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"Get On Board" for Entrepreneurial Success
Published: April 8, 2002

This year, The Business Journal has changed the name of its awards for advisory boards of directors. We've also added a new category: the Barnett Helzberg Award for Entrepreneurial Mentoring. But the criteria and the themes remain the same: entrepreneurs relying on the good will and good advice of volunteer advisory board members or mentors.

Winners
Dick Benner mentoring Melody Warren

Melody Warren credits Dick Benner with a lot of her business success. Benner mentors Warren, who is president and CEO of Transportation Logistics Systems Inc. in Kansas City, as part of the Helzberg Entrepreneurial Mentoring Program.

Benner is the first recipient of The Business Journal's Barnett Helzberg Award for Entrepreneurial Mentoring.

Warren said the program, and through it her association with Benner, has been an overwhelming success for her business, a third-party freight forwarding company. "It's the most incredible thing that has ever happened to me in business, period," Warren said.

Benner, who has worked as an executive for Avon Products Inc. and Sara Lee Corp., retired in 1986 and is involved in several programs that enable him to lend his expertise to business owners eager to learn. Besides HEMP, he participates in the Service Corps of Retired Executives (SCORE) program and the Executive Service Corps of Greater Kansas City. Benner is spending about 25 hours a week this year helping local business leaders, he said.

Warren is impressed with Benner's dedication. He's never too busy for a question. The two have met every six weeks for the past year, but in the beginning, it was much more frequent. Benner and Warren got together twice a month for the first two or three months and then once a month after that. "He usually calls me before I call him," Warren said.

Benner has helped Warren analyze her finances, get better at planning and forecasting, and beef up her staff so she is free to make outside sales calls, one of her strengths. Benner also helped her to think more like a businesswoman as her company has grown since she founded it in 1992. That meant replacing some people she had relationships with.

Benner participates in the programs because he likes to see his pupils grow with their businesses. "Seeing them become successful, seeing them move ahead, seeing them accomplish things, is very rewarding," Benner said.