PSI Environmental grows tenfold in four years: sisters in business build on their strengths.

• Author: Veltkamp, Ron
• Position: Alaska Business Montly's 2004 Environmental Issue - PSI/Hall-Kimbrell Environmental Services Inc.

Family owned businesses can be rewarding and profitable, but they are not without their challenges. Meet those challenges and the business can be very successful; failure to meet them is likely to mean failure of the business.

Sisters Amie Mahler and Crystal Nygard recognized the need to meet the family business challenges head on when they started PSI Environmental. So they organized their company to focus on the strengths of each and carve out well-defined roles based on those strengths. It seems to be working well, because the company has experienced exponential growth since its inception in 1999.

Mahler and Nygard had worked together for other environmental firms for several years. When their last employer went through a merger, both decided it was time to strike out on their own. "We are both parents, and felt the need for more flexibility," said Mahler. "We had made some important contacts that could serve as a basis for the business." So when they found out that a manufacturer of environmental instruments was looking for an Alaskan representative, they made their move.

In their first year, operating out of their homes, they sold environmental instruments, servicing the needs of other environmental firms. The following year, they opened an office and added equipment rentals to their sales lineup. They also started working on their application for 8(a) certification, a program of the U.S. Small Business Administration, to help develop companies owned by socially and economically disadvantaged individuals.

"We believed that the 8(a) program could help our firm develop skills and capabilities to make us competitive with other environmental firms," said Mahler, "and we wanted to expand our services into government contracting."

Through the 8(a) program, PSI built on its environmental strengths, obtaining work as a subcontractor on environmental service contracts. Finally, in its third year, PSI got its first environmental contract as the prime contractor.

Growing as quickly as they did, Mahler and Nygard soon realized that they needed to define their roles in the management of the business. "Actually, it was pretty easy," said...