Media buyer yearns to run his own business

No wonder Nate Greiner lost his job as a media buyer in 2009. When the economy tanked, consumers stopped consuming, advertisers stopped advertising and nobody needed Greiner to negotiate deals for advertising time on broadcast television. When Greiner's agency lost a major client, Greiner was laid-off.

"I loved working there," he said. "Everybody had a good work ethic. Everyone was on the same page." Greiner keeps in touch with the company, R2CGroup/Cmedia, in Exton, hoping that he might be able to return when the economy picks up. That's not happening yet.

Meanwhile, Greiner spent four months working as a plant manager in his family's sausage making business in Connecticut.  But families are complicated, so for the moment, that's not an option. Plus, his wife has a secure job not too far from Greiner's home in Exton.

But, Greiner can see himself owning a small food-manufacturing business, putting his marketing smarts to good use  to promote a small array of products. His idea is to begin with just a few items, do them very well, and then expand. In terms of his job search, he spends about half his time looking for media buying jobs and the other half researching what it would take to run a business like his father's.

"The idea of running my own business appeals to me," he said. "I like getting my hands dirty in all the aspects -- manufacturing, production, human resources, accounting, regulations."

Greiner thinks his best bet is to figure out how to buy a distressed business and then build it back up. It's better, he says, than inventing something out of whole cloth, and he's not interested in franchising. The trick, he said, is convincing the owner of a distressed business to lower the price enough to make it affordable for him to buy.

"A lot of them are in denial about how much their businesses are actually worth," he said.

_{The Inquirer is not endorsing this individual as a job candidate; potential employers should do their own background checks.}