JUDY LITTEER: Eleven years ago, upon turning 40, I wondered: What will I do when I grow up? (The forties are kind of a grow-up period.) Not having gone to college, I felt pretty limited in a career sense. I was tired of having people control my life thru secretarial work. So I thought about going into sales. "If I could get a job talking to people, how perfect that would be."

I applied for a job at Manpower. It was nearby and close to what I wanted: Meet clients, interview temporary employees. The woman who hired me [Lee Nold] is actually my partner now. After about six months at the Manpower office, she brought me to San Francisco. After three more months, she quit — was recruited away to a smaller "boutique" personnel company [named RKV] — and brought me with her. Together, we worked there over about a year-and-a-half transition [to this company].

We tripled that business — but I wasn't making the money I thought I should be making. Again, not a lot of control. So what do you do? You go and open up your own business. I felt I could really put people to work in San Francisco, if they had the right attitude and the right skills — make clients happy, make people happy, and make *me* happy, with a better income.

GREGORSKY: What was missing at RKV? Commissions too small?

LITTEER: Yeah, and I wasn't [even] on commission, I was on salary. As a development person, I was bringing in a lot of business. Manpower was as big as you could get, but RKV was small. We had two or three employees. Lee was the manager. The owner was on-site; he did his own payroll. We had, probably, a couple of hundred temporary employees. The revenues were coming in.

I was put on a very small bottom-line profit structure, like one-half percent, every month, of whatever profits would come in. That was maybe a hundred bucks, every couple months — nothing. And the owner went off to Europe one too many times for me [laughter]. You know, "I'm making all the money here."

Now my business partner [Lee Nold] *was* making good money there; she was managing the establishment. *Her* issue was control; she likes to be the boss and make things happen. She had a lot more of this at RKV, where the owner didn't want to be involved day-to-day, than she'd had at Manpower.

Suddenly he decided to become involved, which drove Lee crazy. So she was being driven crazy for a whole different reason [control] than I was [compensation]. We figured: "Let's leave this and open our own business — we can do this."

GREGORSKY: And this transition was only a year-and-a-half? Wow, you got all fired up in a fairly short time.

LITTEER: Yeah! But we did all the prep work after hours, on our own time. During the day, we gave everything we had to Bob, who paid our salaries.

GREGORSKY: Suppose, back at RKV, your overall take-home pay had been 50% greater. Would there have been other, major sources of dissatisfaction?

LITTEER: Working for somebody else, you can't be as creative as you might want to be. At ProServ, we've accomplished things no one else in the country is doing. So a lot of it [besides money] is being creative, not being bored — changes. You can deal with [avoiding boredom and needing change] by changing jobs a lot — which is not always the most fun thing to do — or you can *create* something and stick with it as it grows and changes. I've always been that way. As a kid, I would make up clubs.

GREGORSKY: You were an extrovert in high school, I gather?

LITTEER: No, I was really shy. Very shy. I wanted to do things, I would start groups, but they were small. I wasn't ever the class president. I hated to give book reports. But things I hated doing, I would make myself do. Now, if someone asks me to give a speech, "Sure, I'd be happy to do it." Even five years ago, it was like, "Oh, God. This is awful."

GREGORSKY: What was your group-starting motivation as a little girl — to find soulmates?

LITTEER: I don't know! It was just something fun and different to do. I don't know that it was to find soulmates.

GREGORSKY: What did your groups do?

LITTEER: I had little clubs, money clubs. We had a Milwaukee Club — my family was from Milwaukee — and the group tried to save some money to travel back there. When you're a kid, you think you can save ten dollars and go buy the airplane ticket. Also I liked playing with the boys more, I didn't like playing with dolls. I had brothers and cousins, so I enjoyed building forts and other --

GREGORSKY: Where are you on the sibling rank?

LITTEER: I was the oldest, by four years. So I was the Queen for awhile. My two brothers arrived four and five years after me. People who are "out there" more tend to be the older one. Maybe they got used to having attention as a kid and they still crave it as an adult.

GREGORSKY: Do you regret not going to college?

LITTEER: I hated school. Couldn't wait to get out. Not going to college is the one big regret. And yet -- I really wouldn't want to do anything over. If I went to college, I wouldn't be here now. Anytime you open a different door, the rest of life changes. I would have done something else — probably become a teacher. But I wish I *had* the education. I wish somebody could've just given me a pill: Pop the pill, and have all this stuff in the head.

But I'm too lazy to go to school. I could've gone to night school. I prefer to play. So I work and play — I don't want to be educated. That's my next life [laughter]. I don't even like to read the newspaper. I probably should get some tapes on something — but I haven't been motivated to do that. It hasn't impaired me, I guess, from making money, from having fun, from traveling, from having a lot of new friends, now.

But not going to college — we all have our hang-ups about ourselves — that's my hang-up. I probably missed a good basic knowledge of government and literature, and just the growth you get when you go away from home. Except for having an apartment for a few months, I went from home to marriage.

Been married 31 years — same guy. Two kids. So I got a lot of stability in some areas and am really "out there" in others. [laughter]

GREGORSKY: What percentage of revenues comes from convention support?

LITTEER: Because that has built up so much, it might be a third convention, two-thirds office. Our formula looks at the whole concept of conventions. A different kind of person works best at conventions [versus being right for an office setting]. An office person wants to come in, work 8 to 5, and "I know my job is gonna be this." A *convention* person has *no* clue what the job will be. You might be room monitor today; you might be pulled after two hours to help register people — whoops, your hours just got back, sorry you need to leave at 5 p.m. instead of 7.

So flexibility [is vital], along with show-biz: Smiley-friendly. Like "Hi, come on in, welcome aboard." You have to be a little bit crazy to thrive at this.

We joined the Bureau, we got the directory; it would tell us who was coming to town when. We made phone calls from this office here, we sent out cute little mailers — and follow-up, follow-up, follow-up. Word gets out real fast. "If you're going to meet in San Francisco, call ProServ." But we're not the cheapest, in either business. We aimed instead to be the fastest and give the best customer-service. Forget "cheap" — we want to make money.

Then we decided to duplicate the [convention service] in other cities. We tried it out in Las Vegas in '94. Then we did Atlanta and Boston and L.A. It's called ProShow, offering on-site management. We knew from the start we couldn't travel hundreds of miles to recruit the people. Instead, we offered to train other [personnel] services to follow-thru [in that city]. If they'll promise to listen to us, and do what we say, we can get the raw people they have and make them our temps [to put on a large event].

GREGORSKY: Isn't this a role-reversal?

LITTEER: Yep. Suddenly we are the client, hiring them according to our specifications. But we know how to check out another temp service [because we've already established all our own measurements]. "Are we on the same wavelength? How flexible *are* you? How much can you change on a show floor to keep things flowing?"

In the case of Atlanta, we made some money on the Show. We charge a management fee — the client is billed directly from the services [we have hired on-site]. And then we charge for our skills — for managing everything.

GREGORSKY: You told me earlier how, even at the beginning of this company, you weren't obsessing — drinking coffee worried about marketing at 4 a.m., etc. I take from this that you are probably able to take a week off now and not be calling in every day.

LITTEER: Right.

GREGORSKY: That's different from a lot of business-owners I've talked to.

LITTEER: I'm not obsessive about the business. I don't think I ever have been. Lee was the more obsessive one in the early days, but we're more in the same space now.

In my case, it was always something else I was doing — and if it didn't work out, something else would turn up. I *did* worry about little things — things like, "Will the temp show up?" [laughter] "Do I have to negotiate this bill-rate again with this client?" Little things. But not major "where is the money gonna come from" fears.

When we opened, we didn't have a lot of capital. We sold some investments, plus my husband and I mortgaged our house. As a matter of fact, the decision to open the business caused my husband and me to split up. Our marriage wasn't really what I wanted; we were going off in different directions; I'm very social — Pete's not.

How stupid to leave your husband and open a business at the same time. I must've thought I'd be very successful at it, and become independent — not need to be married. "So let's just start it now. Do it all now." We were separated three months.

GREGORSKY: This sounds like a man's version of the midlife crisis.

LITTEER: [Laughter] Pete's a lot more conservative. He's a mechanic. As much as he'll moan and groan about his job, he won't change. It's a safety thing — he wants to work toward retirement. So I had a husband who, you know, was not real fun. And I got tired of saying "My husband's sick" when people would ask why Pete wasn't with me.

Now [as I'm ready to take charge], I hear him telling me: "No business, you're not gonna succeed, we're gonna blow the money." Well, okay then, blow you away: "We'll split up — if you feel that way. You take your half and I'll take my half."

I had to find him the apartment. The whole separation was over in three months. We never did sell our home, but we sold a rental place we had. He went thru some counseling — really did an about-face.

GREGORSKY: With a man, change requires a shock — a two by four.

LITTEER: Yeah! That's the way it was. Today we have a really solid, good, happy marriage. We have fun together. We go away a lot together. He even does things socially. So why didn't I do this 25 years ago?

Back then, the kids were appalled. I was in trouble. My family hated me, my brother — they all felt Pete was the poor underdog. But they forgave me. Oh, they were very happy when we went back together.

GREGORSKY: And your two daughters may have drawn a few conclusions about the management of the male of the species.

LITTEER: Maybe, yeah. I don't know. They're doing well with their guys, so maybe!

GREGORSKY: Can you tell me a time between '87 and now when the business was really on the line? A situation or crisis that made you really sweat bricks?

LITTEER: Yeah, when we lost our contract with Pacific Bell Directory. We opened up in '87, we got a contract in '89 with PacBell Directory — and it was a really nice contract. Nice rates. We had big business with them. We were just sittin' back thinking, "Aren't we successful?" Popping that champagne, taking limo rides around town, to the Chamber event, our staff included. It was great.

And then, after two years, they considered rolling the contract over. So we reminded ourselves: Now we can't *depend* on this, we've gotta get out and market to others. "But, oh gosh, let's just take off today anyway." It's very dangerous [to have one big client] — but it's so comfortable, so easy.

And so, in spite of what we said we'd do, we did the wrong thing.

PacBell decided to shift the contract from personnel to procurement, the bottom-line people, who thought, "Let's see what kind of a *deal* we can get here." So they opened it up to the world: "Who wants to have a contract with PacBell Directory? Send us your rates, fill out these forms." It was as if we never had the contract. We went as low as we thought we dare go — but it was not even *close* to what they ended up getting.

So we lost a hunk of business. We had enjoyed a 40-45% mark-up, and [our successors made their deal] at 28% mark-up.

We found this out the same month Lee was honored by the Chamber as Woman Entrepreneur of the Year. So here we're sitting with hardly any business, saying, "Oh yes, we're such a successful company" [laughter] — that was not real cool.

GREGORSKY: "Thanks, folks, just don't ask us this month how we did it."

LITTEER: The economy was also bad, we lost a ton of temps, because PacBell simply put them on the other service's payroll — they kinda pirated our people. Not a nice thing to do at *all*. So we got mad. We called people we knew [at the company] who were chiefs and bosses. "This is what is happening to us. What are you gonna do about it? Let's keep our temps on here. Are there other departments, or other companies, you can get us involved in?" They never did anything about it.

We also went out and hit the streets real heavy — right when large companies decided to quit using temps.

We kept all our employees thru this period, but we also told them how bad the crisis was. Luckily the company had a lot of savings, and we were able to live off that. We never had to go out and refinance or get more money [and dilute our ownership] to keep the business going. That's when we really developed the convention niche. Even though companies downsized and quit using temps, the Convention Center kept going.

GREGORSKY: Affirmative Action is up for grabs in Washington this year. With the exception of one lady who's a hard-charging conservative and prefers to evaluate all people as individuals, most of the people I've interviewed endorse federal set-asides for certain types of business, and the awarding of "points" for firms certified as women-owned. They think it's fair, though one [interviewee] would cut off the benefit after a fixed number of contracts — make the help "training wheels" as opposed to a permanent fix. But what's your take on Affirmative Action?

LITTEER: We've used it, and it has worked for us. This is how we can balance off the old boys' network. Instead of on the golf course, we'll do it on the computer. That's how we got the contract with PacBell Directory in the first place; that's how we get some stuff from PacTel [Pacific Telesis] now. And from government [agencies] as well. So *we* like it.

I have not been someone who went into business as a result of being blocked by men. A lot of women leave law firms or whatever because they can't make Partner — they can't do this, they can't do that. Never having a career that way [during my twenties and thirties], I only have second-hand knowledge [of the Glass Ceiling]. I can only say [Affirmative Action] has helped us in this business.

GREGORSKY: What does the word "feminism" mean to you?

LITTEER: I don't take it as an extreme. It's like this: The men are run by the women at home — pretty much: The women are in control, the guys [in a marriage] kinda go along with what the women say, right?

But, in business, the guys are in-charge — they gotta have something, right? So, since we are in-charge of men, why aren't we in charge of the world? We've only been in the workplace [since the mid-'60s]. My mother's generation, they were all home, except when [the women] were doing rivets, and that stopped when the War did.

In fact, I'm really getting tired of picking up women's magazines and reading about the f-----g Glass Ceiling. Now they're calling it an Acrylic Ceiling — they got rid of the word "glass," because glass you can break, acrylic you can't break.

GREGORSKY: That was a clever propaganda amendment.

LITTEER: Or going to speeches that are pretty much male-bashing. "Women can't get ahead." "There are only so many of us in Congress." Well, how can they hold us back *that* much? If we all banded together and said, "Takeover time, so move over, here we are!" [laughter] — I mean, what's stopping it? Why isn't it happening? Is the guys' network [in these larger companies] really that tight? Why can't we get around it? We're so clever, why can't we get around that?

Even with the Glass Ceiling, what's the worst thing to come about? We've established all these great businesses. We couldn't be creative there, so we're doing it out here. Instead of moaning about it, let's see where we *can* be productive.

So it's happening. We're making strides — you know, come on, give it a break [laughter].