Start a Successful Business (Inc.)

<<<<<<CASE STUDY>>>>>>

Chris Baggott and James Anderson

SITTING BEHIND HIS DESK at a marketing firm, Chris Baggott often daydreamed of owning his own business. In 1992, he finally took the plunge. At the age of thirty-one, he quit his job and bought Sanders Dry Cleaning, a local store that he eventually built into a chain with seven outlets. To make it happen, Baggott borrowed $45,000 from his father-in-law, James Twiford Anderson, a physician who also agreed to cosign a $600,000 bank loan.

With the financing in place, and ten years of marketing experience, Baggott thought he was set. And then the whole “business casual” trend caught fire. “People stopped wearing suits,” Baggott recalls. Revenue fell to just $60,000 a month, far short of Baggott’s ...