How our county got into the jobs business

First in a four-part series on Kootenai County's economic development efforts.

By MIKE PATRICK

Staff Writer

Tom Richards saw the dire economic forecast etched in the trees that fed his livelihood.

Dennis Wheeler had a mind to mine some goodwill for his company.

And Duane Hagadone turned a Spokane lunch into a launching pad that, 30 years later, is still paying dividends throughout Kootenai County and beyond.

These three titans of business — Hagadone from The Hagadone Corp., Richards from Idaho Forest Industries, and Wheeler from Coeur d'Alene Mines — founded Jobs Plus, Inc., the region's economic development agency, in the spring of 1987.

One lunch led to another, and the rest is history.

•••

Hagadone was too busy to take on more projects that spring of long ago. He was running this newspaper and 16 others. He was on the road at least three weeks out of every four. But when the phone rang, he couldn't hang up on a bigger problem.

“I got a call from a good friend in Spokane inviting me to a business lunch to help promote Spokane,” Hagadone said. “Spokane was in trouble — no growth — as was Coeur d'Alene.

“They'd invited me to come and they wanted to include us, but everything was to go to Spokane. And I got to thinking, what the hell?”

That's pretty much what Tom Richards was thinking, too.

Richards, who was running Idaho Forest Industries with his identical twin and co-owner, John, didn't need his Stanford degree or MBA from Harvard to see what was happening.

“The economy of Kootenai County was just in terrible condition,” Richards said. “In those days it was virtually all forest products, and the forest products industry was in trouble.

“The feeling was pretty universal that something had to be done.”

Wheeler, Silver Valley born and bred and a proud University of Idaho law school grad who had taken over as president of Coeur d'Alene Mines, saw the area's unrealized potential with a couple of his colleagues.

“We said, ‘You know, it looks to us like this is a community with great prospects, but doggone it, it's kind of quiet,” Wheeler said. “We were wondering what the heck Coeur [the mining company's nickname] could do to get a springboard.”

Hagadone, Wheeler and Richards had lunch in the owner's dining room of the new Coeur d'Alene Resort. They agreed they needed to create an economic development program and committed some seed money.

“We wanted to raise $500,000 and each of us took three key businesses,” asking for $60,000 commitments from those businesses over a five-year span, Hagadone said.

“We also decided we were going to do it in a hurry,” he added.

And they did. Three days after that Resort lunch, he said, the $500,000 had been committed.

Suddenly, a cool million sounded a whole lot better.

•••

The initiative was announced on the top of the front page of the March 11, 1987 Coeur d'Alene Press. Under the headline “Entrepreneurs plan development effort,” the article opens with an elbow right to Spokane's ribs:

A $1 million private initiative to attract businesses to Kootenai County will create more jobs than similar efforts in Spokane, Coeur d'Alene Mines President Dennis Wheeler predicted Tuesday.

“We're going to beat them,” Wheeler told about 50 people huddled at the Holiday Inn. Coeur d'Alene's “heavy-hitters” unexpectedly unveiled their intention to market the county, and help turn around a county that has lost thousands of jobs in the 1980s.

The story goes on to name the initial board of directors: Hagadone, Richards, Wheeler, Coeur d'Alene Mayor Ray Stone, County Commissioner Frank Henderson, Mr. Steak owner Charlie Nipp, Jon Hippler from First Federal, Randy Teall from the Coeur d'Alene Chamber of Commerce, with Harry Perry of GTE acting as interim board chairman.

It outlines how the first $500,000 was committed and refers to a “County Rally for Jobs” at noon on March 30 at the Resort. Organizers hoped to attract up to 1,500 people.

On March 17, a front-page Press story announced the new organization's name: Jobs Plus, Inc., which would remain the agency's moniker for three decades. The story also pointed out that then-Kootenai Medical Center was loaning its ace fundraiser, Jim Faucher, to help bring in the remaining $500,000.

The March 31 Press indicates that the rally boosted funds to $700,000 but quotes Wheeler as saying the remaining $300,000 had to be raised by May 1. And so it was.

“When we knew we had it, we had a celebration and invited everybody back,” Hagadone recalled. “The next area we were focused on was hiring a director.”

Smooth sailing, right?

“We had a hell of a time,” Hagadone said. “We just couldn't find anybody.”

•••

Katie Brodie has long been part of the Hayden Lake Country Club scene. She's been a devoted employee of the Richards brothers, a former Kootenai County commissioner, sister of former NFL all-pro quarterback John Brodie, and now North Idaho's point person for Gov. Butch Otter. Largely because of her work with the Richards brothers, she was also front and center at the birth of Jobs Plus.

“I came home from spring break and everybody was talking about it,” she said. “I was running the Republican headquarters in Coeur d'Alene then, so I had a lot of time on my hands.”

Brodie remembers the thrill of raising a million dollars and the excitement of advertising for the first leader in Jobs Plus history.

“They got 60 responses and brought three in,” Brodie said. “They were all horrible.”

According to Brodie, a consultant said the person they're looking for is probably retired, 60ish, wants to play golf, maybe worked for AT&T.

“And John Richards said, ‘I know the guy. His name is Bob Potter,'” Brodie said. “Potter interviewed and was offered the job on the spot.”

But there was a string attached.

“He said, ‘Does the little honey go with it?'” Brodie recalled with a laugh. “The little honey was me.”

With Brodie as his only employee — “She and Bob worked just hand in glove — a great fit,” Tom Richards said — Potter immediately brandished the skills and qualifications that had endeared him to that first Jobs Plus board. One was work ethic. Hagadone said he believed Potter headed almost immediately to California for a month, basically going door-to-door to drum up business.

Having signed on for a ridiculously low salary — sources thought it was around $40,000 a year for the CEO — Potter showed unusual fiscal acuity, too. In other words, he was cheap.

Brodie remembers how Potter invited her to lunch as soon as he was hired. She recommended several nice restaurants.

“He took me to Taco Time,” she said. “That's when I learned how tight he was. He could make a nickel go further than 20 people.”

He also could bond almost instantly with anybody, she said — even if their names didn't exactly register.

“He could never remember anyone's name, so every guy was ‘chief' and every woman was ‘little honey,'” she said. “I told him he couldn't say that — little honey — but he did. He would say, ‘I'm 60 and I have legs like steel cables. Wanna feel 'em?'

“But the beauty of Bob Potter was, he could find a common denominator with anybody he got on the phone. By the time he had gone through his dialogue, he and the prospective client were friends.”

In those early days, Brodie said, they subscribed to California business journals and cold-called manufacturers with 10 to 25 employees. They winnowed the field by sticking with two other parameters: The business couldn't be location-dependent, and Bob or Katie had to be able to reach a decision-maker with one phone call.

“That's when times were damn tough everywhere,” Hagadone recalled. “But we got leads and I really give a lot of credit to Bob Potter. He was the jewel. We did get interest and activity. Katie also did a damn good job. She's a go-getter and she and Bob made a great team.”

Richards put it succinctly:

“All I can say is that Bob Potter was the best salesman I've known in my entire life.”

•••

The record will show that during his 16-year tenure at the Jobs Plus helm, Bob Potter is credited with generating $325 million in capital investments, adding nearly $100 million to the annual payroll in Kootenai County, creating 3,900 jobs and generating $2.4 million a year in property taxes.

Brodie said Jobs Plus gave a tremendous return on investment, and that its meager budget was spent almost entirely on hosting clients.

“When we had a live one, Potter would say, ‘Just come on up. Come take a look.' We didn't pull any stops. The Coeur d'Alene Resort, the gorgeous scenery ... You come to Coeur d'Alene for two days, it's pretty dazzling.”

And there was no better ambassador than Bob Potter.

“He didn't BS anybody. Whatever he said he could back up with a fact — no salesman bullshit,” Brodie said. “And he believed in what he was doing: Helping make Kootenai County great.”

Brodie remembers Potter's first score — U.S. Products, a California company with about 20 employees who made carpet-cleaning equipment.

“He had talked to them and talked to them,” she said. “They had even come up here to take a look.”

But the owners finally decided that leaving family in California made the move impossible — a word Potter never understood or acknowledged.

“Bob told me to find out what their son did for a living,” Brodie said. She did, and Potter made some calls. U.S. Products moved to North Idaho.

“Everybody in the family followed,” Brodie said, “and they're still here.”

•••

Next Sunday: That was then; this is now. How Jobs Plus is facing today's business recruitment and retention challenges.