A longtime entrepreneur talks about his entrepreneurial inspiration, the best part of being an owner and the benefits of getting involved.
For Andrew Barkis, owner of Olympia, Washington-based Hometown Property Management, the entrepreneurial seed was planted early.
“My dad was a businessman and an entrepreneur,” he says. “I grew up seeing that in action and started my own landscaping business when I was about 11.”
Barkis hasn’t stopped working since. In addition to his first business, he worked at two restaurants and a hardware store to help support his family and put himself through college. He also served in the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps for two-and-a-half years, but lost his Army officer commission after a knee injury. At the time, however, he was managing a small apartment building and ended up going to work for the owner of the building after college. The rest, he says, is history.
Barkis was inspired to become a business owner out of a drive to do things the way he believed they should be done and treat employees and customers the way he thought they should be treated. When he started with Hometown, the owner planted the seed that one day he could own the business. They worked toward that goal and brought it to fruition in 2005.
“The best part [of being a small business owner] is seeing the rewards of your labor,” Barkis says. “And not just the monetary success after a long period of time, but the impact you have on others, like your employees…. The fact that I’m able to provide a great job with benefits and a very good wage and support their families—that all started because of an idea and something that I put forth to do.”
And the most important thing, he says, is being involved. Barkis has long followed his own advice: He ran for county commissioner, is a longtime member of the Lacey and Thurston Chambers of Commerce and currently serves on five different boards and various committees. He’s also been an NFIB member for 10 years. So it was a natural fit when he was approached about serving on NFIB/Washington’s Leadership Council.
“You have to know what’s going on,” he says. “If you don’t know what’s going on, you’re going to get blindsided. In any given session at the state level, the extraordinary amount of bills and regulations that are continually being proposed and put through—from the smallest one to the largest one—all have an impact on our businesses.”
The Leadership Council, which represents a wide variety of businesses statewide, meets quarterly to review information on state issues and help determine what’s most important to focus on. The Washington Council has been so effective that they’ve caught the attention of the state’s Department of Labor and Industries, which has started sending a representative to Council meetings in order to provide issue updates and solicit small business feedback.
“This is one of the better organizations I’ve ever been involved in,” Barkis says. “I can see the impact of my time and involvement with this Leadership Council.”
