John McIlhon Jr.’s marketing firm could stay busy by doing promotional work just for the businesses owned by his relatives.

The entrepreneurial sprit flows in the McIlhon family. Among two generations of McIlhons, there’s a marketing company, a financial planning business, a pizzeria, a coffeehouse, a clothing store and an industrial services company. Most of these businesses are in Greater Des Moines, where the late Dan McIlhon, the family patriarch, built his successful multimillion dollar company, Iowa Industrial Products Inc..

Dan McIlhon started Iowa Industrial Products in 1959, at the age of 36. With a $5,000 loan to cover start-up costs, he created a distributorship of hardware such as washers, clamps and bolts. Forty years later, he sold the company for $65 million. He passed away a month later, at the age of 76.

Dan McIlhon’s success has inspired several of his children and grandchildren to start their own businesses. A son, Tom McIlhon, opened Nick-n-Willy’s World Famous Take-N-Bake Pizza, a franchise new to Central Iowa, July 25 in West Des Moines. Kellie (McIlhon) Ulrich, a granddaughter, will open a maternity boutique, Urban Belly, in about two weeks in the East Village. Matt McIlhon, the youngest of his 12 children, is the Iowa developer of Bear Creek Coffee, and will open the chain’s first drive-through coffee and espresso bar in the state in Clive at the end of this month.

“With our family, everyone has always been really supportive of entrepreneurship,” Ulrich said. “I think that, because of the size of the family and the quality of the family, you feel that you’re not going it alone.”

NECESSITY WAS THE CATALYST

Dan McIlhon had his children in mind when he started Iowa Industrial Products, according to son Tom McIlhon. He said his father left a job in the tool-and-dye industry to start his own business as a way to support his growing family, which was already nine children at the time.

“His business was about his kids,” Tom McIlhon said. “That’s why so many of his kids went on to work for him.”

Six of Dan and Raymetta McIlhon’s 12 children worked at Iowa Industrial Products for a number of years, and two still do. The company is now named Bossard, after the Swiss company that bought it six years ago. Dan McIlhon’s son Joe serves as the president of the company, and son Ed McIlhon works as a consultant on a contract basis. Tom and Matt left the company this year to start their own businesses. Two other McIlhon children, John Sr. and Margaret, worked there until their deaths.

Tom McIlhon said his father’s business stayed small for many years, and then its growth started to ramp up in 1985, when Deere & Co. became a customer. Between 1985 and 1995, Iowa Industrial Products’ annual revenues grew from about $5.5 million to $45 million, he said. But Dan McIlhon never the success go to his head.

“When we made it to $40 million, we still acted like we were at $5 million,” Tom McIlhon said. “My dad got just as excited about a $500 contract as he did a $500,000 contract.”

CRASH COURSE IN BUSINESS

Tom McIlhon said one of his father’s strengths as a business owner was that every customer mattered to him, and for that reason, he emphasized the importance of getting every job done right the first time.

“Dad’s message wasn’t ‘Do it right the first time;’ it was ‘Do it right every time,’” Tom McIlhon said. “He made sure that everybody working for him had this message.”

What also stood out about the way Dan McIlhon operated Iowa Industrial Products was that he kept his priorities straight, Tom McIlhon said. He put family first in his life, and he was involved in his community through his church and local charities.

“He believed that business is not first; family is first. The business just supports the family,” Tom McIlhon said. “Dad’s customers knew that he was a family man who cared about the community. He loved talking about his kids, and people like doing business with people like that. They know you’re honest and that you’re not going anywhere.”

Dan McIlhon also loved being around people, and his clients became his friends.

“Dad always told me, ‘Tom, you’re not selling nuts and bolts here; you’re selling yourself.’”

REAL-WOLRD APPLICATION

Matt McIlhon left Bossard in April and Tom McIlhon followed in June to start their own businesses. Matt McIlhon said he wanted to start a business to support his wife and four children. His wife, Jennifer, a former registered nurse, is planning to run the Bear Creek Coffee shop with him when it opens outside Abante Furnishings on Northwest 100th Street in Clive later this month.

Tom McIlhon said his decision to open a Nick-N-Willy’s pizzeria in the Bridgewood Plaza near Jordan Creek Town Center in West Des Moines was also fueled by a desire to work in a family atmosphere with his wife, Linda. They also have four children.

“In some way, it’s like what Dad did,” Tom McIlhon said. “He left a job that he was comfortable in and threw caution to the wind to start his own business.”

Tom said he also decided to take the leap after seeing two other family members achieve their dreams of owning their own businesses. Brother Jerry McIlhon owns J.T. Financial Services in Austin, Texas, and nephew, John McIlhon Jr. owns Image Solutions in Des Moines, a company specializing in marketing through the use of promotional products.

John McIlhon Jr. worked in several industries, including nine years in sales with the Triplett Cos., before opening Image Solutions. Kellie Ulrich, daughter of Ed McIlhon, also worked outside the family business before deciding to open her own business. As a leader of a non-profit organization in Boulder, Colo., she said she got the taste of what it was like to “have my hands in everything, almost as if I was running a company of my own.” She missed that feeling when she left that job to work in an advertising and public relations agency.

Ulrich’s idea for Urban Belly hit her after she moved from Colorado to Des Moines to be closer to her family. She noticed, while shopping with her pregnant sister, that though Des Moines was known as a great place to raise a family, there wasn’t a good selection of maternity clothes for women.

“It’s a bit of a risk, because I’ve never been pregnant myself, and I haven’t worked in retail, but my marketing background taught me to look for my own niche in the market,” she said.

“I feel like I’ve had a lot of great examples to follow,” Ulrich said. “When I look at Grandpa and my dad, they’ve always been great role models for it. It makes it less scary, I guess, to take a jump like this when you’ve seen other people all your life succeed.”

Ulrich’s brother Casey recently started his own company in Chicago, McIlhon & Associates, serving as a manufacturer’s representative in the fastener industry. The business is complementary to the product line his grandfather’s business was built on.

“None of us have guarantees that any of this is going to work, but if you have faith in your concept and your abilities, then it will work,” John McIlhon Jr. said. His business, Image Solutions, will be 2 years old in December.