Sharon Sultan Cutler knows how to find a niche ... she just sees a need
and fills it. "And everyone thinks I'm brilliant," she says jokingly.
Her latest business is no exception. But before I tell you about
MatureResources.org, let's backtrack just a bit.
In 1992
Sharon saw there was a growing need for support for the mature
audience. People were getting older. Everyone worked. Nobody
was able to adequately care for their parents and grandparents
as they aged. And no one had time to spend time searching for
the services their family needed.
So Sharon decided to create Mature Resources Network, a for-profit
hotline for consumers to find service providers. Sharon simply
took her gift of networking and turned it into a business. Word
quickly spread. A publicist got Sharon in the newspaper and
the business
took off.
She convinced
the businesses to pay her to connect them with 50-plus- year-old
consumers looking for products or services these businesses
provided. Sharon and her staff made sure the businesses were
reputable before they could join the network and charged them
to participate. The consumer paid nothing. In a way, it was
much like traditional advertising, but with a personal touch.
"We
tried for impartiality. If someone called for an elder care
attorney, we would give them three if we had three in that category,"
she says.
Whatever your problem, Sharon could connect you with a business
that could solve it. It didn't matter what you were looking
for. People would call up and say, "Do you know the name
of a good ____________?" And Sharon would refer them to
the proper resource.
The business began in the bedroom she shared with her first husband.
Then she got rid of the husband and kept the bedroom. A short
time later she had four people working for her, all sharing
her home office space, and she expanded to her guest bedroom.
"Women
are very good at improvising," she says. "I just took
a room that represented nothing to me anymore and my second
husband helped me fill it up with furniture," she says,
laughing.
As time went on, she moved into event planning and held expos for the
mature market. She called it Mature Resources 50+ Expo and it was very
successful, right from the start. From the beginning between 100 and 150
companies exhibited at each show, and the expos attracted about 5,000
attendees over a weekend.
After a few years, a couple of upper managers from a small newspaper
publishing group asked her to go to lunch. Over that lunch,
they approached her about publishing a magazine for people over
50 while continuing to put on the expos. When they offered her
a salary of $52,000 plus 25 percent commission on sales, she
went for it. "The entrepreneur is always the last one to
get paid," Sharon says "and so I went from struggling
to within six months or so, making nearly $100,000 a year. So
that was a good lunch," she says, laughing.
Her employment
lasted a few years until the number of attendees at the expos
dropped off and eventually the company decided to stop publishing
the magazine, as well.
She worked
in personnel for a year or so and then one Fourth of July, tragedy
struck. Her 20-year-old son was killed in a jet ski accident.
"So that changed my life and I became a wailer, someone
who mourned loudly and unexpectedly for many, many months,"
she says. "Fortunately, I had my business networking friends
who came and rallied. I think I probably was in bad shape for
about a year or more."
She took some
much-needed time off from work, but eventually her husband and
her boss forced her to go back to her personnel job. Suddenly,
she decided she just couldn't stand living in New York anymore,
called her husband who was on a business trip in Australia,
and told him she wanted to move. She didn't even wait for him
to return from his trip. "I went down to Florida and bought
a house," she says.
"I
moved into an active adult community as one of the younger people.
But my life wasn't all about lunches and tennis. So I said,
'I have all this knowledge about the 50+ market and where can
I take it now?' That's when I came up with the idea of doing
an Internet website to give news and information and also offer
businesses the opportunity to introduce themselves to consumers
who were 50 years or older."
She didn't know anything about computers, but that didn't stopped her.
She just researched it and learned what she needed to know.
"The knowledge that I've gained... it's been exhilarating on a personal
and a professional level. I'm back to the old Sharon. This business has
great potential. I've not seen a site like this anywhere else," she says.
Sharon now produces a monthly Internet magazine for baby boomers to
seniors with current news, financial planning, health and wellness, home
and leisure, book reviews, self-help information and a senior focus. It's
grown to the point that she is planning to create a national sales force
to help her sell regional and national advertising. The magazine is so respected that writers seek her out. She out-sources her web design and
is in the process of hiring a publicist.
Since it's
the same target market as her other business, much of the previous
business model works for this new business. She sells ads—
this time in the form of business listings, website links, sponsorships
and banners.
What Sharon
has found is that all of her experiences have helped her see
the need for and create a website business that not only takes
care of her financially, but also inspires her while helping
others.
"I know I'm successful because I've taken risks; I have companies that
believe in me; and people who are very excited about the program.
My
mission is to help other people and make money doing it," she says. And
that's just what she's doing.
