Small Business Stories: Simms Jenkins, the Accidental Entrepreneur

Not every entrepreneur starts out expecting to be an entrepreneur. Simms Jenkins is the founder and CEO of BrightWave Marketing for 12 and a half years now, but says, “I’m one of the more accidental entrepreneurs.”

Simms got his start as a young professional thriving in a job for Cox during the dot-com boom. But when the economy started to sink, his division was shut down, and he had to come up with a new plan. “I never had a business plan, I certainly wasn’t somebody saying, ‘I’ve got this idea!’” he says. “But what lined up was being a newly married guy with a mortgage and all of a sudden not having an income.”

Looking for a way to build a bridge between his past job and whatever job would come next, presumably in the next couple months, he got started doing some consulting. It was something he could do without spending a lot of money, and seemed like something he could do. “I didn’t have a one-year plan, much less a business plan or a 10-year plan,” he says.

But 12 and a half years later the business is not only still going, but thriving. “I’m definitely not going to fake it and say that I had this brilliant idea, or even an idea that I thought was going to do much more than keep me afloat for a couple months,” he says. “It was just right place, right time, and it led to the business getting some momentum.”

Here Simms tell his story of becoming an accidental entrepreneur in this 2 minute video:

Come back next week for more Small Business Stories from Simms Jenkins on things he’s learned in his business.

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