(FORTUNE Magazine) – ROBERT FISCHER, 31, a former manager laid off by Cleveland's Ameritrust bank in 1990, on how he came to pick MBA Pool Service as the name for a pool- cleaning business he started in Palm Coast, Florida: ''I have an MBA, and I finally thought I'd get some use out of it.''

FRANK K. AUCOIN, 49, founder of Sign It Quick, a Charleston, South Carolina, franchiser, on the problems of training people to use hand tools or computer technology to make commercial signs: ''I had no idea that some people have no knowledge of how to make anything.''