Motors & Drives Information

Curiosity drives Harris to success

Entrepreneur develops businesses to fill national markets

As a curious young accountant at a venture capital firm in Racine, Mike Harris would ask to sit in when entrepreneurs came asking for funding. And so he learned what it took to finance a start-up.

Later, as chief financial officer of a technology company in Illinois, Harris would attend meetings for the sales force and for branch managers. It wasn't part of his job. He was just curious. That's where he learned about selling a company's services and managing offices.

Curiosity has led Harris to success, and that success has made the 44-year-old Racine native a prototype for Wisconsin entrepreneurs.

Last month, Manpower Inc. reported that Jefferson Wells -- a Harris brainchild that is now a prized internal audit and accounting subsidiary of the staffing company -- generated nearly $238 million in revenue through the first nine months of the year, triple the 2003 level. It has 2,550 employees in 37 offices worldwide.

In 2000, five years after he hatched the firm from his kitchen table, Harris had built Jefferson Wells into a 1,600-employee, 25- office firm with about $131 million in yearly sales. In 2001, Harris and his investors sold the company to Glendale-based Manpower for $174 million. Within weeks, Harris was starting another business.

Since Jefferson Wells, Harris has launched five other companies, including a little consulting business in which he advises other entrepreneurs, a role he suggests he would like to build on eventually.

"I think he's driven, and he has been for some time. But it's not ambition over everything else," said Bob Carlson, president, chief executive officer and co-founder with Harris of SilverTrain Inc., a Milwaukee-based technology and staffing specialist.

"Mike is high energy and high intelligence," said Carlson, who also worked with Harris at Alternative Resources Corp. in Barrington, Ill. "It's not just winning; he enjoys the process."

A compulsive curiosity -- honed by his training as an accountant - - drives Harris to see a business, break it down and figure out how to make it better, much as a tinkerer is compelled to dismantle a gadget to try to improve it.

# posted by Medical Information : 4:40 AM