Business dynamos

Black Enterprise, August, 1998 by Cassandra Hayes

GAIL CONNER

Business strategy. Don't mimic the competition; provide solutions that help clients to be self-sufficient

Ten years ago, Gail Mosley Conner told her husband, Curtis, that she wanted to start her own environmental engineering firm. He smiled at his former high school sweetheart, pregnant with their third child, and said, "Great, you can use the money you make as your spending change." That "spending change" amounted to $2.5 million in 1997 gross sales and is expected to double this year.

G&C Environmental Services "wasn't born of a business plan, but of a dream," says Conner, the company president and CEO. The Newtown Square, Pennsylvania-based company provides environmental engineering and industrial hygiene services to commercial, governmental, industrial, municipal and institutional organizations.

Before a building can be remodeled or major construction performed, Conner and her 10 employees go in and assess for dangerous chemicals such as lead and asbestos, estimate the contamination and then recommend companies to do the cleanup. Oftentimes, her firm will go in where larger environmental firms have proved ineffective, correct the problem and then teach the client how to implement the new solution. "A company's environmental liability could cost more than the project itself. They can lose a lot or even shut down if they don't know their risk factor," states that 39-year-old Conner. "But most people don't want us on a project site because our findings could also lower property values. We are the most dangerous entity on a job."

With 90% of her projects out of state, Conner has been the troubleshooter and savior for entities ranging from the U.S. Department of justice to J.C. Penney. The Department of the Navy declared that she "walks on water" after she got perfect storm water samplings in a region considered to be a drought area. Instead of taking a year to complete the job, she did it in one month. Quick turnaround has been G&C's trademark and the trait that has gained her repeat contracts.

Growing up in Mobile, Alabama, Conner was fascinated with nature and the environment. "They tried to put a landfill in my community, and my dad fought it forever but was eventually unsuccessful," says Conner of her father, who owned several small businesses during his lifetime. "From then on I wanted to know about everything environmental that impacted my life."

In 1982, Conner earned a B.S. in biology and education from the University of Wisconsin in Madison and continued her environmental engineering training and certification while working for the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources and Department of Industry and Labor and Human Relations, as well as the Bartolo Corp. in Youngstown, Ohio.

When she set out on her own in 1988, her first contract was developing an EPA-accredited curriculum for her alma mater. The University of Wisconsin gave her a 50% retainer of $5,800, which she used to start her business in lieu of a business loan. She also avoided 8 (a) contracts the first four years, preferring not to build her business on government contracts that could disappear once she graduated from the program.