Real Time Rehab wins entrepreneurship award
By LAURIE WINSLOW World Staff Writer
Published: 11/17/2009 8:20 PM
And the grand-prize winner of the third annual Mayor’s Entrepreneurial Spirit Award is: Real Time Rehab.
On Tuesday evening, contestants along with their families and friends, community leaders, other entrepreneurs and organizers of the competition mingled and waited expectantly at the Tulsa Community College Center for Creativity downtown to learn the names of this year’s award winners.
The third-annual contest, which kicked off in April, attracted more than 85 entries before being narrowed over several months to the final seven.
Earlier this month the finalists had one last chance to impress judges during two-minute presentations.
Mayor Kathy Taylor said every one of the finalists was a winner.
“You’re producing jobs, you’re helping our economy and you’re in control of your lives and your businesses,” she told the gathering.
Months of waiting and diligence paid off for Jeremy Green of Real Time Rehab, who received a $30,000 check from SpiritBank. Also as the first-place winner, his company receives a free year of space at the Tulsa Collaboratorium, a downtown resource center for entrepreneurs provided by Kanbar Properties.
“I don’t know what to say here. I know they told us to prep,” Green said after stepping up to the podium to accept his award. “Obviously, thank you to everyone — to the contestants, judges, coaches, but most of all family, friends and investors.
“This has been a 3½-year process for us. It started in physical therapy school with the simple question: How can we improve physical therapy?”
Green said the prize money will be used for development of his company.
The $5,000 second-place award went to Part-Time Pros, founded by Carey Dunkin Baker and her husband, Brett Baker. The startup connects experienced professionals with part-time and contract employment.
The $2,500 third-place award was presented to Cog Togs Inc. and its creators — Shawna Sims, Melinda Ryan and Jeff Johnson, who also are siblings. Their social networking site for children requires kids to exchange bracelet beads with friends before they can connect safely with each other on the Web.
A newly added “Skunk Whisperer” award, designated for a contestant who didn’t win a cash prize, goes to Elote Café and Catering, owned by Libby and Jeramy Auld. The award provides six months of service by an advisory board, made up of judges and coaches from the competition, and a visually driven game plan process graphically facilitated by Sean Griffin, chairman of the Spirit Award.
The award is named after the 2007 third-place Spirit Award winner, Ned Bruha, whose business The Skunk Whisperer provides humane animal removal and prevention of wildlife problems in urban and rural areas. Although Bruha didn’t receive any money the year he entered, he has credited the Spirit Award as a catalyst in growing his business through the coaching and promotion he received as part of his participation.
“I think we have some very unique and powerful entrepreneurs here, and it’s just exciting to see them blossom through the almost nine-month process they go through with the Spirit Award,” said Griffin, who also was a judge for the competition, in an interview before the award ceremony. “Although they can’t all win a cash prize, they all are exceptional and that’s an important piece of this.”
Griffin said Real Time Rehab has a powerful business model that helps people rehabilitate themselves effectively from injury by providing DVDs that demonstrate exercises in a step-by-step way that is much easier to understand and follow than on paper.
“We perceive his business to be not only an innovation in rehabilitation but also one that has great potential to be a very large company,” Griffin said.
Starting next year, TCC will begin taking steps to oversee the Spirit Award by 2011. Griffin will remain chairman in 2010, and his team of judges and coaches will also stay on to train TCC for the transition. SpiritBank will continue as sponsor.
Source: Tulsa World