in Online Forums

Another technique business owners use to compensate for a lack of business experience is to join support groups and participate in online forums. All business owners need periodic advice and support. In addition, the simple act of hanging out with other business owners, whether in person or online, can be extremely helpful. A theme repeated throughout this book is that knowing the stories of other business owners can boost your own self-efficacy or belief that you can start and run a successful business. Joining a support group and/or regularly participating in online forums are ways of guaranteeing yourself that you will regularly interact with other business owners.

There is an increasing number of support groups available for business owners. Most of them target a specific demographic or focus on a particular industry. For example, there are several support groups for women business owners. An example is the National Association for Women Business Owners (www.nawbo.org), which provides services on a national level and supports 90 local chapters across the United States. The local chapters sponsor dinner meetings, lunch meetings, and other events where women business owners listen to speakers, participate in business-related workshops, and network with one another. Most of the local chapters host their own Web sites to highlight their events. An example is the Web site of the Orlando Chapter of the National Association for Women Business Owners, which is available at www.nawboorlando.org.

If you’re looking for a support group in your area and can’t find one, check the Meetup Web site. Meetup (www.meetup.com) is an online platform that allows individuals to organize local groups via the Web. Once a group is formed, its members "meet up" on a regular basis offline. The service, which was launched in 2002, has struck a chord, and there are currently over 13,000 Meetup groups worldwide, which focus on topics as diverse as cooking and flying kites. A growing number of these groups focus on some aspect of small business or entrepreneurship. To find out if there is a small business Meetup group in your area, simply type "small business" in the search box on the Meetup front page and enter your zip code. A sample of small business Meetup groups that were meeting when this chapter was written is included below. If there isn’t a Meetup group in your area, you can start one.

• The Metro Detroit Small Business Meetup Group
• The Cincinnati Small Business Help Group
• Arizona & Easy Valley eBay Seller’s Meetup Group
• Small Business Strategies for Success (Stone Mountain, GA)
• The San Diego E-Business Owner’s Meetup Group
• The Overland Park (Kansas) Work At Home Meetup Group

There are also a growing number of online forums that have been developed to provide small business owners support and advice. An example is StartupNation (www.startupnation.com).

The StartupNation Web site sponsors online forums for small business owners that cover topics such as selecting a business for yourself, business planning, developing your invention, and accounting and financial management. It also features open-ended forums such as "coffee talk," where small business owners can chat with one another about any topic that is on their minds. The general tone of the forums tends to be supportive and upbeat, which is exactly what many small business owners need. A small business forum that is more specific is the Small Business Computing and E-Commerce Forum (www.smallbusinesscomputing.com). This forum is similar to the one just described but focuses strictly on technology issues.

Summary

In the vast majority of cases, a lack of business experience isn’t a reason to stop someone from starting a business. No one starts a business with the ideal set of experiences and skills. The collection of experiences and skills that you presently have, along with a willingness to choose the business you start carefully and learn as you go, will serve you well if you decide to start a business of your own.

The next chapter focuses on the myth that the best business ideas are already taken. By looking around, it’s easy to see why this myth is so prevalent—there are literally thousands of products to choose from. But in reality, people come up with new business ideas everyday—many of which make a real difference in people’s lives. In Chapter 5, we show you how to identify and generate new business ideas.

Endnotes

1. Guy Kawasaki, The Art of the Start (New York: Portfolio, 2004), 102.

2. Daisy Rock home page, http://www.daisyrock.com (accessed September 20, 2007).

3. Franchise Gator home page, http://www.franchisegator.com (accessed September 20, 2007).

4. CJ Prince, "Buying Balance by Finding a Franchise," Success Magazine, http://www.successmagazine.com/article.php?article_id=195 (accessed September 20, 2007).

5. Direct Sales Association home page, http://www.dsa.org (accessed September 21, 2007).

6. Doris Christopher, The Pampered Chef (New York: Doubleday, 2005), ix.

7. Leah Call, "Direct Sales Success," Wisconsin Entrepreneur’s Network, http://www.wenportal.org (accessed September 20, 2007).

8. Professional Association of Innkeepers home page, http://www.paii.org (accessed September 21, 2007).

9. Inc., November 20, 2007.

10. nPost, accessed September 22, 2007 (see chap. 1, n. 11).