Building a foundation: every successful company starts with an idea.

• Author: Creager, Janine S.
• Position: Entrepreneurship

When Bryan Welton, president and CEO of Namefiers received his first order from Hewlett Packard, he could've shouted from the rooftops with joy. But when asked for the company's graphics department, he was absolutely speechless.

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"I didn't have the heart to tell them the company was just my wife and me," says Welton. "So, I went along with it. I couldn't sign my name Bryan, so I signed it [my middle name] Lynn." Signing forms with his middle name and setting up an answering machine he bought at Wal-Mart to play "on hold" music from the couple's 100-sq.-foot office were two tactics Welton used to make his company appear larger and more established than it was. Now, with more than 60,000 clients serviced from an 80,000-square-foot office and warehouse, he doesn't have to pretend anymore.

Welton is an anomaly for entrepreneurs as a whole, as the odds of making it as a business owner are stacked against them. For creative business minds like Welton, success usually comes by weathering some rough beginnings, working long hours and enduring sleepless nights. The answers don't come easy, but as shown by several successful Utah business leaders, it can be done.

Out of the Gate

Before the first product is made, or the first service offered, most would agree that a few essential building blocks need to be in place.

"It's sort of a misnomer that starting your own business is easy, that working for yourself is easy," says John Lund of the beginnings of his company, StoryRock. "The reality is that you have to commit and never turn back." Motivation and a solid belief in your product is crucial for success, Lund says.

StoryRock officially launched in 1998, but began much earlier as a concept in john Lund's mind: What if digital technology could be used to capture high school memories? With that optimism, Lund was able to transform this concept into CDs and DVDs of athletic events, school plays and color images for thousands of schools around the country. Later, this same technology was applied to preserving historical records for military personnel and then as a resource to the burgeoning scrapbooking industry.

For Michael Proper, CEO of DirectPointe, which provides computing managing solutions and services, taking a personal inventory helped him define the direction he wanted to take with his company. Proper knew the importance of taking charge of his life, having been abandoned as a child and growing up in the foster care system before finally being reunited with his mother.

"You have to get the direction, the clarity," he says. "You've got to learn...