Jump-starting a New Port-a-Potty Business

Founder undeterred by rocky start, statewide expansion planned soon

When it comes to women-owned businesses, Sharon Whelchel’s is decidedly unusual, for men or women.

Whelchel, who lives in Rogers, is the owner of Johnny on the Spot, the state’s second-largest portable toilet business and soon, she says, to become the largest.

But 5 1/2 years ago, when she first entered the business, Whelchel found that bankers weren’t eager to loan her money. Not that she blames them. Whelchel thinks she very well may have reacted the same way had she been in their shoes.

“I’m sure they had all types of apprehensions [about my] being a woman and wanting to go into the portable potty business,” Whelchel says. “I’m sure I wouldn’t have [loaned someone like that] money either.”

In fact, she adds, “Had I been a woman sitting on the other side of the desk, I would have thought, ‘This woman’s a lunatic.'”

Portable sanitary facilities may be unusual, but some people believe that women are often interested in businesses that are difficult to quantify with conventional lending formulas. That, coupled with their inexperience in the business world, can make entry into the business world as proprietors even more intimidating for women, they say.

Rhonda Townsley, marketing manager for Arvest Asset Management, believes women face unique challenges in the business world – especially a world in which so much business is conducted on the golf course, usually by men.

Townsley raises a provoking thought: What would most business executives say if an employee asked to entertain a woman client with a shopping trip?

The same executives who wouldn’t bat an eye at an afternoon golf excursion would likely be stunned, she suggests. And that, Townsley says, is the result of societal conditioning.

It can also be a communication gap.

Shellie Morrison of Fayetteville started her own company, The Event Group, three years ago. And while Morrison believes she secured the initial loan easily enough, she still recalls being mildly insulted by the loan officer’s first question: Who helped you write your business plan?

Morrison wrote the plan herself and interpreted his question to mean he thought she wasn’t capable of doing the work. In retrospect, she now thinks the plan was good enough that the officer may have believed she hired a consultant to help – but that wasn’t what she thought three years ago.

Vicki Melhart was fortunate enough to be able to avoid seeking a credit line early in the life of Melhart Designs, the company she and her husband, Bill, operate in Rogers.

Melhart Designs grew out of Vicki Melhart’s hobby of hand painting shirts, “way back before anyone was doing country clothing,” she says.

People kept asking for the shirts and eventually, “I had so many orders I couldn’t really supply them. My husband said, ‘We’ve got to do something.'”

The couple bought some screen printing equipment, assembled it in their garage and they went to work. They built the business slowly enough that they could finance it themselves and when they finally needed a bank credit line, Melhart Industries was well established, Vicki Melhart says.

Melhart Designs wholesales its products to customers across the country. Past customers have included Cracker Barrel stores.

As for Whelchel, she branched out into a retail business, too, and owns the Perfume Palace at Ozark Center Point Place in Springdale. Between the store and Johnny on the Spot, she now has eight employees.

Dealing with most people is pleasant enough, Whelchel says, but she still encounters the occasional male who can’t seem to understand how to deal directly with a businesswoman. She recalls trying to get estimates for fencing her property. Most companies suggested that her husband or general manager call back for a quote, Whelchel says.

Whelchel, who’s a single mother, says she finally gave her business to the man who treated her the best.

“I am not a Women’s Libber,” Whelchel says. “I always thought I would be home, barefoot and pregnant on a farm with six kids.”

But life didn’t work out that way, so, “You gotta go with the flow,” she says. “I’m thankful now that I don’t have to be dependent on anyone for my living – anyone other than my employees and good customers.”

Whelchel says she really wasn’t assertive by nature but learned to be that way to survive in the business world.

And now, five years after starting Johnny on the Spot with 100 portable potties, Whelchel owns 900. By year’s end, she expects to expand into Fort Smith and she’s also looking at possibilities in Little Rock and Jonesboro.

About being a woman in business, Whelchel says she just follows her mother’s advice: “Just stick your heels in the mud and hang on.”