How we grew our business

Brecky and Dutch Bihary, owners of Colorific Kids: face painting, temporary tattoos and Hawaiian Shaved Ice   See Dutch’s magnificent work at www.colorifickids.com!  Dutch Bihary, face painter extraordinaire, and his wife, Brecky, the business brains behind Colorific Kids, radiate talent and energy for their enterprise. But they knew little about making a business successful. “The business can be amazing in your head,” Dutch says, “but that - and making it work - are miles apart.” He points out, “I have the same talent today as I had when we were struggling to make ends meet. For entrepreneurs, it boils down to profit and loss.”

“We came into WashingtonCASH with some success, but we needed help budgeting and accounting for expenses,” explains Dutch. The Biharys wanted to know things like where they would get the best bang for their buck. What were the next steps for making their business grow? WashingtonCASH was a good support, and Dutch strongly advises entrepreneurs to, “use any resource you can for things like bookkeeping and streamlining. You can take some of the mistakes out of it. You’ll waste less time and effort.”

Brecky, (“She has the fortitude to make a business work!” says Dutch.) tells entrepreneurs to, “Get all the expertise you can.” For instance, writing a business plan is where Washington CASH begins with students, “but many entrepreneurs don’t have one at first.”

Growing their business has been a top priority.  “Last year we were unknown,” Brecky says. “We worked so hard to get jobs. We had to sleep, eat and dream the business to figure out how to grow it. You’ve got to really have the drive, the way I look at it. 

“2007 was tough, but we were passionate. We love what we do. Now we definitely have made a name for ourselves.”