Megan Torrance likes to say her start-up, TorranceLearning, started with her and the spare bedroom in her house in 2006.

Today her training company employs seven people in downtown Chelsea after hiring three people last year. Her firm is now shopping for bigger office space in downtown Chelsea to help accommodate yet more expected growth.

"It's a great walkable community," Torrance says. "It's great to walk into stores and be recognized."

Torrance spent 15 years specializing in process consulting or change management. It always revolved around some sort of training. Torrance decided to turn that into her own company as a way of spending less time on the road and more time making money for herself.

She is seeing more companies spending money on training now that the economy is starting to expand a little. The big argument is that it costs much less to hire a company like TorranceLearning than building up an in-house department.

"The telephone is ringing again," Torrance says. "It's ringing from places it hasn't rung before."

Source: Megan Torrance, president of TorranceLearning
Writer: Jon Zemke