Oh, to Be So Young, Ambitious and Really <i> Really</i> Rich

The Los Angeles chapter of the Young Entrepreneurs Organization is having its inaugural meeting on a gloomy day in the life of the recession: Orion is still bankrupt despite a major Oscars sweep. Sears announces plans to cut 2,000 jobs. A San Diego S&L; posts losses of $800 million in 1991.

As storm clouds loom metaphorically over the chicly tucked-away Sunset Marquis Hotel in Hollywood, regular working stiffs wrestle with regular dilemmas: Pay for valet parking or save a buck and park in the rain on the street?

But just inside cozy Villa 1-C are memories of a warmer, brighter time. A fire glows in the fireplace, the same way the Gipper’s eyes used to glow when he spoke of Reaganomics. Outside on the tented-in patio, champagne and miniature foods circulate. And everywhere-- everywhere-- are friendly, attractive, moneyed professionals talking shop and doling out business cards.

It’s as if the ‘80s weren’t dead after all, just . . . hiding.

Except for one thing: The professionals in this room were barely out of benzoyl peroxide when yuppies ruled the Earth. The group is called the Young Entrepreneurs Organization because its members--from the United States, Mexico and Canada--are young. Really young. Despite the Rolexes and BMWs and well-cut suits, there is not a receding hairline in sight.

Tonight’s potential members have driven through the rain to check out YEO, founded six years ago to bridge the gap between similar groups for college students and seasoned pros. The group lets members trade ideas and rub elbows with older mentors.

It’s also a place they can hang with people their own age who recognize the difference between a 401K and 501 jeans.

Such people, they admit, are scarce.

YEO’s national president, Neil Balter, is 31 and retired. In 1990, he sold his California Closet Co., which he began at 18, for $11.5 million. He says one of his oldest pals still works at the phone company for 40 grand a year. “He doesn’t want to hear my problems,” says Balter. “And he can’t just pick up and go to Hawaii for the weekend.”

A former Valley dude and self-described partier, Balter shares common demographic traits with YEO’s other 268 members. Their companies run the gamut from computers to real estate development to parking garages, but all YEO-ites must have begun their businesses before 30, must be no older than 40, and must bring in gross annual revenues of at least $1 million.

“It’s fun,” says Balter of the group. “We don’t take ourselves too seriously. I tell everybody to check their egos at the door.”

That is, of course, if you can get in the door.

Millionaire 20-year-olds would seem like a rare breed. But YEO, which has its headquarters in Washington, D.C., and has chapters in San Diego and San Francisco, is sure that Los Angeles has enough qualified baby execs to make a local chapter worthwhile.

“You’ve gotta figure, there’s a huge market here,” says Karen Murphy, 33, who co-owns a Beverly Hills public relations firm and whose 25-year-old partner will head up YEO’s local branch. The inaugural meeting isn’t exactly huge, but it’s respectable--about 20 (mostly male) outgoing entrepreneurs have shown up.

Of course, there were wanna-bes who couldn’t even wrangle an invitation to the event. “We got calls from 30 or 40 (people) who you could just tell wanted to come and meet rich entrepreneurs,” says Susan Pasarow, who works for Karen Murphy. “And then we’d get calls from people who maybe were 31 and wanted to start a business. I felt bad because I didn’t want to make them feel old.”

John Bryant, who owns the Irvine-based financial holding firm Bryant Group Companies Inc., does qualify. In fact, he’s a prized YEO member, one that the group points to as the ultimate in young entrepreneurial success.

He grew up in Compton, where at the age of 10 he was buying candy wholesale and selling it retail to his peers, pocketing 300 bucks a week. “My mission is to be one of the nation’s young black economic pioneers,” he says. Bryant is now 26, and his companies did $24 million in transactions last year.

Most of the entrepreneurs who meet YEO criteria feel old--perhaps a combination of too many 18-hour days and that sense of dissociation that comes with being a child prodigy.

“Entrepreneurs aren’t really a breed understood by their peers or by their parents,” Bryant says. “I am treated like literally the oldest person in my family.”

He describes himself as “26 going on 50.”

A 23-year-old publisher sighs: “I feel 30 already.”

And Scott Purcell, the owner of “a bunch of securities firms” and one heck of a firm handshake, admits that while he loves his work, it does take its toll.

“Anybody can be rich,” he philosophizes. “But are they willing to pay the price that money costs?”

YEO, Balter tells the group in a speech on the tented patio, can be a great help during times of crises--be they existential or plain financial.

“Our motto is ‘Sharing, Caring and Trust,’ ” he says. “This is not the Rotary Club, this is not the Chamber of Commerce. You don’t have to come in here and pretend business is going fine if it’s not.”

He explains the group’s smaller monthly forum meetings, where members get together and hash out problems: how to deal with creditors, for example, or how to put together an employee handbook.

And he talks about the annual YEO convention, which last year included a speech by “Mayflower Madam” Sydney Biddle Barrows: “She talked about customer service.”

But perhaps the thing that makes YEO worth the $495-a-year membership is that it’s a place where members can “air their successes,” Balter says. “If something great happens, you can share it and nobody will think you’re bragging.”

Murmurs of agreement ripple through the crowd.

“Now,” says Balter, “Are there any questions out there?”

A gust of wind catches the tent, but heat lamps keep out the cold. Inside Villa 1-C, the fire crackles invitingly.

And not a single person asks, “Anybody got an extra buck for the valets?”