Photo by Alex Maness

It’s a little after 6 p.m. on a dreary, cold Thursday evening. The rain is falling, the wind ripping, the sky a perfect black. It’s the kind of winter spell that usually sends employees shuffling out the exits the minute the clock strikes 5. But inside Greensboro’s Nussbaum Center for Entrepreneurship, the employees linger.

No one is forcing them to be here, of course. Workers at the Nussbaum Center tend to call their own shots and set their own boundaries — boundaries that extend somewhere between the practical and the unthinkable. These aren’t your typical time-card-punching, 9-to-5 employees. Instead, they’re a sampling of Greensboro’s most daring and committed businesspeople — entrepreneurs. These are the folks who form much of the fabric inside the Nussbaum Center, which, in turn, forms much of the fabric for the local economy.

It’s also important to note that this isn’t a typical evening. On the third Thursday of most months, the Nussbaum Center hosts an event called “How I Did It,” an educational networking series that invites successful entrepreneurs to speak. Tonight’s event carries extra weight, as the speaker — Michael Dougherty — was a former Nussbaum tenant himself.

As the chairman and CEO of Kindermusik International, Dougherty has seen his business grow from a two-man operation to a multimillion-dollar colossus. Based in Greensboro, the company is the world’s leading publisher of educational music for young children, appearing in some 5,000 classrooms and 70 countries worldwide.

But Dougherty, who’s both aspiring and pragmatic, still remembers the initial struggles his company endured. As he walks the attentive crowd through marketing strategies and practical ideals, he takes a second to reflect on his company’s earliest supporter.

“I will say this, and this is being as honest as I can be,” Dougherty says. “Without the Nussbaum Center, Kindermusik would not have survived.”

So what exactly is the Nussbaum Center for Entrepreneurship? In short, it’s a nonprofit business incubator that offers support to upstart, nonretail businesses. The center opened its doors 20 years ago with one overriding mission: to help entrepreneurs grow their businesses. This includes providing various planning and business counseling services, along with modestly priced office space. More than that, though, the center serves to motivate its occupants — whether that means patting them on the back or breathing down their neck.

“The number one thing we do is find what nerve motivates you to take action,” says Sam Funchess, president and CEO of the Nussbaum Center. “We’re going to do whatever it takes to help you succeed.”

Employing this principal-meets-student mentality, the Nussbaum Center has brought more than 1,300 jobs and $160 million dollars to the local economy. In addition, the center and its graduates generate millions of dollars in annual tax revenue for the city of Greensboro ($4.5 million in 2006 alone).

The center continues to operate today as the only self-sufficient business incubator in the state, and one of only a handful in the entire country.

Currently, the center is comprised of 125 employees and 65 businesses, running the gamut from photography studios, to software companies, to jewelry makers. “We even have a nursing academy that teaches phlebotomy,” says Clay Howard, the center’s associate development manager. “We’ll sometimes take ideas under our wings that don’t have a great growth structure, as long as the person has the right attitude.”

Adds Funchess: “We try and make them realize how big their company can be, whether it’s 10 additional employees, or 250 (the size of Nussbaum’s largest graduate). At the end of the day, creating jobs is all we care about.”

Typically, the center takes in any new business they deem “coachable,” a trait that isn’t always common among headstrong entrepreneurs. 

“Entrepreneurs are do-it-my-way kind of people,” Funchess says. “If they weren’t, they’d never think they could conquer the world on their own. They’d happily stay in corporate America.”

So Funchess and company take calculated steps in hopes of turning ambitious ideas into outstanding companies. First, they try to get associates in the right frame of mind by using business outlines and strategic planning sessions. Second, they try to ease the transition from wide-eyed entrepreneur to stabilized business owner by employing a checks and balances system. Once stable ground is reached, they “graduate” the associate from the center and encourage them to relocate their business to the surrounding area. The result is a boost for the community as a whole.

“We’d love for people to stay around here forever,” Funchess says. “But the truth is, we’re a nonprofit, so we have a lower cost structure by nature than the private developers in town. We don’t want to be competition to Revolution Mill Studios next door, or John Lomax downtown, or CBL Properties at Friendly Center. That’s not really helping the community; that’s almost stripping away from the community.

“So we try to set entrepreneurs straight, point them in the right direction, then send them on their way. If we can get them where they want to be as a business, and then get them out into the community, then it’s a win for everyone.”

For more information about the Nussbaum Center or its associates, call 336-379-5001 or go to http://www.nussbaumcfe.com.