<< Previous   of   Next >> Photo courtesy of TERRA Staffing Group  (click to enlarge) In December 2005, Everett-based TERRA Staffing Group acquired AllStaff Inc., an industrial staffing company. The move doubled TERRA’s staff and expanded its reach from two to five offices in the Puget Sound region. “We achieved growth much faster than if we had to build those three offices from scratch,” said TERRA President Betty Neighbors (above). “Now, we’re on track to double again in the next four to five years, either through acquisition or organically.”

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Betty Neighbors' family ties

Family plays an important role in Betty Neighbors’ life — both in and out of the office. Inside the Everett headquarters of TERRA Staffing Group, Neighbors is president and founder of a family-owned operation that includes husband Steve, daughter Jenifer Lambert and son-in-law Greg Lambert. “The four of us bring four very different sets of talents and abilities and strengths,” Betty Neighbors said. Of the younger generation of owners, who each have more than 18 years of experience working at TERRA, Neighbors said, “We couldn’t pay them very much (in the beginning), so their ownership is really earned through sweat equity.” “Steve and I are extremely proud of them,” she said. Outside the office, Neighbors, a mother of three grown children, happily holds the title of grandparent to 14-year-old twins and a toddler. A fourth grandchild is due this fall. “The best job in the world is being a grandparent,” Neighbors said. “Steve and I enjoy traveling. Usually, our travel is business related, but we extend it. We take the twins to D.C., take them to all of the historic sites,” she said.

CONTACT SCBJ John Wolcott, Editor jwolcott@scbj.com

Betty Neighbors a small-business advocate

TERRA Staffing Group president also active in NFIB

By Kimberly Hilden
SCBJ Assistant Editor

Before there was TERRA Staffing Group, a regional administrative and industrial staffing company, there was Betty Neighbors operating a one-woman, home-based business providing administrative and phone-answering services to her commercial clients.

“To their callers, I was their office staff,” said the Everett native, who was working from home while raising her three young children at the time. “Over time, clients wanted me to come to their office. There were projects that needed to be done on site. From that came the seed of a temporary service or staffing company.”

That was in 1983, when Neighbors and her husband, Steve, “sat down and hammered out a business plan.”

“We mortgaged the house and raised capital — it wasn’t enough; it never is. It was just me and one other employee,” she said of TERRA’s inauspicious beginnings.

The timing could have been better, she said. The region was coming out of a deep recession, and while the recruiting ads drew a lot of prospective employees, there were few jobs in which to place them.

“The economy was on the upswing, but it was a slow recovery,” Neighbors said. “That first year in business, it was pretty scary.”

But her perseverance paid off, and today, Everett-based TERRA operates five offices throughout Puget Sound. A family-operated business, TERRA is owned by Neighbors, company president; her husband, who is chief executive officer; their daughter, Jenifer Lambert, vice president overseeing the Talentum Search Partners division; and Lambert’s husband, Greg, chief operating officer.

With a regular staff of 50, TERRA has an additional 650 to 700 people on its payroll each week.

“This January, we issued more than 4,500 W-2s for 2007,” Betty Neighbors said. “… We take great pleasure in the fact that the service we provide to our clients results in putting hundreds of people to work each week. It’s awesome for me to consider sometimes all the lives we touch in the course of doing our business.”

Growth spurt

For its first 15 years, TERRA was a one-office operation, offering direct-hire recruiting, supplemental staffing and temporary help for clients’ short-term and long-term needs. In 1998, the company opened its first branch office at One Union Square in Seattle. Then came 2005.

“In December 2005, we experienced huge growth when we purchased AllStaff Incorporated. Just like TERRA, it was a family-owned and operated company,” Neighbors said. “They did exclusively industrial staffing and had three offices — in Seattle, Renton and Federal Way. We went from a company with 25 employees to 50.”

They also went from a company with one strong identity to two. After evaluating the strengths of each operation and committing to market-based research of its customers and employees, TERRA brought both identities together in September 2007.

What had previously been TERRA Resource Group became TERRA Staffing Group with two divisions, Neighbors said. “Industrial became TERRA Industrial Staffing and the (administrative) became TERRA Staffing.”

“I think that really helped with assimilating the AllStaff employees into the company,” she said. “We’d already been engaged in activities to help them feel part of the TERRA family.”

Creating a welcoming workplace is nothing new to TERRA, regularly recognized as a Best Company to Work For by Washington CEO magazine and a winner of the Association of Washington Business’ Better Workplace Award for its job training and advancement programs.

“When I started this business, I was excited about the prospect of creating an environment, a business where I would enjoy coming to work. I could create an environment that would be one that attracts good people and retains them,” Neighbors said. “But that doesn’t just happen. It’s a very intentional process.”

As a small company, TERRA can’t afford the benefits offered by a Microsoft or a Boeing. Though TERRA’s benefits are competitive for its size, Neighbors said it is the company’s commitment to providing the tools, training and support employees need to be successful that keeps its work force satisfied.

“Our clients and we as owners reap the reward” of that commitment, she said. “They’re productive; they’re happy.”

Despite talk of a national recession, Neighbors said the Puget Sound economy remains strong, and her outlook for TERRA is a positive one.

“We’re so fortunate to be in this part of the country, and I don’t see any appreciable decline except for one sector, home building,” she said. “(TERRA’s) still at greater than 11 percent growth from last year to this year.”

TERRA also benefits from a varied client base.

“Our ideal client would be a small to medium-size company or a manufacturing service,” Neighbors said. “We have a few large customers, but it’s diverse. We’re not concentrated in any particular area.”

“Citizen lobbyist”

As president of TERRA, Neighbors oversees the human resources component of the business, including training and development; she manages the company’s facilities; and is “the face of TERRA” that the community sees. She also is a regular in Olympia, where she has testified before legislative committees on issues such as ergonomics and the minimum wage — issues that affect not just TERRA but small businesses everywhere.

These are issues that many lawmakers have never had to deal with firsthand, she said.

“The majority of our lawmakers have never signed the front of a paycheck,” said Neighbors, a longtime member of the National Federation of Independent Business who quickly learned the need for legislators who respect the free-enterprise system and “have a healthy respect for small businesses.”

“It didn’t take me too long to discover that I had a very unhelpful, unwelcome partner in my business: the government,” she said of the regulatory and taxation systems that seemed designed to be hurdles to business success. “... That was really my consciousness raising for political involvement. I had to become a citizen lobbyist. I needed to go to Olympia.”

In early 1984, a representative from NFIB stopped by her office. Founded in 1943, the nonprofit organization represents the views of small and independent businesses in all 50 state capitals across the country as well as in Washington, D.C. Neighbors said she immediately saw the benefit of joining to have someone lobby for TERRA’s needs and the needs of small business. “I wasn’t able to pay myself (at the time), but I paid my dues.”

The notion that being a small-business lobbyist and activist would be part of her job description was reinforced in 1993, when the state was facing a large deficit, and the Legislature responded by raising taxes, Neighbors said.

“Because I had a service business, my B-and-O tax was raised 66 percent,” she recalled.

That year, the Legislature also produced the Washington Health Services Act of 1993, a health-care reform package that called for, among other things, mandatory enrollment in a certified health plan for individuals as well as employees of big and small companies over varying periods of time.

With a temporary staffing business, Neighbors wasn’t sure how the health-care mandates would be set up or what it would cost to run.

“Thankfully, it didn’t come about,” she said, noting that much of the legislation was repealed in 1995. But that legislative session left her feeling “more threatened than ever.”

Over the years, Neighbors has solidified her commitment to small-business advocacy, continuing her participation with the NFIB, where she has served as vice chair of the NFIB/WA Leadership Council, on its SAFE Trust political action committee and as a member of the local NFIB Area Action Council. She currently is chair of the state Leadership Council and in January was named to the national board of directors of NFIB, a first for a business owner in the Pacific Northwest. In 2005, she was named NFIB’s Small-Business Champion for Washington state.

Running for office

Small-business owner, citizen lobbyist — Neighbors’ plate was full in early 2003 when she found herself discussing the upcoming primary for the Snohomish County executive seat, which was up for grabs, as incumbent Bob Drewel could not run again due to term limits.

“I was having a conversation with friends and said that we need to have someone running for county executive with business experience,” Neighbors recalled. “A friend turned around and said, ‘Well, what about you?’”

Initially taken aback by the idea, Neighbors said she reflected on the fact that the nation’s founding fathers hadn’t been “career politicians” but people who left their jobs to do their part in Congress before returning to their professions. They were close to the issues because they were surrounded by them day in and day out, and so were their neighbors.

“It’s an executive position; the executive role oversees a vary large ‘business’ Things were a little tougher then, with the recession that came after 9/11,” Neighbors said. “I knew that I didn’t have all of the answers, but I know how to assemble a team” and gather the best ideas to solve problems.

With that understanding as well as the support of her family and friends, she threw her hat in the ring and began what she calls “an amazing adventure.”

And though she lost the primary to fellow Republican Dave Earling, Neighbors said it was an experience she cherishes.

“What was both humbling and inspiring to me was the number of people willing to give their money and time to the campaign,” she said. “... I met the most wonderful people, many who worked so hard to make this a reality. ... I have absolutely no regrets.”