Announcer this is nightly busines report with t good evening, everyone, and welcome to this special edition of nightly busines report. Im tyler mathisen. Sue herera has the evening off. Tonight we will examine the entrepreneurial spirit. The journey usually starts with a br idea. That may be the easy part, by the way. Then comes the truly hard work. But of course it can all pay off, and before you know it, that bright idea can turn into a billiondollar venture. We begin tonight with two new york city entrepreneurs who had the bright idea to change what may seem like a dull concept, office space. Both with tech backgrounds, they wanted to shake up the way leases work. And theyre not only increasing flexibility for renters but for building owners as well. Reporter when they began renting out their extra new York City Office space a few years ago, they didnt think it would turn into a business called notell. It was an accident, we didnt realize we were sitting on top of an explosive billions. Reporter in 15 months, they brought in 10 million. But starting it meant taking on a multinational, multibillion Dollar Company. We trying to decide if we had something unique to offer. Reporter some of the big boys are we work and regus. We work develops spaces for startups and individuals looking to share the cost of kitchens, social space, wifi, even group health insurance. Regus, in business for more than 25 years, used to target big businesses. Now its aiming for other segments as well, with 3,000 locations across 120 countries. But the two men believe there is a giant, underserved market. Fastergrowing companies with 20, 30, maybe 50 employees. Less than 1 of the Office Market is this coworking type stuff. 99 is companies that need headquarters. Reporter startups begin life as nomads. Brand identity is a plus. Kelsey says notells flexible oneyear lease allows venue book to move again if necessary. Notell says space for 20 runs about 10,000 a month in new york city. We didnt want to sign a really large lease and then sublette to another company. Reporter to knowtell, leases are the enemy. Leases were the way to do business, until someone showed you a dinner wfferent way. Reporte they say long term leases hurt Small Businesses and landlords. If average rents rise during the lease, landlords cant cash in. Knowtell helps landlords turn over their spaces more often, letting the market dictate the price the same way hotels change room rates day to day. Kn notell shares the risk with landlords and collects the margin off the top. That was a problem for a building owner. Because you cant really run a building with your leases turning over every since months. I think notell took care of that. Reporter norman kirlin is the landlord who first pushed them to fill extra space they were renting from him. Its not really a traditional sublease operation. Its more of a moving around the companies as they needed space. Reporter they also believe their tech backgrounds will help landlords adapt into the future. Who knows what the Conference Room will look like in ten or 20 years . It alleviates the necessity for them to become experts in technology. And for residents, we alleviate the necessity for them to become experts in real estate. You have to coordinate different peoples needs over time that change. Now that we have technology, we can coordinate their needs and put them together. Notell plans to expand to 40 locations by year end. The client list now includes media, finance, fashion, and retail companies. Another pair of entrepreneurs got the bright idea to simplify the process Health Insurers use to decide whether to pay for some drugs. The Company Makes software used by doctors and farm pharmacist get approvals. The Company Recently sold for more than 1 billion to the wholesale drug king mckessan. Tonight we show you how they bring the drug approval process into the 20th century. Reporter even a small town pharmacist like peter in connecticut sees it happen. Prescriptions placed on hold, requiring prior authorizations or pas before Insurance Companies will pay for medication. All the time. Every day. Theres at least one every day, if not five every day. Reporter they force doctors to decide whether to prescribe Something Else or ask the Insurance Company for approval. That used to mean forms to be filled out, faxes to be sent. It could be a week or two type of situation. And sometimes the patients dont need the medication anymore. Reporter enter cover my meds. Its software that supplies the forms and auto populates the patients records. Once you hit send, it puts doctors, pharmacists, and Insurance Companies all on the same page. Now headquartered in columbus, ohio, cover my meds was created by a former pharmacist and software developer. Patients said, why wont they just cover my meds . Reporter columbus native matt was Building Software and websites before he teamed with one of his top customers, sam rogen, in 2007. The aha moment for us is when we decided to put a prior authorization on multiple sclerosis drugs. We found 40 of our patients never went on the drug. Reporter he learned that most feared they couldnt afford to pay for the drug without coverage. It became imperative to speed up and simplify the process. Instead of sending patients often to fend for themselves, they wanted to tell patients, okay, weve got this for you. When a doc has an alldrug, allpayer solution, thats when the adoption and viral adoption model really came about. Weve now helped 42 Million People. Reporter cover my meds is free for patients and a half million prescribers who use it. Its also free for the 47,000 pharmacies using it. Its paying customers are Insurance Companies, and those pharmacy benefits managers who hope that cover my meds can help reduce the cost that build when patients dont take their medicine. Cover my meds wont discuss exactly what it charges, saying only that it cuts the average cost of each prior authorization request from roughly 40 to less than 10. Weve picked a problem that can be solved in a way that the Insurance Companies are a very important customer, theyre the way all of this has to work. Reporter its been working and selling too. Cover my meds doesnt quibble with reports that last years sales were roughly 100 million. By the end of 2016, theyll have more than 500 employees. And with Insurance Companies requiring approval on more and more drugs, an even higher purpose. This company can become quite large. Its because were solving a problem that is daily life. Cover my meds agreed to be acquired by mckessan in january. The two exowners are staying on for now. More than 67 Million People bowled at least one time last year. More than a third of them at a place run by tom shannon. Shes an entrepreneur who has turned rundown alleys into an International Brand thats become the largest player in the 6 billion u. S. Bowling industry. Heres how he made i havent got a chance. Maybe i do. Reporter dont let that first ball fool you. That was pretty abysmal. Reporter tom shannon knows how to strike it rich in bowling. How many total Bowling Centers do you run . Now, 308. And about 9,000 employees. Reporter his tenpin empire, known broadly as bowl more amf, racks up about 550 million in annual revenue and hosts plenty of celebrities. Al pacino, the kardashians. The kardashians were here . Youre kidding me. I taught kim how to bowl. I bet you did. Reporter it all started with less glamour and a single location. Bowl more lanes, a new York City Institution that shannon walked into in 1994, more than a half century after it opened. It was very run down. Probably no investment in at least three decades. Reporter but the Darden Business School graduate saw potential for a revamped bowling experience. Business was financed with the combination of 3,000 in equity, which is all i had, and 2 million borrowed. From whom . Twothirds of it was a seller note. I borrowed money from Small Business investment corp. At 17. 5 interest. Then he went to work, adding new technology, updating the decor, improving the music and the menu, and transforming the tired Bowling Alley into a hip nighttime destination. We used to renovate during the day, clean up, and open for business at 5 00. And it worked. Shannon says by 1999, the Union Square Location was the highest grossing Bowling Alley in the country. Two years later, he tried the same trick in suburban maryland with a similar result. And so i thought, its working in manhattan, its working in bethesda, we have a model that will work. Reporter soon he saw customers rolling through the doors of six bowl more centers at a time when thousands of alleys were closing shop, including amf, the biggest player in bowling at the time. For shannon, it was an entry angle to big league bowling. I partnered up with a private equity firm and we managed to buy amf out of bankruptcy for 300 million. So overnight, i went from six Bowling Alleys to 272. Then theres another acquisition, you get even bigger. Brunswick. This was a little bit audacious. Reporter the newly combined bowl more amf spent 70 million to score 85 Additional Centers from brunswick in 2014. The Company Currently operates under four brand names. Bowl more, amf, brunswick zone, and bolero, and it spares no expense on renovation. Do you work with theatrical stage and set designers to do this . We do it all inhouse. For me the funnest part of the business is i guess to create this crazy spectacle in which you can bowl. It actually has an economic return. Reporter a healthy one at that. In 2015, the annual revenue hit higher than half a billion dollars and welcomed more than 25 million visitors to its lanes. I view this as a long term play. And i dont know where the limit is. I expect at some point well be a multibillion dollar diversified entertainment company. Y well done once in a lifetime. Shannon has no plans to take the Company Public anytime soon, but hes looking to expand his empire outside the bowling by using an Old Fashioned sticktoitiveness, a group of working moms created a niche business and tapped into a multibillion dollar global label market which is expected to reach, get this, more than 43 billion by the year 2020. Their unconventional struggle from startup to brand name is how they made their millions. Rise and shine. Time to get ready for school. Reporter to keep track of her kids stuff, julie cole puts their names on almost everything. Give me your water bottles, dudes. Reporter a formidable task for all six of them. It helps that shes a cofounder of multimillion Dollar Company mabels labels based in ontario, canada, an idea that began when she and her sister and their mom couldnt find durable labels. We saw masking tape, permanent marker. We thought, theres got to be a better solution. Reporter they reached out to a friend who worked in printing. I said, this is ridiculous, tell your kids not to lose their stuff. Until youre in a parenting situation, you dont believe this is a problem. Reporter the four spent two years researching how to make sticky labels. That would go through the dishwasher, the microwave, be ev resistant. Reporter and they did it while working fulltime and raising families. My partners wanted to try something on their own as an addon business. Reporter all they really needed was a workspace, printing machines, and money. But they decided against outside investors. We were 100 , youve got to help us out, were doing a startup, were boot strapping. We did a lot of bartering for things. Our website was built in trade for a foosball table. We ran a Production Facility out of my sisters dingy basement. Reporter in 2003, mabels labels launched online, selling packs of 45 durable personalized labels for about 21 each. They received about ten to 15 orders a day, and then out of the blue, hundreds at one time. I called the foosball guy slash website developer and said, what is going on . He said, theres no virus, those are orders. Reporter turns out their product had been featured in an email newsletter and things really started to stick. I remember making myself count to five and then hitting f5 for refresh and more had come in. It was crazy. We had to call in sick for our day jobs to make these labels. Reporter within four years, this parttime business became a fulltime job for all of them. They moved out of the basement and into this 14,000 square foot facilities. By 2016, they had 40 employees and sales of 9. 5 million canadian. Thats nearly 7. 25 million u. S. Bucks. It caught the attention of one of the largest specialty packaging and label companies in the world, cce industries, which made them an offer. They understood our brand. They had been watching us for a long time. We sold the company for 12 million. Reporter thats more than 9 million u. S. Cole has continued to run public relations. Their two cofounders cashed out. Now the business pumps out hundreds to thousands of label packs a day depending on the season. It runs almost 24 7s. Theres something really special about starting this and building it and selling it, and knowing that you did it all without a single loan. I really do lov make labels. Mabels labels can be used on practically anything, sports, gear, luggage, shoes, phone skins, even including Bar Code Technology so it can be tracked back to you if you lose it. Thinking about retiring . Why the new retirement is not to retire so maybe you didnt make your millions, but you did work hard your entire life, and now its time to think about retiring. As jane wells reports, Many Americans dont want to retire in the i may bring in the camera close right here. Reporter veteran assistant director Jason Roberts is giving a class to aspiring background actors at burbanks legendary central casting. One student is 67yearold abe rogland. He used to run a Logistics Company but that went south in the recession. Now hes pursuing acting because he says he needs money. And a lot of them does, he says. A lot of them cashed out their iras, theyre out working because Social Security isnt making it. Reporter 42 of people working for pay after retirement need the mon by. But at the same time, almost all of them also do it for fun. I get bored. Reporter 77yearold walt retired at age 60 from a career in Food Services management. Now he picks up odd jobs as a background actor, not for money but to keep busy. He even did a scene with cameron diaz for bad teacher where she washed his cadillac. I didnt wash my car for two months after that. Reporter the fact is, were living healthier, longer, more active lives. Thats why the Senior Center here in palm springs is a hive of activity. Half of americans expect to live at least to age 85. And more of us are retiring earlier than expected but were not sitting around. People like sherry. I had Breast Cancer six years ago. And i looked at between 62 and 65, and i thought, do i really want to stay there another few years, or do i want to start really living . Reporter she ran the numbers, realized that with a little downsizing, she had enough retirement to, quote, start living. Now through a website called trusted house sitters, she house sits and pet sits around the world for free. I plan to do this as long as i can. I love it. Reporter retiring is a lot less retiring than it used to be. For nightly busines report, jane w while some are coming up with second acts in their retirement years, there are others who simply cant wait to really retire to start living life as they expected it to be. And theyre doing it well before 65. What are the pitfalls of early retirement . Our guest is here to discuss, diane, welcome, good to see you, how have you been . Good to see you. Lets say i have a mind that i would like to retire at 62 or 59 or whatever. How do i know if im a good candidate to do that . You really need to think about all the pitfalls that are out there. And do you have enough dollars to stretch and let you do everything that you want to do . So you need to think about a couple of things. What is it you want to do in retirement . Whats that going to cost . If you want to travel, if you want to do all those things. There are many things. Do you have a baseline Life Expectancy when you work with clients . Do you say 90, 95 . We use 100. Youre an optimist we have clients in their 90s and still going strong. So, you know, the odds are pretty good, were going to have a lot of people reach that age. Ive worked with several Financial Advisers over the years, and most of them, i say, no, you got this wrong, they tell me, dont expect to spend less when you retire than you do in your working years. Are they right . Theyre exactly right. In fact why . Because you replace all that free time you know, you used to spend money working, now people say, oh, you retire, you spend less. The reality is you dont, you spend more on entertainment, you spend more on eating out, travel, golf, tennis, whatever the things are. And you probably spend a lot more on health care. You definitely, possibly do. So what are those pitfalls that lets say i am getting ready to retire a little bit early, lets say its 62 or whatever it is. What do i need to avoid, most importantly . You need to make sure you have dollars in taxable accounts. Taxable accounts . Why . Thats so when you need dollars, when you need to draw dollars out, you dont have to tap those retirement accounts so soo