Something from nothing: People & Companies

An entrepreneur essentially creates something from nothing. Where there used to be nothing, or an empty building, a job shop now stands. When services flow from a new business, they never have been delivered before.

And ask any entrepreneur and he or she will tell you that getting from concept to reality isn’t easy. It almost always requires a hellish amount of work, risks and disappointments. My wife started her own company 7 years ago and I know the long hours she works. But those who persevere can reap the rewards and create something they can truly call their own.

In this issue, we have several different stories about entrepreneurs. I enjoyed visiting DC Machine LLC in Summerville, S.C., and writing about the shop (see “Steady aim“). It was pretty obvious from the moment I met Brian Plaisance, founder and co-owner of the shop, that he had a drive to succeed.

In the shop’s early days, Plaisance said he would sometimes be up 3 days straight, working a full day at a local manufacturer and most of the night at his small, one-man shop. The days are less full now, but he still puts in a lot of hours. The shop employs 45 people and is completely sold out for the next year or so—that’s a feat to be proud of.

In another entrepreneurial story, Kevin Burkett, a musician, was so intrigued with making aluminum guitars that he knocked on the doors of machine shops in Pensacola, Fla., until he found someone who would tell him how machining works. Today, his Electrical Guitar Co., also in Pensacola, machines aluminum guitars used widely in the music industry (see “Musical machinist gets sweet sounds from CNCs“).

Our third pull-yourself-up-by-your-own-bootstraps article features the inventor of a machine that processes, well, straps. Michael Rudnicki of machine shop Rudnicki Industrial Inc. in Thunder Bay, Ontario, invented the Strap Eater after a friend told him about problems disposing of hard-to-handle—but recyclable— steel strapping. Today, Rudnicki sells improved versions of his original machine as a sideline to his machine shop business (see “Machine takes a bite out of strapping“).