Kerr Cos. Founder Works Hard and Dishes Up Some Laughter
The 39-year-old president of the Condor Freight Line sat on the floor, twisting and untwisting his arms. Five other business executives watched intently and called out guesses on what type of object he was imitating.
No one could guess, so Bob Jewett Crites tried again. Still on the floor, he arched his back and put one arm on the floor, prompting giggles from the still-confused executives. Finally, Crites said: “Clop, clop, clop,” and one woman excitedly yelled the right answer: “Shoe!”
Welcome to a typical off-the-wall work day for Cherie DePetrie Kerr, founder of the Kerr Cos., a collection of four small businesses.
Combining her background in public relations and improvisational comedy, the 46-year-old Huntington Beach resident has founded a public relations firm; ExecuProv, a company that trains business people to be better public speakers; the Industrial Strength Comedy company, a group of performers that helps corporate executives liven up business meetings, and a recently formed Orange County comedy troupe called the Crazies.
Kerr is an example of a single mother who made the most of her skills to build successful businesses despite limited professional experience.
“I didn’t have a college education,” Kerr said one recent day as she discussed her career. “At 24, I had nothing. But if you want something badly enough, then you can work hard enough to get it.”
On one wall in the Kerr Cos. waiting room are photographs of Kerr with various celebrities--Michael Jackson, Ronald Reagan, Bill Cosby and Kenny Rogers--whom she has either worked with or met in the course of her work. Standing on a nearby bureau are statuettes awarded to her public relations firm.
“I’ve never taken on this much in my life, but I’ve never been this happy,” said Kerr, a slight, energetic woman whose office is decorated with Art Deco furnishings and crayon drawings by her son when he was a child.
Starting from scratch with no more experience than two years of working as a receptionist at a brokerage house, Kerr has started four businesses that employ about 45 people and last year brought in $600,000 in revenue.
Kerr credits her parents--her father, 73, a jazz bassist, and her mother, 70, a tap-dancing teacher at Coastline Community College--with teaching her to pursue her dreams, no matter how impossible they seemed.
In 1969, she was a recently divorced mother of two small children with little job experience, who was suddenly forced into the role of family provider. She interviewed with a home-building firm for a secretarial position but was hired instead as the company’s publicist.
“I had no idea what I was doing,” she said. “I figured I’d bluff through it and the worse they could do was to fire me.” So she went home at night and taught herself how to write press releases according to the widely used Associated Press style guidelines.
Two years later, she landed a job writing copy at Martin Advertising in Tustin and worked her way up to become an account executive. Kerr considers her four years at the advertising firm as her unofficial college education. “It was where I really learned my craft.”
At the same time, she decided to return to a childhood love--acting. Kerr became one of the original members of the Groundlings, a Los Angeles improvisational comedy troupe that has produced such stars as Laraine Newman, Pat Morita and Pee-wee Herman.
In 1978, after several years as a free-lance publicist, Kerr founded her own public relations agency, Kerr & Associates. The company’s client list includes home builder Bramalea California Inc., Condor Freight Lines, the Anaheim Hilton and the Church of Religious Science.
Kerr’s clients say the secret to her success is her dynamic personality and her understanding of the PR business.
Peggy Bassett, the senior minister of the Church of Religious Science of Huntington Beach, said that Kerr did a very good job in publicizing the church’s sponsorship of a visit by Soviet schoolchildren in 1988. The visit received coverage by the major TV networks.
Jeffrey Ullman, the president of the video-dating service, Great Expectations, also praised Kerr.
In 1984, Kerr realized that she could use her skills in public relations and comedy to help business people get over their jitters when they had to speak in public and founded a company called ExecuProv.
ExecuProv boasts a broad range of clients, from electronics companies like Casio and CalComp to Self magazine and the Los Angeles city attorney’s office.
Crites, the president of Condor Freight Line, said the guessing game he participated in last week was designed to encourage trainees to be spontaneous.
Mary Clare Molidor, a supervising deputy city attorney for Los Angeles, said a three-day ExecuProv class is part of an eight-week training program for new deputy city attorneys. As part of the class, attorneys are asked to portray fictional characters, tell stories and do other impromptu exercises.
“Cherie is very insightful in her critiques of the new deputies’ speaking abilities in her one-on-one sessions with each of them,” Molidor said. “Initially, there’s a great anxiety among many of the deputies to participate in ExecuProv.
“Once they get into it, though, the class helps build camaraderie. And they figure: If I can do this in front of these other lawyers I have never met before, then, by God, I can get up and speak to the jurors.”
Kerr and screen writer David Morgasen recently created Industrial Strength Comedy, a group of five actors and comedians who help corporate executives communicate through humor.
Kerr said the public relations agency and ExecuProv generate most of Kerr Cos.’ annual revenue, while the two newly formed comedy troupes are not yet turning a profit.
She said her goal is to someday sell the public relations firm and just teach classes through the Crazies. The drama and comedy school then would incorporate ExecuProv and Industrial Strength Comedy.
