Paying It Forward

Gary Butler, CEO of employer services giant ADP, crosses borders
to build business

The streak had ended. In 2002, after a remarkable 41 years of double-digit growth in earnings per share, Roseland, N.J.–based Automatic Data Processing Inc. (ADP) was caught in a wave of challenges that hit the economy: a 40-year low in interest rates, the collapse of the brokerage industry, a minor recession, and a dip in employment. “The combination of those things caused us to break our string,” says president and CEO Gary Butler, “and our share price suffered accordingly.”

When Butler, 61, who joined ADP in 1975 as “a street-level salesperson,” became CEO in August 2006, he decided to refocus on the company’s traditional core mission of providing employer and dealer services. That was a change from the strategy of Butler’s predecessor, who sought to grow the company by adding human resources service offerings and entering other data-processing-intensive industries.

After a two-year period of modest growth, ADP returned todouble-digit growth in 2008. “One of the tough things about a service business is that you add customers kind of one at a time,” Butler says. “It’s not like selling widgets or iPods, where all of a sudden they’re selling millions of them. In a service business, you’re selling to one client at a time, and you layer the revenue in.”

Butler has proven through his success that he bears the CEO title well. But he’s still a sales guy at heart. “I love to talk with people,” he says. “You don’t run your business from the fourth-floor corner office.”

So after he took over, Butler talked, making the rounds in person and communicating via streaming video on the company’s intranet — to get his employees on board with his plan. He talked about increasing the company’s international business; about selling products related to ADP’s core services, like workers’ compensation insurance, to the client base; and about improving margins.

“The single most important thing is to establish a strategy that’s clear, succinct, and relatively short and easily understood, and then communicate that to the people who work for you,” Butler says. “It’s something that I talk about everywhere I go, no matter whether it’s with first-line service people or my senior executive team. Most everybody at ADP could recite the plan back to you.”

While he’s still deeply entrenched in driving ADP’s U.S. business forward, Butler is clearly excited about expanding overseas. Through a partnership with SAP AG, ADP is offering payroll and human resources outsourcing in more than 50 countries. Launched three years ago, the partnership marks ADP’s latest push outside the United States. The company now has offices in Beijing and Shanghai, and by year’s end, a Moscow dealer services office will be up and running.

“The first time I went to China, I started thinking, “What the heck have you been doing? You should have been here five years earlier,” Butler says. “It was a real cold-water-in-the-face kind of experience. It certainly was motivation for me.”

Although he’s got 33 years under his belt at ADP, Butler makes it clear that even in the role of CEO, he’s still in touch with his roots as a salesperson. “I learn the most when I’m out in the market,” he says.

So, if you go looking for him, don’t be surprised if he doesn’t answer the door of his corner office. 

The Elements of Style

Designer Kelly Wearstler creates one-of-a-kind interiors using
a variety of influences

Kelly Wearstler finds good design in unlikely places. On her way home from the gym one Sunday morning last year, the busy mother of two spontaneously stopped at an estate sale in Beverly Hills — a drive-by, she calls it — and came away with a modern impressionist painting, a beautiful piece with fine brushstrokes of lavender, amethyst, and pale pinks. It was a registered work of art, worth well more than the $250 she paid for it.

But Wearstler insists the money is irrelevant. “I can go to the junkiest, smelliest thrift store and find a jewel, and then I can go to the most expensive store in Paris and find something I love. It’s fun to find a mix.”

Still, it’s tough to envision Wearstler in a junky thrift store. Last year, she was voted one of the best-dressed women by no less a fashion authority than Vogue, and her interior design work is strictly upper-crust. Since she began her career in Los Angeles in the mid-1990s, the Massachusetts College of Art graduate has designed everything from upscale residences to iconic hotels, such as the Avalon in Beverly Hills, and luxury resorts, like the Viceroy Anguilla Resort and Residences.

Now the South Carolina native has her own design studio and two books on interior design, and this fall she’ll reprise her role as a judge on the Bravo network’s Top Design. She has also developed several product lines, including a collection of fabrics and trimmings launched last month by Lee Jofa.

Lee Jofa’s executive vice president and creative director, Stephen Elrod, says it’s Wearstler’s ability to reference many design styles — Asian influences, and the glamour of the mid-20th century, for example — that makes her products so appealing.

“We also admire her ability to effortlessly evolve her style and move on in new and exciting design directions,” Elrod says.

That variety of styles is apparent in Wearstler’s interior design projects too; though they all have an underlying modern sensibility, no two homes or hotels are alike. She says that’s partly because she incorporates environmental cues that are unique to the project’s location. “Every job is site- and client-specific,” Wearstler explains.

For example, for the Tides South Beach hotel in Miami, she picked up on the art deco building’s original terrazzo floors and infused the whole building with their color palette: warm yellows, cream, and white. Over time, Wearstler says, she’s developed the confidence to make decisions like these quickly; it’s how she’s managed to balance all the different aspects of her career.

“Honestly, I’m fast. I’m like a speed designer. I know what I like and I commit and I move on,” she says. “I’m not always vacillating and second-guessing myself, which a lot of creative people do. You still make mistakes and you still learn from mistakes. The best part about it is learning.”

Cha-Ching!

Superstar Brian Ching helps Houston cash in on the growing popularity of professional soccer in the U.S.

By the time his fourth goal settled into the back of the net, Brian Ching and the Houston Dynamo were well on their way to the first win of their first season. The night of April 3, 2006, was thrilling for Ching and the orange-clad Dynamo, who scored seemingly at will against the Colorado Rapids at Robertson Stadium in Houston. With a 5-2 win just minutes away and more than 25,000 fans cheering him on, Ching leaped into the arms of his teammates yet again and celebrated.

“I’d never scored three goals in one game in my life, much less four,” recalls the  30-year-old Hawaiian-born forward. “To start off my life here in Houston with a game like that was special.”

The Dynamo won the league in 2006, with Ching earning MVP honors in the MLS Cup finals. The team repeated as MLS Champions in 2007, and as of press time it was headed into the finals of the 2008 SuperLiga tournament.

Ching’s success with the Dynamo is the high point of a career that started inauspiciously when he was just 7 years old. “Soccer kind of just fell upon me,” Ching says. “My mom was very athletic and wanted me to play a team sport. One day she suggested soccer, but I didn’t know anything about it.”

Neither did his mother, Stephanie Whalen. She was an accomplished volleyball player and successful in her career as president and chair of the Hawaii Agriculture Research Center in Aiea. But when she urged her son to take up soccer, he said he’d do it only if she agreed to be his team’s coach. The rest, as they say, is history.

Ching went on to play for the Division I team at Gonzaga University, helping the Bulldogs to win two conference championships. He later became the first Hawaiian-born player drafted by an MLS team, landing a spot with the Los Angeles Galaxy in 2001. But Ching stumbled while playing for the Galaxy and was released after just eight games. Undeterred, he worked on his game and ended up signing with the San Jose Earthquakes. In 2004, he led the team in scoring and was named the MLS Comeback Player of the Year.

Now Ching has three championship rings, one with San Jose and two with Houston, and he is the only Hawaiian ever to have played on a World Cup team. These days he recalls with affection his first-ever soccer practice. His mother had picked him up from school that day. “She was driving and trying to figure out what kind of drills to run us through,” Ching says. “After that first year, she took a back seat and became my biggest fan. She still is.”