Q&A: Lemur CEO Talks About Life as an Entrepreneur in Arlington

Arlington Patch recently sat down with Lemur Retail CEO Will Fuentes to talk about life as an entrepreneur in Arlington. Fuentes and Lemur co-founder Cary Scott are the current entrepreneurs in residence at Arlington Economic Development. Between the two of them, it's not unusual for them to talk with 10 businesses a week.

Patch: What's this journey been like?

Fuentes: The journey's been interesting. And the reason I think it's been interesting is I held a lot of leadership positions in the retailers that I worked in, but you always had a corporation behind you. And the decisions you were making, and at the end of the day, one bad decision that you made as a store manager wasn't going to fatally end the company. Now, as a CEO you've got to think of how all those decisions affect everything.

The second thing is the ownership involved — the sense of ownership. While you can have a sense of ownership around your store, your community when you're a manager, the sense of ownership you have around your company and what you're building is just… You're willing to take a phone call in the middle of dinner with your wife, who you haven't seen in a couple days, because you just never know what it might be about. And before it could just go straight to voicemail.

It's tough. It's hard. You're taking pay cuts. You're not making as much as you used to. You don't have the nice things that you used to have. You're putting on hold some of the other dreams you had because you want to build this out — because you believe in it. And sometimes it's tough to believe in it. While you may think it's the greatest idea in the world, you just don't know. So it becomes tough sometimes. And lonely. It's lonely as hell.

Patch: Is this the kind of advice you give other entrepreneurs?

Fuentes: You end up talking to 40 different business owners in four weeks. Sometimes, it's a therapy session, where someone comes in and they're like, 'I don't know if i should keep going,' or 'I don't know what to do,' or 'I'm alone in this' or 'I really messed up.' Sometimes, it's nice to just talk to someone who has been through it.

Others have come in and discussed their business. I'm not going to pretend to know how to build a billion-dollar business. But I have a couple of companies that are retail-based, and they come in because they want to know what my experience says. Because I've done it. I've done retail. So that's cool.

I love when people come in to talk about, 'How do I even get started?' And my first question comes around to, 'Have you started sharing this idea with friends and family and what did they think?'

Patch: Did you use an accelerator?

Fuentes: Yes, the Fort. (Fortify Ventures)

Patch: Was it worthwhile?

Fuentes: Yes, it's great to be with other entrepreneurs that are just starting, because you're able to bounce a lot of stuff off of them. You're able to learn from their mistakes and they're able to learn from yours. So in that sense, it was worth it.

…I think we got some value out of it. I don't think you can put a price on network and density. And that's what that offers. You have this built-in network. You're kind of in an alumni association now, right? And you have the ability to walk over to a CEO and say, 'Can I borrow five minutes of your time' and say, 'How does this look?' — someone who is not involved in your business but will give you an honest answer, or maybe knows a little bit about what you're trying to do, so you're not trying to educate them before getting an opinion.

What I love to tell entrepreneurs… is for me, the biggest thing that happened in 2011 was the day I called a buddy of mine and asked to use his conference room and invited 30 guests — friends and family — to come hear me pitch. And I said, 'I'm not asking for your money, but I'm going to treat you all like you're million-dollar investors. And I want you to ask me questions as if you were. And after we're done with that, I want you to critique me for the way I answered questions and presented and just give me personal feedback.'

And that was the day that I realized I could do this. Because, for one, I had a lot of the answers. I had a lot of things doubters were going to think about. That was a good thing to know. But the second thing was, a lot of the comments back were, 'You seem to have a lot of passion about this. You really want to just want to do this.'

And that meant to me that there's something deeper here than just wanting to build something. I'm living this already. People can see it.

That was good to know, because I go back and look on those days sometimes, when I'm traveling and catching red-eyes and flying back and forth and I'm tired and I get in at 7 o'clock in the morning and I have a call at 8 o'clock in the morning. I think about that passion. You know? I got this. I'm going to do this. It keeps you going.

Because if you don't have the passion, trust me, the excitement of being an entrepreneur is over very, very quick.

Patch: Is that a first thing budding entrepreneurs need to figure out?

Fuentes: Yes, they need to figure out if they're passionate enough to get through the dark days. Because there's a lot more nos than yeses.

Patch: What's it like being an entrepreneur in residence at Arlington Economic Development?

Fuentes: I think one of the biggest misconceptions, and I think we're getting through it a little bit, is that this is just for tech startups. But it's not. It's really for entrepreneurs and small business owners. The advice that Cary can give around social media and leveraging all the free tools that are available to create a brand and awareness — those are things that a restaurant can use, a boutique can use - anybody can use, even a services business can use.

And the stuff that I can talk about with people… At the beginning, we all just have ideas. It doesn't matter if it's a tech idea, a restaurant, whatever it is. We all just have ideas. And I can talk to you about how you can start to build from that idea, and how you can get people interested and listening to you, and how you can get feedback from people. And then when you want to work on your pitch, I can do that, too. Or if you're going to go pitch some investors, we can talk about that as well.

I think a lot of times, the problem is… I'll give you a great example. I spoke to someone recently, a budding entrepreneur who is doing a very cool concept in fashion. And they said, 'I don't know anyone to talk to about whether this is going to work or not.' And I started asking what they did for a living and asked where he worked, and said, 'Here's a huge network of people in your network that can give you this feedback.' And I think sometimes we get so caught up in the grand scale of what we're going to do that it takes someone from the outside to say, 'You don't have to talk to Erik Nordstrom, or Valentino (Garavani) or Michael Kors about fashion. You can talk to the 20 kids you see who are buying all the high-end stuff and wearing it all the time. You can get their feedback. Sometimes, I think it just takes talking to who is someone not involved in your business. And a lot of times, I think that's what we offer — helping people leverage what they already have in front of them.

Patch: How do you have time to do this and run Lemur?

Fuentes: It's interesting because I've had some people in the community tell me I need to focus on running Lemur as opposed to doing something like this. And my response is, 'I've always done this.' I've always spent time with my colleagues, my peers, people who want to do this, and any entrepreneur worth anything dedicates time to others who are trying to do it — it doesn't matter if it's 30 minutes for lunch, or an hour here and there, or whatever it is, everyone does this. And I was doing it before, people were calling me… and saying, 'Hey, I want to talk to you about an idea I have.'

So now, I'm lucky. I can direct them somewhere I can dedicate the time, instead of having to go to five lunches a week that eat up a lot of time …and I think that's the biggest misconception is that it takes four hours away from my business. But it really doesn't. It's a shift.

Patch: Are you optimistic Lemur Retail will hit its goal of landing on large account by the end of the year?

Fuentes: Of course. The entrepreneur is the eternal optimist, right? We are continuously moving in the right direction for that to happen. And we have good prospects on the horizon.

Patch: Any words of wisdom for young entrepreneurs?

Fuentes: It bears repeating: Be ready for long days and some lonely nights. And just make sure what you're trying to build you're passionate about building.

A lot of times I like to tell people if you're getting into this because you feel like you're going to make a ton of money… well, that's the wrong reason to get into it. That's not going to sustain you. It's just not. Because the ton of money doesn't come quickly.

I gave a speech 10 years ago to a high school class, Lee High School… The speech was entitled, 'Passion and Commitment.' And in that speech, I said, 'If you're passionate about something without being committed, the passion will flame itself out. If you're committed to something without being passionate, you won't be able to sustain it. Because there are days where it takes more than commitment to get through it.'

I hadn't started this. I don't think I even knew what those words meant. And I look back and reflect on it now and think about what those words meant… Although I didn't know what they meant, they were always in me. And that's what allowed me to become an entrepreneur.

It's fun. But it can be really tough. No one tells you that.