"Keep your day job” is advice that many aspiring entertainers are loath to hear but might carry more credence if it came from a veteran musician such as Dan DoBell. In DoBell’s “day job” as business manager at Enterprise Works in the UI Research Park, he helps entrepreneurs on the Urbana campus launch their fledgling companies. But on weekends this affable accountant can be found on local stages playing guitar with the band Maurice and the Mindset, a group he co-founded last year. DoBell, who earned a bachelor’s degree in accounting and an MBA from Iowa State University, was business director of Iowa State’s research park before joining the staff at Illinois about 2-1/2 years ago.
Tell me about your musical career.
I started as a drummer in a Christian rock band in high school. I learned how to play the guitar, sold my drums at 17 or 18 and have played guitar ever since. When I graduated, I played full time with a five-man USO show band and did the club circuit through the Midwest. We had tuxedos and a horn section and did shows with comedy, choreography, costume changes and instrument changes.
When the ’80s rolled around, we got a new lead singer and went with the ‘hair band’ thing. I was on the road for three years and then decided, I’ve had enough of this. I’m going to go with whatever is going to get me the most money and always keep me gainfully employed. I opened up the Des Moines Register one day and the first four pages of the help wanted ads were for accountants, so I said, ‘That’s what I’ll do.’
But I’ve always continued to play music on the weekends. I’ve been with bands who have opened for Steppenwolf, Head East, Black Oak Arkansas, Blue Oyster Cult, 38 special. I was in one of the top rock bands back in Iowa before I came here: Standing Hampton.
When I came here, I was hoping to find a band to play with and was going nuts, saying ‘I want to play!’ So I decided I’d just have to start a band. It has just been going great. I’m like a caged animal; I’ve just got to play.
Is being in a band as exciting as we all think it is?
It’s a lot of work. There’s grunt work that has to be done and nobody wants to do it, like making phone calls to nightclubs, delivering promo packets, printing up posters. Believe me, it’s not all fun and games.
What does your job at the university entail?
I’m the business manager for the Research Park and the business incubator EnterpriseWorks, so I handle all of the front-line bean counting. When a professor or someone else affiliated with the university has intellectual property they want to commercialize, we help them with the resources to start a company, assist with business plans, prepare financial statements and handle receivables, give them guidance on their university accounts and act as a liaison between the company and the university.
At EnterpriseWorks our goal is to graduate them to be profitable within about three years or less. We monitor them and measure their milestones versus their financial statements.
We have 19 tenants. We predict that we’ll be full in about a year to a year and a half, which would mean roughly 25-30 tenants, depending upon the type of business. It could be a guy with a cubicle for $95 a month or it could be a big, well-funded entity that wants two or three labs for a couple of years while they ramp things up.
What’s your favorite part of what you do?
It’s the people. Hanging out with them. Talking about their projects. We’re working with the most brilliant scientists in the world and they’re all just wonderful characters. Being able to say that I’m in the same building as some of the world’s greatest scientists is just a wonderful joy. The things these people are working on are just mind-boggling: robotics, biotech, software, chemistry. It’s a lot of fun.
What’s the most challenging part?
Same thing: those professors. This is their technology, their baby, so they can be really protective and demanding. They love their invention and their science, but the idea of doing tax returns and financial statements is just not a fun thing. I don’t do their taxes or financial statements but I have to deal with them on a business level.