Risks payoff for local contractor

It's been almost 18 years since Bradford Seamon rounded the corner on his block heading towards his house only to discover the "repo man" sitting in his front yard, waiting to take his car.As a young entrepreneur in his late twenties, he was able to pay everyone on his payroll - everyone except for himself. He took another look at his yard and kept driving.

"That's one of the risks that you take as an entrepreneur," Seamon said. "It's all about being an individual and being willing to take risks. The more risks, the higher the reward."

Four locations, including a 17,000 square foot office space in Greenbelt, Maryland, later, Seamon no longer has to worry about paying his car note or any other bills.

Seamon is the founder and owner of BL Seamon Corporation, a contracting company that offers conference and event management services as well as web development services to government agencies.

"I did something I knew the customers were buying," he said. "Looking back on it, starting it was hard and you look at it and wonder how you did it. But when you're doing it you don't really think about that. You just think about what you need to do for your business to survive."

Back in 1989, Seamon quit his job set out to create BL Seamon Corporation with the help of his wife, Malitta.

"You need to be in business with somebody you can trust so that was important for us; because we could trust each other," Seamon said."Those people that decide to go that route, to go into business with a spouse, it can actually help the relationship. It's powerful because it can really strengthen the relationship."

With his experience in finance, he took control of the accounting and financial part of the business while his wife offered her experience in marketing and personnel.

"We put our heads together to handle the administrative side of the business," Seamon said. "We had the two most important pieces for a new business - marketing and finance. We didn't have to depend on anybody or pay anybody on the outside for that. That was the key to getting BL Seamon off the ground."

To make up for his lack of management experience, Seamon poured through books on the subject.

"I listened audio versions of the books while I was driving back and forth to work," Seamon said. "'Good to Great' by Jim Collins is one that sticks out in my mind."

With his wife and his books at his side, Seamon still ran into challenges along the way. One of the first challenges he ran into was financing. "Financing is a challenge for anybody starting out," he said. "Another challenge was reaching the proper balance between acquiring new customers and providing top notch service to those customers."

BL Seamon Corporation contracts for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the National Cancer Institute, the Department of Labor, and the Division of AIDS. He has two locations in Maryland including a 17,000 square foot office space in Greenbelt, MD. Seamon also operates smaller units in Charlotte and Atlanta.

"We want to expand our services we offer and our current customer base, which is largely government," Seamon said.

Though Seamon believes, "passion without profit equals failure," he recognizes the importance passion plays when dealing with starting a business. "I think that the challenges that you'll face when you start out are so great, that hard work and commitment is not enough to get you through the trying time," he said. "You need to put them together with passion. When you marry those things together, nothing is impossible."

Address: 9001 Edmonston Rd. Suite 200 Greenbelt, MD
Phone: (301) 313-0244