Entrepreneur
Stephanie Isaacson

Company Information
806 Genessee
Kansas City, MO 64101
(816) 569-5256
www.newhorizons-llc.com

Type of Business
Environmental Consulting
and Remediation

Year Founded 2007

Employees 21 year-round;
50-60 during summer months

Keys to success
“If we don’t challenge our key leadership, if we don’t give them the training they need, we can’t grow the company to the next level.”
-Stephanie Isaacson

Stephanie Isaacson and Bill Bush believe in taking chances. They took a chance when they decided to create New Horizons Enterprises. They took a chance when Isaacson bought out Bush because she was in a better position to leave her job at the time and launch the company. They take chances every day by hiring former prison inmates as employees.

Sharing a Dream

Isaacson went to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln to learn how to make ranching and farming better—more environmentally safe. After graduation, she got a job with the USDA in Ames, Iowa, and, eventually, came to Kansas City to work for a private company as an agricultural consultant.

A few years later, she met Bush when his company and hers worked together on a project. They started talking and realized they shared an interest in owning a business—one that would be able to deliver all aspects of environmental services to clients.

Enter the next set of chances taken.

While still working for their previous employers, Bush and Isaacson developed their business plan and dreamed of what their company could be.
That was October 2007. In February 2008, Isaacson was ready to quit her job and plunge full-time into entrepreneurship. Bush wasn’t at that point yet, so he sold his part of the business to her.

“He didn’t feel that it was right for him to be an owner when he wasn’t working in the business,” Isaacson said.

So she began building the business, developing clients and mentors that helped bring business in the door. Meanwhile, Bush was still content at his previous employer but didn’t see a future there.

“I was at a company that was great to work for,” Bush said. “But I knew I wasn’t going to advance. I was stuck.”

Later that year, Bush approached Isaacson about becoming part of the New Horizons’ team.

Second Chances

Today, the company has 21 year-round employees, with as many as 60 during the summers. It offers a full suite of environmental services, from environmental consulting to remediation, which includes the removal of asbestos, lead, mold, working with underground storage tanks, etc. It also works on environmental assessments, particularly for redevelopment projects.

Clients include the city of Kansas City, Mo., other municipalities, developers, commercial property owners, schools, hospitals, banks and contractors.

Isaacson thinks they have built a company that’s different from their competition in several ways: they have worked hard to be professional in an industry that sometimes hasn’t been, they said.
“There are a lot of companies doing what we do,” Isaacson said. “But we like to take it to another level—to really be intelligent about what we’re doing.”

She talks about how the company approaches clients’ needs. For instance, New Horizons has worked with a church to finish removal of asbestos. The church couldn’t finance the entire project at once, so it’s been accomplished in stages.

“For others, this is just a job,” she said. “We want to bring solutions to our clients where we’re not going to break the bank, but are going to get through the process. We don’t think it has to be all at once. Others just want to get the check and get out the door.”

Isaacson and Bush also think their company is differentiated by its employees.

In another instance of taking chances, New Horizons works with a program through the Environmental Protection Agency that pays for and trains former prison inmates, or those just out of rehab, for work.

Isaacson knows these are at-risk employees, but she feels it’s important to give people a second chance. And the gamble is paying off. “Most people aren’t going to give them a second chance,” Bush said. “But the program is turning out good workers.”

Having a stable of good employees has enabled New Horizons to consistently find work for more than two years.

Many contractors follow a pattern of bidding, working projects and then laying off employees until the next project comes on board. Isaacson actively looks for jobs to fill the holes in the schedule so there aren’t down times.

Keeping employees working has helped grow the business beyond the Kansas City area. The company’s first satellite office is in Lincoln, Neb.

Expanding Geography

Several years ago, a friend of Isaacson’s working for the Nebraska Army National Guard contacted her about some Guard projects. Not long after, while at a Northeast Johnson County Chamber of Commerce golf tournament, she met someone from Nebraska who needed the company’s services.

Slowly, it became apparent that Nebraska was a good market for New Horizons.

The running of that office has been the source of a great lesson learned for Isaacson.

In just the past year, the company has developed a standard operating procedure manual to solidify how things are to be done: everything from who can write a check, to how to answer the phones.

“When we opened the office in 2009, we had about 10 employees total (in Kansas City),” she said. “We didn’t need the procedures—everyone did things the New Horizons way.”

Having to set down procedures and processes also led Isaacson to realize that she has to change as an entrepreneur in order for the business to keep up its growth.

“We’ve had triple-digit growth in the last two years,” she said. “We’re on pace for about 30 percent growth this year.”

But for the company to continue that growth, Isaacson  knows that she has to take a step back from day-to-day operations and focus more on a broader outlook. It’s the classic step of the business owner working less in the business and more on it.

Today, Isaacson is trying to concentrate less on ordering office supplies (which she did recently) and more on how to grow the company, groom internal leaders and where to situate the next office.

A Chance to Prove Herself

It’s not an easy transition. Isaacson has worked hard to prove herself in an overwhelmingly male industry, but she truly enjoys being in the field.

Being a woman in the industry has had its challenges: clients incorrectly assume that Bush is the company’s owner or only want to work with Bush, simply because of his gender.

“I do think, though, that it’s worked to our advantage,” Isaacson said. “There are people who don’t think we’re a threat. We had a lot of contractors helping us along the way because they didn’t think we’d be anybody.”

A few years into the company’s history, however, that’s changed a lot, as has the reaction Isaacson gets when she walks into the room or answers the phone.

“I think I’ve earned respect,” she said. “It’s a definite challenge to get people to believe that you are the decision maker. It still amazes me sometimes in a meeting to think that I’m really the only woman.”

Eye on the Next Level

Isaacson and Bush don’t dwell much on gender issues or the past—they are too busy planning for the future.

Short-term, the plan is to grow New Horizons’ internal leadership team.

“If we don’t challenge our key leadership,” she said, “if we don’t give them the training they need, we can’t grow the company to the next level.”

Long-term is all about regional growth. The plan is to open more offices throughout the Midwest. The company is currently licensed in Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska and Iowa, with plans to move into South Dakota, Oklahoma and Arkansas.

“We’ll have more revenue from Nebraska and Iowa than Kansas and Missouri this year,” Isaacson said.

The growth has been spurred by the company’s commitment to professionalism and meeting clients where the client is, she said.

“I’m a big believer in moments,” she said. “There are moments that make sense when we’re working with our current clients and then going where they need us to go—where the next client needs us.”

Being in those moments has paid off for New Horizons.

Isaacson points to a project the company completed on the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s campus last year as a particular moment.

The company was hired to lead the demolition of Ferguson Hall, an historic building that at one time housed the university’s engineering school. There were people who thought the company was too small to get the job done.

Instead, New Horizons accomplished the job in less time than allotted and gave Isaacson an “aha” moment, complete with four stars from the university team that rates every on-campus vendor and a sterling letter of recommendation.

“To be able to go back to the foundation, where it all started and come full circle,” she said, “to work with people who had taught me, it really made me feel like we’d made something of ourselves.”  

Kate Leibsle is a writer for Thinking Bigger Business. This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it