Carl Stecker, owner of Benefits in a Card, discovered early on that failures are learning opportunities
Budding entrepreneurs can start with babysitting services and lemonade stands, but Carl Stecker, 47, started with a cement truck.
Stecker, owner of Benefits in a Card and NetProfit Advisors, began his series of businesses with a friend at 16, painting houses – then moving on to construction and purchasing a cement truck to pour patios.
He moved on from Troy, Mich., to publish Spring Breaker magazine, a guide for students, in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. He then worked as a trader at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, where he was a “market maker” for Johnson & Johnson, serving as an intermediary between buyers and sellers.
Along the way, he’s held “every job possible in a restaurant” and worked in sales at 3M. And that’s what brought him to the Upstate. Stecker said he learned lessons through every venture, along with valuable skills in the corporate world.
In 1992, he founded NetProfit Advisors as a firm that helped companies grow, taking warrants or options and receiving a portion when the company succeeded. The firm later evolved into a tax credit procurement business. NetProfit was sold in 2004 to TALX corporation, said Stecker, and TALX was later sold to Equifax.
One achievement Stecker is most proud of is that during the sale, he stipulated that local employees stay for two years. The result was that Equifax opted to keep an office in the Upstate, he said.
Benefits in a Card came along in 1999. The company offers health coverage for companies like staffing firms, restaurants and temp firms.
“Some of our bigger clients (from NetProfit) had 400 percent turnover and they came to us and said, ‘We need some affordable healthcare for our employees,’” Stecker said.
It took about two years to implement the system, he said. Because Benefits in a Card served clients like ConAgra and Cargill, it started in a big way.
“We immediately became national,” he said. The company now serves companies in 50 states and has 26 employees in the Upstate.
And like many serial entrepreneurs, Stecker has the optimism that sees failures as learning opportunities. He said he learned the difficult preparation and research lesson with startup Garnishment Solutions, which would expand its current operation of administering court-ordered garnishments to all types.
“We spent a bundle developing the software and hiring staff and ended up just shutting it down,” he said. “We didn’t research the market. It was so decentralized in how these garnishments were administered. With that entrepreneurial optimism, we let it rip and weren’t watching the bank.”
That diligence and research is going into a new incarnation of NetProfit Advisors launched in late 2012, Stecker said. The company is now a lending entity and seeks to help entrepreneurs grow their businesses. Part of the goal, he added, is to also be a resource for board development, training and advice.
Over the years, Stecker said he has also learned how important experienced people are to any business.
“I’ve seen companies cut too deep,” he said. “People are your core and that’s what’s going to help you grow and you can’t replace that experience. What it fundamentally costs the business is real … you can’t just manage your business off of a balance sheet.”
Stecker said he had multiple mentors and the best piece of advice he took away from them was to maintain focus: “Put your eggs in one basket – and watch that basket. It’s tempting to get involved in a lot of different things and spread yourself too thin.”
Stecker had this advice for entrepreneurs: “Try your best to have a balance in your life. Business isn’t everything. It should be spiritual, be family and then your business in that order. That’s part of focus to keep that balance in your life.”
“It’s nothing for me to work 18-hour days and not think about it – if I let myself,” he said. “But I’ll leave here and do an hour and a half of yoga. That’s part of me maintaining that balance.”
