By Sally Huggins

Entrepreneur: Patrice Manuel
Company: P/Strada
4033 Central
Kansas City, Mo. 64111
(816) 256-4577
www.pstrada.com
Type of Business: Management Consulting
Year Founded: 2001
Number of Employees: 11
Keys to Success: "You have to understand how to bid on a government contract. And you have to keep your finger on the pulse and the trends to respond to meet their needs." ¾ Patrice Manuel

Take bioterrorism. Add a pinch of career military. Sprinkle on some innovation and compassion and you have the ingredients for a potent small business.

Patrice Manuel used that combination to create P/Strada, a highly successful national consulting company with designs on becoming global.

P/Strada opened in 2001 and hit the ground running using Manuel's dynamic experience as a biological, nuclear and chemical officer in the U.S. Army to provide emergency preparedness assessments to governments and corporations.

By starting her company when she did, she was able to tap into the federal government's need for assistance with homeland security. The newly established branch of the government had a need for help with organizational development and with the emergency preparedness assessments.

Building a Business
Manuel opened P/Strada to provide consulting on leadership and organizational development, diversity integration and emergency operation plan assessments. A changing market caused Manuel to add a furniture division. This interesting combination of services is a result of Manuel's constant attention to the marketplace and her ability to adapt her business as shifts occur.

After 20 years in the Army, Manuel had returned home to Kansas City with a vast knowledge about the government contracting process. Her time in the military also provided a fertile training ground for her project management and organizational development skills. That combination provided a powerful knowledge base and service to offer corporations and government agencies. 

Manuel holds a bachelor's degree in chemistry and a master's in science administration, and she is nearing completion of a doctorate in organizational development and leadership. During her years in the Army, she was involved with project management and strategic planning, including advance technologies for the Army.

After Manuel determined the concept for her new company, she set about building contacts because she had been absent from the area for many years. Working from her home, she spent two years networking. She then moved into a business incubator at 18th and Vine for a few months and then set up shop in Westport.

"The disadvantage to starting my business here is that while Kansas City was home, I hadn't lived here in 30 years," Manuel said.

Using her certifications, new contacts and expertise in government contracting, she has steadily built P/Strada. Today she has 10 full-time employees and four part-time employees.

Government Contracting
When Manuel created P/Strada, she was open to both commercial and government contracts; however, her experience moved her toward the government side, where she now has 70 percent of her business with local, state and federal governments.

"I wanted to do commercial and government contracts. I wasn't sure which would work better for me," she said. "With my Army background and an understanding of how the government contracts work, it was a process I knew."

To formalize her plan, Manuel took the FastTrac Growth Venture course at the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. She then set about establishing certification as a Small Business Administration 8(a) small disadvantaged business and HUBZone (historically underutilized business zones) program, as well as a service-disabled veteran-owned company through the Veteran's Administration. With those certifications, she became eligible for numerous government contracting opportunities.

Manuel also obtained certification with the city of Kansas City, Mo., and the states of Missouri and Kansas. She also is a member of the MidAmerica Minority Business Development Council.

Homeland Security
Tapping into the heightened awareness of the need for emergency operation plans following Sept. 11, P/Strada worked with both corporations and government entities to develop preparedness assessments.

 "We create emergency operations plans for counties and municipalities all over the country. We are one of the few companies that do pre-planning," Manuel said.

While several companies help with the aftermath of a disaster, few work with companies and governments to do the planning, she said. It's a time-consuming process and one most people don't want to do.

P/Strada's staff works with companies to develop an emergency operation plan. Planning includes everything from IT backups to phone service to alternative operation sites, she said. Part of P/Strada's work is to explain the importance of implementation.

Keep a Finger on the Pulse
While homeland security is currently a profitable area for P/Strada, Manuel constantly keeps in touch with her contacts in the military and other government entities to be ready to shift her market emphasis. She travels to Washington D.C., a couple of times a year to attend trade shows where small businesses contracting with the federal government gather, and to meet with members of Congress and their staffs.

 "The pulse right now is homeland security. Based on a new administration, that may change," Manuel said.

Manual plans to open an office in Washington, D.C., to better keep abreast of federal spending trends. She wants to find a retired military officer to staff the office and use his or her contacts to help P/Strada modify its marketing as needed.

As part of its effort to be ahead of trends, P/Strada is engaged with a marketing company to revamp its image with corporate clients. Manuel said her company needs to have a better balance of corporate and government projects. Depending too much on any one area is always dangerous.

Organizational Development
At the outset, Manuel wanted her company to provide soft skills. While working as a biological, nuclear and chemical officer in the Army, she came into contact frequently with scientists and saw firsthand that while they were highly intelligent, often they didn't know how to communicate with their staff.

"Scientists often have an inability to communicate. They move up in industry but they don't have the leadership skills to understand why they aren't communicating well," Manuel said.

Manuel saw a niche for P/Strada. The company helps corporations and governments manage growth, focusing on getting people within the organization to use the skills they already have more effectively rather than immediately starting with training and personnel changes.

"We teach people how to lead," Manuel said.

But she notes that training is just an element of organizational development. Development helps people more effectively use the skills they already have, she said.

Clients have included the U.S. Department of Defense, Kansas City Power & Light, the city of Kansas City, Mo., Aquila, Fort Leonard Wood and Burns & McDonnell.

Diversity Integration
P/Strada's work with Burns & McDonnell involves the current renovation of the Jackson County Sports Complex. P/Strada provides assessment and reporting on the contractor's use of minority and women-owned businesses on the project, helping Burns & McDonnell meet the good faith effort to use small minority business enterprise (MBE) and women business enterprise (WBE) companies in the work.

"It's a service we provide to developers to monitor, report and evaluate MBE and WBE spending. We help companies meet their minority participation goals," Manuel said. "We help by finding companies that are MBE- or WBE-certified in the field they need so they can meet the best faith effort to use those companies."

P/Strada also is working with the Missouri Department of Transportation on a pilot program to help certified disadvantaged business enterprise (DBE) companies learn to work with larger contractors to meet the goals of MoDOT for DBE participation in MoDOT projects.

Empowerment
Just as Manuel works with clients to develop their resources from within, she empowers her staff to take responsibility at P/Strada.

"They come to work happy every day because I empower them. Their job is to be tactical, to execute and to make the company run as smoothly as they can. My job is to be strategic," Manuel said.

A company needs a good bank, a good accountant and great employees, she said; and she considers hers invaluable.

Empowerment of women entrepreneurs is also an interest of Manuel. Her dissertation, which she hopes to finish by mid-summer, is about the resiliency of women entrepreneurs.

"Women entrepreneurs are underserved. We have the least access to capital but we are the last to drop out of business," she said. "Why do women stay in business, despite the capital situation? Because they have hit the glass ceiling, because they want to spend more time with their families, or because working for someone else is no longer an option."

The company's strategic plan has P/Strada helping to empower women on a global basis within the next decade through work with women overseas.

Global Expansion
Manuel is laying the groundwork for P/Strada International, which she plans to launch in the next few years with a buying house in Bangladesh. The company will purchase uniforms from a manufacturer in Bangladesh and sell them to police, fire and military entities. Eventually the company wants to set up its own factory there.

"The employees would be mainly women. We want to empower women in those factories. Our goal is not to change their economy but to give back to a third world country like Bangladesh," Manuel said.

The strategic plan calls for the workers to be paid an hourly wage with a percentage of that wage again paid into a fund. The long-range plan is for the workers then to decide whether that fund should be used for health care or education for their families.

Giving Back
Giving back to the local community is important, too, she said. Manuel personally gives back through her participation in programs such as the Greater Kansas City Chamber of Commerce POWER (Partnering Organizations With Essential Resources) program, the Kauffman Foundation Entrepreneurs Boardroom and the National Association of Women Business Owners (NAWBO). She also is giving back through the Kauffman Foundation.

Manuel provides time off from work for her employees to participate in community service and to support charitable organizations.

"Organizations can't continue to take away and never give back," she said. "We give back to the community and have been embraced by the community."

Work/Life Balance
The flexibility to be able to participate in community activities and other things is why many women like owning their own business, Manuel said. She carries that philosophy into her own company. On snow days, employees can work from home. If they have a sick child, they can work from home.

She trusts her employees to get the work done and they respond by putting in the late hours at the office when it is needed.

Work/life balance is important to Manuel. She talks about that with clients during coaching and development strategizing and she applies it to herself.

While she works long hours, she also has time-share locations for regular vacations, participates in ballroom dancing and spends time with her son.

"I delegate well. It's part of the process of being an entrepreneur. Those things you need to let go of to think strategically, you need to let go," she said. "The best way to be in control is not to be in control. Trust and delegate. You have to learn how to live."

Employee Ownership
As part of letting go, Manuel plans to have the company 40 percent employee owned within a few years. She said employees have an altogether different attitude when they have a direct stake in the company's success.

It is also her exit strategy.

In naming her company, she considered her exit strategy. While the "P" stands for Patrice, she didn't want to use her name because it wouldn't make sense when she sold the company. The "Strada" is Italian for avenue or street.

"P/Strada wants to create an avenue in your organization for innovation, growth and creativity," Manuel said.

From inception to exit, Manuel has planned carefully and innovated when the road strayed from the plan. While she doesn't plan to leave P/Strada anytime soon, she is prepared. With her background, it couldn't be any other way.