Rising up: Meet the next generation of Centre County business leaders

Editor’s note: This story is part of the Business Matters special section.

There’s a slate of young business leaders rising up in the Centre Region — those younger than 45 who are leading the way.

We asked them about their goals, challenges and what their advice is for those just starting out in their careers.

Their answers have been edited for length and clarity.

Spud Marshall

Marshall, 30, explains that the “why” behind his work is focused around the questions: How do you cultivate community that catalyzes change in the world around people in some way? What does it actually take to create dynamic communities?

That takes shape in different ways for him, such as through the ventures he runs in State College, like co.space and, back in the day, New Leaf. Another avenue is consulting work he does with existing organizations, foundations and nonprofits on the work they do.

Q: What are your goals going forward?

A: My life kind of goes in a lot of ebbs and flows. So I’m a big believer in taking time in your life on sabbatical to just pause and rest and soak in the learning that happened on whatever previous sprint you were on. ... And so the last year, two years was really hitting the pause button on my work in State College ... . After this pause, where do I move forward? There’s a couple different areas that I’m interested in kind of exploring. The big one for me is that State College still doesn’t feel like it has a space where it’s safe to dream. ... There’s still not that facilitated support and like we want to help you dream and stretch into those what if questions in your life. ... I’m exploring what that looks like and that’s one of the things that I’m excited about to have an actual, physical space, a watering hole of some sort for the community to dream big and have it be a bit of that incubator type of space.

Q: What challenges do you face?

A: The frustration and the challenge that I feel like I deal with oftentimes is small towns don’t think they’re good enough and capable of being a front runner. If you talk to so many small towns in Pennsylvania, they say well we look toward the Phillys and Pittsburghs, and we replicate what they’re doing and we’re usually like five or 10 years behind. ... In the last couple years, I seem to be talking to a lot more towns and there are pockets of State College that I feel like embody this where they’re recognizing like “wait, we can be the leader ... and we can attract really great talent because of that.” And so the biggest challenge for me in this work is communicating that. Stop looking toward the cities and look toward yourself.

Q: What’s your advice for other young business people?

A: If you’re ever gonna take a risk, take it now. And I realize that other people maybe have variables in their lives that I did not have. Yeah, so encouraging people to just dream big when they’re young ... . Anytime I hear advice that has some degree of postponement in it, (it) really worries me. ... If you’re willing to make that jump and push into that edge today, then I think there’s a far higher likelihood of success just because people are willing to take more risks.

Melissa Hombosky

Hombosky, 39, co-founded 3twenty9 in 2008, and the company LLC’d in 2011. She’s a graphic designer and production manager. She’s also a founding member of the State College Young Professionals group, and she serves on the Bellefonte Borough Council.

Q: What are your goals going forward?

A: We’d like, obviously, to grow our business more than we already have. ... Every year we’ve seen growth, and we’ve reached out to more and more diverse clients so we’d like to see that continue. But we’re also really interested in diversifying and maybe building apps that we can then sell. We kind of are looking for an endgame because graphic designers don’t last forever. There’s going to be a time when we’re not relevant and I don’t want to stay past our due date but we’re just kind of looking for a way to keep diversifying so we don’t burn out so we can reach new levels.

Q: What challenges do you face?

A: As a company, we definitely face the challenge of being right next to Penn State that’s constantly pumping out great new designers. A plus in living where we live is the economy is so strong, but that also leads to a fair amount of competition with other agencies in the area. We’re typically so focused on what we’re doing ... that I typically don’t get hung up on competition because there’s so many of them ... I’m not gonna mind everyone else’s business but it’s definitely a challenge in living with the area ... .

Q: What’s your advice for other young business people?

A: Networking. Find networking groups and meet a lot of people. Being friendly to anyone that you meet is a real plus.

Jeremy Frank

Frank, 42, co-founded KCF Technologies and has served as its CEO since its inception in 2000. The company optimizes American manufacturing sites through wireless sensor systems that measure the health of machinery in big factories.

Q: What are your goals going forward?

A: The thing that we’ve done that I’m really proud of and has just been unbelievably impactful is we define our success by our customers’ success so we just finished 2017, and we saved our customers $121 million. ... It’s about equal to 60 million gallons of oil that would have otherwise gone up in smoke. ... This year, we’re gonna do $250 million of savings for our customers. ... And there’s other things that are in the business that obviously like any business we have profitability goals and growth goals and employment goals. They all sort of go in proportion to that, but it’s really the customer goal that we rally around.

Q: What challenges do you face?

A: It’s great that we’re growing really quickly — our revenue has more than doubled for each of the last couple years. While that’s wonderful, it makes the biggest challenges just to handle and accommodate that growth. So it’s almost like every month or every couple months we’re encountering these challenging scenarios that are ultimately caused by our growth that are new, and we don’t really know how to properly solve them.

Q: What’s your advice for other young business people?

A: My main advice is to have an attitude of service. ... There’s a lot of people with a lot of talent ... and there’s a lot of people who want to have a big impact on the world, but when you see people that are really focused on what they’re going to derive from that — money or recognition or whatever — then it seems like the wheels can stall. ... When you see somebody that really focuses on solving something or providing service to someone to solve some need or problem then everything becomes much clearer, and I think also the chances for success are a lot higher.

Amy Frank

Frank, 42, owns The Makery, which specializes in creative classes — like sewing, photography, cake decorating and more — parties and events. The downtown State College location also has a market for locally and regionally made goods and a resident artist program (and Frank is one of the artists).

Q: What are your goals going forward?

A: Our question now, in this year, is so how else can we serve the arts community in State College broadly and beyond that? ... Every week, we get two or three emails from places around the country asking “How do I make a Makery? How do I do this in my community?” We, for the last year, have offered consulting services, just phone consulting, and have had two groups actually physically come to our space and learn in more detail how we operate. But we’re putting some bones around that this year. We’re creating an e-book. We’re creating some more extended consulting services to help folks beyond the State College community proper learn how to do this ... in a way that can help support their entire arts community and be financially solvent.

Q: What challenges do you face?

A: Our challenge is education, particularly about our downtown. I feel very strongly about our downtown and just how vibrant and how cool and how awesome it is. But it’s a continual effort to remind our local community that if they don’t shop downtown, if they don’t go see shows downtown, if they don’t go out to dinner downtown and to the bars downtown, the downtown will cease to exist. ...

Q: What’s your advice for other young business people?

A: Asking yourself “what do I love and how can I serve?” And where those two things intersect is your sweet spot, is where you should be.

Andres Munar

For the past 12 years, Munar, 33, had been a loan officer, and for the past three he had been a business owner. Recently, he and his business partner joined forces with the seventh largest purchase lender in the country. He’s now a market leader for Movement Mortgage.

Q: What are your goals going forward?

A: I believe in servant leadership ... . I believe that I was put here to serve, love and lead people, and so my goal is just to help people understand that they can truly do anything that they want in life if they’re willing to put in the work.

... Everybody that crosses my path I try to open them up to all of the things that, all of the tools and all of the resources that I’ve been given and I try to share that with them to show them like you can truly do whatever it is that you want — you just gotta be willing to put in the work and the time and the effort and everything else will come with time.

Q: What challenges do you face?

A: I would say that the biggest challenges I face are getting through those down days. Because you have those days that you’re down or those times where you’re stagnant, whether it’s in business or in life, and it’s like, well how do you get over that bad day?

Q: What’s your advice for other young business people?

A: My biggest piece of advice would be making sure that you are always listening to people. ... Again, us as humans, we really — we want to talk and talk and talk, but we don’t do enough listening. And if you listen enough, people will give you the answers that you’re searching for.

And definitely put in the work.

And follow up, follow up, follow up, follow up, follow up. Did I say follow up?

This story was originally published February 12, 2018 at 10:30 AM with the headline "Rising up: Meet the next generation of Centre County business leaders."