by Michele Newbern Gillis
Staff Writer
About once a week, husband and wife Roger Postlethwaite, and Maxine McBride sit down with their day planners and discuss what they are doing, who’s in town, who’s out of town and how they can get some time together.
“It’s a real challenge at times,” said McBride.
Both of their jobs require them to travel at least twice a month. Between social engagements and work itself, finding time to be together can be quite a task.
“Our relationship is really the most important thing in our lives more than anything else,” said McBride, the president of Clockwork Marketing. “Being together is important. We take walks on the beach together often and I don’t know that we call it a ‘date night,’ but we make plans together and put them on the calendar and look forward to it. We have to or all our time gets taken up.”
They also use the business travel as an opportunity to travel together and see new places.
“We make dates and we take the opportunity to travel on business together sometimes,” said Postlethwaite, the chief operating officer of LandMar Group LLC. “It’s an opportunity to get away, not only to be together, but to interact in the business world together since we are, in a sense, in the same business.”
For them, meetings, luncheons, conferences, dinners and other social engagements are all part of the workday.
“They take up a lot of time and it is work,” said McBride. “You are there with other business people. You are networking or entertaining clients, but it is still work. They make for long days.”
Since their jobs require them to be out and about so much, one of their favorites places to be is home for dinner. McBride cooks and Postlethwaite cleans up.
“When Maxine’s son, Jonathan, is home, he joins us,” said Postlethwaite. “That is our discussion time, our family time. My daughter may come over and join us, too.”
Since they are both in the real estate and construction business and best friends, they utilize each other by bouncing ideas off one another to get a different perspective.
“It’s nice to be able to bounce ideas off someone who has two things, a knowledge of the business and is not afraid to tell you exactly what they think about the issue that you have,” said McBride, whose firm handles marketing and public relations for some of the area’s top construction companies. “With your best friend, you can be the most objective. That’s what we have - we are best friends and very honest with each other. We won’t hold back if we feel the other one is making a mistake.”
Both work long hours. They rise at 5:30 and soon are out and about.
On the job(s)
McBride is the president of Clockwork Marketing, which provides marketing and public relations services to building and development industry.
“We do research, focus group and other types of market research,” said McBride. “We do a lot of public relations and special events.”
McBride works an average of 60 hours a week running the business and focusing on developing new business.
“I work with all of our clients,” she said. “We have an account executive and a writer who works with each client, too. I moderate all of the focus groups. I work with our writer on writing the scripts and then I moderate the focus groups.”
Clockwork Marketing mainly services clients in the Jacksonville, Orlando, Tampa and Sarasota areas.
Postlethwaite is the COO of LandMar, a community developer.
“We don’t just do development, we feel that we create communities and great places for people to live,” he said. “They often have some recreation feature to them - sometimes a golf course, sometimes not. What we are finding these days is that you have to build recreation in many ways. It can be as elaborate as a golf course or as simple as a bike path or sidewalk. You have to provide a lot of different variety of recreation for people these days.”
As the COO, he runs the company on a day-to-day basis.
“That means helping to grow the company in the sense of bringing new employees on board,” he said. “I think it’s fair to say that Ed Burr, our chief executive officer, is the one who generates most of the opportunities for the company.
“It’s my job then to take those deals and make them work. (I try to) make them work in the sense of bringing the people on the team or utilizing or allocating the people on the team to do whatever is necessary to bring those communities forward.
“That’s what I do, I build teams.”
Lots of hours
Postlethwaite works just about as many hours as his wife. But, he says, it’s not the number of hours you work, it is how effective you are with them.
Currently the company builds from on the east coast from Osprey Cove in Georgia down to Palm Coast and on the west coast from Hernando County down to Ft. Myers. The North Florida properties include Osprey Cove, North and South Hampton, Hampton Glen and Grand Haven.
“Shortly we will be as far south as New Smyrna Beach and, hopefully, in Orlando,” said Postlethwaite.
He travels about twice a month to look at new opportunities.
“I also travel to provide support to our team,” he said. “I see myself as an asset to the team managers that I can go in and see things that perhaps they can’t see because they are dealing with it everyday.
“They can call on me for my experience on a regular basis. That’s how we communicate in LandMar. We have a very much a team philosophy just as Maxine’s company does.”
The two met as many couples do - at work.
He was the president of Taylor Woodrow Homes in Sarasota and she was in the marketing department.
Their courting and their 13 married years have been somewhat of a long distance romance.
“We met in Sarasota, but I moved to Jacksonville,” said McBride. “He kept burning up the road and coming to visit me. So, I said ‘OK,’ I guess we are meant to be together. It was a long distance romance.”
Postlethwaite had the opportunity to go back to his native England to be chairman of Taylor Woodrow Homes. He went over for about two months, then came back and they got married. Then it was back to England for two years.
While there, McBride got a job at an advertising agency which help spur her decision to open her own company when they returned to the states.
“It was fun,” she said. “I was the business development manager. I had worked on the developer’s side and then on the agency side. When we came back, I thought, ‘OK, I could do this.”
The next stop was the states.
“We came back to Jacksonville and Roger got a job in Sarasota,” she said. “So, he moved back to Sarasota and Jonathan and I stayed here. We had put my son in school, so I wanted him to finish out the school year here. Then I got tired of it said ‘I’m going to Sarasota, too.’”
She started Clockwork Marketing in Sarasota.
Postlethwaite moved to Jacksonville in January 1999 to work for LandMar Group, LLC, while McBride stayed behind in Sarasota tying up loose ends with her company. She followed in June 1999 and relocated her company to Jacksonville.
“Where ever we move, there is usually a two to six month period before we actually catch up with each other,” said McBride. “He had to get up here and I had a business to get organized to move and Jonathan was in school.”
McBride was raised in Bradenton and wanted to be an accountant.
“But then I realized I was way too social to be an accountant because my calculator just wouldn’t have a conversation with me,” she joked. “I then moved into administration and then there was an opportunity in the marketing department. That’s when I decided ‘OK, that’s exciting, that’s what I want to do.’” She ended up liking it and working there for 13 years.
An ocean away, Postlethwaite always had a hankering to move to America and thought he wanted to be a draftsman in the engineering or architectural field.
“I joined a company at 16 in central London as an apprentice,” said Postlethwaite. “I got my degree at the same time that I worked. I went to school one day a week and in the evenings and worked the other four days.
But the reality of the business world came quickly: he was laid-off.”
Postlethwaite approached an employment agency. They couldn’t find a place for an apprentice structural designer, but they directed him to a homebuilder across the street from their office.
He got a job at the small home building company called Croudace.
“The benefit of that company was that I was involved in everything,” he said. “I was involved in the architecture, the surveying and engineering. It was a great ground floor experience.”
He stayed at that company for four years until he saw the advertisement for a position at Taylor Woodrow.
“There were so many things about America that from an early age were fascinating to me,” he said. “Taylor Woodrow had this opportunity in Sarasota and they asked me to come over and help for a three-week period. I came for three weeks and then spent the next year doing everything I could to come back because I knew that was truly my destiny.”
Coming America
When he came back in 1974, he started on the ground floor of a Taylor Woodrow community called The Meadows in Sarasota and eventually became the president of Taylor Woodrow Homes in Florida.
“It was a great experience,” he said. “We opened up operations in Tampa and in Jacksonville.”
The company then asked him to return to England to help restructure the housing company.
“The two years there were great years,” he said. “It was great for Maxine and for Jonathan with the education and the experience. But, I was very anxious to come back. I found the business approach and attitude to be very frustrating having spent so much time here where there is such a positive business attitude.”
They returned to the states with no jobs on the horizon, but that soon changed; Postlethwaite was offered a position with Schroeder Manatee Ranch, a large 28,000-acre land holding company in Sarasota.
“They identified me as having the ability to start a development there,” he said. “It was a 5,500 acre community with a mix of housing of every style and a commercial element to it. I was there for close to six years.”
So, again McBride and son moved to Sarasota and she started her company.
Enter LandMar. Postlethwaite had met Burr when he came up to Jacksonville on behalf of Taylor Woodrow Homes looking for land opportunities and when an executive search firm contacted him about the job at the Jacksonville-based company, he took it.
“We had always wanted to come back to Jacksonville,” said Postlethwaite. “Knowing Ed from before and knowing his reputation, it was just an ideal time to come here and start all over again.”