Illustration by M. Scott Ricketts

Tainted Comedy

Lewiston-born Anne Taintor has turned a sharp wit, scissors, and old magazines into a snarky empire.

The image is a vintage illustration from a magazine, published more than half a century ago. The caption was written by Lewiston native Anne Taintor, who has parlayed a love of irreverent humor and collage-making into a line of products sold in more than 25 countries.

Taintor’s sassy product line includes refrigerator magnets, greeting cards, shopping bags, sticky notes, coin purses, cosmetics cases, flasks—almost anything to which you can affix a funny message. Most poke fun at the stereotypes of women promulgated in pre-feminist era publications like the Ladies Home Journal. Alcohol is often involved. In one illustration, a perfect 1950s housewife wipes a gleaming frying pan. Taintor’s caption: “The only thing left to polish off now is the gin.”

As a Harvard-educated single mother in the 1980s, Taintor was having difficulty supporting herself and her young daughter. “I went to a career counselor, who asked me what I liked to do. When I told him I liked making collages, he told me to do that.”

Her first products were handmade wood lapel pins and earrings, about the size of a quarter. Taintor cut and pasted artwork from old magazines and lacquered every piece, then sold them at local craft fairs. “When I started putting words on them, they started really selling,” she says. She cut the words out of magazines and assembled them into humorous messages, which she glued onto the pictures in blocks, creating her signature style.

Magnets came next, and quickly became her bestselling items. These, too, she produced herself, cutting sheets of magnetic material into rectangles using a paper cutter. Soon the demand outstripped her ability to produce products in her home, and she hired a manufacturer. Taintor maintains a network of freelance writers who supply ideas for the 30 to 40 new captions she uses every year. “It’s like long-distance brainstorming,” she says. She also runs caption contests through her online blog.

Recently relocated in Portland after 11 years in New Mexico, Taintor has seen her business expand beyond her greatest expectations.  She has eight full-time employees in offices in New York and California, and she has launched a new line of products called Taintor With a Twist, which uses images licensed from the Saturday Evening Post. Though she has competitors, few can match her pithy wit. What woman, after all, hasn’t sat on a sofa listening to a self-absorbed man and wondered, “Why am I sober?”

Cutting Businesswoman

3,000 •  Number of stores that carry Anne Taintor’s products.

1971 •  Year Taintor graduated from Lewiston High School.

30 •  Age Anne Taintor was when she started her own business.

900 •  Number of entries in a recent caption contest at www.annetaintor.com.

Portrait by Irvin Serrano

Anything But Generic

With her latest venture—the generic pet meds company Putney—Jean Hoffman is doing what she always does: quietly, brilliantly, doggedly transforming the marketplace.

When Putney, a Portland-based generic pet meds company founded in 2006, released news that it had attracted $21 million in investment capital—a very large wad here in Maine—it didn’t get a lot of column inches in statewide press.

Perhaps the achievement seemed natural, given the size of the market. Over 60% of U.S. households have at least one cat or dog, and spent about $48 billion on these companion animals in 2010. Some of this cash was for medications—which can be as pricey for Buddy and Whiskers as it is for the human members of the family. Yet, while 78% of human prescriptions are now filled by generics, only 6% of pet meds are. Putney is primed to fill that need with a pipeline of some 20 products. Read that on the Dow Jones Venture Wire, and the capital influx makes sense.

But the truth is, the story is less about market size and projected earnings, and more about a soft-spoken powerhouse named Jean Hoffman.

The daughter of journalist Burton Hoffman (1929–2010), who became editor in chief of National Journal magazine, Jean Hoffman was trained from an early age to be correct, careful, and, simultaneously, to reach for the top. While her dad grappled with national news and world affairs, Hoffman’s grandparents conquered a smaller world in Newport, Rhode Island, as owners of a busy nightclub called the Ideal Café. Hoffman, it seems, inherited both her dad’s journalistic curiosity and her grandparents’ entrepreneurial grit.

As a young woman (who’d had the smarts to become fluent in Mandarin Chinese), Hoffman was one of the first Americans allowed inside Chinese factories in the early ’80s. She was named CEO of a Swiss pharmaceutical subsidiary before the age of 30. She founded the company behind the most widely-used industry intelligence software in the pharmaceutical world. Now, through Putney, she is out to lead a generics revolution in animal health.

In a 2009 interview with MaineBiz, Hoffman, asked when she’ll be able to relax, said, “I’ll sleep in 2011.” That’s one of the few projections she’s missed over her career. Make that 2016.

Maybe.

Please tell us a bit about your growing up in Washington, D.C. What were your interests? What kind of a kid were you?

I think I was a pretty serious kid. My greatest interest as a child was in plants and animals. My first job was in taking care of people’s pets when they went away for vacation, and I wanted to be a veterinarian, so I loved animals from a very, very early age.

My dad was a journalist, and then active in politics, so we grew up in an exciting place in exciting times, and were exposed to a lot of journalists who were covering the important events in the world. Both of my parents were tough taskmasters. My brother and I used to have to do 12 drafts in elementary school, so I was certainly brought up with high standards and to work very hard.

How did you end up at Bowdoin College, and why East Asian studies?

I wanted to go to a small, high-quality New England liberal arts college. My father had grown up in Newport, Rhode Island, and summer vacations were going to Newport and staying with grandma and grandpa. So it was really the connection to Newport and to my grandparents that drew me to New England.

Through my father’s involvement in reporting around the world, we were exposed to Asia. It was the Vietnam War days, and, as a girl, I got interested in China. I think China was the most different place in the world to me, and I was very interested in learning about that. I had a particularly inspiring professor at Bowdoin who taught me a lot about Chinese philosophy and culture, and I studied my junior year in Hong Kong. I learned to speak Chinese, both at the Middlebury Summer Language Program and during that year in Hong Kong. It was my first trip overseas, and a very important part of becoming independent and learning to understand myself in the context of how I fit into the world.

How did you end up in China, working in the pharmaceutical industry?

After graduating from Bowdoin, I went back to Washington and worked for a trade association. This was prior to diplomatic recognition of China, so it was actually a quasi-official organization called the National Council for U.S.-China Trade. It was headed by a former ambassador, and there were a lot of very bright young people there at the time, and some experienced foreign service professionals, so it was a wonderful opportunity to learn and to excel. From the National Council, I was offered a position by one of the council’s members, a New York-based pharmaceutical company that was part of a big, privately-held Swiss conglomerate called the Zuellig Group, and ran business development with China for them globally, which was also a very exciting opportunity.

One of my roles was in helping the Chinese understand how to export to the U.S. So I did quite a bit of research into who were the top-ranked FDA law firms, and introduced the Chinese to a number of firms that had experts in food and drug law, and consultants who could help them understand the regulatory and legal requirements for exporting pharmaceuticals to the U.S. I was also involved in technology transfer and the sale of machinery and equipment to upgrade Chinese factories so that they could produce more efficiently and meet U.S. regulatory
standards.

You eventually become CEO of a Swiss pharmaceutical company, a Zuellig Group subsidiary called ZetaPharm, at age 29. Your job was to turn the company around. How did you do it, and what did you learn? 

I put in place the plan to turn the company around, and others continued the work after I left. My plan was to develop a business in supplying the active pharmaceutical ingredients for the generic industry in the U.S. The generic industry was given its big start by the passage of an important piece of legislation in 1984, and this was that period of time. So I was involved in the very beginning of the human generic industry.

The next phase of your career was developing pharmaceutical industry intelligence software for a company you started, called Newport Strategies. You developed it into a global leader and sold it to Thompson Reuters in 2004. Why did you start it, and what did you offer customers?

I got the idea of putting together a database that I could sell repeatedly to clients, and that was the genesis of Newport Strategies. I raised capital; IBM had a little venture capital group in Paris, and that provided seed capital to launch that business. Newport became very successful. IT was really a lot of hard work and took a lot of time, but it was also fun because we created a global brand that survives to this day, and which became really well-known.

It was a proprietary system with proprietary and in-license data, and it created a new category. It enabled generic pharmaceutical companies to analyze product targets for development and licensing on a global basis. A different version of the software system enabled branded pharmaceutical companies to calibrate the erosion curves of their branded products when generic competition hit. So the data could be analyzed and deployed to serve both sides.

Originally I had a partnership with a very talented developer, whom IBM set me up with. I had the idea for the company, and had the idea that I would learn how to write code myself. I’ll never forget the advice of a gentleman at IBM. He said, “Jean, you could spend the rest of your life learning how to be a mediocre developer. You need to go out and get somebody good.”

So IBM found me someone great, Richard Hong, who was a key partner for me in developing several generations of software at Newport. Eventually it became too big for one guy in New Jersey to do, so we built our in-house development team, and when Thomson acquired the company, they found that our development team was more productive and more cost-effective than their development groups at the big company. Thomson still maintains the Newport office right here in Portland, Maine. Some of my team are still there. I see them out at trade shows with a great big booth we never could have afforded in the early days, and I’m really proud.

Why did you sell the company?

One of the reasons I sold Newport was that I wanted to build a company around the kind of profitable, niche products that the Newport system had been built to identify. I found an ideal opportunity in the vet pharmaceutical space: a very inefficient market with limited generics, very little generic competition, and a great group of product opportunities for a company to have sustained profits and to also really contribute something to pet owners and veterinarians.

You founded Putney in 2006, and launched its first product for pets, a generic equivalent of the pain reliever Rimadyl. With a generic equivalent like Carprofen  caplets on the market, why would any vet buy Rimadyl, which costs more?

Great question. We wish you were out asking that question in the market. On the human side of course, generics are well established and fill 78% of the scripts. To date, 94% of the products that have been approved by the FDA for pets don’t have a generic, so veterinarians and pet owners are not familiar with FDA-approved generics for pets. So it will take some time, particularly for the veterinarians, to understand the value that generics bring to their practices and to pet owners.

Why does Putney only offer two generic equivalents at this point? What takes so long?

The key challenge is to get our pipeline of drugs developed and approved by the FDA. That is hard work, because it takes time to develop a drug, and the FDA has high standards, which it should have. The key challenge in particular is bringing the drugs through the FDA approval process that are the large-selling items. Carprofen caplets is a generic of a relatively small drug, in terms of usage, and so the much more dramatic conversion to generics will occur with the approval of Carprofen palatable chews. Chews are more widely used because of their palatability, and palatability is important for dogs and cats being willing to take the drugs.

How do you  and your team decide which products to develop?

I like to say that we do product development backwards. Most pharmaceutical companies, if they are a branded pharmaceutical company, base their product development decisions on their medical research expertise. They may be experts in cancer, or in the digestive system, so they’re doing research in a particular set of organs or diseases. Other companies base their product development decisions around their manufacturing capacity. They are injectable drug manufacturers or they are manufacturers of tablets or capsules.

At Putney, we develop products backwards, which means we develop the products that the market needs, and we base our manufacturing choices on what is the lowest regulatory risk. We look for a manufacturer who has developed the same or a very similar drug and has a sterling track record with the FDA. We also make our development and manufacturing decisions in a geographically-neutral way, so the decision is driven by who’s the best partner—who can develop with the least risk, the highest quality and the best time frame. We are developing and manufacturing products in the U.S., in a number of European countries, in India, and potentially in China.

Why don’t human generic drug companies move into the pet industry?

The human generic companies have not focused on pet generics because it is a completely different market, and requires a dedicated sales force calling on veterinarians. It requires dedicated product development, and expertise to conduct the science and research that is specific to the animals. And it requires dedicated regulatory affairs to deal with a different center at the FDA, the Center for Veterinary Medicine, which is a different center from CDER, the Center for Drug Evaluation Research, where human drugs are evaluated. So the human generic companies that have the skill sets to overcome barriers to entry and formulate generic drugs, do not have the veterinary-specific expertise.

The barriers to entry are high; this is not an easy market. It’s not for the faint of heart. We have taken on this challenge and we have a great team here who are really, really excited about overcoming these challenges. But it isn’t easy.

Why is veterinary-specific expertise so important?

Veterinary medicine is quite different, because veterinarians both prescribe drugs, like human doctors do, but they also dispense them. Human doctors give you a script, and you go fill your script at your pharmacy. The human doctor’s not involved and in fact doesn’t know what you pay for it, and they don’t know what your insurance plan pays and how the economics work out. Veterinarians, on the other hand, sell the drugs. So they are very economically aware, and, in fact, a significant portion of veterinarians’ income and profits comes from drug sales.

If pet owners are not filling their prescriptions, if they’re not giving their dog heartworm medication every month in the South, not only is the dog at risk of getting heartworm, which, if not treated, will be fatal for the dog, but the veterinarian is also losing income. If the pet owners aren’t filling their scripts, then the pet owner may not be bringing the dog in for its vaccinations or its checkups, so it’s a dangerous spiral in terms of disease, in part, because some diseases are zoonotic and can transfer to humans. And it’s negative for the veterinary practice in terms of income and profits. By offering drugs that the vet makes more on, but can offer at a cheaper price, it’s really solving a number of problems.

One of the shocking things to me, as I delved more deeply into this market, is how many pets go untreated, or are treated with a drug that isn’t ideal, in order to help the pet owner save money.  With some of the infectious diseases in particular, the drugs are prohibitively expensive, so we really look forward to helping the pets get treated with the right drug for the disease.

How long does it take to get a generic product for companion animals to market?

The total process from pulling the trigger on a portfolio decision to FDA approval is anywhere from three to six years.

Some of that time line is not FDA evolution; it’s actually development and testing of the product. There are requirements, for instance, for stability testing, where the product is actually kept in a chamber and exposed to heat and required to sit there for a period of time. That’s frustrating time to wait while your product sits there, but it’s important to demonstrate that the product won’t degrade once it’s in the market.

I wish things were faster, and we’re actually working hard with the money we now have through the new investment to do some things to accelerate some of our development time frames, but it’s important for the process to be very, very rigorous for any drug, whether it’s for an animal or a human.

What kind of time line are you looking at for future product launches at Putney?

We don’t disclose time lines, as is common in the generic industry, and we don’t disclose our pipeline, except I will say that we believe we have the largest pipeline in animal health, and we expect significant product approvals in the not too distant future. We will be expanding into the other side of the office—we have the whole floor here—and we will be moving some of our people into the other side. We have a lot of hiring going on, all in anticipation of increasing our pipeline and bringing to market some very significant veterinary generic products.

Any particular talent you’re looking for?

We’re recruiting very aggressively from both human generics and animal health, and we’re looking for really strong performers with a track record of success. Portland is a great place to live; it’s a great place to raise a family. The schools here have a pretty good reputation and that’s a very important component of what people are looking for as they relocate with their families. So we’re excited about Portland. We have a lot of people that we need to relocate here from outside of the state of Maine and will be announcing several additional key members of the management team very shortly.

A very important part of our challenge is to scale up the company, and, at the same time, preserve our core values, and preserve and enhance a very performance-driven, entrepreneurial culture.

So you’re looking for people who behave as if they own the company.

Exactly. People here get good compensation, but they also get stock options. So they actually do own the company. The kind of person who’s eager to own a piece of the company is the kind of person we’re looking for.

How long does it take to get the right person?

It depends, and we’re committed to finding the right person, not to filling chairs with live bodies. Hiring decisions are the most important decisions that you make, and they’re the most important decisions that I make as the CEO. It’s what I spend the majority of my time on right now.

What tools or processes do you use at Putney to help you make good hiring decisions?

We have a very rigorous process here. It is designed around the recommendations of a talent consulting company called GH Smart. There is a book that the founder of GH Smart wrote called Who. We actually were very privileged to have one of the principals of GH Smart join our board of directors for a period of time. He transformed our hiring process, which will have a dramatic, lasting impact on the success of the business.

The GH Smart process focuses on rigorously defining the mission for each position, the measurable outcomes expected for each position, and tying that to bonuses, and then looking for people who’ve demonstrated success achieving similar outcomes over their past career, as well as evaluating for cultural fit. It’s a very rigorous process. There’s a lot of common sense to it. It’s really about the discipline of defining what you’re looking for and then matching people against that clearly defined set of criteria for the position. It’s been incredibly, incredibly helpful and important here. I’ve really learned a lot.

You recently brought in $21 million in C-round investment capital to Putney. What did that take? 

Like everything else, raising money is a function of having a good business plan, a good strategy, a credible story, and good relationships. One of the new institutional investor’s principals, one of the gentlemen who has just joined our board, Bruce Downey, is one of the most successful human generic CEOs and someone I have known and respected and admired for several decades in the industry. We also had outstanding investment bankers at First Analysis out of Chicago. The depth of knowledge and the relationships to high-quality institution investors that that investment banking firm brought to the table were instrumental.

Do you have any insights on why Maine seems to have trouble attracting investment capital?

It really isn’t that Maine has trouble bringing in investment capital. It’s that venture capital investing tends to be concentrated in a small number of places, because of critical mass.

Around Silicon Valley, around Boston, there are concentrations of experienced venture capital investors, experienced entrepreneurs, academic institutions of sufficient caliber to spin out scientifically interesting discoveries, and a pool of companies that also provide training grounds for talent. Obviously there are some smaller clusters as well: the mid-Atlantic area around Philadelphia; Austin, Texas. But operating outside of those clusters is always more difficult, because you have less access to all of those pieces that you need for a successful business.

Here in Maine, we are in the midst of an early-stage growth in a cluster of veterinary biotech-related entrepreneurial successes. IDEXX is obviously a very highly successful company, and there are a lot of tremendous people there, some of whom leave and have started other businesses, some of which succeed and some of which don’t. But there is a nucleus growing here of veterinary, biotech-related startup businesses that I think can be not only successful but also very important in creating employment and technology investments in the state of Maine.

The companies selling branded meds for animals must not be too happy about Putney’s existence. 

We have a lot of fans among veterinarians; I’m not sure we have fans among the branded companies.

The lack of generic competition has allowed the big pharma animal health companies to have evergreen products with limited innovation, and they raise prices on these old products every year. You don’t see that on the human side, because generic competition comes along, and unless you’re innovating and launching new products, you’re dead. So generics help to spur innovation, and I think they will be helpful at prodding these sleepy vet- branded companies to actually develop more new products to treat disease for pets. That’s a great thing. And those provide the generic drugs for the future. Innovation is good.

* * *

The Hoffman File

Born:  Washington, D.C.

Education:  BA (double major) in East Asian history/government and legal studies, Bowdoin College, 1979. Hoffman also completed language studies at Middlebury Summer Language Program and Chinese University of Hong Kong, and executive education programs at Stanford and Columbia Universities’ Graduate Schools of Business.

Career: After working for the National Council for U. S.-China Trade in Washington, D.C., for two years, Hoffman entered the pharmaceutical industry. Positions include: manager, China business, Zuellig Group, 1982; general manager, China, Zuellig North America, 1984; CEO, ZetaPharm, 1987. Hoffman returned to the U.S. and founded Newport Strategies in 1990, which she sold to Thomson Reuters in 2004. She founded Q Street Advisors in 2004; Putney in 2006.

Affliliations: Charter board member, Maine Small Enterprise Growth Fund, 1997. Current affiliations include: editorial board, Journal of Generic Medicines; member, UNE College of Pharmacy, Dean’s Kitchen Cabinet; mentor, Maine Center for Enterprise Development Top Gun Program.

Awards: Woman to Watch, MaineBiz, 2009; Woman to Watch, Mass High Tech, 2011.

Personal: Hoffman and her two children live on Peaks Island. Her daughter attends Waynflete School, and her son is a mechanical engineering major at the University of Vermont.

Daniel Lambert/MPBN photo

Ready & Able

Maine Public Broadcasting Network has the staff, gear, and mandate to reach every corner of Maine with news, culture, discourse, emergency alerts, and Big Bird, too.

Irwin Gratz gets out of bed at an hour when most roosters are still snoring, and drives to the Maine Public Broadcasting Network’s Portland studio in the dark, arriving just after four in the morning. Legend has it that he stores a cot somewhere in the building in case a snowstorm threatens to keep him from his thousands of listeners who begin their day with his popular radio program, Morning Edition.

“For years and years there was a fold-up cot in one of the back studios,” says Lou Morin, MPBN’s director of marketing and public relations. “If it looked like it was going to be really nasty, he’d sleep there just to make sure that he would be on the air on time. I haven’t seen one in the new space. We haven’t been in there all that long, so I don’t know if he’s just got it hidden somewhere.”

At any given moment, Gratz’s voice reaches some 30,000 pairs of ears throughout Maine and in spillover pockets in Canada, New Hampshire, and even Vermont. His total audience during the week is around 170,000. When he goes on vacation, MPBN has to warn listeners in advance to head off the deluge of phone calls from his loyal listeners.

Gratz is the producer of Morning Edition, which he has anchored for 19 years. He’s also a past president of the Society of Professional Journalists, an amateur astronomer, and an avid swimmer who has completed five Peaks Island-to-Portland swims. But in the halls of MPBN, he’s hardly unique: The network is filled with interesting and accomplished professionals, most of whom have been at their jobs for a considerable length of time.

Suzanne Nance, who hosts a classical music program every weekday, is a talented opera singer who performs throughout Maine and abroad in cities including London and Prague. Jennifer Rooks, television anchor for Maine Watch, spent 13 years in commercial television in Portland and has won two Edward R. Murrow awards, for coverage of Maine National Guard soldiers deployed in Bosnia and Hungary, and for the documentary Citizen King, about independent governor (and former Maine Watch host) Angus King. Chief technology officer Gil Maxwell, who oversees the transmission center in Bangor, has worked for MPBN for 24 years. Vice president for TV and radio Charles Beck spent much of his youth in Europe and is
fluent in Swedish. He’s in his 31st year at MPBN.

“This organization has a reputation for longevity of its employees,” says Rich Tozier, whose Friday night jazz program emanates from the Bangor radio studio. “It’s a good place to work. You have a lot of people who have put their blood, sweat, and guts into this organization to help it succeed. And we’ve had a lot of alumni who’ve left here and gone on to bigger and better things.” He proceeds to rattle off a list of names of former MPBN employees now working for CNN, National Public Radio, and commercial stations in Boston and beyond.

While MPBN has highly regarded talent, many don’t realize how popular MPBN is in terms of ratings, especially when it comes to radio. MPBN’s total listening audience is larger than that of any commercial radio station in the state. While the television ratings aren’t as spectacular, polls consistently show that PBS is the most trustworthy brand on TV for both children’s programming and news.

“We serve a diverse population across the state that we’re touching every day,” says Erin Merrill, who works in the fundraising arm of the Lewiston office with major donors and special events. “Parents will tell us that we are the only station they’ll let their kid watch during the day, because they know they won’t see an ad for violent video games or sugary snack foods.”

The core of what MPBN provides, says chief financial officer John Isacke, simply would not be provided by commercial broadcasters. “We devote half of every weekday to educational offerings that other broadcasters, even specialty broadcasters, are not doing.”

Gil Maxwell, who makes sure the orchestra of sound waves, TV signals, and digital information is always flowing, stands in front of a bank of TV screens displaying children’s programming currently on air. “If it wasn’t for public broadcasting, would Sesame Street have ever started?” asks Maxwell. “Think of our programming as research and development. The ultimate goal is not to make money, but to educate, inform, and enlighten. Sometimes we get a hit.”

Maxwell makes sure that every household in Maine with a television can tune in to the educational antics of Big Bird, Barney the purple dinosaur, and Sid the science kid. With five television transmitters in strategic locations around the state, MPBN is the only broadcast entity that can touch the entire state.

MPBN also runs seven FM radio stations, with an additional seven towers, which likewise provide statewide coverage.

It’s all done from three studios, in Portland, Lewiston, and Bangor. The Lewiston station houses MPBN’s television studio, where the public affairs program Maine Watch with Jennifer Rooks is recorded. The administrative staff is also based in Lewiston.

Radio programming broadcasts from the Portland and Bangor studios. The radio studios can link into the National Public Broadcasting network. Stephen King, for example, can sit in the Bangor studio and be interviewed by an NPR reporter in Washington, D.C., and it will sound like they are in the same room. Bangor is also where technicians monitor the transmission equipment around the state.

“We are the result of a merger,” says Morin. “We didn’t set out to have three centers in three different cities.”

The Lewiston facility is the former headquarters of WCBB, the combined television station of Colby, Bates, and Bowdoin Colleges, which began broadcasting in 1961. Two years after that, WMEB-TV began broadcasting from the University of Maine at Orono. The Portland station grew out of a similar program at USM. On the radio side, WMEH-FM began broadcasting from UMaine in the early ’70s, and was joined by five other stations around the state over the ensuing decade. The stations merged to form MPBN in 1992.

The Lewiston studio is in a small building on the edge of town whose dominant feature is the parabolic dish antenna on the roof. The studio itself is tiny. At the center is the round table where Rooks interviews her Maine Watch guests. From her seat she can read from a teleprompter and check a monitor to see the show as it’s being recorded.

Off to one side stand three lecterns resembling those used on Jeopardy! MPBN is planning to use them when it revives its iconic but long-dormant Maine-based game show, So You Think You Know Maine, in 2012.

MPBN runs four channels concurrently, their main broadcast channel and three sub-channels: PBS Kids (24-hour children’s programming), CreateTV (featuring cooking and other instructional shows), and MPBN World (featuring round-the-clock news and public affairs programming). As Morin explains, “Not everybody had kids; there are grandparents and other viewers out there who want to watch public broadcasting programming, but not necessarily Curious George.”

The most popular television broadcasts, by far, are the annual high school basketball tournaments in February.  That’s a lesson MPBN’s strategic planners are taking to heart as they try to map out the network’s future.

MPBN’s last five-year strategic plan, Morin says, expires in 2012. The committee charged with writing the next five-year plan—which will include MPBN’s new president, Mark Vogelzang, who succeeds retiring CEO Jim Dowe—will have to look at the rapid transformations brought about by the switch from analog to digital broadcasting, and the thinning line between television and computers.

“There’s only a certain amount of broadcast spectrum,” Morin says. “It’s finite, and there’s increasing competition with cellular and broadband and first responders. It’s getting crowded. That’s what the transition to digital was all about. The digital broadcast technology of today uses vastly less spectrum than the old analog technology.” Hence, MPBN was able to broadcast additional sub-channels after the switch to digital. But more change is certain.

“Our new plan makes the point of not referring to television, but to visual content. The delivery mechanism may be in flux, but we will still be producing visual content.”

As more people are able to watch Nova and other shows online via video on demand, they eventually may not need MPBN’s TV signal, Morin admits. “What will differentiate us in the future is the creation of local content.”

On the TV end, in addition to reviving So You Think You Know Maine, MPBN is negotiating with the Maine Principals Association to air more scholastic events, such as the state spelling bee and high school jazz competitions.

On the radio side, MPBN’s local news content is already well-known and respected. MPBN employs eight news reporters, whose numbers include veteran journalists covering the capitol and other hot spots around the state, led by news and public affairs director Keith Shortall. An additional reporter will soon be hired to cover the midcoast area; that person will have a desk at the Portland office but will work mostly from the field.

On the web at www.mpbn.net, three staffers work full-time updating content throughout the day and responding or anticipating the constant changes in technology offerings and user expectations.

All this takes money. And budget-conscious government officials often look at “soft” areas of the budget like public broadcasting when contemplating cuts.

“Government funding is at risk, both at the federal and state level,” Isacke says.

In its initial budget proposals, the Le-Page administration eliminated the state appropriation for public broadcasting. Cooler heads prevailed, but MPBN will still see less revenue from the state this year. “We were successful in convincing the appropriations and financial affairs committee that eliminating our funding was not a good idea,” Isacke says, in part because MPBN is the focal point of the state’s emergency alert system (see sidebar).

MPBN’s annual budget is approximately $11.5 million, 64% of which comes from membership donations and business underwriting. The annual appropriation from the state makes up another 19%, and federal funding and grants make up 14%. “We get grants for this, that, and the other thing,” Morin says. “We just got a grant for about $200,000 to upgrade our cameras to high definition. We’re HD capable in broadcast, but that’s only good if you have the HD cameras to send the signal out. That grant will pay for four HD cameras.”

But grants have been hard to come by of late. “Government funding, broadly, has declined dramatically over the last 10 years,” Isacke says. “Not in the form of annual operating support from either the state or the federal level; that annual operating support has held up reasonably well. The area of funding from a government standpoint that has diminished dramatically is grant funding through various government sources, whether those grants are for replacing aging equipment or for developing content.”

The private sector has at least partially stepped in to fill the breach. “Corporate funding for us has been up in the last several years,” Isacke says. “A lot of it has to do with Lou, when he took over our corporate support two years ago.”

Lou Morin has since become marketing and PR director, and corporate support is now led by Susan Tran.

“The job is a lot easier,” Morin says, “when you have the radio ratings that we do. We hear stories of people who have learned English listening to public radio or watching PBS. We are part of people’s lives. When I hear things like that, it makes me feel like I’m working for the good guys.”

But even good guys sometimes have to fight battles.

“We welcome the opportunity to describe what it is we do and the reason for our existence, which needs to be done every couple of years,” Morin says. “People can start to take us for granted. They turn on the TV and there’s Maine Watch; they turn on the radio and there’s All Things Considered. A lot of people don’t know how that all happens.”

Another challenge Morin sometimes faces is criticism from the political right that its programming slants liberal. “A lie that’s repeated often enough becomes accepted as wisdom,” he says. “I defy you to find a regular station that does what we do. We run public affairs programs in the afternoon. Often the speakers are very conservative. We give them half an hour to an hour to expound on whatever they want to talk about. Right-wing radio doesn’t have those kinds of extended, balanced, civil conversations.”

But Morin says that funding worries are a constant, no matter what political party is in power. “Administrations come and go,” he says. “The cutting of our funding and the pressure to do so knows no party affiliation. Times are tough.”

In private sector broadcasting, ad sales are the lifeblood of commercial TV and radio. For MPBN, cash flow depends on the success of its fundraising staff.

Fundraising is subdivided into several departments. Four people work full-time with major donors, defined as those members who give $1,000 or more annually. MPBN has approximately 300 such members, some of whom give substantially more. Five sales reps and a manager comprise the corporate support department, which encourages businesses to underwrite programs and receive on-air recognition for doing so. An additional five employees work with the majority of MPBN’s membership, sending out reminder notices and the DVDs and CDs given out as thank-you gifts, and handling inquiries. Five more part-time tele-fundraisers work from a small phone room five nights a week.

An untapped—or perhaps undertapped—source of potential new revenue lies outside the state’s boundaries, in the parts of Canada reached by transmitters in Calais, Fort Kent, and Presque Isle. MPBN has recently created a nonprofit entity in Canada, with a Canadian board of trustees, so that, for the first time, donations made to the network by Canadian members will be tax deductible in Canada. And MPBN is negotiating with several cable providers in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia to carry their television content.

All told, MPBN has between 40,000 and 45,000 members. “The traditional funding mechanism for public broadcasting is sort of a three-legged stool: government funding, corporate funding, and donations and foundation gifts,” Isacke says. “The longest leg is individuals.”

While the fundraising staff works to keep the cash flowing, keeping the information flowing is the job of chief technology officer Gil Maxwell in Bangor. The nerve center of the whole operation is housed in what he describes as “an old chow hall” left over from Dow Air Force Base, which closed in 1968. The building is now part of the University of Maine at Augusta’s Bangor campus, near the airport.

It’s a maze of small rooms and corridors. There are three radio studios. A music library is filled with CDs, vinyl records, even some old 78s. The lunchroom serves as a phone room during pledge drives. The biggest visual wow is a room full of flat-screen monitors and data screens showing the status of signals emanating from a dozen towers in a dozen different locations. The technical heart of the facility is Bangor’s bank of electronic servers, senders, receivers, compressors, computers, and all the other hardware needed to keep the system operational statewide.

“The more you know about how this stuff works, the more it overwhelms you sometimes,” says Maxwell, who keeps up with new developments by teaching live sound wiring and electronic troubleshooting at the nearby New England School of Communications. The reliability of MPBN’s daily reach is something he’s proud of.

“You have a mechanism that is built and operational, and tested every day,” Maxwell says. “Every day you can turn on your radio and know it’s there. At the blink of an eye, we can communicate with every individual in the state of Maine. That infrastructure’s in place, and the cost to maintain it is peanuts compared to the cost of building out a whole new system. And, as an extra benefit, you get public radio and public TV.”

* * * *

High Alert

The Maine Public Broadcasting Network is the only broadcaster in Maine with a statewide footprint. If there’s an emergency, you’ll find out about it on MPBN first.

“We are the focal point of the emergency alert system in Maine,” says Lou Morin, director of marketing and public relations.

What that means is that MPBN makes its statewide system available to federal and state authorities in the event of an emergency that requires rapid notification of the state’s population.

“If there were an earthquake or tsunami or terrorist attack or something like that, the warnings come from us first, and then get distributed to all the local radio and television stations around the state,” Morin says.

“Both multiple federal agencies and state agencies have the authority to step in, take over our broadcast signal on a moment’s notice, and broadcast throughout the state,” says CFO John Isacke. “And in turn, the other broadcasters can pick up that signal from us.”

To Gil Maxwell, senior vice president and chief technical officer, that alone is reason to keep the far-flung equipment in good working order. “We can communicate with every person in the state of Maine. How valuable is that?”

The bulk of the system has been in place for half a century. Because Maine is large and sparsely populated, statewide coverage means the installation and upkeep of equipment in remote locations. Veteran technicians tell stories of driving through blizzards and accessing towers with snowmobiles to get the signal out.

One of MPBN’s towers stands among the wind turbines on Mars Hill in Aroostook County. It’s now accessible via a service road built during the construction of the wind project; before the wind turbines were erected, technicians had to walk up an old cow path.

Maxwell says the system is a good bang for the buck. “What’s the guarantee that your cell phone or your Internet is going to work?” he asks. “A person at home can have a battery and a radio and still get information to tell them what’s going on.” Mainers who were here for the Ice Storm of ’98 remember that well.

• • • •

Company Brief

Maine Public Broadcasting Network  

Lewiston, Portland, & Bangor, Maine

Year founded: 1992

Employees: 80 full-time; 22  part-time

Creation details: Merger of public broadcasting facilities at Colby, Bates, and Bowdoin Colleges with those at the University of Maine, Orono, and stations in the
Portland area.

Annual operating budget: $11.5 million

Positions: Technicians, electronic engineers, camera operators, radio operators, on-air talent, fundraisers, volunteers.

Future challenges: Actual and proposed cutbacks in state funding; cost of infrastructure and technology.

To learn more: www.mpbn.net

Photo by Mark Wellman

Environmentalist #1

Horace “Hoddy” Hildreth Jr. has given considerable time and money to environmental causes over the years. But the laws he wrote in the 1960s remain his most powerful contributions

In the classic book The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing, Al Ries and Jack Trout teach that “it’s better to be first than it is to be better.” In his work championing Maine’s environment, Hoddy Hildreth has managed to be both.

An attorney who hated every minute of law school, Hildreth practiced during Maine’s environmental Wild West, when paper companies were polluting rivers and developers were wrecking wetlands and marring landscapes. Hildreth responded by running for the state legislature, won in 1966, and introduced laws that would become, and remain, the pillars of environmental protection in Maine. They include the law that established the Land Use Regulation Commission and controls development on 10 million acres in the unorganized territories; he also wrote the Site Location and Development Act and the Wetlands Control Act. While Ed Muskie is recognized as a national pioneer in codifying protection of the environment, on a statewide level, that pioneer is Hoddy Hildreth.

After serving one term, Hildreth continued marshalling change through nonprofits, some of which he helped found. These include the Conservation Law Foundation, Maine Audubon Society, Maine Coast Heritage Trust, Maine League of Conservation Voters, and the Island Institute, which he shepherded for 17 years as chairman of the board. In all those years of transformational leadership, says Island Institute cofounder Philip Conkling, years when “even a small leak could have sunk our boat,” he never heard Hildreth raise his voice in a board meeting.

As the son of Maine’s 59th governor, Hoddy Hildreth is as close to aristocracy as it comes in this state, yet he can connect with anyone. He does it, Conkling says, with humor, gentleness, and the quintessential attribute of a lifelong Mainer: common sense.

Where and when were you born?

I was born in 1931 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. So I’m not a native.

What was your early childhood like? What sort of youngster were you? 

Oh, golly, I don’t know. I was sort of the middle of the road. I wasn’t particularly studious; I wasn’t particularly athletic; I wasn’t particularly enterprising. But it was a happy childhood.

When you were a teenager, your father, Horace Hildreth Sr.,  became governor of Maine. How did that change your life?

I don’t know if it really changed my life at all, except that I was able to see things and do things that I wouldn’t have been able to see and do if I had not been the governor’s son. But I was very normal. I went to two years of public school in Augusta while he was in the Blaine House, and then I went away to Deerfield Academy. I don’t remember being particularly different from anybody else. It was quite a lot of fun, actually.

You went on to Bowdoin. What did you study? What were your college years like?

I majored in English. I really liked courses in English and reading, and I had some very interesting, intellectual friends that put up with me. Bowdoin was all male at the time. It had a very supportive atmosphere and it was challenging. You had to study pretty hard, but it wasn’t a grind, like law school. I took a semester of my last year at Forman Christian College in Lahore, Pakistan. My father was ambassador to Pakistan at that time. All of the classes were taught in English, which was the second language for the Pakistanis, so it was easier than Bowdoin.

Why did you decide to go on to law school at Columbia?

I didn’t know what else to do. My father was a lawyer. I can remember him saying, “Look, why don’t you go to law school? It’s good training, it teaches you a whole other area that you haven’t been involved in, and it’s a great place to start from if you’re looking for some sort of career.”
So I did.

You married your wife, Alison, while you were at Columbia University. Is that where you met her?

I’d met her years before that; she was a good friend of one of my sisters, but I really didn’t see much of her until I got to Columbia. She was at Vassar and my cousin Charlie dated her, and I was dating this other lady. As it happened, I ended up marrying Charlie’s girlfriend and he ended up marrying mine.

What about Alison got your attention?

She had—and has—a wonderful sense of humor. She was very much a free spirit, obviously talented. She was just fun to be with.

After you graduated from law school, you worked at Pierce Atwood, and became a partner during a time the firm lobbied for some big paper companies. Some of what went on back then, pollution-wise, was unimaginable now. Can you talk about what made you decide to run for the state legislature?

While I was very loyal to my firm, I really didn’t like what the paper companies were doing in terms of the environment, so I made a deal with Pierce Atwood when they first hired me. I said, “I’ll lobby the labor laws and the economic issues, but I don’t want anything to do with the environmental stuff.” After I got elected, though, I resigned from the firm because it would have created a conflict of interest.

As far as politics is concerned, because my father had been in politics and I grew up with the smell of cigar smoke, I was a political junkie in the sense that I was interested in it and in running for the legislature. I ran in ’64, which was the year that Barry Goldwater ran, and you know what happened to Republicans in that election.

I ran again in ’66 and got elected easily, and wrote a lot of environmental laws on things I had seen during my lobbying years that were going on, or weren’t going on. The whole north woods for instance, unorganized territories as they were called, were open to any kind of exploitation. There were no rules. We were so close to huge populations of people within a couple hours’ drive who wanted to come to the north woods and fish and camp and have camps and so forth, and none of this was being overseen, either by the counties or by the state. So that was one of the areas that I got very interested in and wrote some legislation that finally passed.

There were other laws. I can remember when Central Maine Power Company built a power plant on the very fringe of Yarmouth, on a point that stuck out into the bay. Hardly anybody from the town of Yarmouth was able to see the power plant, which was absolutely dominating the landscape for three or four other towns who were looking right at it, and there was no way to say, “Hey, wait a minute, is this a good place to put it?”

So I wrote a law that said, in effect, that if you’re going to build something big, if it’s going to have an impact, you’ve got to go to a hearing before a board and demonstrate that you’re not screwing things up, aesthetically, as well as it being feasible for this development to occur. That got passed and it’s still in the books, as is the wildlands zoning laws.

Can you give us any other anecdotes while you were a member of the Maine State Senate?

One thing that was interesting: The Augusta House was still standing, and many of the legislators would stay there during the course of the legislative session, and as a result the legislators really got to know one another. They’d socialize in the evening, gab about things, they’d go out to dinner and so forth, and the atmosphere was totally different from the way it is today. There was none of this really mean, partisan bickering. It was just wonderful.

But when the Augusta House closed, there was no place for them to get together and partisanship started to build. The legislature became, and still is, highly partisan and competitive. It’s sort of like Congress now, but it didn’t used to be.

Were the environmental laws you introduced accepted by both parties?

By the time I was in the legislature, environmental consciousness was just starting to crop up here and there. After I got out of the legislature and ran for Congress—unsuccessfully, thank God—I formed an environmental lobby in Augusta and spent a lot of time talking to legislators about environmental things.

Nationally, as well as in Maine, there was a great increase of consciousness, and it was bipartisan. I happened to be at the right place at the right time and was very successful as a lobbyist for this organization at getting some of these laws passed—two of which I had written and introduced when I was in the legislature but they didn’t pass. Those defeats came at the hands of a group of Republicans and a group of labor-oriented Democrats. But because the atmosphere was changing, most of the Republicans really got on board.

What was the name of the lobbying group? 

It started out as Coastal Resources Action Committee. For several years, I would go out and raise the money for a lobbyist. We hired three or four different lobbyists from year to year, one of whom was Angus King, who was a very effective lobbyist and did a great job.

We also had a really good board of directors. I was able to recruit a lot of people who agreed to give their names on the basis that they did not have to come to board meetings, so I ended up with extraordinary people on the board like Douglas Dillon and Buckminster Fuller. We put up a masthead that had those names in really large letters, and it was easy for me to raise the kind of money we needed to pay the lobbyists.

Did you go back to practicing law, too?  

When I got through with politics, Pierce Atwood wouldn’t let me come back to the firm. I had alienated some of their clients, so they didn’t want anything to do with me. So I started my own firm, with Harry Richardson.

You became president of Diversified Communications in 1979. How did that come about?

It is a family-owned company; I was their outside legal counsel. We parted company with the president we had, and I was put in charge of the search committee to find a replacement. I looked and I looked and couldn’t find anybody as good as myself. [Laughs.] I really did interview a number of people, but I just kept coming away with, “Oh, no, we need somebody better than that.”

Diversified Communications has changed a great deal and grown a great deal since then. 

Yes, at that time we had just one television station in Bangor, and we had one little trade show in Boston, and we published the National Fisherman. We had already started into cable, because I can remember helping get some of the franchises in some of the towns when I was still of  counsel.

The company also bought TV stations and got into cable service, correct?

I think I was just counsel when we bought the Gainesville station; after that, we bought stations in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and South Carolina, which we later sold.

We expanded greatly in cable in the early ’80s. We were 50th nationally in terms of subscribers, and had cable systems in southern Maine and New Hampshire and Massachusetts. But it became very clear that if you were going to be in cable, you had to be huge. HBO and other services would give quantity discounts, which is understandable, so you had to be really, really big or you just couldn’t compete. So we finally got out of the cable business and decided to concentrate on trade shows.

You started out with one show, in  the fishing industry. What other kinds of trade shows did Diversified develop?

We created some and we bought some.  We didn’t start the Fish Expo, but it was just a tiny little thing; it was practically in one room. Now it’s huge; in fact, it’s the biggest show that Boston has. Our next biggest show is the Work Boat Show in New Orleans, which is also huge, and we started the European Seafood Exposition. We now have 13 different events in Australia; we have a lot of shows in Canada; we have shows in Europe; we have a couple shows in Hong Kong and India . . . .

You’re global now.

Without a doubt.

Over the years, you’ve also remained active in environmental efforts. Are there any projects or initiatives you are particularly proud of?

Ever since I became president and then chairman of Diversified, my involvement in environmental things has largely been on boards or contributing cash, and I think the things that I’m most proud of are things I was able to do while I was in the legislature. What I’ve been doing since then is sort of indirect. I occasionally go to Augusta and sound off at a hearing.

Your dad died in 1988 at age 85. What was he like and in what ways are you like him?

He was more politically conservative, much more conservative than I am. Economically, I’d say, for his time, he was very liberal, much more liberal than a lot of his fellow Republicans. He had a great sense of humor, he was very athletic. He had a twin brother, identical twin. It was eerie how much alike they were, really. Both he and his brother, Charles, were both very big on keeping the family together and doing things as a family. So the two families were very close and still are.

You are a Republican and an environmentalist. Today, those two philosophies aren’t often in the same camp. You’ve talked about the false dichotomy between robust economy and robust environmental laws. Where does this  come from? 

In the first place, the environment, in my view, should have absolutely nothing to do with Republican or Democrat or liberal or conservative. I’m a Republican probably out of stubbornness; many times I’ve voted Democratic. But I think that it’s very possible to be conservative economically and still have a great environment.

In my view, the environment is something that Maine, in particular, has that is hugely attractive, more than most other states. It’s just a wonderful place to be. I think a great environment is a wonderfully powerful selling tool to somebody who wants to be in business to hire people and be here for the long haul.

What environmental issues do you see as the top priority right now in Maine?

Top priority right now is to keep the governor and the Republican legislature from screwing up the stuff we already have. I think it was a shock to many people when LePage got elected, and I think during the campaign he certainly projected an attitude that was very unfriendly to the environment. So right after the election there was a feeling of, “My God, what are we going to do?” We knew these bills were coming in LD1, dismantling one thing after another. I think the environmental organizations, for the first time, really, got together in one room and said, “Listen, we can’t be competitive with one another and try to take all the credit. We’ve got to work together.”

They did, and they were able to get across a very powerful message, that this is not what people of Maine really want.

Governor LePage has focused on the “red tape” end of environmental regs. Do you think that is a good thing?

Absolutely. I think some of the state employees in the DEP just aren’t realistic, they’re not practical. They’re not because they’re safe from being fired unless they do something pretty awful; they have no incentive to be nice to some person who’s trying to get something done, to help him out rather than saying, “You can’t do that.” All I’ve been saying in these things is: Listen, fix the bureaucrats; don’t mess around with the law. Fix the regulations, but leave the law the way it is. These laws do make sense and they are important.

You have worked tirelessly to help protect Maine’s environment. What inspires you? What do you hope your legacy is?

I think what inspires me is the possibility of smallness: small cities, small companies, and small appetites. I don’t travel all that much around the United States, but I do travel to places like New Jersey and Pennsylvania, and I say to myself, “God, I would really hate to live here.” Think of having to commute an hour and 30 minutes to get to work. I can get to work in 15 minutes; I can go home for lunch and get back within an hour. That’s what inspires me about Maine, the ability to do that sort of thing.

I hope to leave for a legacy a greater understanding of, and appreciation for, what we have. I think there are anawful lot of people in Maine who don’t realize how great it is.

Illustration by M. Scott Ricketts

Is Your Business in Trouble?

If your expenses are higher than your revenues, then your company is not well. Jacques Santucci, Mary Weickert, Dan Walsh, and James Ebbert offer potent medicine, though it may be hard to swallow. 

In 2006, a mere 1,250 businesses filed bankruptcy in Maine. Since then, bankruptcies have more than doubled, with an all-time high, so far, of 4,100 in 2010. That’s a lot of Alka-Seltzer.

Some economists say having some businesses close is ultimately good for the marketplace. It’s a way of correcting excesses, thinning the herd, a pecuniary version of Darwin’s survival of the fittest.

Small comfort to the businesses’ owners and employees. In a state like Maine, where small enterprises are the norm, the fall of a business is all of life’s top stressors rolled into one. Financial hardship. Job loss. Moving. Divorce. Breakup of the family. Death of a loved one. People who spend more time together than they do with their own kin, who sometimes have solved problems together for decades, are unceremoniously dispersed. All the things the company provided—products, services, jobs, business for other businesses—go poof.

The four experts in this roundtable don’t like “poof.” They want to help troubled Maine businesses turn the corner.

Dan Walsh, senior VP at Norway Savings Bank, says this requires kiboshing the blame game and taking responsibility for the turnaround. “When a business owner considers himself a victim, and waits for someone else to save him, it’s not going to happen.” Fellow commercial banker Mary Weickert, from Kennebunk Savings, urges owners to be realistic. “A turnaround requires time,” she says, “and it may take several years to establish positive trends on a new, restructured course.”

While bold moves are a must, corporate renewal consultant Jacques Santucci warns that “the most common turnaround mistake is trying to do too much at once.” Turnaround pro James Ebbert, like all the panelists, recommends calling in experts to help. “Let’s face it—most executives have not been groomed to take a company through a turnaround.”

Is your business in trouble? Let’s face it. Plop in an Alka-Seltzer and read on.

What are the signs that indicate a business is in financial trouble? What early warning signs do many business owners/managers ignore?

Dan Walsh: It becomes obvious to the bank that a business is in trouble when we see delinquent loan payments; failure to pay real estate, income, payroll, or sales taxes; or inability to provide financial statements to the bank. By the time these signs are present, it is late in the game, and there are fewer options to save the business.

Earlier signs of trouble are declining sales trends, losses, stretching of accounts payable, or loss of a primary customer. Some small businesses fail to produce, read, and react to monthly financial statements, thus missing the early warning signs. The bank is likely looking at your financials annually or maybe quarterly. A business owner should be reviewing them more often than that.

Jacques Santucci: The lifeblood of a company is positive cash flow. When the operating cash level becomes lower, or the company needs to draw more on the line of credit or push vendor payment over the term limits, the management of the company needs to react and analyze the situation.

A business owner can tend to be overly focused on its sales, its product, its activity, or its employees, and not realistic about key performance indicators of the company such as its gross margin level, the trend of overhead expenses, or its liabilities. We have seen troubled situations created by the lack of focus on the core activity and cash being used for new and unrelated developments or on investments that were not planned properly, creating unnecessary stress on the cash situation.

Another sign is the inability of the top leadership to delegate and share information, particularly in family-owned businesses, masking potential financial issues.

Mary Weickert: At Kennebunk Savings, we’ve seen a number of people who are affected by the economy often in ways that are beyond their control, and so we make every effort to work with our customers to help them weather difficult periods. Some indicators of trouble we see are deposit account overdrafts, delinquent loan payments, and might also include an unusual increase in payables, increased or new debt, and deferred liabilities.

To avoid difficult times, it is best if business owners can adjust and respond to early indicators that things aren’t going as well, such as watching for changes in their cash flow, acknowledging their true expenses, and/or completing an analysis about what lines of business may or may not be most profitable.

James Ebbert: From a workout professional’s perspective, cash is king. Declining cash flow should be investigated for the underlying reasons. Declining revenues would be obvious, but look closely at the business’s gross margin and how it stacks up against the infrastructure costs to support it. Different costs as a percentage of revenues provide insight. Where possible, compare them to other companies in the same business.

While GAAP earnings [earning calculated by applying generally accepted accounting principles] are important and one factor used by lenders in evaluating credit, cash is what drives a business’s success. As an example, think of the heavy string of GAAP losses posted by Ted Turner’s CNN at its inception; its cash flow kept it alive to become what it is today.

In the current economy, do cash flow problems more often come from a lack of income or from too much spending/high costs? 

James Ebbert: No one, except politicians, promises year-after-year economic growth. The major problem behind many failures in the past two years has been too slow of a reaction by managements to adjust their cost structures (overhead) to the falling demand caused by the worldwide economic downturn. Once you fall behind the cost curve, you may not be able to catch up. Admittedly, this can mean gut-wrenching decisions related to reductions in compensation, including benefits and layoffs. When making decisions of this nature, never think about how it will impact a particular individual; rather, think about how it will impact the survival of the enterprise.

Mary Weickert: In our view, the impact of our economy cannot be overstated; when revenues, profits, and margins are strong, one is likely to be less focused on cost management.

Because our market is weighted in the hospitality industry, we’ve seen businesses that are hard hit due to the economy’s effect on consumer disposable income, including increased oil and gas prices. With less disposable income, reservations and volumes have decreased, and those that do travel are often shortening their stays and spending less on food and extras. Furthermore, increased heating costs have been challenging to absorb. I have seen numerous business owners make the difficult decision to close for the winter months in a drastic effort to reduce overhead.

Jacques Santucci: Overall, cash flow problems do not originate only from lower sales or changes in the cost structure.

Often they begin when the company and its management fail to adapt to changes in their business environment that result in lower sales or changes in the cost structure. The global economy is constantly changing and tough economic times will always be a part of the business cycle. Some companies resist these pressures more than others, particularly the ones that have a clear business model, use solid forecasting and reporting mechanisms, and do not hesitate to identify and address all potential problems.

Dan Walsh: In the current economy, it is more likely that we will see a business struggling with a lack of income because of the lack of demand and the prolonged weakness in our economy, rather than a high cost structure. Each business’s cost structure is so unique that it is hard to say there is any one place that costs are most often too high. The business owner/manager needs to take a hard look at every expense, line-by-line, to find a way to fit expenses to the company’s revenues.

What role do inadequate financial reporting systems have in failing businesses? What does a good financial reporting system look like?

Dan Walsh: A business should be generating an accurate income statement, balance sheet, and accounts receivable and accounts payable agings monthly, and the owner/manager should understand how to read those reports. When we see a small business fail, there is too often a manager/owner who did not generate, read, or understand their financial reports, or there was a bookkeeper who was not accurately inputting the information.

For example, several times we have seen a bookkeeper book loan proceeds or capital contributions as income on the income statement, rather than booking them on the balance sheet. This obviously overstates income, and a savvy owner/manager should recognize this type of error and other similar errors upon review of the reports.

Jacques Santucci: It is difficult to make a generality regarding the role of an inadequate financial reporting system in a failing business. The question is first: Are the business managers reading the financial reports regularly? Are the indicators chosen by the management appropriate? In the case of the financial statement; is the chart of accounts correctly set up, representing an accurate view of the business? Is the record keeping done accurately, classifying the information in the appropriate buckets?

We have seen a wholesale company that issued a daily gross margin report of over 150 pages in small print and in no particular order. None of the five managers of the company were looking at it. Who has the time to review thousands of lines in search of an anomaly? It took them five weeks to find an error in purchasing which led to a significant negative gross margin and cost the company thousands of dollars.

Following the error, the thick gross margin report was replaced by a one-page report showing only the major issues.

Mary Weickert: Inadequate financial reporting makes it difficult for an owner or manager to identify and respond to challenges that can ultimately cause a business to fail. A business cannot evaluate their business plan and projections without monitoring the makeup of their revenue stream and expenses on a regular basis. Quickly identifying and responding to an issue such as an increase in labor costs can make a difference to the bottom line within the quarter, as opposed to looking back at year-end.

Today, small businesses have many affordable options to utilize accounting software that provide comprehensive tracking and reporting. A good system provides the user with the ability to generate a variety of reports beyond the standard profit and loss statement and balance sheet. Receivables, payables, and any specific category report can be generated for any given period. It also enables the user to compare data for the same period year over year.

James Ebbert: Having been in the workout profession for 20 years, it boggles my mind how many companies do not know the true costs of their manufactured products or services. This can be the result of poor financial reporting, or simply ignoring what the reports are saying.

Examples of inadequate information are endless, ranging from failure to account for production downtime for machine changeovers to simply not including obvious expenses such as shipping. I have seen managements “fudge” costs in order to justify doing business with high profile customers, such as the big box stores.  A construction company client ran 20% over on a fixed-priced contract and did not realize it until a month after the project was finished.

Finally, often there are too many reports with too much detail that intimidate (encourage) one to ignore them. A CEO should receive a daily one-page report showing the business’s key production and financial parameters.

What are banks looking for from their troubled business customers? What makes them nervous? 

James Ebbert: Lack of communication and last minute surprises. The last thing any lender wants is a phone call out of the blue at 4 p.m. on a Thursday afternoon saying, “Joe, we have a problem. Tomorrow is payroll and we don’t have enough to cover it. We need another $100,000.” Believe it or not, this happens when many borrowers begin to fail. This last minute, frantic call prompts the following thought process from the lender, who may or may not communicate it, depending on his or her mood. “First, did the company just discover this? Second, why didn’t you call me weeks ago to indicate you were experiencing some difficulties? Had you done that and come to me with a plan on how to get over the crunch, I could have worked with you. Now you have put me in the impossible position of deciding whether or not to close down your company by asking me to fund your payroll.”

Mary Weickert: It’s true that we, as banks, like to have our loans paid back! Luckily, as a mutual, community bank, we’re able to look at our borrowers who are having trouble with compassion and patience. There’s an art to working with businesses that are having a hard time and developing a mutually agreeable plan.

A successful workout action plan must accurately identify and address the problems. Borrowers are most successful when they show a willingness to accept change with patience and a positive attitude. It can be very difficult for owners to make the hard choices of prioritizing payments. Ultimately, though, we both have the same goal: having their business be productive and profitable and paying their bills.

Banks get very nervous when customers don’t want to work with them, or are unwilling to face the realities and reasons behind their troubles.

Dan Walsh: First and foremost, we would like the customer to communicate clearly with the bank. Ideally, a borrower can formulate a plan to address the problem, and that plan can be discussed with the bank. What makes me nervous is a customer who does not return phone calls, does not acknowledge there is a problem, or doesn’t fully disclose information to me.

Jacques Santucci: A lender or an investor does not want to run the business on a day-to-day basis. A bank usually lends to a company based on the ability of the company to keep the value of its collateral and to execute its business plan while generating cash. Although I am not a banker, my experience is that a financing institution is expecting a troubled customer to be proactive and realistic about the situation while keeping the bank informed.

Once it’s clear that the company has cash flow issues, a plan to address the situation must be put in place and all stakeholders, including the bank, must participate. Cash flow management is critical and banks typically require a cash flow forecast with regular updates and realistic assumptions. The lack of vision of the management, unrealistic expectations, and inability to illustrate past performances or financial forecasts would likely create stress in the banking relationship.

What are some creative ways you’ve seen businesses get themselves out of trouble?  

Jacques Santucci: Every situation is different and you need to combine traditional management methods, creativity, and a realistic approach to the problem to develop a feasible plan to get a business out of financial trouble. The most common approaches include adapting your business model, selling assets, or looking at your cost structure. You sometimes hear of companies in financial trouble laying off employees, usually higher paid ones to reduce expenses. Employees are typically the best assets of the company.

An interesting approach that we have seen while a company was trying to get out of trouble was to keep the top management and incentivize them on “laying off” their least profitable customers—the ones with lower margins and the ones that require too much time and break employee morale. That approach combined with a strong grip on cash management and open communication with their partners, particularly major vendors, brought the company back on track in a few months.

Dan Walsh: The most successful strategy we’ve seen has generally been shrinking the expenses to right-size the company to the new revenue stream. We have also seen businesses sell unproductive assets (such as land held for development or an unproductive location) in order to generate additional cash or retire some debt. Another alternative is for the business owner to sell personal assets in order to generate cash to contribute to the business.

James Ebbert: One of the first places to look for cash is stale inventory—raw materials and finished goods. It is not uncommon to hear, “We can’t sell it for that because it won’t cover our costs.” Those costs are sunk costs, and holding the inventory represents an opportunity cost. The same applies to equipment that is no longer needed. Excess space (either owned or leased) can sometimes be sold or subleased.

Collection of accounts receivable is another source. Believe it or not, when first being engaged, I often find large amounts of uncollected receivables—even from credit-worthy customers. The client has no collection program and no individual
effectively working the accounts.

Stretching out accounts payable is another possibility, assuming they are not already stretched to the point where suppliers are refusing to ship.

What are some of the preventable problems you’ve seen that might not have happened if the business had sought professional advice earlier?

Mary Weickert: There’s no substitute for professional guidance and putting that guidance to good use. It’s important to have a solid legal and accounting framework on which to build any new business venture. Many seek appropriate professional advice at the start-up of their business, but use it only as a onetime service.

I have seen a number of borrowers successfully grow their business, yet the legal structure and accounting practices remained unchanged. In one instance, multiple real estate investments were made and supported by business cash flow; however, individual accounting was not set up for each property. As the economy slowed, the borrower began to experience cash flow problems, and they were unable to identify the real underlying problems and react quickly. Many of the problems the owners experienced could have been minimized had they sought professional guidance to help manage growth and change.

Dan Walsh: Your accountant should be more than just the person who prepares a tax return for you once a year. If you don’t know how to read your monthly financials, ask for a lesson. If you don’t understand your financial reports, it’s unlikely you can solve the financial problem.

You should also feel comfortable using your banker as a sounding board. There should be more to your banking relationship than just “renting money” from the bank. Your banker may be able to give you some perspective on the issues you are facing.

The business owner in financial difficulty may also get value from hiring a seasoned reputable turnaround professional to assist with a plan. It is more likely your turnaround plan will be realistic if you hire the right professional. An attorney is also an important part of the professional team. If your regular business attorney does not have a background in working with troubled businesses, he/she may be able to refer you to someone who does.

It is difficult to justify more professional expense when cash flow is tight, but having a good team of professionals behind you may mean the difference between a successful turnaround and liquidation.

James Ebbert: The most serious problem a workout professional encounters is denial on the part of the CEO or owner that there really is a problem. Time and time again I hear: “It’s the bank’s fault”; “The bank doesn’t understand”; “It’s the economy’s fault”; or “We’ll get a big order next week which will solve our cash problem.” This type of attitude is most certain to kill any hope of a successful turnaround.

Employees’ attitudes mimic those of their leaders, and if their leaders are blaming everyone else, so will they. Turnaround plans often involve operational changes and employee sacrifices. When implementing a turnaround plan, I always tell employees that in a turnaround, I often value attitude more than experience. If they cannot accept the changes and get on board, it is better to leave now.

Often CEOs begin to bend to the pressure, making promises of all kinds they cannot keep. This, unfortunately, puts employees down the line into uncomfortable positions. A good example are accounts payable personnel who will often tell an angry vendor that the check is in the mail or that it will be sent next week, even if they know that not to be true.

Retaining professionals early in the process prevents these mistakes and brings credibility to the situation. And, yes, they are not cheap and they will want retainers.

Kids See ‘Em

Giant teeth, tiny creatures, buried bones, and life-sized storybooks—kids see ’em all at the Maine Discovery Museum.

Keeping young children entertained over long stretches of time like February vacation can get old fast. Fortunately, Maine’s largest children’s museum is actually fun and relaxing for parents, too, and will happily occupy any kid whose age is still in the single digits.

Completed in 2001, the Maine Discovery Museum, occupying what was once Freese’s department store, is more like an educational playhouse than a traditional museum. Learning takes place by doing, so the ability to read or pay attention to instructional kiosks is not required. Lessons are often supersized, including giant body parts, oversized illuminated pegs, and a pump-your-own waterway.

Interaction is irresistible: Kids can go (safely) atop a two-story treehouse, put on costumes, and walk inside the pages of Maine-made storybook classics like Charlotte’s Web and Goodnight Moon.

The hottest Maine Discovery Museum attraction these days is its new Dino Dig. Children (and their archaeologically inclined guardians) can dig through a giant sandbox for bone replicas that are true to size. Budding scientists can match and record their discoveries, and leave with a brochure on how to fossil hunt in Maine.

While digital dazzle is kept to a minimum on most of the displays, the Sounds Abound and Artscape exhibits will satisfy any young techies in tow with the chance to make a video of themselves singing karaoke or to make a wall of digital art by “freezing” their own shadows.

Free bonus: Plenty of seating means kids can discover while parents recover.

Getting there:

• Take I-95 to Exit 184/Union Street . Take Union Street/222 toward downtown.

• Turn left onto Main Street. Maine Discovery Museum is one block down on the right. Learn more at www.mainediscoverymuseum.org.

Natural Selection

Way before green was hot and locally-grown was cool, Avena Botanicals was growing its own answers to healthcare conundrums.

“Healing begins in the garden,” says Deb Soule. She should know. She’s been growing medicinal herbs and turning them into medicines since 1985, the year she founded Avena Botanicals and began to teach others about the healing qualities of plants.

In 1995, Avena moved to its current Rockport location, four miles from the ocean, where Soule (pronounced like the bottom of your shoe or the music of Aretha Franklin) designed and planted a large organic and biodynamic herb garden. The garden contains over 125 different medicinal herbs and plants. In the adjacent apothecary, housed in a farmhouse built in the 1830s, Soule and her all-female team run a thriving retail and mail-order business that supplies herbal medicines to a growing market. Products include liquid extracts, creams and salves, teas, herbal powders and supplements, oils, and health remedies for women and children.

It’s a year-round operation, beginning in March with sprouts in the greenhouse. In addition to production of herbal remedies, Avena also holds classes for locals interested in expanding their knowledge of herbal medicines.

“Our most popular products vary with the seasons, but our Heal-All Salve is consistently a top-seller,” says Nadine Gallagher, Avena’s office manager. She says the salve “can heal anything from minor cuts and abrasions to relieving radiation burns for cancer patients.” Another popular item, especially in winter, is their Be Well herbal compound tincture. Designed to support the body’s immune system, the product is a long-term, in-house staff favorite for preventing and shortening colds and flus.

“All of our products are handmade,” Gallagher notes. She’s not kidding: The staff manually harvest and process the herbs, and hand pour, label, and bottle them in the farmhouse.

As one would expect, everything Avena offers, Gallagher says,  “is completely artificial preservative-, toxicant-, and cruelty-free.”

Chris (left) and Dan Patry

Better Butter

As Kate’s Homemade Butter builds a new facility in Arundel, the company prepares for controlled growth—and even more of its better butter.

For 30 years, Kate’s Homemade Butter has been made in the basement and garage of Dan and Karen Patry’s raised ranch in a residential neighborhood of Old Orchard Beach. That’s about to change, as the family business moves to a 17,620-square-foot facility in Arundel sometime this  summer.

Now under construction, the state-of-the-art manufacturing plant will allow Kate’s to cut costs, lift capacity, and introduce more products—beyond butter and real buttermilk, which they launched three years ago—including cheese, ice cream, and other specialty foods. But it will also represent a nod to the very roots of the company, long before Dan and Karen Patry started selling butter in 1981. The steel-framed building will be shaped like a dairy barn, sitting on a 40-acre field with silos to store cream, a spring-fed trout pond, and a herd of 25 cows.

“I learned how to make butter from my Uncle Roland on my grandfather’s farm [Hemond’s Dairy, founded by Dan’s grandfather, Alphonse] in Minot,” Dan says. “We still make it almost exactly the same way. This new building is going to be highly efficient and let us do a lot of things, but it’s also going to be beautiful, like a little dairy farm.”

For years, the Patrys made butter at home, in five-pound batches. But when Oakhurst Dairy, Dan’s then-employer, bought Cole Farm in Sydney, he got his hands on a churn that could make 300-pound batches, and the Patrys decided to sell butter. Initially, the plan was to build the business to the point that Karen could stay home with the couple’s three young boys.

Today, they run an 11-foot-tall churn with a 4,000-pound capacity, three times a week, with each shift beginning at 1 a.m. and running into the next evening. With five full-time employees, they churn out more than a million pounds of butter per year, earning revenues of more than $3 million. The company has been growing 20% to 25% annually for many years. Hannaford was their first big account, but today Kate’s is available in stores across much of the U.S., south to Florida and west to Chicago, and in restaurants out as far as Las Vegas.

That 11-foot churn, and another just like it, will be placed in the new facility, creating the potential for double shifts and growth that, Dan says, “is limited only by how much we want to work.”

Actually, that’s not entirely true. Kate’s products are acknowledged as some of the best in the world—the company has won first place at the World Dairy Expo for salted butter (2006), unsalted butter (2008), and buttermilk (2010)—and growth will require maintaining or improving the texture and flavor that make Kate’s stand out against dairy giants like Land O’Lakes and even higher-end specialty manufacturers. “We’re going to grow, but it is, and always will be, controlled growth,” Dan Patry says. “The most important thing, our ultimate priority, is quality. We’ll never get so big for that to slip.”

That means using the freshest Grade A cream, from Maine and New England farms. It means using the same methods that Roland and Alphonse did, slow churning in smaller batches. It means wrapping in foil instead of parchment (to protect the butter from airborne flavors and light), and never freezing for storage. And, it means keeping control of every step, from cleaning equipment to standards that are much more stringent than the FDA’s, to handling the delivery to as many stores as possible, usually within a few days of production.

“All of those things cost more, and not a lot of companies do any of them, but it’s the way we do it, and that won’t change,” Patry says.

Most commercially available buttermilk is a mixture of skim milk and cultures, but Kate’s Real Buttermilk is just what the name says: the by-product of the butter-making process. The Patrys say substituting it for milk in almost any recipe makes food—especially pancakes and baked goods—that much better.

The company, named for Patry’s now 33-year-old niece, whose face graces the logo, is truly a family affair. The three Patry boys grew up with the company, folding butter boxes even at a young age. Youngest son, Luke, 30, joined full-time in 2005, and has been the driving force behind technological improvements that streamlined production, even while improving the products. A UMaine grad who studied science and German, then learned cheese making in Austria, he will live at the Arundel site and continue to specialize in R&D, developing new products. Chris, 35, a mechanical engineer, manages the equipment side and played a big role in the new facility. Son Dan, 39, runs Patry Family Realty and helps with sales and marketing.

“We’re all passionate about this,” Chris says. “You have to be, to work 20-hour shifts.” His father chimes in: “People ask me why I work so much, why we all do, and I tell them, ‘It’s not really work if you enjoy it as much as we do.’”

They won’t share a lot of specifics about the goals for the company, other than continuing to grow within their means and adding new products, hopefully one per year.  “I don’t want to tip my hand too much,” Dan says, “but we could do anything from ice cream (for local sale, starting in the new facility’s shop) to products made with buttermilk, such as ranch dressing. It will be good, and it will be fun.”

“That’s really the ultimate goal,” says Chris. “To make really good dairy products and have fun.”

Please, Hire a Writer

You wouldn’t hire a high school biology teacher to remove your appendix. Don’t expect a novice to produce professional-quality writing. 

My pal Bill Roorbach is an exceptional storyteller. He is descriptive yet concise on the page, and perfectly meandering when he shares a story over a beer.

There is one particular story Bill has told for years, and I often think of it whenever talk turns to good writing and what it means to write well. Bill’s tale has become something of an urban legend, and it has been retold at literary conferences and parties across the country.

The short version goes like this: Bill is at a literary cocktail party. A surgeon approaches Bill and tells him she was so inspired by his lovely, understated memoir Summers with Juliet that she is going to take a six-month sabbatical to write her own book. Bill politely thanks her; this isn’t the first time he has heard such cavalier pronouncements about writing.

“You know, you’ve inspired me!” Bill suddenly blurts out, his courage no doubt girded by the cold liquor in his tumbler. “I’m going to take six months off and become a surgeon like you.”

Confused and unamused, the surgeon walks away.

Now, Bill’s response was, of course, pitch-perfect, tongue-in-cheek sarcasm. But it points out how casually many people talk about the hard-earned craft of writing. While it’s commonly accepted that every skill set—be it surgery or stonemasonry—requires practice, hard-won expertise, and years of experience, why do we keep forgetting this is also true of writing?

No one assumes that just because they own a gleaming set of wrenches they are proficient auto mechanics. We accept that we are enthusiastic amateurs fumbling our way through a Sunday afternoon under the hood. So why is it that so many people with a word-processing program fancy themselves wordsmiths?

The fact that most of us can write does not necessarily mean that we are all
writers.

In a wrld whr ths knd of mssg hs bcom accptbl, good writing is actually more appreciated and more important than ever. Good writing is good communication—and just about everything in today’s small, flat world is about communication. Just consider the sheer volume of writing used to communicate a business: website content, print materials, advertising, and, yes, gobs of email. Good writing is good business, and good leaders value genuine expertise, invest in their most important assets, and never assume there’s no room for improvement. Whether it’s in our relationships or our professions, it’s never wise to take something important for granted.

While mechanics work in the esoteric language of carburetors and exhaust systems, a writer’s tools are the 26 letters and 14 common punctuation marks that make up the English language. But here’s how that equation looks in literary terms: 26 + 14 = an infinitude of possible expressions.

All of this is to say, simply, that written language is slippery. The ability to speak well is not the same as writing well. Casual emails, texts, and Facebook posts are not professional-grade writing. And getting someone to pay attention to your product or service or cause, in a world filled with noise and distractions, is an elusive art. Yet if we accept a few fundamental facts, respect the written word, and strive for improvement, we can all become better communicators.

1) Make good writing a priority, not an afterthought. Recognize that great businesses and organizations are built on great communication.

2) Invest in your written communications. Build it into your budget. Take time to get it right. Refine and improve your writing over time.

3) Don’t do it alone. Take what you have, print it out, and give it to friends, colleagues, or clients for their feedback. Good writing never occurs in a vacuum.

4) Always pass it by a professional! If you can’t afford a professional copywriter for your print materials or online content, for example, work with an experienced editor or proofreader. Professionals see things that novices overlook.

5) Remember that bad writing is bad business. Typos, ungrammatical sentences, or missing words imply carelessness and substandard quality. And confusing or sloppy prose is as disrespectful to readers as rudeness is during a conversation.

6) Never, ever, under any circumstances, use the typeface Comic Sans.

Good writing is, at its very best, invisible. Like great typography and great architecture, even when you’re not fully aware of good writing, you are imbued with a sense of ease and calm. Nothing jars, clanks, or confuses. Good writing flows, lures you in, and exhilarates.

The surgeon Bill Roorbach met at a cocktail party was correct in one sense: Nearly everyone can write. But it’s careless to assume that everyone can write well. So what’s one to do?

When your car engine is smoking, you take it to the shop. When your kitchen sink is leaking, you hire a plumber. So when dealing with something as crucial as the language you are using to describe your business, services, mission, or cause, hire a writer.

We’re out here, still awake in the predawn hours, sleepless over a semicolon or sloppy adjective. We’re obsessing over a typo or stray comma the way a great CFO obsesses over a balance sheet. So, please, hire a writer. Either that, or my pal Bill is going to start performing surgery.

Joshua Bodwell is the executive director of the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance. His website is www.joshuabodwell.com.

Shanna Horner O’Hea and Brian O’Hea

Academe, Kennebunk

Opening your own  inn and restaurant is a gutsy undertaking, even for highly trained chefs. Shanna Horner O’Hea and Brian O’Hea did it while they were still newlyweds. In the eight years since, the pair has turned The Kennebunk Inn and its restaurant, Academe, into a community anchor. National attention through the show Best Thing I Ever Ate, which featured the O’Hea’s lobster pot pie, has also turned their place into a crustacean-lovers’ destination.

First or early food memory: 

BRIAN: At age 5, I used to help my Mom roll out meatballs for our family dinner. It continues to be a family staple and they have become a local favorite at the restaurant.

SHANNA: In my baby book my mother listed all of my favorite foods. Ice cream was at the top of the list; it continues to be one of my favorites, not only to eat but also to make, because of its endless combination options.

Early cooking experiences: 

BRIAN: As a child, at Christmastime ,I would accompany my mother on multiple grocery stops to plan the family supper: the butcher for the kielbasa, the specialty Polish shop for the pierogies, the Jewish bakery for the bread. As a kid, I could not understand why we could not buy all the ingredients at one place, but now as a chef with a focus on quality, it all makes sense.

SHANNA: I was given a junior cookbook in grammar school and loved trying all the recipes, especially the cookies. And even at a younger age I would make mud pies and Play-Doh eggs, and many creations from my Holly Hobby oven.

Family influences on your style and taste: 

BRIAN: Weekend BBQs and an annual family camping trip started my passion for grilling and smoking; it continues to be a flavor profile that shows up in my cooking from meats to vegetables to sauces.

SHANNA: We moved around a lot when I was growing up, from Rhode Island to California to Chicago. Regional specialties and cultural influences have always inspired my culinary creations.

When you realized you really were a chef:

SHANNA: After culinary school, I took a job as a second chef in a private home in New York City, working under the direction of a French chef. This experience really set the bar for me in terms of professional cooking standards. Later I took a job as a private chef and estate manager for a Jewish family in Westchester, New York, where I needed to prepare the food according to Kosher restrictions. This job challenged me in lots of ways because I had to juggle so many responsibilities.

BRIAN:  Shanna and I bought The Kennebunk Inn in 2003. It was this move that really defined me as a chef. Ironically, the first year of running the inn was the least amount of time I spent in the kitchen. I had to learn all aspects of the business from innkeeping, to catering, to menu planning, human resources, accounting, and recreating the restaurant spaces.

Other professionals you admire most:

BRIAN: Danny Meyer, not only for his broad range of restaurant skills from back of the house to front of the house but also his range in food establishments from The Shake Shack to Grammercy Tavern.

SHANNA: Michael Boulard, former chef to the king of Belgium, is the private chef I worked underneath in NYC. His pastry skills alone would make him a standout chef, but he is also equally talented on every course of a meal. His commitment to detail, classical French cooking, and artistry set him apart from any chef I know.

Longtime favorite ingredient:

BRIAN: Pork, especially bacon or pancetta, because of its smokiness and natural flavor enhancer.

SHANNA: Almond flour. It’s a great addition to pastries to add depth of flavor.

Something about you people might find  surprising:

BRIAN: I was accepted to the New York City Police Academy when I was in culinary school. I had to make a major career decision whether to follow my passion or the guaranteed pension.

SHANNA: I have dual citizenship in Ireland and the U.S. through my immigrant Irish grandfather. I hope someday to live or work internationally.

What a perfect day off looks like:

SHANNA: One of those perfect Maine days, clear, crisp, and sunny, sitting on the deck in Harpswell with my husband, a glass of wine and snacks, and throwing two tennis balls in the ocean for our golden retriever, Autumn, to retrieve again and again.

BRIAN: Same as above, except  with a  major league baseball game playing on TV in the
background.

* * * * *

Academe

45 Main Street • Kennebunk
www.thekennebunkinn.com

Hours: Tuesday–Saturday 11:30 am–9 pm

Specialties: Creative comfort food with regional Maine influence.

Accolades: Featured on Food Network show Best Thing I Ever Ate for the O’Heas’ lobster pot pie. First place in bartender competition at Signature Event for “Sage Against the Machine” cocktail.

First-timer’s tip: Dine at the bar, a great way to meet the locals.

Sample menu item: Braised beef short rib, slow-cooked bistro cut short rib, Brian’s garlic, Parmesan cheese tater tots and haricot verts. $27

Directions: Take Exit 25 off I-95. Head east toward Kennebunk/Kennebunkport. Follow Route 35 south to Kennebunk. Once there, take a right at the first set of lights, onto Main Street. The Kennebunk Inn is in the center of town, on the left.

Photo courtesy of Maine Memory Network/MaineToday Media

Conventional Wisdom

1925, Portland

An assembly of women attired in paper party hats at Portland’s Grand Trunk Station was in a celebratory mood in July 1925. Special carloads of delegates, including these Kansans (note the lone man seated with hat in hand), arrived from around the U.S. for the seventh convention of the National Federation of Business and Professional Women’s Clubs. Five years after the 19th Amendment granted them the right to vote, women’s hopes and hemlines were on the rise. Bloomers, a precursor to women’s pants, were worn by some of the delegates.

Still, much hard work remained in a state and nation dominated by men. Twenty-three hundred paid delegates from as far away as Twin Falls, Idaho, flooded Portland’s hotels and banquet halls to discuss strategy, squeezing in junkets to Old Orchard Beach and Peaks Island. Among the delegates was the 27-year-old Margaret Madeline Chase, who cofounded the Skowhegan chapter of the club in 1924 and was elected president of the Maine BPW in 1926. Margaret Chase Smith went on to a distinguished 33-year congressional career and shattered the glass ceiling during her historic 1964 presidential campaign.

Maine BPW archives at the University of Maine’s Special Collections department document the organization’s growth, beginning in 1919 with the formation of the Lewiston-Auburn BPW Club, followed by Portland in 1920. The state unit was formed in 1921. Now called Maine Business and Professional Women, the group holds an annual convention and informational workshops. A sister organization, BPW/Maine Futurama Foundation, sponsors a scholarship program and Maine Women’s Hall of Fame.

The landscape has improved considerably since the 1925 BPW convention rocked Portland. Maine women now head corporations and nonprofits, control considerable wealth,  hold three-quarters of our congressional seats, and head the state Supreme Judicial Court. Like Margaret Chase Smith, rather than talk about equal rights and abilities, many Maine women leaders seem to prefer to put them into action.

Photo by Ashley Ray

Aesthetically Pleasing

Out of the many hundreds of licensed aestheticians in the state of Maine, only a handful do their magic in a different place every day. As part of the I Do Spas team, Linda Dyer travels across Maine, pampering brides and bridesmaids on the day of the wedding, destressing frazzled workers at their office retreat, or making spa party guests more relaxed and beautiful. While her traveling spa work is her favorite job, she has at least four others, plus “volunteer” work as a proud grandmother.

When and where did you learn to do facials?

I went to school in 2004 at Capillo’s Institute in Augusta  for my aesthetician license.

What other type of beauty-related services do you provide?

I’ve been working with I Do Spas for four years now. I provide onsite facials and pedicures for them. I also work out of my own shop, offering manicures, facials, and pedicures, and am licensed for permanent makeup.

Rumor has it this is just one of several jobs you have. Where else do you work, and what do you do?

When I’m not out on an event with I Do Spas, most of my other jobs are all service related for the State of Maine, Augusta Civic Center, and the food industry.

People say it’s hard to find a job these days. Do you agree?

I think it’s easier to find a job if you’re willing to try things you haven’t done before and have a strong work ethic. I also believe it is easier for women to find jobs than men. We work in the cleaning business and waitressing, and there are a lot of jobs in those fields.

Why do you work so hard? Did you have a role model?

I work hard to keep up on my bills these days. The dollar doesn’t go as far as it used to. I never really did have a role model until I met Jody Newman, owner of I Do Spas. She has created something that has been so inspiring to me, something I’ve only dreamed of doing.

Your skin looks great. Do you do anything special to keep looking young?

I live a clean lifestyle and drink lots of water, which is very important to keeping fit and staying as young as possible. I believe if you keep your mind and body busy, it also keeps you young. I don’t believe in just sitting around doing nothing.