Don’t Let a Big Project Overshadow Bigger Picture
Harold Urman and Gwen Uman face a special kind of Y2K stress: A two-year federal contract that has been the mainstay of their research consulting firm’s business is coming to an end Dec. 31. Planning ahead, allocating resources to marketing and capitalizing on their contacts are all tactics they’ve used to smooth the transition. Urman was interviewed by freelance writer Karen E. Klein.
Gwen and I met and formed a partnership while we were both graduate students at USC. We started out analyzing data for professors and students working on their dissertations. Within two years, we had enough clients to move into a small office.
Over the years, the business evolved and now we work mainly for school districts, social service agencies, nonprofit programs, financial institutions and health-care agencies. We define the parameters of a research study, develop surveys, collect and analyze data and then interpret and write up the results.
For the last two years, a big chunk of our funding has come from a $750,000 grant we received from the National Institutes of Health to measure resident and family satisfaction in various long-term-care settings, like assisted living facilities, group homes and nursing homes. The grant expired Aug. 31, but we got an extension that goes until Dec. 31.
Everyone on our staff has been affected by this project. Technically, we have one full-time employee and one half-time assistant working on it, but everyone’s worked on pieces of it.
A project like this is wonderful, but you have to make sure your company does not get consumed by it. When you focus on only one client, or only one industry, and that goes away because of a project’s completion or a merger, suddenly you have nothing to fall back on.
The trick is juggling the big project with lots of smaller ones and trying to keep it all in balance. We take on 100 to 150 research projects a year, many of which are ongoing.
Even though most of our referrals are word-of-mouth, it takes networking and marketing to keep the business growing. It’s been difficult, because there are restrictions on the funding we get from the research grant and none of that money can be used for marketing. We have to draw on our other revenue for our marketing budget.
We hired a marketing consultant four years ago and he’s become a three-quarter-time staff member. He prepares marketing materials for us and press releases and we have a public relations person who works for us a few hours a month.
We’ve tried to capitalize on this NIH project, which has generated a lot of exposure for us around the country. We’ve made it a point to travel to meetings of academic organizations, groups like the National Alzheimer’s Assn., and trade groups for the industries we work in. Gwen’s done a lot of speaking and journal writing and we’ve hired an intern from the Gerontology School at USC to try and make sure that her articles get into the appropriate professional journals. We’ve also joined organizations like the American Marketing Organization and served on committees so we could make business contacts.
We’ve tried exhibiting at professional conferences focusing on some of the industries that we work in, but we haven’t found that too successful. It’s energizing to be there, but we never have found that there’s a huge direct sales impact that results.
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If your business can provide a lesson to other entrepreneurs, contact Karen E. Klein at the Los Angeles Times, 1333 S. Mayflower Ave., Suite 100, Monrovia, CA 91016 or at kklein6349@aol.com. Include your name, address and telephone number.
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At a Glance
* Company: Vital Research
* Owners: Harold Urman, Gwen Uman
* Nature of business: Research consulting
* Location: 8380 Melrose Ave., Suite 309, Los Angeles 90069
* Web site: https://www.vitalresearch.com
* E-mail: hurman@vitalresearch.com
* Founded: 1982
* Employees: 11
* Annual revenue: $885,435