Rooted in Courage: How One Woman Turned Life’s Crises into a 24-Year Legacy of Leadership

By Sharon Hulce 

Employment Resource Group - Sanford Rose Associates

It’s interesting for me to discuss Courage. Until I reached my 40’s, I never realized how important this value was in my life, or how it has shaped who I have become as a mother and an entrepreneur.

I married very young and married my equal. He was type A and together I really thought we would rule the world. At 23 I had a nice little Image consulting business and was having the time of my life.

It was around 11:00 when his brother, who was working with my husband 100 miles north of us, came into my office. “There’s been an accident. Dale fell off the concrete dam (he was working construction with his father), and I’m running to get Mom and I’ll come back to get you.”

Of course, lots of things went through my mine – but the fact he was getting his Mom was not a good sign.

We arrived at the hospital and as I walked in, I saw my father-in-law in the hall talking to the doctor. I heard really clearly a voice that said, “it is now going to be up to you.”

He survived falling 68 feet off a concrete dam because his hard hat embedded into his head. But the trauma from the brain injury was something that would never go away. My Type A husband became very quiet and very unsure of himself. Being courageous and changing everything about my career and our family became first priority as I would now be the only breadwinner. The gift in all of this is that my career took a serious turn for the better.

I ended up taking a job with a women’s clothing company in North Carolina. They had provided me with the clothing for a TV show I had been involved in and had tried to recruit me a few month prior.

I loved that job. I hired all their salespeople throughout Wisconsin, and we took the territory from last to first. That success resulted in a national job, where I flew every day to different cities to do the hiring.

My next bout with courage came in the form of a flight. I was at a conference in St. Louis, and I was flying to O’Hare on my way home to Upper Michigan. As a daily flyer you get pretty used to the cadence of “flight attendants, please prepare for landing” and the flight descends. But this time we didn’t.

An hour later the pilot finally came on the intercom, Folks, I need to give it to you straight. They found our landing gear back where we took off in St. Louis, which means we will be having a belly landing. That’s the good news because we can do that. The bad news is we refueled the plane, so we will be up here for about four hours, go out to a field and dump the remaining fuel and have just enough for our belly landing in O’Hare.

For four hours you could hear a pin drop. We landed fine. But of course, I missed my flight to Upper Michigan, and I had a big decision to make. Do I get on another plane? There was one flight left. I was so scared to get on a plane again after what just happened. But I also knew that if I didn’t, I would never fly again. At 9:30 pm I got on a little plane to Iron Mountain, MI…terrified. But I’m glad I did. But I also knew my days of flying were done.

That’s how I got into Executive search and that was 29 years ago (I worked for an MRI office for five years before starting my own).

It is now the 24 year anniversary of starting Employment Resource Group. Day one, got out of bed, fed my two year old and was off to my tiny little office with tongue and groove paneling to start Employment Resource Group (ERG).

The office had a lobby and a long skinny office that could fit a table for meetings. It was not glamorous, but it was affordable.

I had “bought my desk” meaning I purchased the ability to work with my same customers from my five years at MRI. For that I was grateful, because I had a nice group of construction folks (now frankly friends) that gave me consistent work to do.

Then I made one of the scariest moves in my career. There are two types of search, contingent, where they pay if they hire, or retained, where they pay upfront a portion of the fee but get all in effort focused on their search.

MRI being contingent those days, my entire desk was built on contingent search. And while I was standing on stages successfully, I now had a business to build.

So my first act of congress was to become all retained. Businesses change their value prop all the time, it was time to change mine. I set out to establish a process that made it worth it, one that has evolved a million times in 24 years (but is damn good today).

Back to day one. I started calling clients to inform them of my new payment terms. Mind you, some of these folks, I was placing 10-15 people a year with them. By the end of week two, I had lost my top three clients.

“Sharon we really like working with you, but we don’t pay fees upfront.”

So, I had a decision to make. Do I buckle or hold my ground? After some reflection and a whole lot of courage, I decided to hold firm. I was tired of doing work for what could be free, and I left MRI because I didn’t like the transactional part of search. The only way to change it was to change it.

So, I did two things. I started going out visiting firms face to face (no one did that back then). I also decided to get involved in the community I live in and try and grow a local search practice (I literally knew NO ONE at that point except my nanny).

My realtor told me to join downtown Rotary to meet business people. So, I did.

At Rotary I heard rumblings that they were unhappy with their President of their brand new Performing Arts Center (PAC) which was directly across the street. On that board were 26 of the highest ranked CEOs in the area. So, in my wisdom what did I do? I walked up to two of them at Rotary (mind you not on day one) and offered to do the search pro-bono. Walt just stared at me and said “sure.”

And so was the beginning of ERG. The PAC search went well, and they subsequently put me on the board. Ultimately a new group of dear friends and clients.

And those top three clients that left after I started ERG? All three are still clients today. Come to find out, they were happier with the service than payment terms.

It’s been a hell of a ride over 24 years. My takeaway…believe you can and you will.

Connect With Sharon

sharon@ergsearch.com

www.ergsearch.com