And Hamister was taught well. Rotating through each department, he got to know his fellow staff members and their jobs. Then he spent a week living as a resident, learning to see the world through their eyes. Training completed, he went back to school to complete requirements for his own nursing-home administrator's license and founded National Health Care Affiliates (#329) as a single facility in Leroy, N.Y., in 1977.
The past 10 years have been hard for the nursing-home industry. A number of operators have been convicted of overcharging patients and the government, while others have been accused of abusing and neglecting their residents. In response, government oversight and regulation have become more stringent, while nursing-home patients and their families have become both more discriminating and more demanding. Through it all, NHCA has grown steadily -- from one facility with 77 beds to 15 with 2,387 residents.
Hamister credits his company's growth to the values he learned during his apprenticeship, and he has made it his business to see that his employees share those values. Potential managers are trained just as he was, spending up to two years rotating through the housekeeping and dietary and receivables departments. And like Hamister, they live for a time with the residents. Even when training is completed, managers make regular rounds with the nurses, talking to each resident at least twice a month.
To the residents, Hamister says, it's the details that matter most -- wallpaper rather than paint, fresh flowers in the rooms, dining rooms where residents can eat with their families. But delivering that quality depends on keeping high-quality staff, usually the bane of nursing-home operations. Good salaries help, and NHCA's salaries are consistently higher than industry norms. As a result, turnover, which averages more than 60% nationwide, is less than 40% at NHCA.
STARMARK INC.
CHICAGO
ADVERTISING, MARKETING, AND PUBLIC RELATIONS
A decade ago business-to-business advertising was small potatoes, a market virtually ignored by the powerful agencies clustered on Madison Avenue. The advertising itself was rarely more than a recitation of performance specifications. The agencies that handled it were mostly small and sleepy.
Starmark helped to change that. When the husband-and-wife duo of Dan Estes and Peggy Nordeen started their Chicago agency 10 years ago, they were determined to show business customers that it was possible to convey technically important facts in ways that were as sophisticated or dramatic or as visually appealing as the best of the cigarette and car ads. "After all," explains Estes, "everyone is a consumer, whether they're an engineer or a purchasing agent, and everyone is going to react like a consumer."
Today, the logic of that argument has generated a booming business-to-business advertising market, with nearly 2,000 agencies across the country competing for these ever-more critical and profitable clients. And Starmark (#311) has managed to stay in the forefront of the industry by broadening its services to include public relations, market research, and sales support. The agency now has offices in Chicago, Denver, and Milwaukee. And it has developed a computer program, Adfacts, which measures the effectiveness of advertising programs and allows the agency to fine-tune its advertising buys.
HEURIKON CORP.
MADISON, WIS.
MANUFACTURER OF MICROCOMPUTER BOARDS
Chris Priebe never expected to be in computers. In fact, he never really expected to be in business. In college he'd been a sculptor, earning his master's degree in fine arts at the University of Wisconsin. Reality hit at graduation, when he realized that his artwork just wouldn't support a young and growing family.
It was an engineer friend who first saw the connection. Priebe's sculptures were not exactly carved from Italian marble. They were massive things, and "building them was something of a manufacturing process," Priebe remembers. "I had to work with blue-prints, metal fabricators, design engineers."
It was from these artistic roots that Heurikon (#498) began. Priebe found his first inspiration at the photo-finishing lab where he took a job. There he noticed that his colleagues were constantly checking their watches to see when the pictures would be finished. Teaching himself the necessary electrical engineering, Priebe developed a programmable time sequencer. Other controller systems soon followed -- one for newspaper platemaking, and another for maintenance of a bean cannery.
In those early days, Heurikon, as a custom shop, developed products for individual clients much as an artist would produce work for patrons. But in 1980, with sales just over $600,000, Priebe decided to turn his company into a full-scale manufacturer of computer circuit boards. The company took off, largely on the strength of military contracts. In 1986, sales were more than $10 million.
Businessman Priebe says he still feels very much the artist. "I think of the company as if it were a sculpture," he explains. "Like a piece of art, it has to work in a specific place and relate to a wide variety of attitudes. But the difference is that a company changes over time -- and perhaps that's what makes it more intriguing."
