The key to moving quickly to a successful launch, Logan and Zilinski decided, was to create a business plan "that would enable the new entity to be in business instantly," Zilinski recalls. The proposal would have two objectives: first, it would need to demonstrate the economic viability of a breakaway start-up; second, it would need to show TNE cost savings with no loss of quality.
How does a corporate department become an entrepreneurial company overnight? Logan decided that having partners would make the conversion easier. It didn't take him long to line up three senior-level TNE employees ready to take the plunge: Jim Kerley, a 23-year TNE veteran with a thorough understanding of how to sell the insurance company's products; Nancy Michalowski, who excelled at client services; and on the creative side, Sue Wolski, TNE's director of design and photography services.
The core team tackled the issue of economic viability. Obviously, clients were crucial, and the favorable reactions Logan had elicited earlier from his internal TNE clients suggested that the new venture could count on them as customers. As for the services the new company would provide, the team agreed to take with them the creative and communications functions while leaving behind equipment-based work, such as darkroom operations, and work that was heavy on administrative chores, such as the preparation of annual reports. They figured they would need to bring at least 20 TNE employees with them to start. As Michalowski describes it, "We were looking for people who were entrepreneurial by nature -- who didn't need a lot of supervision or support staff, who were flexible, willing to learn and try new things and chip in to get the job done."
Working at TNE gave the team the luxury of cherry-picking the new venture's customers, services, and employees, but it also entailed a major headache. The four would-be founders were still full-time employees with regular jobs to attend to -- and they had to keep news of the breakaway project under wraps. Starting in July 1992 and for the next two months, Logan and his team would meet daily after work and on Saturday mornings. They avoided using electronic mail and the telephone as much as possible; all copies of written correspondence were destroyed. Nearly lost in the shuffle of duties was the selection of a name for their proposed company. Over a late-night huddle on the eve of the 7 a.m. deadline their lawyer had given them, the four settled on "Trinity Communications" because it was easy to say and, they hoped, made it sound as if they had been around a long time. "It was a long summer of meetings, memos, and crunching numbers," recalls Michalowski.
Remarkably, the team members shared similar visions of the kind of company they wanted to create. "We wanted to take the things that worked well at TNE and improve or discard the ones that didn't," Kerley remembers. The former included placing a premium on training and technology, pro bono work, community involvement, and what Logan calls "the Baldrige stuff." They would measure customer satisfaction with surveys accompanying each project, and when possible, they would track each project's effect, if any, on the customer's sales. They would monitor employee satisfaction and encourage feedback through a team-based peer-review system. The management structure would be flat. Everyone, including the four founding partners, would be titleless to give more credence to the term peer review. Open-book management and stock ownership for all employees would heighten the feeling of teamwork, with a group of equals striving for a common goal. Creating the kinds of process and cultural changes that would have entailed years of struggle at TNE could be done overnight in a spin-off. "You can move faster because there's no resistance to overcome," notes Logan.
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On January 3, 1995, at 7:30 a.m., Dan Logan, the untitled but de facto president of Trinity Communications, and Tom Simons, the founder of another agency (Boston's Partners & Simons), were breakfasting at the Ritz Carlton, "sharing notes and nervousness, and talking through the challenges of the coming year," recalls Logan. Except for the waiter, they were the only people in the room. Afterward, says Logan, "we asked ourselves, 'Are we so obsessive and compulsive that we're the only two people having a breakfast meeting on the first business day of the year?"
Logan shares the story to illustrate one difference he's had to confront between managing a corporate department and running a small business. It's been a shock to start each business year knowing that his company's committed expenses exceed its certain revenues.
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Since Trinity opened its doors, on January 1, 1993, its revenues have surpassed its expenses by a comfortable margin. (See the company's financials below.) During its first two years Trinity has put more than half a million dollars into its bonus pool and $700,000 into retained earnings. It has invested more than $200,000 in technology (all 40 employees have PCs at home and are hooked up to the Internet) and $50,000 on redecorating (adding modern hanging light fixtures, purple chairs, aqua carpet, and some funky furnishings to camouflage the corporate furniture it inherited from TNE). Trinity has also spent 1.5% of revenues annually on training. To generate those dollars, the company provides a full menu of communications services -- advertising, public relations, research, event marketing, direct marketing, and multimedia design -- for a growing list of clients that includes TNE and other members of the Boston financial community such as Putnam and Bank of Boston, as well as corporations such as Lotus and Cahners Publishing.
