A shoulder, or two, to lean on

By Brendan Buhler

Friday, May 16, 2008 | 2 a.m.

A mortgage broker, an electrician, a chiropractor and a funeral planner walk into a bar, but it’s not what you think.

For one thing, the occasion is breakfast. For another thing, they came to talk about business, along with 14 other small-business people, no two of them in the same line of work.

What they have in common is trying to survive in an economy that’s beginning to resemble a horror movie, complete with mists, lightning flashes and creditors howling in the distance. They are banding together around the fireside (literally, the Fireside Restaurant & Tavern off St. Rose Parkway) to share ideas and steer customers toward each other.

They do this every Thursday morning, in good times and, now, in bad.

For some it’s a lifeline. Just ask the electrician. “Through the sour times, this is what’s kept me hanging on,” said Duey Vernon, owner of Bright Lights.

Same for the mortgage broker. “I wouldn’t still be a mortgage broker if it wasn’t for the group,” Peter Brown said. “I’d be like my competitors: out of business.”

In fact, the mortgage broker likes it so much he runs the meetings, one of six in town put on by the CityShare Network, a Nevada company that specializes in business networking. He took over for the chiropractor, who started this group eight years ago. The chiropractor’s still in it, of course. “It’s so much different to get a referral from somebody who knows you,” David Luzod said. “I mean, probably half the people in this room are my patients.”

As for the funeral planner, it hasn’t worked out. He’ll be leaving after his year’s membership is up. We’ll get back to him.

A year’s membership in the group costs $349 and you have to buy your own $12 breakfasts at Fireside, where members talk about their business and exchange leads. Besides breakfast, what you get is everyone else in the group carrying around your business card and, you hope, handing it out while saying nice things about you. Plus, maybe the other members of the group need your services.

Take Howard Rubel, who along with his son owns a Frozen Ropes baseball and softball training center. They had the misfortune to open their doors only nine months ago. At first things were fine, “but the last two months, all of the sudden people don’t have money. It’s tough, it’s tough.” The group helps spread the center’s name for birthday parties and corporate lunches. Sometimes group members bring their kids or grandkids out to Frozen Ropes.

Sometimes it really works when people have complementary lines of work, as with Mike Schoenbaechler, who’s a partner in a 1-800-Got-Junk hauling franchise, and Bruce Dodson, who’s a service manager for Done Right Plumbing. The two sat together Thursday morning.

“My clients don’t only need my services, they need somebody else’s services and somebody else’s clients need mine,” Schoenbaechler said. “When times are tough, it’s groups like this that help you.”

As Dodson explained, “I’m not just recommending a business. I’m recommending a person. I’ve gotten to know them.”

Now back to the funeral planner.

Technically, Tony Hayek is an advance planning director at Palm Mortuary, which means he sells funerals to perfectly healthy people. (“You could do it for your infant child, if you really wanted to,” he said.)

If you are a perfectly healthy person, you can buy your funeral from him now, pay for it in chunks and be protected from inflation. It’s like the forever stamp of funerals.

Hayek figures that the group hasn’t worked out for him, even though everyone is really nice, because funeral planning is hard to introduce into casual conversation. Plus, his particular slice of the industry can be hard to explain to people.

“Sometimes people in the group will call up and say, ‘Hey, I’ve got an uncle in hospice. Can you help me?’ Well, no, I can’t. It’s too late,” Hayek said.

“I really thought I’d get more referrals.”