"Our target client is the individual entrepreneur and family trust," said Ryan-Thrailkill, who has been immersed in the commercial brokerage arena since 1978. "The smaller company or the guy who is moving into his first executive office or who has had a small home-based business working out of his garage and is ready to move to his first location - those are the people who really need help, because they don't know the process. Anyone who calls us gets help and all of my agents have to subscribe to that theory. Sometimes working small transaction does not pay commission but we still do the deal because we're building good will, and clients will remember you down the road for helping them, so more than 50 percent of our business is referrals."

Ryan-Thrailkill founded Millennium as a solo operation, so perhaps she can empathize with the challenges faced by small business owners. Originally a zoology major at the University of Washington, she began her real estate career as an onsite leasing agent for an industrial project in Orange County, working her way up the ladder and gaining comprehensive experience with other companies before moving to Denver in 1985.

"The company I worked for handled a lot of institutional projects, so I headed up a regional office and spent five years under the most dramatic real estate situation you can imagine, when there were no tenants to be had in high-rises which would be trophy buildings in Las Vegas," she said. "It was a tremendous learning experience of how you adapt in a down market but also extremely draining."

Burned out, Ryan-Thrailkill was looking for new opportunities when she was approached in 1990 by a head-hunter to head up the Las Vegas field office for a developer, a position which allowed her to further her knowledge of the industry. She later joined a national platform integrated leasing and management firm as senior vice president and director of operations, a post she held for five years before the family-owned company added additional partners and its business philosophy was modified.

Then Ryan-Thrailkill had the opportunity to sell a large industrial portfolio for a hefty commission, a move that afforded her a nice nest egg-and the opportunity to assess her career.

To that end, she launched Millennium in 1999 with less than $2,500.

"My concept was that I had a brokers license and a lot of tenant relationships and I would just do tenant representation, which doesn't have any overhead or responsibility other than myself," she said, adding that she operated the company by herself for about a year. "I started building relationships as an individual and I had more and more opportunities so I had to re-evaluate and say, 'What do I want to be when I grow up?' and I thought maybe I really want to be a boutique management and brokerage firm. So I wrote a new business plan which included taking office space in one of the places we were managing and added an administrative assistant and took on my first agent."

She said the business cruised along for the next couple of years before she was compelled to pen a third business plan in order to determine in which direction she wanted to take the company to better compete with national and international companies.

She resolved that metropolitan Las Vegas would be her niche, and moved forward with that in mind.

"The reality is that real estate is local and the people who ask you to find space in Las Vegas don't want to know if you can find them office space in Dubai, so I decided that metro Las Vegas would be my world, and if clients needed to move out of this market, we have referral networks," she said. "So that was the gist of the new marketing plan and since we implemented it things have just really changed."

Indeed, the company has doubled its business for every three of the last years, and now manages 25 properties totaling nearly 5.8 million square feet.

This includes Las Vegas' 56,000-square-foot Reno-Arville business park. Margaret Scalise, property supervisor for Santa Monica-based Reno-Arville Associates, has been a Millennium client for seven years.

"Renee handles management and she is also my broker for leasing," Scalise said. "I find her to be extremely intellectual and she is a problem-solver and also very professional. She has always fulfilled our needs and manages the building very efficiently and solves any tenant issues we may have so everyone will be happy. She is very responsive and always comes up with good suggestions and recommendations."

Like many small business owners, Ryan-Thrailkill has faced numerous challenges along the way. Among the largest? Projecting cash flow.

"Given the fact they we do brokerage, we typically we rely on landlords to cut us a check and sometimes that does not happen right away so it's hard too project when cash will flow into the company, so that was a challenge initially," she said.

She overcame that obstacle by bolstering the property management side of the business, which is fee-based on revenue collected each month.

She went on to say that building up the property management component was also a strategic move in response to changes in the local commercial marketplace.

"Previously, most product was for lease, but with rising land prices we started seeing small office and industrial projects offered for sale, so they created a new venue which is what we call commercial association management services for the common interest portions of group-owned commercial properties," she said. "So we became the experts in that and took the community association manager certification program even though that's not required."

Millennium faced another challenge when the building that housed the company was sold.

"We learned a hard lesson when we had offices in a building that we managed and ownership of the building changed and our management contract was terminated so we had to relocate very quickly," she said, adding that the hurdle resulted in a positive outcome. "We were fortunate that we found new offices we moved into August 1 that accommodated the growth of the company and also upgraded the company profile."

Ryan-Thrailkill faced that challenge in the same manner she tackles other obstacles or deterrents: With an optimistic attitude, an approach she said will benefit other small business owners.

"It was one of those things we hadn't anticipated or planned for and that's part of being and entrepreneur," she said. "It don't matter how much you over-think, things will be thrown at you and the sign of a true professional is to maintain a positive outlook and that everything happens for a reason and you have to continue down the path until the benefit of what happened is revealed. You can wallow or you can say everything happens for a reason and play it out. Part of being a successful entrepreneur is being patient and flexible to allow the culture of the company to evolve."

Ryan-Thrailkill credits the success of the company in part to her staff, and believes that having the right team in place is beneficial regardless of the size of a company.

"I would rather have a vacant desk than put the wrong person in because synergy in the corporate culture is more important than the gross profit," she said. "That's not to say I've never made hiring mistakes but you recognize them as quickly as you can that's a hard thing because nobody wants to be a bad guy, but this is my company and I want it to be a place I can't wait to get to everyday and if I don't feel that way because we have disturbed synergy then I am not being a good executive."

Ryan-Thrailkill is a strong proponent of trade associations, and encouraged other small business owners to get involved as well.

"Take an active role in trade associations because that will introduce you to the people in your field you can learn from people who can mentor you so you can help mentor someone else," said Ryan-Thrailkill, immediate president of the Southern Nevada chapter of the National Association of Women Business Owners, 2008 president-elect of Commercial Alliance Las Vegas and a former director of the Nevada Association of Realtors and the Greater Las Vegas Association of Realtors. "The greatest learning resource is trying to teach your business to someone else because it causes you to think about the day-to-day and sometimes when I am doing that I have the greatest revelation of changes that need to occur. You also need the benefit of your peers as cheerleaders."

As for the future of the company, "I never wanted to be the biggest brokerage firm or have a national platform," she said. "We'll continue to grow in a thoughtful and organized manner as long as the market responds to what we do. I don't have a crystal ball, so every morning I wake up and I can't wait to get here to find out what's going to happen next."