Q. How do you determine how
much the changes will cost?
I hired a financial consultant
to help me project out how
much this regionalization is
going to cost. If I’m going to
spend the money, I need to
spend it correctly. With travel
and transportation costs being as high as they are right now, it’s
a moving target to put a finger
on exactly what it’s going to
cost for this regionalization.
Because we’re an entrepreneurial company, I stand behind
the value of not overspending. If
we were a publicly traded company, for example, and I had a
big bucket of money to spend
on the best marketing materials
and brochures and my job was
to do bid work on who’s going
to provide for all these things
and sub out our ability to be creative, it would be a different
story — and my employees
wouldn’t like it.
Q. How do you keep your
employees happy?
We’re going to remain as independent as we possibly can and
come up with solutions amongst
ourselves. Regional managers
have to be able to duplicate
what we’ve done in St. Louis in
order to be successful.
Our business is one of connections. One person knows another; you end up being introduced
to somebody based on your
presence.
We’re not going to put up billboards, we’re going to meet
people on the way and provide
a glimpse into our culture. It’s
the same way with this regionalization process. We have to go
in and kind of start at ground
level from a bootstrap perspective and build the culture.
If I get the right regional manager in a certain geographic
area that possesses the qualities it would take [to duplicate
our success], then I’ve home-grown again. It’s been a home-grown experience, and that’s
the franchise.
That’s what we want to do,
because it’s more fulfilling.
There’s more ownership and
buy-in from the employee and
then we end up spreading the
culture.
HOW TO REACH: Pfoodman Holdings LLC, (636) 230-3310 or www.pfoodman.com
