from staff
Delores Kesler is a veteran entrepreneur and business leader, having started a company, Associated Temporary Staffing, more than 30 years ago from her kitchen table that eventually became AccuStaff and then MPS Group Inc., which was sold last year to Zurich-based Adecco Group.
She chairs Jacksonville-based PSS World Medical and also sits on the board of The St. Joe Co., which has undergone a management shake-up.
Kesler, who also has been in business with her children, Mark Pass and Deborah Pass Durham, will give the keynote address to the 25th Annual Women in Business Awards on March 21. On March 10, she and her husband, retired County Judge Morton Kesler, will receive the 2011 Jacksonville Distinguished Community Service Award from the Anti-Defamation League. Kesler has been active in nonprofits, especially mentoring efforts.
AccuStaff moved Downtown 13 years ago and put its name on what became the Modis Building. The name is coming down as Adecco moves to Southside.
Kesler met with Daily Record reporters Tuesday at her Philips Highway offices.
How did you start your business?
I did start on the chicken farm, many, many years ago, in Dinsmore, and I have been in this world, a world of finance and Wall Street, that I never thought I would be in. I thought I’d have one little office, and I’d send my kids to college, and that would be it.
I was not young when I started. I was 38. Then the evolutionary process worked, and I started merging other companies into mine and went public in 1994. I retired as CEO and then chairman in 1998.
They just sold to Adecco, and (former MPS Group Chair) Derek Dewan called me the day this was coming down, and he said, ‘How do you feel about this?’ I said, ‘Derek, I feel wonderful.’ He said, ‘well, I know the name’s going to come off the building, and this won’t be your baby here anymore, it’ll be part of Adecco.’ I said, ‘Adecco is a wonderful multibillion-dollar international organization.’
To think, from one little card table and one little phone and one little yellow pad, that we’re now part of the largest staffing industry in the world. Now that’s full circle.
How has that changed your life?
It gives me more freedom. I think time is probably the most difficult thing to manage because you only have so much time and you have so many pulls on it.
I still sit down in January and review my resolutions and goals in the past year and see how I did. And usually, it’s maybe 50/50.
When you do reach 70, it kind of rings a bigger bell than 60 does. You say, ‘I’ve got to really plan. How many more years can I give of time, treasure and talent?’
I try to disburse that time, and my commitments are obviously to my six wonderful grandchildren.
Then I try to disburse the treasure where it needs to be. My hot buttons have been scholarships, and children and people who can’t do for themselves, whether it be underprivileged adults or individuals who can’t find their way to an educational system.
And then talent. That’s how I found myself going onto public boards. I’d been through the process of building a company, taking it public, having that fiduciary responsibility to other shareholders.
When people first bought stock in my company, I felt such a responsibility to them. People came up to me when I’d be speaking and say, ‘I put my children’s college fund in your stock’ and I’d say, ‘oh, please don’t do that. We don’t know if it will double or quadruple.’
You are known to be a planner. How so?
My week is planned and my year is planned. I’ve got two or three years planned. I’ve always been this way. I wrote lists when I was a kid, and I had nothing at all to list. I think it’s either in your nature or it isn’t. You can learn how to plan, but some people are more comfortable with it.
I admire these people who can say, ‘oh, let’s get in the car and drive across the country’ and don’t know where they’re going. Oh my goodness, I never could do that.
But I do attempt to become more that way. That’s one of my goals, live in the moment, don’t think about everything that’s on your plate for today.
I am truly attempting to live in the moment and let life take me, because it does take you anyway. The best-laid plans, they say.
What’s on your goals list this year?
Starting from the public company perspective, obviously I’m working hard. I’m on the boards of PSS and St. Joe and I do devote a lot of time to both of those boards. They’re good boards. If they weren’t, I wouldn’t be involving myself with them.
I am not on the boards of any other small companies. I’ve given all those up. Somebody else can do those as well as I can.
I am on a few philanthropic boards.
Mort and I found each other late in life, it’ll be 23 years since we were married. We’ve been very conscious of time. We’re both trying to be flexible in what we put on our plate and be cognizant of our commitment to each other.
What did you want to be when you grew up?
When I was on the chicken farm and I had to clean up the eggs, you cleaned them by hand. When you’re doing that, and you spend a lot of time in this room by yourself, I kept saying, ‘I want to see the world.’ My only exposure to people who saw the world at that time were missionaries. I went to a Baptist church at that time with my parents and missionaries would come and talk about being in Africa, or India, and I thought, that is so exotic.
As I realized the commitment of that, and you’d give everything else up, I thought, that’s probably not going to be it. But I still wanted to see the world.
My family couldn’t afford to send me to college, but they could send me on one of those after-school trips abroad. So my goal was to visit every country in the world. That’s been my goal since I was a kid. I have wanderlust something terrible. I want to go everywhere and do everything.
That was a driver for me. Ultimately one of the companies I worked for sent me to college part-time at night. Even when I was little, I wondered, why can’t I go to college? My parents just had no money to send me.
I applied for all the scholarships, didn’t quite make it, so that was my driver.
My dream was to be in business for myself, because my father was a very frustrated entrepreneur who had a day job, but he always had something else going on the side. He died at 52 of a heart attack, and I was 19 at the time. When he died so young, I was very aware of the fact that you don’t always live to be 90. But he was my mentor also, and he was the one who told me, ‘Delores, you can do anything you want to do.’
He turned the family checkbook over to me, and had me balancing finances when I was 13, so he put that responsibility on me.
I didn’t know what I was doing, but you learn. Through that process, I thought, how complicated can it be?
It took me till I was 38 to figure out what I wanted to do.
I was going to be a psychologist, and then I realized I had to have a master’s and a doctorate, and I’d end up teaching, so I thought, that’s not the way.
I started moving toward business. As I was involved in the International Harvester job, they gave me a lot of responsibility. Back then, there was a definite glass ceiling you couldn’t get beyond.
I was working for the head guy here and I did some training with the salespeople and then I did some human resources stuff. I was constantly giving him suggestions. He said, ‘you should be in your own business.’
At this point, Deborah was an infant, and I had a son, and my life was very complex. He just said, ‘hang on to that quality you have, of seeing talent in people, maybe you need to do something in the people business.’
He was a mentor to me and a very tough man. He listened to me and put some value in what I said. Mentoring is still near and dear to my heart and I mentor way too many people, from business people to college students. But I love every minute of it.
I got to the point of saying, ‘I’m going to branch out on my own.’ Along the way a bunch of what I felt were wise people said to me, ‘you know, you’ve got whatever it is. Go do it.’
You always insisted that your employees volunteer their time, talent or treasure. What is your philosophy?
You are born alone, and you die alone, no matter how many people you have around you. Your soul is the only one leaving this Earth. When you get to the end, it’s only you, and your spiritual life, saying, ‘I gave it a good run, and I slid into home plate at the last moment, and you know, there was nothing left of me.’
I really don’t want anything to be left of me. I say that to my family, ‘now don’t expect a big inheritance, because I’m giving it all away.’
Your dad left you with some words of wisdom, didn’t he?
The night before he died, I was pregnant, I was married to Mark’s father at that time, it was two months before I was 20. I went to visit him and I went out in the backyard to talk to him, and he talked about how young I was, having children and all that kind of thing. And he said, ‘if I’m not here to advise you, Delores, I’ll still tell you, you can do anything you want to do.’
He died the next morning before I ever got to see him again. He spent the last time with me, telling me I could do whatever I wanted to do.
Now if you think that doesn’t stay with you...
I ended up divorced in a few years, and on my own, and that’s when I said, my dad told me I could do anything I wanted to. I’ve got to get some college.
How did you manage that?
I started paying for my own college for a couple of years, and then my employer (at International Harvester) said, ‘let’s help you.’ I said, wonderful. That’s when they wouldn’t do it for you if you weren’t a man. He said, ‘send in your application,‘ so I wrote in ‘Delores,’ sent it in, and they said, ‘we’re sorry, but we only fund programs for males.’ This was ‘61 or ‘62. This is the dark ages.
I went back to my employer, who was my mentor, and I said they aren’t paying, and he said, ‘what do you mean, they’re not paying for this?’ and I said, I’m not a man.
He said, ‘what difference does that make? and I said, here’s my letter. He said, ‘you get another one of those forms, and don’t take it into the personnel department, you bring it to me.’
I filled out another one, he signed it, and said, ‘I recommend this person,’ but he said, ‘don’t put Delores on there, put D, and they will not know.’
They had no male or female check because nobody was applying but men. He said, ‘we’re not going to go through the circuit here, we’re going to send it to Chicago.’
I never knew how he did it, but in a month, he got it back and he said, ‘OK, take this to JU (Jacksonville University), send your bills directly to Chicago, they’re going to pay for it, but sooner or later, they’re going to figure out you’re not a man, so make sure you don’t sign anything as Delores until you get what you want out of this.’
This was a huge office for International Harvester. About three years later, they had a Southeastern meeting for the management trainee program, and students who were involved in the reimbursement programs. It was all built around ‘we’re so proud of you, we’re educating you, we’re going to take you to another level.’
We had it at the old Roosevelt Hotel. I got the invitation, so I started walking up to the class, and the guy who was here, who was a big executive in Chicago, said, ‘now honey, this class is for the people who are enrolled in college.’ I said, I’m enrolled in college. He said, ‘no, no, the one the company’s paying for.’ I said, I am. He said ‘no no no. This is for men only.’
I said, ‘I know about that, but my name’s on the list.’ He looked at that, and he said, ‘that’s you?’ I said, that’s me. Check me off.
My employer did say to me, ‘please don’t embarrass me, because sooner or later they’re going to figure out that I signed your thing,’ and he said, ‘make sure you make good grades.’ That was always on the top of my mind.
What is the $10,000 loan story you’ve been sharing over the years?
When I did decide I wanted to go into business, there was not one person that supported me. Not one. The people I was working for didn’t support me, my husband did not support me, nobody in the community. They said, ‘are you kidding? The staffing industry? That business is not going anywhere.’ Well, look at it.
I wrote this very preliminary business plan that really required $50,000, but I took it to every big bank in the city. I said, ‘I need $50,000.’
They asked, ‘have you ever owned a business before?’ No. ‘Equity?’ No, because my husband will not let me use the equity in our home. ‘What are you going to put up?’ Nothing, just my time. ‘You got children?’ Yes, I do. ‘What happens if you have a third child?’ I said, what happens? I just have a third child. They could never ask you these questions now. ‘Well, is your husband going to sign on the loan with you?’ No.
I mean, you can imagine the laughingstock I was. So I went to nine banks. I finally ended at Barnett Bank with a guy I went to high school with. He and I were in the National Honor Society. He was president then of the Orange Park or Clay County bank, and I said, I’ve been trying to get $50,000 for probably six months. And he said, ‘did anybody give it to you?’ And I said, no. Look at my business plan.
‘Excellent, Delores.’ Then he said, ‘If I didn’t know you, I wouldn’t even be talking to you. I’m surprised you got in to anybody to talk to.’
So he said, ‘I can’t do this, Delores. I have nothing to base it on. You have no equity.’
I said, you can’t do anything on it? And he said ‘I have a little bit of authority within my position’ and I said, well how much can you loan on your signature, without going to your loan committee, and he said, ‘$10,000’ and I said that’s all I need.
He said, ‘you can’t do this on $10,000.’ I said, no, I can’t do this, but I can do a modified version of it. That was one nervous man.
He put that $10,000 in my new account, he walked me to the door, and he said, ‘Delores, I don’t make bad loans. Please don’t default on this.’
I said, I’m not. He said, ‘I’ll see you in six months.’
I came back in six months and he loaned me the $50,000.
Then of course the bank got all ‘well look at what she did’ and everybody at Barnett likes to say they floated me in business.
That was that persistence, kind of an aggressive side, that I will keep asking. If you tell me no, I will come back again. If somebody says no, it doesn’t feel good, but I don’t go home and curl up. That’s a trait in business that I think is vital, that you don’t take no for an answer easily. You have to be aggressive.
You talked about how you wanted to make good grades because someone trusted you, and you wanted to protect shareholders because they trusted you. You hold people’s trust in very high esteem.
I do. People tell me that I have an excess of the responsibility gene. I feel very responsible for everybody everywhere. I’m incapable of saying, that’s not my job. I’ve been told that over and over by members of my family, ‘Mother, darling, you’re not responsible for the world.’
I just never, ever successfully walked away from anything that I thought I was responsible for. Not that I made a difference in every situation, or not that I had the best answer, but I felt like it was my responsibility to try to make a difference.
You chair PSS World Medical. What is that like?
It’s a $2 billion company, about $1.5 billion in stock value. It’s a great company. The new CEO, Gary Corless, is an excellent leader. He’s been with the company a long time. All they needed was some older sage around to guide and listen, because they were a new team. Gary hadn’t been a CEO before, and a lot of the leaders had not been to the level they are. It does take time, but it takes less and less time as they mature, they grow and they de-
velop. I love the time I spend with them. I’ll do this as long as I’m making a difference. When I’m not, I’ll step aside.
There are age limits on boards now. You don’t stay there until you’re 90, as people used to do. I’ll be cycling off of some of these boards in the next few years. That’s OK. I can have time to do those other things that are still on the drawing board.
What can you say about serving on the board of The St. Joe Co.?
It is a great company. There is a lot of value there, and there are a lot of very smart people involved with the company. Some announcements have been made in the last few days, and one of them is that I am going to stay on the board. I am one of the few members who will stay on the board, the others are resigning. I am going to be on the board and will continue to be very involved. I’m glad to be there, because it’s a good company. They’re real estate. It’s a company with a lot of value, and I feel very optimistic about serving on the board, and being a part of the next phase of whatever it does, which will be different, but you know that’s the thing. You’ve got to be willing to change, whatever you’re involved in, because the times change.
What is the history of your company, from the start to the sale to Adecco?
The first company that I started at 38 was called Associated Temporary Staffing. Then of course we shortened it to ATS until we did the merger and I brought in my three partners and it became AccuStaff.
After I retired, they changed the name to Modis. It was a large company, so they made an all-encompassing parent company called MPS, which was Modis Professional Services. Then Adecco bought them a year ago.
The Modis Building Downtown was AccuStaff when you moved into it. What did you think the first time you saw that AccuStaff name on top of that building?
I thought, I can’t believe this, that I founded a company and I’m running a company that has a name on a hallmark building downtown. That was one of those ‘aha’ moments.
You are truly a captain of industry in Jacksonville. What do you see happening with the City from a civic perspective?
Every mayor that we’ve had has brought something different to the table, and a different perspective, and they all have different economic drivers when they’re there that they have to work with.
It all comes from leadership. We all have input, but there’s got to be one person at that top who says, ‘I’ve got this vision.’
For the city, I think somebody’s got to put it all out there and not give a damn, and say, ‘we are going to build a strong Downtown.’ There’s nobody pushing it, and when times are tough, they say, ‘we don’t have enough money to do that.’ But there are creative ways to do all of that.
If somebody who’s running for mayor is a true visionary, who doesn’t care if they don’t get that next job or if they’re going to be a one-term mayor, they’re going to get us focused.
There’s got to be someone who speaks for the city and the people. I don’t think anybody disagrees with building a strong core city. Somebody’s got to get passionate about it. This is ridiculous. We’ve got this waterfront. We’ve got to have something that brings it all together.
Somebody’s got to get in there who’s willing to not say, ‘I’ve got to be in here eight years, because then I’ve got to run for the Senate’ or whatever they do next.
Somebody’s got to sign on this. You’ve got to step out and say, ‘this is what we’re going to do.’
But no mayor, no leader of a company, has all the answers. They surround themselves with wise people and listen to them, and make the decision.
And I’m not running for mayor.
You were nominated to be the first woman to chair the Jacksonville Regional Chamber of Commerce, but you declined the position.
That was the year I was taking the company public. Derek and I were on the road, and he looked at me and said, ‘when the hell are you going to run the chamber?’ I said, I think I need to rethink this. I felt a real responsibility to the city and to the chamber.
But I felt a greater responsibility to those employees at AccuStaff, and we had a thousand, and they were depending on me to do this right. I thought, I can’t do both.
What are you most proud of so far?
I’m proud that I have kids who are contributing members of the community and grandchildren who are growing up to be contributing members.
I’m proud that there’s a second and maybe a third generation that are saying, ‘my grandmother and my grandfather made a contribution to the city, and I need to make sure, this is my home, that I make a contribution.’