During 18 years as a banker, Gretchen Shugart helped clients raise money for their businesses.

Then, the co-founders of one client asked the Pelham resident to join their fledgling company. She did in January 2001, and the move became her ticket to a new career -- literally.

The startup, TheaterMania.com Inc., is a source for theater tickets and information that was founded in 1999 and owns and operates the www.theatermania.com Web site. It sells tickets for Broadway, off-Broadway and off-off-Broadway in New York City and has comprehensive listings for shows in 40 markets across the country. The site offers theater news, reviews and video content.

TheaterMania.com sells tickets for shows in the Lower Hudson Valley, such as ones at the Westchester Broadway Dinner Theater in Elmsford, the Emelin Theater for the Performing Arts in Mamaroneck and St. Charles AME Zion Church in Sparkill.

"It's really the most satisfying job I've ever had," Shugart, the company's chief executive, said. "I could not dream up a better job, for me."

TheaterMania.com, which has 30 employees, is Shugart's first entrepreneurial experience outside of the banking industry. She handles the financial side of the business. However, she has been learning about advertising, technology, customer service, consumer marketing and editorial.

"What I didn't have was publishing experience before coming to TheaterMania," Shugart said from the company's offices in the Flatiron Building in Manhattan. "It has been very interesting to manage an editorial department and preserve the separation between the revenue side of the business and the editorial side."

She also said that she is forced to think differently as an entrepreneur rather than as an employee at an established business.

"It was a big adjustment, the idea of meeting a payroll," she said. An entrepreneur, she said, questions the importance of each expense. More>>>

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