On Tuesday morning, a few hours before Mayor Anthony Foxx & Co. arrived for a small-business photo-op, shop owner Chris Finley was quietly retracing his tough and unlikely road to entrepreneurship.
"I've made some stupid decisions," said Finley, the 31-year-old owner of Computer Functions, a computer repair shop at 1427 South Blvd.
Finley recounted, for instance, joyriding with a drunken buddy in 2001 in his hometown of Anderson, S.C. The duo made a stop at a Krispy Kreme, then proceeded to plow straight into a tree trunk. The smashup was so bad, and injuries so serious, it made the local news.
"I was told I'd never walk again," Finley said, rocking proudly on his heels. "But I said to myself, 'There's no way I'm going stay in this bed for the rest of my life.' "
If only Finley's drama ended there: Insurance payout in hand, he moved to Charlotte in 2003. He also took up with a woman who, in the course of a year, conspired with her posse to rid him of his worldly possessions, he said. "My house and car kept getting broken into."
No, these are not the kind of stories that typically lead to summits with a mayor. But on Tuesday, Foxx stopped by Computer Functions to not only salute Finley's story of personal transformation and entrepreneurial guts, but to solicit his views on how the city can better support its other 27,000 small-business owners.
"You are an inspiration to so many people in this community," Foxx said.
Just a few years ago, while a student at Central Piedmont Community College, Finley had fallen so low that he was homeless, living in his car. His refusal to quit paid off. After graduating in 2007, he launched Computer Functions, which does everything from computer virus removal to diagnostic services.
With local unemployment hovering in double digits, Mayor Foxx says he's committed to supporting programs and policies that fuel job growth, whether it's reducing government red tape in getting a business license to revamping the city's new small-business website to make it more user friendly.
"It would have been easy to go to a small business that's been in business for 10 years and has a huge revenue and profit line," Foxx said. "But this is business - and business is not always pretty."
That's for sure. A couple of weeks ago, Finley says Computer Functions was burglarized overnight. Fortunately, damage was minimal: just a shattered window and a stolen laptop, he said. Still, the setback inspired one of his suggestions to the mayor on Tuesday: a citywide grant program to help businesses defray expenses for security.
"With the economy falling, keeping your business up to date with security can be expensive," he said. As Finley went on, Mayor Foxx nodded favorably. "That's a good idea," the mayor told him at one point. That's a place far removed from the joyrides of the past.
