There`s something about entering Melinda Post`s office that puts all the senses on ready alert. Bold splashes of red dominate the room. A red Rambo lunch box, a Christmas gift from her 15 employees, is displayed with pride. Framed posters of sleek, red cars line the walls.
”My alternate career choice was being a race-car driver,” she says with a no-kidding look accented by the eye-riveting smile she no doubt perfected during her years as a pompon girl at Northwestern University, where she graduated with a degree in engineering.
It`s not the office appointments that are unnerving; it`s her. ”I only buy red cars. Red fits my personality,” she volunteers. She drives a candy apple-red Jeep.
Success, power and speed are big turn-ons, says the 31-year-old Glen Ellyn native, who talks fast and giggles at the drop of a hat. But the racing world likely will be absent the talents of ”Mindy” Post for some time.
Her job, she says, consumes 65 to 80 hours per week plus lots of travel. She`s the hands-on president of the company she founded in 1983, Pinnacle Technology, Oak Brook, which develops and markets computer software primarily for contractors. Annual revenue is about $2.5 million, with profits exceeding $1.5 million. ”Software sales are analogous to publishing a book,” Post says. ”The first copy is very expensive to produce, but once it`s written, the product can be duplicated over and over at a trivial cost.”
If the bigger-than-life superwoman entrepreneur hadn`t been invented in the `80s, Post easily could qualify as a working prototype. Her unrequited passion for perfection and stratospheric personal standards of excellence fueled by a quick-study intelligence drive her workaholic lifestyle.
Those who know her well paint a competitive image with almost caricaturing strokes: ”She will kill herself trying to be successful,”
commented venture capitalist Alan Brown, who invested $250,000 in start-up capital for Pinnacle.
”She makes Type-A people look wimpy,” opined her mother, Charlene Post. ”I`m generally considered fairly competitive and driven, but Mindy leaves me in the dust, and I leave 99 percent of the people in the dust,”
said five-year Pinnacle customer Brian Burgett, president of Kokosing Construction, a $150 million company in Fredericktown, Ohio.
Her 40 percent share of Pinnacle`s assets makes her a millionaire, on paper anyway, Post allowed with a so-what shrug. Some people are impressed by lots of money, but she`s not, she said. She cares more about what she does than what she`s worth. She and her work are one. She will not, she emphasized, permit herself to be separated from Pinnacle-not for love, nor money, nor imminent threat of death.
Not long ago, she was on a plane that developed engine trouble. Passengers were instructed to assume the head-to-knee crash-landing position, and, she recalled, ”We were told to take nothing with us.” Post remembers muttering something akin to ”forget that” and jammed the dozen or so computer diskettes containing copies of Pinnacle`s software down the front of her jacket.
The plane landed without incident, with Post crouched over her diskettes. (It`s probably an understatement to say that she keeps those diskettes-she calls them her security blanket-with her at all times.)
The day after Post was married, she insisted on stopping at the office before she would depart for her honeymoon. And in 1987, when the
responsibilities of her three-year marriage intruded on the demands of Pinnacle, she got a divorce. Ever a maverick of social custom, Post began dating her former husband a year ago. ”We have a romantic relationship without the bonds of marriage now,” she said. ”Most people think that`s odd, but nothing is odd for me.”
There are 200 Pinnacle software users in the U.S., and the company`s officially gone international, Post boasted, now that the programs are being used by one of the major builders of the Euro-Disney park under construction just outside Paris.
Pinnacle software, she explained, is designed to streamline the process of creating a bill of materials and an estimate of a project`s cost. The software is loaded into a personal computer that is attached to an estimating digitizer consisting of a plot board and a stylus. When an operator traces the stylus around blueprints, the system measures, computes and graphically displays the materials needed to complete a project. The program is usually linked to a list of prices of labor and materials, giving the contractor an estimate.
In a competitive market, accurate estimates are critical, said Pinnacle customers. ”It gives us a handle on costs, which is a big plus for an organization like ours,” said Norman Hassinger, president of Hoffman Homes of Itasca, which reported sales of $120 million in residential properties last year. The system also makes the estimater more efficient, he said. ”We`ve had a 20 percent increase in business without having to increase our contract staff accordingly.”
”The system-we bought three at $12,000 each-saves us at least $100,000 annually,” said Burgett. Topping that, he said, Post stands behind her product with the kind of service that`s almost unheard of: ”A couple of years ago, on a Saturday, I had a problem with the system. I called Mindy at home, and she led me through the whole procedure.”
Both customers reported that Post edged out the competition because she agreed to make special changes to Pinnacle`s standard software, customizing it to their needs. Pinnacle`s chief competitor, Timberline Software, in Beaverton, Ore., has a different sales philosophy. ”We don`t customize by individual site,” said John Geffel, marketing manager. ”The name of the game is technological innovation and sheer marketing savvy.”
If it were only that easy, Post said. ”The scary part is trying to look into the future and determine what`s coming out that`s going to get you. In the computer business, things change overnight. I worry about being broadsided by a technology that would obsolete what we`re doing.”
Post is a self-described ”gearhead with a personality.” And what a personality.
Words like vivacious, ambitious, opinionated, strong willed and super smart fit her like a second skin. She especially likes being smart. ”They
(her employees) tease me all the time,” she said. ”I`ve got a very good memory. I can remember programs I wrote 10 years ago. I don`t lose a lot through the cracks . . . . Smart is wasted, though, if you don`t have motivation. For me, the gene pool was right. I came from two extremely motivated parents.” (”In my spare time,” she said, she picked up a master`s degree in business administration at the University of Chicago.)
When it comes to running her own business, Post cuts herself little slack: ”Having a business of your own means you have to be willing to give everything because everything is on the line. . . . I lead by example. I will take any kind of garbage anyone needs help doing. I say to the employees, `You do what you can, and I`ll take the overload. If a sales rep has demos he can`t handle, I`ll do them. If a tech person needs help, I`m here.”
Post is reluctant to delegate responsibility-to a fault, criticized Brown, who owns 60 percent of Pinnacle stock through his venture capital company, Servex. ”It stifles growth if everything has to be funneled through one person. If Melinda has a fault, it`s that she spreads herself too thin, but that`s typical of an entrepreneur.”
Yet it was that same entrepreneurial characteristic, he admitted, that favorably influenced his decision six years ago to back Post.
”She was someone you could walk away from and not worry about getting a 40-hour week out of her,” and besides, he added, she worked cheaply. Her reduced salary of $50,000 was her financial contribution to the business, he explained. And she was a woman. ”I find woman to be the most loyal and hardworking of the sexes,” he said. ”They`re going to prove to you that they are as good as a man.”
Even though she holds only a minority interest in Pinnacle, Post said she isn`t worried about Brown selling the business out from under her. ”When most people buy a software company, they want the products and a couple of key people, and that`s it. And because one person they`ll want is me, they`re going to have to pay . . . . I`m young enough that I still don`t think this is my only opportunity.”
She said she could double and possibly triple her salary by working for a large company, but such a change is unlikely: ”At a large company, you`ve got to play the game. You succeed by playing politics. I could not sit still in meeting after meeting and go through what I consider to be torture. I need forward progress. I need to make things happen. I need not to waste time. I can`t stand the thought of sitting in endless meetings where all that would be squandered. At Pinnacle, we stand in the hall, talk about a problem, and in five minutes we`re done.”
Post`s candor is part of her charm. Her expressed thoughts are unabridged. Her life is an open book, from which she delights in quoting chapter and verse.
Although her mother is her best friend and the woman she most admires and respects in the world, Post said, she didn`t succeed in marriage, in part, because she couldn`t live up to the professional homemaker example Charlene had set. ”We all called her Miss Perfect,” she said.
”About the divorce: It was me that was the problem. I was raised by Miss Perfect; so I had high expectations about my home life. I believed I was supposed to be handling the extra responsibilities . . . but I have a very demanding job. I couldn`t be like my mother and be totally organized.” When she felt trapped in a marital role she couldn`t perform perfectly, she concluded the relationship wasn`t working and that any move away from it would be progress.
”I`m always moving in some direction,” she said. ”It may not be the right direction. Divorce may not have been the right direction, but it was moving forward. I tend to make a decision and run with it. Maybe that`s typical entrepreneurial behavior; it costs you sometimes.”
And sometimes it costs more than you want it to, Post said. ”I love kids. I even teach Sunday school. But I could not do my job and do any kind of job at being a parent. I`m not so selfish that I`m willing to see what kind of offspring I`d produce and then put that child in day care 14 hours each day. The only reason to have a child is to spend time with it. I haven`t made a final decision. I know my biological clock is ticking, but right now, I`d say having children is not in the game plan.”
Post`s childhood was idyllic by most standards. Her father Lewis, who died three years ago, was an executive at Illinois Bell. Her mother stayed home, kept an immaculate home and pursued gourmet cooking and tailoring, while Melinda and her brother, Charles, who is four years younger, were educated in Glen Ellyn schools.
Post is analytical about the impact of her own childhood on her adult life. ”I have oldest child syndrome,” she said. ”I`m very responsible. I have feelings of responsibility, for every other person in my family, for the community and our employees. That`s typical of the oldest child.”
Her efforts to meet those responsibilities extend to working several nights monthly at her church providing meals for the homeless and to employing family members at Pinnacle, including her brother, who is the accounting manager; her aunt, Susan ”Susie” Temple (Charlene`s sister), who is the office manager; and her cousin Melissa ”Missy” Vogelsinger (Temple`s daughter), a college student who is doing data entry during the summer break. Charles doesn`t think of himself as working for his sister because he doesn`t see her that much, and besides, he said, ”everybody has to pull their own weight here; if they don`t, it`s obvious.” Temple said she likes the job because no two days are the same. Her duties range from travel agent to sales assistant at trade shows, and more important, she said, ”Mindy never pushes. She`s the type who says, `Hey, here`s a word processor. It would be nice if you learned it.` So I did.”
”The person Mindy pushes is herself, always has,” said her mother, as she served afternoon tea the old-fashioned way, from a silver tea service with brewed loose tea and a dainty strainer. Seated in the split level home she has meticulously decorated with the mementos of a lifetime, including Melinda`s child-size table and chair set loaded with stuffed animals and dolls, Charlene Post broke down and cried three times during a 90-minute interview, overcome with emotion.
She was especially touched that Melinda referred to her as ”an incredible seamstress” who could have been a world-class designer and who outdid herself making her college prom formals that her sorority chums begged to borrow and her wedding dress with 2,000 pearls handsewn on the bodice. Charlene still makes her daughter`s suits and coats.
”Charles and Mindy know there isn`t anything I wouldn`t do for them,”
she said, her voice breaking, and that could include, she said, a task as monumental as taking care of Melinda`s children should she ever have any and wish to continue her career or as simple as naming her daughter`s business.
”We had a family contest, and I won,” she said.
Thirty years ago that included taking a 20-mile detour home after she drove her husband to the train station because Melinda said her first sentence. ”She said,`Bye, bye, Nanna,` Charlene recalled; so I took her to her grandmother`s house immediately so she would know I understood.”
And about two decades ago that included formulating an effective strategy to persuade Melinda to keep up her piano lessons. ”I told her,” Charlene related, ” `You have to take the lessons, but you don`t have to practice.`
After a couple of weeks of no practicing, she was so embarrassed-she needed to achieve-that she began practicing again and continued piano through high school.”
Asked if she believes her daughter is happy, Charlene replied, ”She`s so driven, it`s hard to tell. That has to affect her. I don`t really think she knows how to relax.”
Chocolate, that`s the ticket, said Melinda. When she wants to escape from it all, she eats chocolate: ”It doesn`t interfere with your time, and it`s such a thrill.” Work is relaxation, she insisted. ”I work all the time at home. I enjoy that. For me to pick up the computer (she totes a laptop) and do something creative is relaxing.”
Time for relaxation, according to her former husband, Hugh Walborn (also an engineer; they met as students at Northwestern), was critically missing when they were married. ”I thought she worked too much; I still do,” he said. ”Now if I get her away from work, I have an alternative (activity) in front of her.” Most of the time it`s sailing. ”When we sail she has zero responsibility. She doesn`t have to make decisions. She can compete and enjoy it. When we sail, it`s a role reversal for her. She doesn`t have to be in charge.”
There`s one problem, though. They keep winning races, and because they haven`t gotten around to naming the boat, there are a bunch of uninscribed trophies sitting around. Walborn confessed he has a boat name picked out,
”Second Time Around.” (Post said remarriage is a possibility.)
Post dreams of high-tech advances that will make her life in the fast lane more fulfilling. ”I consider myself narrow,” she said. ”I haven`t read much literature; it just takes too long. I`m waiting for someone to figure out a way to put a microchip into my brain.”
But will it come in red?
