Women Mean Business
Patty DeDominic has a front-row seat as California businesses maneuver for survival and success in the new millennium.
As president and chief executive of PDQ Personnel Services Inc. in Los Angeles, she spends her time helping her clients meet the changing demands of increasingly fast-paced, global competition. The company was recently recognized for its efforts by Working Woman magazine, which named PDQ No. 1 in customer service. PDQ, founded by DeDominic in 1979, supplies staffing services and payroll processing.
DeDominic, a past president of the National Assn. of Women Business Owners, talked about the trends she sees shaping small business in 2000 and beyond. She was interviewed by Times correspondent Cyndia Zwahlen.
Question: What is the biggest change you see for women business owners in the next century?
Answer: First of all, women business owners aren’t going to be unique any longer. They have reached critical mass in the marketplace. If they keep going at the rate they are growing, they eventually will be the majority. ... Also, more and more women are growing their businesses in the technical, professional and virtual arenas.
Q: Will we stop talking about women-owned businesses as a special subset?
A: More forward-thinking organizations, from a marketing point of view, recognize the women-business-owner market is a very strong and viable market. The advertising being played to business owners is not just aimed at men. It’s “You are a hard-driving entrepreneur and you have to balance your work life with your family life.” The advertising is more gender sensitive. They know there is money out there.
Q: In what other ways is the environment changing for women business owners?
A: When I started, there was very little outreach to women small-business owners. There are many support systems for women entrepreneurs now. There are advanced training programs in universities and economic development corporations. There are organizations like the National Assn. of Women Business Owners and there are major corporations that spend megabucks on marketing to the women-business-owners market. That’s providing a lot of added value.
Women business owners create jobs and influence people’s opinions as employers have always done. That has begun to happen seriously in this century and it will continue.
Q: What trends do you see for business in general after the turn of the century?
A: There will be many more home-based businesses--those SOHOs (small office/home office businesses). There are more people that realize they have specialized expertise and they realize they can have more fun and enjoy life more and make more money by offering their specialized expertise to three to seven “employers” or clients over a period of a year as opposed to working for three to five employers in their lifetime.
Q: So the number of small businesses will continue to grow?
A: I think the real growth in numbers for SOHOs will be in microbusinesses--the $1 million to $2 million or less [in sales] businesses. Once they reach a certain size, they become no longer a lifestyle business for the owner. Now they become a major capital asset and they get picked off in mergers and acquisitions.
The ratio of microbusinesses will balloon compared to small businesses, which I define as between $2 million and $10 million [in sales]. I don’t think those $2 million to $10 million businesses will stay around as long as they used to because there is too much of a market for them.
Q: What will happen in human resources?
A: Small businesses will be much more creative in recruiting and attracting quality employees. They are going to be packaging employee benefits and creating better places to work by creating flexible schedules, more family-friendly environments, portable retirement benefits and more benefits.
Q: Why do you see that as a trend?
A: The small businesses and big corporations are competing for the same employee base and [small businesses] are not going to let something solvable be the reason really great employees don’t come to work for them. Small businesses are going to take away that obstacle. Because of technology and the ability to compete globally on the Internet, small businesses really can give big businesses a run for their money and they can’t afford to do that with substandard workers.
Q: Has that been reflected in the requests your company receives from clients?
A: Yes. Smaller businesses are willing to use agencies now where in the past they did everything to avoid them. They are looking for our counsel on what benefits to offer employees to entice them to stay and to make them less vulnerable to being raided by headhunters.
Q: How will the work force evolve in the near future?
A: The contingency work force--the temporary people and part-timers and freelancers--continues to grow. That data is well-known to the U.S. Department of Labor because they’ve been making strong efforts at encouraging portable pension plans and more regulation of the employee leasing industry. And there is additional regulation regarding benefits for temporaries. The contingent work force is growing to over one-third of our working population now.
Q: What kind of worker will succeed in the workplace of the future?
A: Those people who are failing to learn new skills or are failing to sort of get into technology, who won’t use computers, or those people who are fighting diversity, who aren’t embracing the opportunity for diverse culture--those people are going to fall behind. What the future is about is very diverse, very global, 24 hours a day, high stress, a very demanding work environment.
Q: Where do you see opportunities for small-business owners in the future?
A: Trainers are a high-growth area. Any kind of trainer--education, corporate trainers, leisure trainers like ski instructors, scuba diving. There will be more and more interest in people learning how to do different things to cope in competitive work environments as well as to enjoy life.
Q: Anything in particular your clients are worried about as the new century begins?
A: Demand exceeds supply for highly skilled people. And, of course, the unemployment rate is as low as it’s been in 30 years.
Q: What advice would you offer a small-business owner contemplating the millennium?
A: One of the real opportunities that will give small businesses an advantage in the coming years is their flexibility. It’s that analogy, that it takes a lot less effort to turn a small boat compared with an aircraft carrier. Learn how to take advantage of that flexibility.
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Patty DeDominic will give a keynote address from 9:45 to 10:45 a.m. Sept. 25 at The Times’ Small Business Strategies Conference at the Los Angeles Convention Center.
