Sometimes the Best Plan Is No Plan
— -- You could call her a “cereal entrepreneur” — a full-time mom and full-time businesswoman who simultaneously recruited customers and dished out Rice Krispies when her two daughters were young.
Betsie Andrews is one of those mega-creative, where-does-she-get-all-that-energy women who manage to raise healthy kids, sustain a loving marriage, operate a business or two, and strike an ideal balance between work, family and other activities.
Ever since Amy and Kathryn Andrews were babies, their mom has taken the ingredients of her life and mixed them into a savory stew. She founded and ran a respected preschool and kindergarten. She sold designer clothing. She opened an elegant tearoom. She started a German-culture program in the schools. And from a business begun in a basement corner she has built a full-fledged fine arts program complete with artists-in-residence and a children’s theater.
A flight attendant and a Radio City Music Hall Rockette before she and her husband, George, were married, Andrews is no dilettante, and she’s not in business just to have “something to do.” But she goes after opportunities that harmonize with her goals and benefit others. If she sees a way to involve friends in her enterprises, and it makes good business sense, she does it. “As long as people are motivated by something outside of self and can respond to ideas that bless others as well as oneself,” Andrews says, “then one is truly about one’s life’s work, which brings peace of mind, joy and satisfaction. … and isn’t that really what people hope money will bring? My house still has its carpet of 23 years, but I feel rich and blessed and buoyant.”
The Art of Business
A Florida native and a graduate of Principia College near St. Louis, Andrews moved with her family to Hutchinson, Kan., more than 20 years ago and promptly opened a dance studio in her home. From the initial seven students, the studio quickly outgrew its basement location and has been moved to larger quarters five times.
Always an arts enthusiast as well as an educator, Andrews became a one-woman traveling show, taking German language and culture (as “the German Lady”) and art history (as “the Art Lady”) into Hutchinson’s elementary schools. She dreamed of starting a children’s theater and eventually persuaded college friends — a married couple working as entertainers in New York — to relocate to Hutchinson and take charge of the project. Today, more than a dozen years later, the theater is thriving and the New York City transplant, Patrick McCrary, is Hutchinson’s mayor.
Recently, Andrews has combined all her projects into a single enterprise — ArtisTree — which includes not only her preschool and dance studio but visual arts and the children’s theater. ArtisTree inhabits a restored 1925 downtown building, including its ballroom, but the enterprise is mobile as well. The Art Lady and the German Lady still go into the schools, as do the other ArtisTree programs.
Energized by Ideas
Andrews has no formula for success. She doesn’t spout advice about how to get organized. She rarely does just one thing at once, though, and if you stop by her house you’re likely to find her talking on the phone, clipping magazine and newspaper articles and stuffing them in files, and making a pot of tea.
Right now, however, “Miss Betsie,” as her students call her, is vacationing in Italy, where she lived for a time before her marriage. “I’m going to experiment,” she says, “and see what a vacation is like where I don’t take any work with me. I’m not very good at just leaving my business. I’ve discovered that I so love what I do that I do it even when I don’t have to.” Her e-mail signature quotes Christian Science founder Mary Baker Eddy: “The devotion of thought to an honest achievement makes the achievement possible.” Andrews’ biggest problem seems to be choosing which achievements to pursue.
“I am constantly energized by ideas,0 she says, “and the ideas always bring with them whatever is needed to fulfill them. When I follow through, the journey usually ends up with discoveries and enough resources to more than cover the needs along the way.”
An editor since the age of 6, when she returned a love letter with corrections marked in red, Mary Campbell founded Zero Gravity in 1984 to provide writing, editing and marketing services. She is the marketing director for the online university, Magellan.edu.
Small Business Builder is published on Wednesdays.