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Scott Eggen, Randall Crosby and Linda Allison joins Jeff Thompson in the Blind Abilities Studio. They are owner/operators in the Business Enterprise Program (BEP) and are here to talk about their experiences and successful careers.
The Business Enterprise Program (BEP) was established for Blind/Visually Impaired individuals to create opportunities and careers through food vending services and food and merchandise sales on Federal and state properties. The BEP program is nationwide and if you or anybody you know is interested in owning their own business, wants to work and begin a promising career, share this podcast and let them know about the Business Enterprise program.
If you are interested in knowing more about the BEP, contact State Services for the Blind, or your Vocational Rehab agency if outside of Minnesota and ask about the Business Enterprise Program.
Be sure to check out Randolph-Sheppard Vendors of America on the web and stay up to date with all the latest news and events.
Thank you for listening!
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Contact Your State Services
If you reside in Minnesota, and you would like to know more about Transition Services from State Services contact Pre-ETS Program and Transition Services Coordinator Shane DeSantis by email or 651-358-5205.
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Full Transcript
The Business Enterprise program: Business Ownership Opportunities: Meet Owner/Operators Scott Eggen, Randall Crosby
Scott:
The business enterprise program has grown throughout the United States. Businesses on military bases and federal buildings, state buildings, rest areas, prisons, hospitals, colleges, you name it. Lots of opportunities.
Randall:
I didn’t think it was possible. I remember telling him, no, really a blind person couldn’t do that. That’s what I believed. I called the Division of Blind Services counselor and did the interview, and here I am, 32 years later.
Linda:
And a nuclear power plant came up and I got it. It has been extraordinary. I have learned a whole lot. I felt a lot better about my skills as a businessperson. It has been great.
Jeff:
Welcome to Blind Abilities. I’m Jeff Thompson. Today in the studio we got members from the Business Enterprise Program and they’re from across the United States. First of all, from Minnesota, we have Scott Eggen. Scott, how you doing?
Scott:
I am doing fantastic.
Jeff:
Well, great. Thank you so much for helping put this together, because this is gonna be a great opportunity for people to learn more about the Business Enterprise Program. Also with us, we have Randall Crosby. Randall, how are you doing?
Randall:
I’m doing great. Coming from Florida here.
Jeff:
All the way from Florida. So you’re not getting the snow we’re getting?
Randall:
No snow here.
Jeff:
No snow there.
Randall:
We had rain today. We didn’t get much sunshine today. Lots of rain.
Jeff:
We had rain too, but it’s turned into the white stuff. It’s heavy and sticky and north of us got 21 inches up in Duluth. So we’re fortunate. We only got probably four or five inches down here for now. And also in the studio with us is Linda Allison. Welcome Linda.
Linda:
Thank you.
Jeff:
So Linda, where are you from?
Linda:
Knoxville, Tennessee.
Jeff:
Well, thanks for being here. The Business Enterprise Program, Scott, you wanna give it a little introduction to the BEP as we’ll probably be calling it? Yeah, I would be happy to. Once again, thanks for inviting me and really looking forward to this. The Business Enterprise program, it’s been around for, I’m thinking 75 years or better. It started off with a couple of senators who decided that they wanted to create an opportunity for blind people throughout the United States, and so the special businesses were created. Initially, I think a lot of our businesses were in places, like they would be coffee shops in courthouses or those kinds of places, federal buildings, state buildings, and certainly the Business Enterprise Program has grown throughout the United States. We now are into anything from businesses on military bases, businesses in federal buildings, state buildings, rest areas, prisons, hospitals, colleges. I mean, you name it, there’s probably a state doing it. Lots of opportunities for anybody looking at getting into our program. It’s an exciting career. I’ve been doing this, I don’t even know if I should tell you how long I’ve been doing this, but 35 plus years. Still enjoy it, the Business Enterprise Program is still interesting to me. It’s still fun. I love working with my colleagues throughout the country. I also love working with my customers and my business. I just love to talk about it and share one of the better secrets in our country.
Jeff:
Wow. So it really proves that someone can have a career out of the BEP?
Scott:
Absolutely. There’s many opportunities. You can’t believe the breadth and depth of some of the programs in this country. Some states just have some amazing opportunities out there.
Jeff:
Randall, what are some of your earliest memories when you got introduced to the BEP program?
Randall:
I started out in my youth actually with pretty much regular sight. The word blind was not even in my vocabulary until around 27 years of age. I went through school and high school with normal sight, public education, reading regular print. The only thing I had was night blindness because I have retinitis pigmentosa. But for me, I worked at the Marriott Hotel in my twenties for about nine years in the purchasing department, and then when I became 27 years of age, that’s when suddenly I did become legally blind and it was a whole new world. I actually was at home for a year and a half collecting social security disability, realizing that I could not work, and there were no opportunities for me. At least that’s where my mindset was at the time when I was 27. It was actually my ex-boss from the Marriott Hotel kept in touch with me some, off and on, and he told me about these business owners who manage restaurants and cafeterias, snack bars, coffee shops, and I didn’t think it was possible. I remember telling him, no, really a blind person couldn’t do that. That’s what I believed. and he gave me a phone number. I called the Division of Blind Services counselor in my local area there and did the interview and went on to training and became a licensed food service operator, and I didn’t believe I could do it. I really didn’t think it was possible at the time. Here I am 32 years later and I’ve had six different businesses, each time I’ve moved it’s been to better my situation in business, and I believe it’s for anyone and everyone who is blind, if they want to give it an opportunity. I like to tell new people starting out, if you’re not so much about accounting or numbers, if you’re intimidated by how you do your taxes, you hire an accountant. If you don’t like to cook, this is food service, there may be cooking involved, you hire a cook. Now you wanna learn about what your cook is doing and be knowledgeable, but any aspect of this business, you can find a way to do it. And you learn about your own strengths and weaknesses through that.
Jeff:
Wow, that’s really great. Coming from experience. Experience is the best teacher. I’m so glad you’re on here, Randall.
Randall:
Thank you.
Jeff:
Linda, the Business Enterprise Program. What was your biggest fear entering the Business Enterprise Program?
Linda:
That’s a good question. Failure. I’ve always been kind of entrepreneurial. As a child- I was selling gum in second grade. I’m just one of those weird little people, but I’d never thought about that as a career or anything. I wanted to be a teacher. I studied to be a teacher. I got degrees to be a teacher. I did teach for a very long time, but my hearing started going on top of the vision and made teaching what I taught impossible to do. I was trying out the Business Enterprise Program on the advice of a friend and with a lot of trepidation because my first love career-wise tanked because of infirmities, so to speak, and what was gonna make this any different? So in a nutshell. Yeah.
Jeff:
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Just like Randall, trying to be positive about your future is hard to do right after you have vision loss. I mean, we don’t know what we don’t know, right? Interesting. Randall, earlier you mentioned you had to switch businesses six different times and move, you’re talking about leaving home?
Randall:
Yes. Initially in this program, it’s a plus if the person is open to moving. Here in Florida, they go through 18 weeks of training. Each state is a little different on the length of time for training and what it involves, but the training, most often, the person has to leave home to go for training, stay at a campus type of a learning institute for a time, and then once you’re licensed, you’ll want to be open to moving around your state and be open to where those opportunities are, and most people are. And that’s how you get your opportunities. If you limit the idea of not moving around, you will limit your opportunities, but-
Jeff:
And each time you made the decision to move.
Randall:
Yeah, I’ve moved each time. Bought and sold a house each time. My first business was at a vocational technical school for eight years. My second business, which I say it in some ways, it was a highlight of my career. It was at the Kennedy Space Center here in Florida, right on the base and the headquarters building, and we had a cafeteria there. When I say we, my wife works with me too, and so we ran the cafeteria for 14 years. We had the NASA engineers as our main customers. Those folks that worked on the rockets and the launches and the actual astronauts themselves came in sometimes. What opportunities those were. It was fantastic and we really felt like we were part of that program. It was like family after 14 years, and then when that changed because of the cancellation of the shuttle missions, we moved again and we actually moved out to Colorado and started a brand new career in the BEP in another state, and that was kind of humbling to start over. And there we were in the state capital building, serving the congressmen and folks like that. And so lots of experiences, and after a couple years there, we came back to Florida, decided we really liked the BEP program here, and our family’s here in Florida. So we came back and each time I’ve moved, it’s just been to kind of move up the business ladder, you know? As they say.
Jeff:
That shows a lot of security that you must feel in the Business Enterprise Program because to sell your house, to move, to do all that, you must feel that you got a good foundation, even though you’re just starting another business. And why limit yourself to your state? You can go across pretty much the entire country.
Randall:
Yes, absolutely. I believe in the opportunities in this program, just like Scott and Linda can tell you. And for new people starting now, don’t be discouraged. It’ll be hard in the beginning. Anything is that you start out in. Sometimes you’ll wonder, why am I doing this? But after one or two years in it, you start evolving and, and gaining your confidence and finding your place. Lots of opportunities for people who are blind in this program.
Jeff:
That’s well put. Scott, I know a little bit about your journey. You started out back home and everything was going great and then opportunity knocked and you kept growing and here you are today and probably where you thought you would never be
Scott:
Yeah, I did grow up in the Fergus Falls area, that’ll be west central Minnesota. I grew up there. I graduated from school there. I went to college there. Long story short, this opportunity came in my hometown. I certainly knew I was not gonna miss that opportunity and it was at a small, at the time they called them a community college. So I spent my first 10 years there, I had a food service and I had vending machines and thoroughly enjoyed it. Really got to know my customers. I really grew as a person. Learned a lot about business and all the ups and downs and running a food service is definitely a challenge, a big challenge. I enjoyed the vending and I knew that’s where my heart was, was in the vending. An opportunity came up at a college in Moorhead, Minnesota. Again, west central Minnesota, near Fargo, North Dakota, and we had had an operator go up there with the intention of opening a brand new business. They know more than open the business, and in one of his first weeks of going to work, he passed away in the van on his way to his job, his business. So just like that, this business came open again. I had looked at it the first time and having a small, young family, I just wasn’t sure I was ready to take on that challenge. But once I saw what was taking place, I was all about it. I wanted to be in that business so bad, and I was granted that business, and I was there for 20 years, and I had a college, four year college. I had a two year technical community college, I guess they call ’em now because they offer all of those things, and I also had a rest area in Moorhead. Like I said, I was there for 20 years. Really, really enjoyed that business. Then the opportunity came to come down here to the Twin Cities, and it was a unique environment. I was going into a prison. Something so different than anything I had done. And the equipment inside the prison fascinated me, the people you worked with fascinated me. It was a lot like a college campus, but the fences were much taller. So I thought, why not? So I’ve been here since 2015. My business has expanded here. I’m also in a community technical college once again. I’m in three prisons. I’m in a number of state buildings. I’m also in, we call it the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. They do a lot of work on if someone’s murdered, those kind of things. FBI, all that stuff is in there. I have a micromarket there, which again is a unique experience. That’s the hot new trend in our industry right now. So I have a lot of experience. I’ve been a lot of places. Done a lot of things. Still enjoy it. Still get up in the morning and I’m ready to go to work. I still love it.
Jeff:
Wow. Linda, how about you? Did you move around a lot?
Linda:
No. Now see, I’m kind of the unique oddity in this group. I’ve only been in the program since I got licensed in December of 2015. I’ve only been in for seven years. My first facility was a federal office building. It was food service downtown and I was temping. It was not a good experience and not because of anything they did, but because I was brand new and I had no clue and I had added employees and I’m just not ashamed to admit it. That was an enormous learning experience for me. I was there for 10 months till they got someone else placed in it. And then I had about a year dead time and the nuclear power plant came up. Again, it was kind of a unique situation because nobody wanted it. I was the only person who bid on it and got it, just because I said, can I? And it has been extraordinary. I have learned a whole lot. I felt a lot better about my skills as a businessperson, customer service. It has been great, but I am in the process of changing out again. There was a- a facility came open 20 minutes from my house. The nuclear power plant is an hour and a half drive one way. So the irony of the new one, which I also got, and I will be starting here at the beginning of the year. It’s where I used to teach. It is a technical community college that like Scott was talking about, but I taught at this particular school for 12 and a half years. It’s kind of weird going back in this capacity, but I know the grounds, I know the campus.
Jeff:
Well, that’s really interesting. You kind of make the Business Enterprise Program come to you rather than moving around. It must really be nice to be sitting next to these pillars of experience with Scott and Randall, that you can always ask questions, talk to. What is it like to network with other operators of the Business Enterprise Program?
Linda:
I have found it extraordinarily helpful. I love asking Scott questions. I have not had the privilege of talking to Randall, but I have listened to him and, both being major bastions of knowledge. It’s great because it’s like having access to the internet without having to say hey, Siri. You know, just all that information is there with experience to back it up. It’s really neat.
Jeff:
You know, coming out of the pandemic, Randall, what are your expectations for the next two to five years?
Randall:
That’s the magic question I think we’re all asking ourselves and among all of our peers right now. this is a national situation and I think every state is sort of handling it uniquely in their own way. I know I talked to Scott about this, things that Minnesota does may be somewhat different from Florida, but all in all, the bottom line, we really kind of are in unknown territory. What is the future? It’s up to all of us to create that future. We talk a lot about thinking outside the box. Maybe we need to go into other endeavors in addition to food service. And there’s endless possibilities for creative people. That’s why we want new people coming in, bring in new ideas and we are entrepreneurs, we are businesspeople, and we love doing business.
Jeff:
I love that, entrepreneurship, thinking outside the box, getting more young people in, getting fresh ideas. Looks like you got the people, the tools, and the tenacity to take on the future. Now, Scott, what advice would you give to people? As Randall mentioned, the need to bring in more younger people, not younger, but new people to the program, new thoughts, new ideas. What’s your advice to someone who’s thinking about joining the Business Enterprise Program?
Scott:
Yes, and I’m gonna back up a half a step and address something Randall just said, which will bring us forward here, certainly two to five years, what do we see ourselves doing? You’ve got a great group of people here who have taken on challenges already to be successful in the Business Enterprise Program. I can’t think of a better group to take on a new challenge after surviving Covid here, and the face of the world changing, which it certainly has, any sector, if you’re selling cars, you’re doing home heating, repair, or you’re filling vending machines. Our world looks a little different now than it did a few years ago, and it’ll probably look a little different in a couple years than it does now. I think our people are entrepreneurs and they’re up to the challenge. I think it’s so important that we continue to recruit new people. Some of our folks are aging out. I don’t want to admit it. But I’m getting up towards the top of my career. I’m starting to look at days where I may not be going to do vending machines anymore. I think it’s still a ways out there, but certainly it’s in the back of my mind and we need somebody to come in behind me and take on these challenges, make some money for themselves, support a family, all those good things. It’s all out there for you. Definitely for those young folks who love technology. I love technology, and you young folks know it way better than I do, and we have telemetry, we use card readers. There’s just so many new things with these micromarkets, and what a micromarket is, is basically it’s an unmanned, or some of them are manned, but typically an unmanned convenience store. In the vending world, I think about a snack vending machine, I’m confined to 60 options for product, 40 to 60 options, depending on how big the machine is. With a micromarket, I could sell hundreds of different items. There’s just no limit to what you could do. My personal joke is if I wanted to sell a set of tires, I could do that. I don’t know quite why I would, but I could. So there’s just some incredible options out there. And with the micromarkets, there’s a lot of technology, a lot of cool things. You can track a lot of stuff. Inventory is all there. I mean, it is so slick. It’s just a really cool new thing that’s going on, and there’s just a ton of opportunities. For those of you who are curious about our program, please investigate your state’s program. We’re everywhere in the United States. I think you’ll have a surprise waiting for you to find out how energetic these folks are, how much we like to work together. There’s just some wonderful opportunities out there.
Jeff:
With all the snow that we got here in Minnesota, Scott, I’m sure those snow tires would go really quick.
Scott:
That’s right.
Jeff:
Umbrellas down there in Florida.
Randall:
Yeah.
Jeff:
And probably some tinfoil safeguard at the nuclear plant.
Randall:
There you go. Good ideas.
Jeff:
All of you bring such a neat perspective to this, and your experience and your longevity in the program is just proof that it has been resilient over the years. I’m sure there’s been many changes that you’ll all have endured, moved and adjusted to new businesses, and I like that you mentioned about if you don’t like to cook, that you can hire a cook, or if you don’t like accounting, because it’s all there, the accounting, the taxes, and everything like that. This is not a handout job. This is a job where you are running an entire business.
Scott:
Absolutely. Yes, and the opportunities for growth are incredible. And Jeff, I’m trying not to make too many plugs, but if I can plug the Randolph Shepherd Vendors of America, we’re a group of vendors throughout the United States who get together and we’re a grassroots organization. And one of our big things is we love to work on training, train ourselves to be better in our industry than we were before. How can you beat that? My personal goal as I am president of our group is to make a warm and inviting place for anybody who’s new to our program. I want you to feel like you’ve got a home here with us, and we want to nurture you and watch you grow. That’s our greatest pride.
Jeff:
That’s really neat that you guys have an organization where people, as Linda was saying, she can talk and find out information from other people, tap into the experiences that you guys have all gained. And now Linda, you’ll be lending experience right here on the podcast by just what you’ve been doing and everything. So I’m not saying you’re getting older at all. I’m just saying Scott and Randall, 30-some years, 67 years combined. Wow. That’s some experience. So people, if you ever want to, we’ll put some links in the show notes where you can find out more about the Randolph Shepherd Vendors of America. Like Scott said, talk to your vocational rehab in your state. Talk to the person in charge of the BEP program and find out what they can do for you. So Scott, Randall, Linda, thank you so much for coming onto Blind Abilities and sharing with us all your knowledge and the experiences that you bring to this and letting people know about the opportunities in the Business Enterprise Program.
Scott:
Absolutely. Happy to do it, and I’m hoping that we can join you again for maybe a little more in-depth on some of the subjects we’ve just touched on today.
Jeff:
Oh, definitely. Randall, thank you.
Randall:
Thank you. Glad to be here.
Jeff:
Thank you, Linda.
Linda:
Thank you.
Jeff:
Be sure to contact your State Services for the Blind, your Voc-Rehab, to find out what they can do for you. Live, work, read, succeed. For more podcasts with a blindness perspective, check us out on the web at www.blindabilities.com, on Twitter @BlindAbilities, and download the free Blind Abilities app from the App Store and Google Play Store. That’s two words, blind abilities. If you want to leave some feedback, give us some suggestions, give us a call at 612-367-6093. We’d love to hear from you. A big shout out to Chee Chau for his beautiful music. You can follow Chee Chau on Twitter @lcheechau. I want to thank you for listening, and until next time, bye-bye.
[Music] [Transition noise] -When we share
-What we see
-Through each other’s eyes…
[Multiple voices overlapping, in unison, to form a single sentence]
…We can then begin to bridge the gap between the limited expectations, and the realities of Blind Abilities.