From the moment Moudy and I sat down with Cheni, we learned he was gracious, welcoming, and also an exceptionally bright businessman. His astute insights and unwavering focus on personal relationships have been sharpened by eight years of observing and mentoring other small business owners. Cheni Yerushalmi rents space to small businesses but he is not a run of the mill landlord. For one, he calls his tenants Shiners. More importantly, he is deeply invested in the success of everyone that works at Sunshine Suites. The innovative office spaces, which he personally designed, promote collaboration and networking. He goes above and beyond for his community by offering free business consulting and amenities like a vacation home in Vermont. Cheni is a remarkable individual but his true success can be seen in the rich and diverse community of ambitious and talented entrepreneurs that work at Sunshine.

What is Sunshine?
Sunshine is a community that harbors and supports small business owners and entrepreneurs. I look at Sunshine as a necessity. Being an entrepreneur for the past ten years, I realized how hard and alienating it is to start a business. Why not collaborate with other people that have the same drive and ambition? That’s how it started.

Where did you grow up?
I grew up in Israel. When I was eleven, my family moved to Long Island. I came here kicking and screaming. It wasn’t exactly something I wanted to do, but my parents said, “We’re going. Let’s go.” That’s when I met my best friend Joe. He was born in Iraq and moved to Long Island during the revolution. Our greatest accomplishment, after 8 ½ years of business together, is that we’re still best friends.

What’s the importance of having a good business partner?
For some people it’s everything. I’m one of those people. I’m very bad at accounting. It’s very hard for me to juggle everything. I find it very helpful to know my limitations and then find people that complement them. There are reasons why my other businesses failed and I identified those reasons. Someone like Joe was a natural fit for me. However, I think being successful goes beyond just finding the right partner. I think you need to have very strong moral agreements because businesses tend to tear people apart. Sometimes, you have to remember to be friends first.

When did you realize you’re an entrepreneur?
I was twenty-seven and working in hotel management at the New York Grand Hyatt. This little brat of a kid came up to me and asked for something. I said, “I’m sorry, we can’t do that for you” and he said, “Go fuck yourself.” I thought to myself, “You know what, he’s probably right.” That’s when I decided I was going to be an entrepreneur.

How did you get the idea for Sunshine?
I started a video game company with Joe called Zoomgo Gaming Networks. We had a tiny office in the flatiron district that we were paying about $1000 a month for. It was very cramped and wasn’t a good solution. A couple floors below, a guy that had a lease for five years was giving it up for $14 a square foot. For New York prices, it was outrageous. We ended up taking the lease. I asked Joe, “What are we going to do with 38,000 square feet?” He said, “Let’s rent out the extra space and we’ll break even, maybe make some money.” It turned out that we made more money renting space than the video game company. We also started liking this business more because the people that were there became really good friends of ours. A revolutionary moment came to us when one of our Shiners was falling behind on his rent and instead of evicting him we found him a job inside of the community. He got paid, he paid us and he stayed for another six years. We found this to be the opposite of what traditional landlords would do. If there were a tenant in troubled waters, they wouldn’t throw him a life vest. This is what we became known for and people started to refer us business.

Was there a moment when you realized Sunshine could be a viable business?
Yes, actually. We started off very primitive. I didn’t have any expectations for it. I thought it would just be a way to make some extra money. It started to dawn on us that it was really becoming a business when other people came to us and said, “Wow! There’s a lot of energy in here.” In a room of 3,800 square feet, there were probably fifty people all working with one another.

What was your family’s reaction to your desire to start your own business?
I think parents always want the best for their kids and want them to be happy. I come from a line of risk takers. I don’t think they were surprised at all. On the other hand, Joe gave up a very lucrative job at Morgan Stanley. He did really well for himself. So, I think it was a shock to his parents. In fact, his parents didn’t even know what we did for the first two or three years.

How do you distinguish yourselves from your competitors?
There are a lot of things that separate us from everyone else. Being in business for 8 ½ years is one thing. We have made our focus helping people. We do everything we can to assist our community. I think the caring factor separates us from a lot of companies. Some companies just don’t care. Over the years we have developed a community where 90% of the people work with one another. We have 14,000 people and 600 companies. That’s a very large community. You could be working in groups that are much smaller or executive office suites that are very impersonal. But, Sunshine is a very unique blend of entrepreneurs and small business owners who are collaborating in a diverse environment. There are so many different companies here and they reach out to help each other. So, we developed a lot of tools for them to interact with one another. We have a lot of parties and events. I purchased a vacation home in Vermont for a corporate getaway that everyone can use. That’s a big differentiating factor. We’re going to build a 5,000 square foot roof deck upstairs. My goal is for every company here to out grow me. I think that is very different.

How does the community respond to all these amenities and services you provide?
For some people it’s everything for other people it’s not. The most important thing is price. At the end of the day, we’re very affordable. We’re at a very affordable price point. We start at $275 per person per month and that includes everything. Some people, who work for a major company where they have affordable health care and just want to get out of the house, aren’t going to look at Sunshine’s health benefits as a big deal. Maybe they have a dog and they want a workspace where they can bring their dog. They might choose us because we allow dogs. I think the individual will determine what’s right for him. At the heart of it, I think all small business owners look for the same thing and that’s business. I think that’s where we separate ourselves from everybody else, because, when you come to Sunshine, you will get contacts.

What is your target business for Sunshine?
We don’t have a target. Initially, I did have a target. I wanted to be the cool, hip guy that partied all the time and for a while, I was. As we started to expand, Joe and I realized that we were very passionate about not discriminating. We wanted to create. We wanted to create synergies that others may not have been able to achieve. So, as time went on, we became much more open.

How has your idea for Sunshine evolved over time?
To be honest, everything has come from the community. We constantly do surveys and listen to feedback. Instead of us creating the agenda, we go out and ask the people what they want. We ask the community how we should spend our money, because they are the people paying us. This way we don’t have to guess what the people want. I’m not a good guesser. Why would I put everyone’s well-being in my inability assume what they want? We created a very calculated way to grow our business by listening to feedback and people really appreciate it.

How has starting a business affected your personal life?
It gave me a lot of freedom. For the first couple of years, we didn’t pay ourselves much of anything. So, I was eating a lot of bagels and it was very humbling. I have to be honest; those were some of the best years. When you become an entrepreneur you care very deeply about your business and sometimes it’s hard to separate from it. One of the things Joe and I have worked really hard not to do is consume our personal lives with our business. I suggest to any entrepreneur who is going out there with a friend or a partner, to definitely try to create alone time that’s away from the business. It’s very important to avoid developing tunnel vision. Go out. Party. Meet new people.

What is your relationship with the small business owners that work here?
I hardly sit in the same seat twice. I jump around. I don’t have a permanent desk. Everybody knows me on a first name basis. Anyone can make an appointment with me by going to the front desk. I allocate three hours a day to that. I consult many of these companies for free. Over the years, I’ve learned quite a bit about what makes a small business successful.

Do you feel invested in the success of these companies?
I’m always invested because they’re success is my success. Any company that leaves you happy is a lifetime referrer. I’d rather be a company that grows based on referrals rather than marketing dollars, although, I do market quite a bit now because I’m trying to build a brand. There is a whole new audience of people stuck in their homes, who are still unemployed and are thinking about starting a business. They should know about their options.

What role does social media play in your brand?
I think social media is going to play a vital role in business now and in the future. Gary Vaynerchuk is in our space. I’ve had many conversations with him and his brother, AJ, another rising superstar. I think these guys really have a pulse on social media and understand it’s true potential. Gary makes a living off of it. He’s a great example of how you should market your brand. You have to be in touch with your community. You have to provide valuable content to you audience on a consistent basis.

Walk us through a typical day for you here at Sunshine.
No two days are the same. Today, for example, I had morning conference calls. I work with the city on helping them grow their initiative to be more friendly to start-ups. I met with four Shiners about different ways I could help them get more exposure. This was all before 12. I still do sales. I’m our number one sales person. I have no problem calling people and saying, “Hi, my name is Cheni. I’m the managing partner.” They’re like, “Are you kidding me?”

What advice can you give to young entrepreneurs?
Be afraid not to try. My biggest fear in life is regret. I think you should open your eyes to see what’s out there and identify something that makes you say, “I know this can be done better.” Once you identify what can be done better, try to create a very simple way to translate it, so people can easily understand. Then, create a business around it. Every idea is a million dollar business idea. It’s just a matter of how simply you can do it and how clearly you can deliver the message. Be a customer of your business. Don’t live someone else’s dream. There has to be a little anger behind an entrepreneur. When I was starting, I was very angry that nobody wanted to help me. Why did I have to sign a long-term lease and worry about not having the internet work? Nobody gave me a break, so I don’t want people to have to go through that. I think you can have a million dollar business just by helping people.

What’s the future of Sunshine?
Absolutely, we’re going to grow. We are building strategic partnerships with different cities. We plan on growing outside of New York. We plan on developing a service that allows a person from New York to work in San Francisco without paying any fees. We want to build a stronger entrepreneur base that will empower all of us like if we worked for a Fortune 500 company.

Special thanks to Cheni. For more info on Sunshine, please find them at www.sunshineny.com, twitter, and facebook.

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starting story posted Thursday, March 11th, 2010