It's a growth environment for women entrepreneurs in Florida

For Murphy, the greatest business challenge this year is hiring qualified caregivers. "I can train them with skills, but I can't train motivation."

Becoming an empty-nester left Donna Killoren, a former IBM manager and stay-at-home mom, feeling it was the ideal time to buy a business. After searching for a profitable company with growth potential, in 2006 she bought Ten Star Supply, a Tampa company that prints directly onto bottles, glass and metal. After only a few months as owner, Killoren realized she faced challenges in keeping the business profitable and increasing sales and turned to her local Tampa Bay Small Business Development Center at the University of South Florida for help. "I thought with my experience this would be a piece of cake, but there are challenges you face as a small-business owner when you don't have the resources or support structure of large corporation," Killoren says.

The center worked with her on how and when to increase prices, manufacturing capacity issues and how to put in systems (the previous owner had kept his customer records on cards). Through networking, Killoren landed new clients, including a women-owned St. Petersburg life sciences firm, Dermazone Solutions. "We do bottles for them and for those companies they manufacture for, so as they have grown, we have too."

Killoren also instituted a quality control process and used a training grant from Workforce One to hire and train a new production manager. She has carefully cultivated her niche: "If someone needs a million bottles, they are not going to come to us, but we can do a relatively small volume with a quick turnaround." She says her company also markets its ability to fill larger orders for customers who want the bottles in batches. "We will warehouse the bottles until they send us orders to print them, and we don't charge a fee."

Now, her company has a promotional products division that prints on everything from jars to irregularly shaped objects of all kinds — including appliances, instrument panels, industrial instruments, specialty products and automotive parts. She recently hired a salesperson to promote the new division. Customers have included the University of South Florida Alumni Association, which hired her to create custom-designed basketball and football promotional purses.

Today, Then Star has nine employees and may hire more this year. Killoren says revenue has doubled since she bought the company. She has moved the company into a larger facility and purchased equipment that allows her to increase output. Killoren's husband, Jack, who had a background in engineering and quality control with companies such as Monsanto and General Electric, oversees technical operations. "Now that we have diversified and started a promotional products division, we are looking into other ways to diversify and engage employees," Killoren says. "We are nimble That's the beauty of a small business."

Maggie Thompson took over as owner and CEO of Accessibility Services in 2009 after her husband, Fred Thompson, who had founded the company in 1989, decided to retire. Thompson quickly put the company on a growth path, tapping financing for growth, adding staff and introducing new products.

The central Florida company's core business is making and selling high-tech "environmental control units" for the disabled that are voice- or switch-operated. The devices give users increased independence at home, hospitals or rehabilitation facilities by allowing them to control and operate everyday items like a television or computer easily and effectively without their limbs.

In the last few years, Accessibility Services developed an updated version of its environmental control units that replaced a box with a tablet and new software. Users can turn on a television, surf the web or play computer games by sipping and puffing on a straw or using a head tracker or touch or voice commands to navigate the tablet.

One area for growth has come from providing services to injured and disabled veterans. In 2012, Thompson won a $700,000 contract to install 60 machines in the Memphis Veteran Administration Medical Center's Spinal Cord Injury Center. "It was a good start for us. In Memphis they worked with us and showed us how we can improve what we offer. Training is a big portion of it."

Thompson saw her chance to bid on a large-scale federal government contract when the VA Center for Innovations put out a request for proposals. Navigating the process of applying for a multimillion-dollar contract was a challenge, she says. She turned to consultants at the Small Business Development Center for help with the 126- page request for proposal.

The help paid off. Early last fall, Accessibility Services scored big, landing a multiyear, $18-million contract from the VA Center for Innovations that Thompson Maggie Thompson Accessibility Services Homosassa TECHNOLOGY believes can move the company in a new and lucrative direction.

Accessibility Services will supply 207 units to four VA medical centers in the first year of the contract. The second year calls for supplying 453 units to nine centers on the East Coast. In the third year, the company will supply 350 units at nine centers on the West Coast.

Thompson says building the units, installing them and training VA staff to use them has her scrambling to hire and train workers. She just hired a director of operations, Marshall Lawrence, a former master chief with the U.S. Navy Submarine Service. She also signed a deal to buy a warehouse/office building in Citrus County. "There is no doubt in my mind that this business will continue to grow and support disabled veterans," Lawrence says.

The company also continues to sell and service automatic door openers for the disabled, one of its original products, which are installed in Macy's stores throughout Florida. However, Thompson says the company no longer actively is marketing the door openers. Instead, it will concentrate on selling more environmental control units to individuals, commercial facilities and veteran centers and work with therapists, case managers and care givers and facility managers to ensure they are used effectively.