News

Washington CEO

Wanted: Civil Engineer. Five to 10 years of experience. Sense of humor a must. That's a typical job description for RoseWater Engineering Inc. It also typifies the firm's owner, Amy Haugerud, and helps explain how she has grown her company from the basement of her Seattle home 24 years ago to the 15th floor of a downtown Seattle high-rise.

Along with creativity, book smarts and engineering skills, Haugerud, 52, wants her new hires to "come as you are," bringing a lighthearted, have-fun approach to the business of engineering consulting. She looks for people "who bring their whole self" to the company, including the ability to not take themselves too seriously and the willingness to laugh at - and learn from - mistakes.

It's the "RoseWater" way - a combination of professionalism, intuition, sensitivity and a sense of humor - that has propelled Haugerud to the top of her field and placed her among a select group of women entrepreneurs reaping multi-million-dollar revenues without sacrificing their own personal growth and work-life balance. It's a tightrope act that requires discipline, hard work, endurance and positive thinking.

Haugerud, who was named 2006 Nellie Cashman Woman Business Owner of the Year, is in good company. At least one in 11 women nationwide owns her own business, according to the Center for Women's Business Research in Washington, D.C. Nationally, 41 percent of privately held U.S. companies are at least half-owned by women. Those firms generate $1.9 trillion in sales and employ 13 million people nationwide, a 20 percent increase between 1997 and 2002 and twice the national average for all businesses, the Census Bureau reported.

While Washington state has an unimpressive record when it comes to the number of women CEOs of large public corporations, it ranks 13th among all states in the number of privately held woman owned firms. At last count, the total was 234,197 companies, including many sole proprietorships, which generate $44 billion in annual sales and employ 256,253 people. And, as of 2006, 46 percent of Washington's privately held businesses are 50 percent or more owned by women. That percentage compares favorably with the national average as well as with more densely populated, commerce-heavy states like New York, where 38.3 percent of businesses are woman-owned, according to the Center for Women's Business Research.

Washington CEO Magazine surveyed about a dozen women business owners, including Haugerud, and found they are motivated to be their own bosses mainly so they can control their own time, have a better work-life balance, and transform their dreams into realities.

While Haugerud shares the same skill sets as her male counterparts and has made a name for herself in engineering circles worldwide, she, like many top female executives, brings another dimension - a woman's perspective - to her business.

She epitomizes the type of businesswoman Elizabeth Cogswell Baskin writes about in How to Run Your Business Like a Girl: Successful Strategies from Entrepreneurial Women (Adams Media, 2005). "Women really do run businesses differently than men," Baskin says. "They do it by trusting their intuition and putting a stronger emphasis on relationships, which leads to building corporate culture."

Baskin, who runs a $3 million advertising agency in Atlanta, acknowledges that "women can be just as uptight and buttoned up as the guys." But the main difference, she says, is that women are not afraid to stop and ask directions. They place a higher value on collaboration and experimenting with new ideas. In short, "we give and take advice easily," she says, noting that men notoriously resist asking for help.

While Haugerud says the gender lines on management styles are not necessarily clearly drawn, she agrees that women, and herself in particular, pay more attention to questioning things and seeking advice. "If there is an elephant in the living room, I think we should pay attention to it before it takes a dump on us, rather than dancing around it," she says. "It's important for a leader to acknowledge when something is difficult for them, because it makes it OK for others to be less than perfect. If you make a mistake, you have to admit it and apologize."

Women also take different approaches to starting their own companies, Baskin says. Instead of following old-school business etiquette and doing months of research, women dive right in and "sort of make it up as they go along."

That's what Haugerud did when she started her engineering firm in 1983. She admits she didn't know the first thing about running a business, but she had an engineering degree from the University of Washington and knew that companies were being encouraged to award contracts to women and minorities. So, with $1,300 in her pocket and a $30,000 line of credit, she opened her business. Her office consisted of a borrowed Compaq portable computer, a drafting table, ink pens and straight edges - all you needed in those days.

"I figured, if all else fails, I could go out and get a real job," she says. While it took a couple of years before she could pay herself a full year's salary, she never had to get that "real" job. Today, her firm employs 36 people and brings in annual revenue of $3.9 million. Projected sales for this year are $4.2 million.

Haugerud belongs to a generation of women who are less reined in by Business School 101 rules and are paving the way for a younger generation by creating their own textbook success stories. The first lesson: Defy naysayers and be willing to take risks.

That's a page right out of Alice Cunningham's business story. She is co-owner of Seattle-based Olympic Hot Tub, a $10 million company that many predicted would never make it.

Her friends and family, including her father, thought she was crazy to quit her comfortable Labor Department program administrator job to open a hot tub company - especially in the 1970s, when wooden hot tubs in Seattle were about as rare as winter sunshine. "My father cried the day I told him I was leaving my high-paying government job to move to Seattle and open a hot tub store. Still, my gut and heart told me it was the right decision."

That was 1975, shortly after Cunningham met her future husband, Blair Osborn, who was a tenured professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Washington. The same day they met at a conference in Washington D.C., the two decided to quit their jobs and become business partners.

Despite Cunningham's previous job, in which she was responsible for allocating $60 million in federal grants for programs across four states, bankers balked at her hot tub idea and refused to loan her the money. One banker even joked that she hoped Cunningham liked beans, because that's all she would be eating if she went into the hot tub business.

Undaunted, Cunningham cashed in her federal pension, sold her treasured collection of Oriental rugs and European antiques, and moved to Seattle from Berkeley, Calif. She opened the business in 1977 by putting a red cedar hot tub in a Lake Union storefront. Business was slow for the first few years but picked up when portable, plastic hot tubs became more popular and affordable.

Today, Olympic Hot Tub has 45 employees and projects 2007 sales at $11 million. Olympic has become the oldest spa and hot tub company in the Northwest, with retail stores in Seattle, Fife, Issaquah, Lacey and Everett and a sales and service center in Tukwila.

Cunningham, 66, is the voice of her company. She does all the radio ads, in addition to directing marketing and sales activities, and is a frequent speaker at pool and spa industry conferences. Her husband keeps a lower profile as chief financial officer.

Over the years, Cunningham has earned a reputation as a top-performing entrepreneur, and in 2002 the Small Business Administration named her Washington State Small Business Person of the Year.

While Cunningham and Amy Haugerud run vastly different companies, they share the same business philosophies. And they both have passed author Baskin's "How to Be the Boss Without Being a Bitch" test by maintaining their authority while building supportive relationships with their teams and clients.

Haugerud says the first step toward creating a positive and motivating corporate culture is to treat employees with respect and to frequently collaborate with them.

"We take our work seriously, but we don't take ourselves seriously," Haugerud says. "The industry we work in includes many things (e.g., delays and changes) over which we have absolutely no control. If you can't find something to laugh at, it's going to be grim. ... We give people permission to be their whole selves and be silly from time to time. We prefer to be amused by our own silliness. It keeps us from being pompous asses."

She even used a tongue-in-cheek approach to naming her business, combining her love of gardening and roses with the work she was doing at the time: designing sewer systems. The carpeting in her downtown office is painted with yellow stripes, depicting a road that leads to a street sign reading ROSEWATER WAY NW.

The sign was a gift from her employees, and it symbolizes Haugerud's approach to business and life. She also brings a spiritual mindfulness to her career by regularly practicing and teaching meditation, which she's been devoted to since taking her first class six years ago.

It wasn't always that way. When she started her business, Haugerud worked 60 to 70 hours per week. The long hours put a strain on her marriage, which ultimately ended in divorce. At the time, she was a "do everything" business owner. Eventually, she realized that "it isn't healthy or productive to work at that pace."

A few years ago, her firm was going through a rough patch, which she describes as "the perfect storm of adverse events." Since then, however, the company has made "a stellar recovery" and is planning to expand this year. One of its biggest projects is coordinating the utility relocation and designing water and drainage modifications for the Alaskan Way Viaduct Replacement Project.

While Haugerud continues to provide strategic direction to the firm and serves as its president, chief financial officer and project manager, she now takes alternate Fridays off, giving her more time to focus on her life outside the office. "It helps me maintain my sanity and equilibrium ... to not define myself only by my work," she says.

Already an accomplished ballroom dancer, Haugerud recently took up West Coast Swing with her longtime partner, who has two grown sons of his own. She also loves to ski, golf and hike in Yellowstone National Park, her favorite place in the world.

It's that sense of personal lifestyle and control over their time, rather than the need for success and financial rewards, that strongly motivates women to start their own businesses.

"It's not about men versus women. It's all about flexibility and controlling time," says Charmel Bowden, the former president of Women Business Owners in Seattle, which gives out the annual Nellie Cashman awards. "We have a global perspective; our lives touch so many more aspects than men. We are wives, mothers, daughters, community leaders. There is a greater need for us to seek flexibility."

She says there's an underlying innate nature women have that isn't necessarily a good fit in the corporate lifestyle. "Women are nurturers, gatherers. We run our companies differently, because we live our lives differently."

Bowden says many women working for corporations often feel stifled by overpowering bosses - men or women - and have the sense that they can create something better than what they are experiencing. "The women who end up holding true to their nature and personality are the ones who really rise to the top," she explains.

That's the case with Melinda Partin, CEO of Worktank, a Seattle advertising company that focuses on storytelling. After spending several years working for large, male-dominated companies full of big egos, Partin says she knew she could create a better ad agency on her own. "My biggest complaint was that the corporate culture was ego-driven and politically motivated," she says.

By focusing on collaboration, having a clear mission, communicating employee expectations and giving "360-degree feedback on their performance," Partin has seen her company's sales grow from $2.5 million in 2004 to $3.8 million in 2005. Last year, the company earned a $950,000 profit on revenue of $6.5 million. Projected revenue for 2007 is $10 million.

She started the company in 2001 with her business partner, Leslie Rugaber. They each put in $15,000 of their own money and rented a 800-square-foot "funky" old warehouse in the Sodo district. By 2004, their business was bursting at the seams, so they moved to a 4,000-square-foot office in Montlake. They grew out of that space last year, and in January of this year, they relocated to a 9,000-square-foot loft near Seattle's waterfront.

Today, Worktank employs 51 people and has plans to add 10 more this year. To better prepare for running her own business, Partin, 42, who already had a degree in comparative literature from the University of Washington, went back to school part-time and earned an MBA from City University.

She says the key to her success is attracting talented, creative and disciplined employees - or, as author Jim Collins puts it, "getting the right people on the bus before you figure out where to drive it." Partin says she drew inspiration from Collins' best-selling Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don't (Harper Collins, 2001).

In his book, Collins writes that it doesn't take a high-profile CEO or the latest technology to go from a good company to a great company. Rather, he says, "When you combine a culture of discipline with an ethic of entrepreneurship, you get the magical alchemy of great results." It's the same winning combination that worked for Partin, Amy Haugerud, Alice Cunningham and dozens of other women business owners in Seattle.

For Cunningham, trusting her instincts and luck also played a part in her success. "You have to go with your gut," she says. "And don't be afraid of risk. You have to gamble big to win big."

By: Karen West