Great friends Past recipients of the Parkland College Foundation’s V. Dale Cozad Entrepreneur of the Year Award in 2023:
2022:
2019:
2018:
2017:
2016:
2015:
2014:
2013:
year 2012:
2011:
2010: Clint Atkins
POTOMAC — Betty Brennan may have grown up on a farm in Streator, but the career change to regenerative agriculture is still new to the co-founder and former president of Taylor Studio, a Rantoul-based company that designs and creates exhibits for museums and parks across the country.
“I was like a janitor for my dad,” she explains, “‘Get this tool, get that tool.’ I didn’t learn the ins and outs of running a farm. … It takes so many different skills, from animal husbandry to botany to agriculture. There’s a lot to learn.”
Brennan’s latest project, the 250-acre Bluestem Springs Farm, is in Potomac, and while she currently contracts with more conventional farmers, in the future she hopes to incorporate more regenerative farming techniques, such as implementing cover crops, reducing chemical use and implementing crop rotations.
As a first step towards regenerative agriculture, she plans to start keeping sheep, raising them on pasture, in rotational grazing, and pasture-fed, with plans to eventually raise other livestock.
Brennan’s work also includes creating grasslands, maintaining forests, removing invasive species and planting native plants.
And when you need a break, you can even ride a horse.
In some ways, Brennan has felt like she’s been out of the public eye since “going to the farm,” so she was surprised to learn that the Parkland College Foundation had selected her as the 2024 recipient of the V. Dale Cozad Entrepreneurship Award.
The award is given annually to an individual who “demonstrates the best traits of entrepreneurship, including leadership, self-motivation, willingness to take risks, drive, perseverance, discipline, self-confidence, strong values and passion.”
The winners will be recognized in collaboration with founding members of the university’s entrepreneurship program.
While moving into farming may seem like an odd choice for someone who has been in business for more than 30 years, Brennan described it as a “natural transition.”
“At Taylor Studio, we were teaching people about nature,” she said. “We had a lot of natural history exhibits and we worked with nature centers. We did a lot of wetland, forest and prairie exhibits. That’s what my farm is all about.”
She also said her long-held desire to be an entrepreneur likely stemmed from growing up on a farm, which is a small business in itself and, like any business, comes with its own share of risk.
Brennan founded Taylor Studios with her ex-husband, Joe Taylor, when the two met when Brennan was a teenager, taking business classes and dreaming of making it onto Inc. Magazine’s list of 500 fastest-growing companies.
The couple both attended Southern Illinois University, and Taylor got a job with a taxidermist in Murphysboro.
“He got a job making trees at the nature center, and we realized it was an industry,” Brennan says. “There was a group of people making museum exhibits for museums.”
Taylor then got a job in that industry at Chase Studios in Cedar Creek, Missouri, while Brennan finished his MBA and started another business making interactive computer programs for museums.
Eventually, they decided to join forces and go into business of their own, opening Taylor Studios on their farm in Mahomet in 1991. As the business grew, they later moved to a building in Rantoul.
Jason Cox, vice president of operations at Taylor Studios, said he first met Brennan when he was a college student looking for a job in 1998. Brennan has worked for the company ever since.
“It was a great pleasure working with Betty over the years and getting to know her on a personal level,” he said. “She was a fantastic mentor and a very special friend.”
Cox said he had always been impressed with Brennan’s work ethic and passion for customer service.
For example, the company once heard from a customer that a $10,000 model of a giant swordfish it had made wasn’t scientifically accurate, and Mr. Brennan promised to fix the error, even if it meant a financial hit.
“She knew it would have been damaging to our business,” Cox says, “but she said, ‘This is the right thing to do. We have to do it,’ and she stood by the Taylor Studios name and product and never wavered. That’s what stuck with me early on and made me want to stay.”
The company’s work includes creating a 2,500-square-foot poppy field for the National World War I Museum and Memorial in Kansas City, Missouri, and a life-size mammoth for the University of Illinois Museum of Natural History.
In an interview in 2021, Brennan said the company has created and produced more than 700 exhibits in 30 years for clients including museums, parks, universities and large corporations, with work spanning 45 states and four countries, she said.
This includes local work, such as multiple projects for the Urbana Park District and its Anita Purves Nature Center.
Judy Miller, former environmental programs manager for the park district, said Taylor Studios was one of the first exhibition companies interested in working with smaller clients.
“No matter the size of the project, she wanted Taylor Studios to do the best job possible,” she said of Brennan. “She wanted us to do a better job than anyone else.”
“Her pure drive and work ethic, the amount of effort she puts in to set goals and achieve those goals was very impressive,” Cox said.
The company fulfilled Brennan’s dream of making the Inc. 500 list in 2000. It has also been named to the Inc. 5,000 list twice, and Brennan was named to the magazine’s top 100 female founders in 2020.
She eventually bought Taylor outright and continued to run the business for several years.
“I loved it. It was my treasure,” she says, “but I think for the first time in human history we had four generations working together. I think it made it a little bit more difficult to understand what the younger generation wanted and to motivate the group towards the same vision and work together to get there.”
The pandemic has also been a stressor, she said.
Brennan said he thought at one point members of the company’s management team might be interested in taking an ownership stake as they explored possible succession plans.
“When that didn’t work out, I decided it was time to do something different,” Brennan says, “so I pitched the company to a mergers and acquisitions firm, they pitched the company, and I found a buyer who wasn’t going to resell it and would use my management team.”
Brennan sold the business to Innovative Companies, a unit of New York-based Proviso Capital, in late 2021. He remained in the role of president for a short time before stepping down in the fall of 2022.
After leaving the company, Brennan took a year to figure out what to do next.
“After I left Taylor Studios, I started paying more attention to where my joy comes from, which is caring for animals and nature and being outdoors,” she said.
Brennan is proud of his time at Taylor Studios and feels the company has had a positive impact.
“Once again, I strive to make a positive impact on the world through my work,” she said.
Brennan will be honored Thursday at Parkland’s Entrepreneur of the Year Awards dinner at the I Hotel and Illinois Conference Center in Champaign.
