Ready, Set, Grow

How does the founder of the #1 company on the 2000 Inc. 500 stay calm amidst the hypergrowth? He's spent a long time preparing for it.

#1 Company

If Dan Weinfurter, founder of America's fastest-growing private company, seems unfazed by what he's up against, there's a good reason. He's spent a long time preparing for it

On the surface, it's not immediately clear what makes Dan Weinfurter the ideal person to be running Parson Group LLC.

Even though he founded the Chicago-based business, which supplies high-level financial acumen to big companies, he's not especially keen on crunching numbers. "I can't even balance my checkbook," claims Weinfurter, 43. And though he serves as CEO, he's not a pushy, pumped-up type. Mindy Meade, the company's marketing director, says a mutual acquaintance summed up her boss best. "He said, 'He's the only type B CEO you'll ever meet,'" she recalls.

Yet Weinfurter, the nonfrenetic nonaccountant, feels perfectly suited to lead his employees, who now number 800. That's because he's not so much an expert in what Parson does as he is in how Parson does it -- namely, grow at a supersonic rate. In the past five years, the company's revenues have swelled a staggering 27,992%, with sales skyrocketing from $200,000 to $56 million. That puts Parson Group, which until 1998 was known as Current Assets LLC, at the head of this year's Inc. 500 class.

Weinfurter, in fact, likely knows as much as there is to know about all-out, full-throttle growth. Seven years ago he served as vice-president of operations at a company that cracked the top 20 on Inc.'s annual list. Alternative Resources Corp., an information-technology staffing company, ranked #13 on the 1993 Inc. 500. (In 1994 it slid to the 140th spot.) At Alternative Resources he spotted a wide-open niche for a staffing business focused on accounting. He knew enough to move in fast, and he's never stopped moving. Geographically, Parson Group has already expanded to serve 15 cities. Strategically, Weinfurter has worked decisively to push the company in a new direction -- shifting from high-end staffing and operations support to more sophisticated (and higher-margin) consulting services. "There are tons of opportunities out there," declares the Milwaukee-born Weinfurter in his signature understated fashion. "What we've done well is pick the right ones."

Dan Weinfurter knew just what to do when he faced a clogged-up accounting system: he sat down and wrote a one-page outline for a business plan.

At the time Weinfurter was four years into his five-year stint at Alternative Resources. He had joined the staffing company in October 1989, a year after its launch. Working at a breakneck clip, Weinfurter supervised the opening of offices in 30 new markets during the next five years and established himself as an effective leader. "He's got a quiet leadership style that makes people intuitively trust him," recalls Wayne Bock, a former vice-president at Alternative Resources.

He also inspires productivity. By 1994, when the company went public, revenues had soared to more than $94 million. But, as Weinfurter recalls, the company's accounting and financial-reporting system wasn't equipped to handle the stringent new reporting requirements. Weinfurter watched as staffers scrambled to meet the deadlines. "I could see the struggles," he says. "It really impacted the operation." It also spurred his imagination.

At the time there were dozens of IT companies that were offering general systems staffing and consulting support, Weinfurter recalls. There were also companies, like Accountemps, whose main specialty was supplying clerical staffing help for accounting departments. But when it came to offering sophisticated assistance with budget analysis or a quick stand-in for a departing controller or -- as in Alternative Resources' case -- someone who could overhaul an entire accounting system, Weinfurter found few places to turn. He saw an opening in the middle of the market between Accountemps and the then-Big Six accounting firms. His strategy would be to offer seasoned professionals who could provide sophisticated accounting and finance operations support and project management to large companies.

"We pushed ahead as fast as we could," says Nelson Head, Parson Group's senior vice-president of operations.

The timing, he could see, was right. The downsizing of the early 1990s had left accounting and finance departments with severely stripped-down staffs. By the mid-1990s, chief financial officers were fast warming up to the idea of bringing in outside accountants and other professionals to help ease the strain. As the economy gathered steam, their need for outside help only grew. "The market was out there for it," says Tim Molloy, founder of Integrated Financial Temporaries Inc., a six-year-old Chicago company that places accounting and financial professionals. "They couldn't get people fast enough."

Weinfurter got a quick boost for his start-up plan in the fall of 1994, just as he was preparing to leave Alternative Resources. The husband of one of his salespeople introduced him to two venture capitalists, Samuel P. Chapman and J. Jeffry Louis. And in January 1995 the pair met Weinfurter for breakfast at Mitchell's Original, a venerable North Side diner, to hear his business strategy.

Chapman and Louis took an instant liking to Weinfurter's résumé: a proven track record at Alternative Resources, plus an additional 11 years of sales and managerial experience. More important, they saw real potential in his plan. "What was interesting was that we were talking about carving out a whole new niche," recalls Louis. "When we looked to see who else was doing it, there was no one out there."

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