Balancing work and home is very hard work
by Glenn RittFor a young, enterprising couple the biggest stress is how to afford a family on Cape Cod. Julie and Colin Eitelbach are trying to have it all – a successful business, a growing family and their own home in a high-priced housing market. Stress is a constant in their increasingly busy lives, and they work overtime to keep it from overwhelming their daily schedule and long-term dreams.
Ironically, they now find themselves taking on increased responsibilities in hope of gaining greater control over their complex lives. They are willing to take bold risks for a humble goal – to remain on Cape Cod at a time when so many of their peers are forced to leave because they cannot afford housing and the peninsula’s high cost of living.
“Every day is a crunch for us,” conceded Colin. “We seem to live on fumes,” he added, talking about the lack of time in a day.
“We’re trying so hard to be good parents, but to be good parents, we also have to provide our two children with financial security,” said Julie, who quit her job as a waitress to take on the twin role of mother and entrepreneur.
Sitting in her dining room on a cold February morning, she marveled at the road ahead. Within weeks, she and Colin would be opening their second Verizon Wireless Zone store in less than a year. Their Orleans franchise on Cranberry Highway, which opened its doors in March 2004, would be joined by a store on Route 132 in Dennis next to Ring Brothers and Dunkin’ Donuts.
That will mean that their already complicated schedules will enter uncharted territory. Instead of sharing management duties at one store six days a week, the couple will be dividing up to oversee two franchises. Seventy-two-hour work weeks will extend to 80 hours or more. Vacations will remain even more an abstraction.
But the Eitelbachs are convinced there is no alternative. Their financial survival depends on sales volume and commissions. With growing competition from numerous cell phone vendors, both brick and mortar and on the Internet, expansion across their franchise territory is the only formula for sustained success.
“Once your foot is in the door, there is no turning back,” said Julie. Success in the Orleans store opened up a line of credit through the franchiser, and the Dennis location they found was so attractive that “Verizon took one look and approved it on the spot,” said Colin, adding that the landlord chose them over 35 other applicants.
“But now we’re splitting ourselves up,” said Julie, “one to each store.”
“It means more out-of-pocket expenses,” explained Colin. “Child-care costs have just doubled.”
“That’s our biggest hang-up,” said Julie, “what to do with the kids.”
“I want to be the best dad I can be,” said Colin, a hint of anxiety in his voice.
It is that fatherly ambition above all that is the impetus behind Colin’s entrepreneurial quest. He is convinced that in today’s business world, being your own boss is the best way to ensure economic security.
“It’s even more important on Cape Cod. There just aren’t that many jobs that will pay us enough money to make it as a young family,” said Colin, who grew up in Eastham.
Giving up corporate life for his own business
Colin tried the corporate route, becoming a repairman and installer for Verizon. “I thought it was going to give me lifetime security. The pay was decent, the benefits were great,” he recalled. They had built a three-bedroom, 2000-square-foot home in Brewster, and had become parents for the first time.
But the job required a commute to Plymouth every day, and unpredictable hours often made worse by the weather. “I couldn’t stand the long commute and the forced overtime,” Colin recalled. “I wanted to be home with my family, and as I worked these hours, I never got to see my son, Hunter.
He was asleep when I left for work and very often asleep when I got home.”
In the late 1990s, layoffs began as Verizon’s traditional telephone service began to shrink in the face of the wireless revolution. Colin had survived one round of layoffs, then a second workforce reduction. At that point, he decided it was time to control his own destiny. “I have too much to lose,” he recalled telling Julie at the time.
“It wasn’t hard to figure out what was happening. The landline business was losing 4 percent of its base very quarter,” Colin explained. “Having a small child and just building our new home, the stress was too much.”
He and Julie feverishly began to read books on owning their own business and on how to be a successful entrepreneur.
But the key to their future turned out to be tied directly to the immediate threat facing Colin’s position at Verizon: the wireless revolution. “Having seen how the industry was headed and the double-digit growth rate of wireless, I saw the hand writing on the wall,” said Colin. He started with a call to
Verizon Wireless’ offices in New Jersey and learned of possible opportunities with ATI, the parent company of the Wireless Zone franchises.
“Financially, the franchise wasn’t thrilled with our status,” Colin recalled. “We had to convince them that we were willing to put everything on the line.”
While Colin had technical experience, neither he nor Julie had any sales or marketing experience.
The territory between Provincetown and Dennis was virgin at best. “They were not too super-psyched about us,” Julie recalled with a laugh. “They didn’t want to see a young couple risk everything and lose. If it doesn’t work out, we would lose thousands of dollars.”
There were financial obstacles: The couple would have to leverage their new home to afford the $25,000 franchise fee, and there was a $20,000 out-of-pocket expense to finance inventory for the store in Orleans.
But the Eitelbachs persisted. And that can-do attitude won over the franchisers.
They open their first store in 2004
The couple opened their Orleans store in March 2004 with a goal of activating 800 accounts a year. By January 2005, they had reached 1,300. “We’re the little storefront that could,” joked Julie.
It is a high-pressure, high-volume business in a laid-back part of Cape Cod. The store sells cell phones and cell phones accessories, and also handles new and existing service connections and maintenance through Verizon Wireless. Margins could be 100 percent on a particular sale, or absolutely zero. Much of their profit comes from selling accessories for wireless phones and commissions on service and sales.
From day one, they had to purchase their entire inventory. At the end of every month, they owe the franchiser for whatever inventory remains in the store. “We have been burned a few times, owing $12,000 twice and $10,000 another month. “It’s very tough balancing having enough products for the customers and keeping a handle on money owed at the same time,” said Colin.
They discovered that whatever profits they realized, however, would depend on a commodity they would not quite appreciate until they opened their doors: customer service. The Eitelbach franchise was competing against Verizon Wireless itself, which has stores in Hyannis and sells via the Internet. What differentiated the Wireless Zone in Orleans was the time and attention Colin and Julie were willing to spend with customers.
And time with customers meant less time with Hunter and Brooklyn.
Meanwhile, day-care costs had become prohibitive for both children, given all the debt tied up in their home and business. Hunter and Brooklyn stayed in the backroom of the business during its first three weeks of operation. “Then we realized how unfair we were being to the kids, making them stay there for eight hours a day,” said Julie.
“Talk about trying to balance home and work,” she said. “We were learning how to be businesspeople at the same time as we were trying to become the best parents. You could just see the anguish on Hunter’s face. ‘Another DVD. Oh, no.’ We were turning our son into a couch potato in an 8-by-8 room.”
Through friends, the Eitelbachs eventually found an individual day-care provider who not only was affordable, but also highly competent.
The timing could not have been better. Summer had arrived and business exploded. They were selling 186 phones a month, an astounding number when compared with the 300 to 400 sold on average at mall stores.
That kind of sales surge, however, is offset by the winter’s doldrums. “Every Cape business can identify with that,” Colin said. “The summer dollars are gone, and you go week to week watching your reserves dry up.”
The good news is that the Eitelbachs paid back their one-time franchise fee over the first 12 months of operation, and there is only a $1,000 additional fee to be paid for the Dennis location, because it falls within their purchased territory. “We’re financially more secure with the second store,” said Julie. The two locations can be supported by the same financial systems, advertising budget and franchise infrastructure.
And while the hours will be longer and more intense, Colin views his new world as far more family-friendly than his previous job.
“Now, I can stop at the beach to catch my breath between Dennis and Orleans,” he said
Glenn Ritt Glenn Ritt is editor and co-publisher of Cape Business Publishing LLC. He is the former publisher of Cape Cod Community Newspapers and editor of The Bergen Record in New Jersey. 
