SHANE SPENCER | Green REIT
Credit Shane Spencer for a prescient understanding of how public policy impacts business—and creates opportunities. With state mandates that utilities generate a portion of their power production by renewable means, Spencer saw an emerging market to help utilities do just that. Thus was born Green REIT, a real-estate investment trust he founded. He’s already secured more than $100 million in assets managed. Recognized earlier this year by Forbes as one of 30 promising young American entrepreneurs, the 25-year-old Liberty resident has a goal of reaching $5 billion in net asset value within five years. That’s quite ambitious for someone who’s still working on his MBA at UMKC’s Bloch School, but typical of Spencer’s vision, those who know him say. But entrepreneurship makes attainment possible, he says: “If you would have asked me where I wanted to be one year ago, I could never have dreamed I would be where I am today.”
CLINTON STULL | Northwestern Mutual Financial Services
Seizing opportunities is one side of the entrepreneurial coin. The other half? Overcoming obstacles. Clinton Stull’s other half of the coin came in a 2008 doctor’s diagnosis—epilepsy. Fear of seizures meant he couldn’t drive for six months. “In a business that relies so heavily on face-to-face meetings, this posed a substantial challenge,” says the 26-year-old field director for Northwestern Mutual Financial Network. With support from the leadership at his new employer and an innovative approach to social media and networking, Stull has been able to not only survive, but thrive. He holds the company’s honorary Pacesetter record for most life policies written in the first six months of work, and is building on that foundation with solid goals for the next five years: “My enterprise aims to develop 10 new financial representatives while placing $250 million in insurance coverage,” he says.
TYLER VANLOO | Mid-America Power Systems
Working at the family electrical contracting firm. Interning in sports marketing. Lobbying. Almost nothing in Tyler VanLoo’s background screamed “SALES!” when he signed on with Mid-America Power Systems in January 2011. Fast-forward a year: VanLoo, 26, has been credited with doubling the size of the dealer network for Kohler Residential Generators, and is on track to surpass that performance this year. A combination of relentless work ethic, positive attitude and creative thinking helped VanLoo overcome what he lacked in technical understanding at the onset, said his boss, Brian Williams, to the tune of $1.13 million in sales that first year. Result? Mid-America expanded VanLoo’s responsibilities to give him markets in Wichita, central and western Kansas. He credits Clyde Lear, of Learfield Communications, with mentoring him and helping him understand that success “is not always about that next sale, but rather, taking time to hear what people have to say.” Entrepreneurship, says VanLoo, means “recognizing a need and fulfilling it better than someone else can. It could be sales, service—anything, as long as you know that you are doing something more efficiently and with better quality than your competitor.”
JEFFREY WINTERS | Cassidy Turley Commercial Real Estate Services
Jeff Winters got his start in commercial real estate by jumping into the jaws of the 2009 downturn that hit that sector. “An entrepreneurial spirit,” he wryly notes, “is imperative for success” under conditions like those. Grim though the marketplace was, Winters maintained his confidence and has blossomed at Cassidy Turley, where he is now associate vice president at 25.
That, coincidentally, is the number of years that his mentor, Mike Mayer, has been a producer in the field. “He has shown me that age does not define me as a professional,” says Winters. “I can garner responsibility of any magnitude at any age.” Example: Capitalizing on the power of social media to triple his individual production in 2011.
One reason for that, he believes, is an embrace of a team structure, something considered rare in a highly competitive line of work like commercial realty. But it seems to be effective: All told, Winters has completed more than 600,000 square feet of sales or leasing of office space transactions for Cassidy Turley, with aggregate value of more than $40 million. His next goal, he says, is doubling the values of his office sales and lease transactions over the coming five years.