Volume 1, Issue 6
Table of Contents

Cover Story:
Small Business is BIG Business
In Rockland, small businesses are the engine that drives the economy

RBD Round-Up:
How'd He Do That?
The interesting rise of Mal McLaren
RBD Business Survey
How do you communicate?

DEPARTMENTS:

Economic Round-Up
• The Smart Investor
Your portfolio is doing great, so why rebalance?
• Economic Viewpoint
The U.S. Attraction Factor

Business Round-Up
• Down, But Not Dirty
The best way to handle company layoffs is to provide options
• Marketing By Design
The top 15 campaigns of the last 100 years. You know them all, but why?
• Receivables
One of the largest headaches for small businesses

Ask The Experts
• Talking Taxes
• Payroll: Key Issues
• Workplace Hotline

Invest in Your Community
• Where's the Fire?
Rockland Volunteers - increasing efforts and awareness

Odds & Ends
• The Last Minute
• Rockland Newsmakers

Dedicated Section:
Rockland Business Association:

The President’s Desk
New Healthcare Tax
will hurt small and midsized businesses. Here's how.

RBA/United Way Golf Outing
The Rockland Open: Monday, May 21st

RBA Happenings
• Committee and Council Info
• Calendar of Events
• New Members

“I was an optimist. I thought I would just put my name in the yellow pages and wait for the calls. Then I started talking to people and finding out I needed to fill out this form for government, and that form for this kind of work. I immediately said what have I done? When I think back, I think I was a danger to society.”

Malcolm McLaren has one of the most successful firms in Rockland County, an engineering firm whose scope reaches from marine engineering to the Broadway stage; from floating ferry piers to designing sets for the Rolling Stones and Red Hot Chili Peppers; from devising the whiz-bang technotronics behind the Twister attraction at Universal Studios to restoration work on the Mormon Tabernacle. McLaren Engineering Group also has a roster of local projects that have made an impact on Rockland County, where he lives in Blauvelt, including the September 11 memorial in Haverstraw Bay Park.

“I've had a lot of fun,” says McLaren. “I've been diving all around the world, climbed high-rise buildings, flown over volcanoes, and toured with rock stars,” he recounted in a 2002 interview with The National Association of Engineers.

Yet, like many successful businessmen, McLaren started out with desire and a dream—and little more. After graduating from Cornell and getting his master’s from Rutgers, he hung up a shingle in his Rockland home the day he got his professional engineers license. When the calls didn’t start pouring in, he used his love for scuba diving to scare up some jobs by offering his professional engineering services for examining underwater structures. His first paid gig was swimming up a sewer outfall on the Hudson River. He started MG McLaren in 1977. “It was just me,” he said, “working out my basement.”

Today, the company is world-renowned for its forward thinking design and construction expertise. This sole proprietor now employs more than 110, but his base of operation is still here in Rockland, in West Nyack.

Rockland Business Digest had the opportunity to talk with McLaren about growing a small business successfully.

RBD: When we talk about starting a small business, you’re the epitome of the genre.

MM: I started out in my basement, the only employee of M.G. McLaren. But originally, I set out to become a structural engineer. I got a degree from Cornell and a Master’s from Rutgers and went to work in Washington DC for a contractor. I always knew I wanted to start my own business, though, so the day I got my license, I went on my own. I was designing bridges and buildings—a lot of the structural engineering that we do today I started out doing back then, for a lot of architects, the state of New York. As soon as I started, I wanted to expand.

RBD: Was that difficult?

MM: Oh yeah, I was an optimist. I thought I would just put my name in the yellow pages and wait for the calls. Then Istarted talking to people and finding out I needed to fill out this form for government, and that form for this kind of work. I immediately said ‘what have I done?’ When I look back, I think I was a danger to society.

RBD: Why didn’t you want to stay small?

MM: You know what it is, I have a tremendous love for all the different types of engineering. I guess that’s it, more than anything else. My philosophy is the more we expand, the better we treat the customers, the more we put into the business, the more fun we can have with the engineering.

RBD: It’s the small business vs. large business mentality.

MM: It’s interesting. You go into business thinking, this is great. I am going to work for myself not somebody else, or I don’t want to work so hard, but my first job was to design a drainage solution for someone’s house that was flooding. I designed a French drain, which was great, but I also did all the labor, dug the pits and put in the stone, and I’m sweating in the heat, and I’m thinking, hey, I am doing it for me. But you know what, it’s really not for everyone. Today I say, and I’ve said this often, ‘I don’t own the business, it owns me.’ It can be tough; I work 15 hours a day, and think about the business for the other nine.

“From a marketing standpoint, you push in all directions and something will yield. It is really strange; sometimes the biggest jobs are not hard to come by, and then you work and work for a small one that doesn’t come around. So, we’re sitting around saying, ‘what are we going to do next?’’

RBD: I’ve heard it said that small business people spend too much time working in their business, not on their business?

MM: If you don’t pay attention to the business, it will die. Look, you have to have a passion to run a business. Some people let the passion get ahead of the business. Architects are notorious for this, constantly tweaking and improving, not worrying about the business, and that business will die. On the flip side, if you’re in it just to make money, you’re going to lose track of why you’re in it.

A real good business is careful to spend time between delivering the right product, a product you can be proud of and stand behind it, and maintaining your love for what you do. There are people, too, who don’t want to invest in their business. They’re doomed to failure, likewise not paying enough attention to cash flows. Marketing concepts, advertising. You can’t grow without the foundations.

RBD: Did you do due diligence starting out—creating a business plan, looking for loans?

MM: Geez, I had nothing. I just made it up as I went along, and I did that for years. It took me about 15 years before I figured out it was a business. I was 25; I started out too young. I never advise anyone to jump into a business that young.

RBD: I don’t assume you still do business that way, though?

MM: My business is based on people, 110 employees. That’s very important because every person is different, what motivates them and causes them to achieve is different.

Some people need to be patted on the back, and some kicked in the butt. I was always very hands-on in the day-to-day, and the one thing I did do 6 or 7 years ago when it was becoming very taxing for me—was to set up some structure within the company. It was me and 50 people, no organizational structure at all. Here’s why: We’ve taken on many different types of engineering since we started out—marine engineering for example, ferry transportation, bridges, railroad structure, site and civil engineer.

I put people in charge of divisions, and once I started defining the divisions, creating division heads, and gave them responsibility, it started to develop. The difficult thing is to find the right person. It’s amazing to me, sometimes, that the people who were effective for you when you are small are not as effective when you are big.

RBD: What steps did you take to bring MG McLaren from one employee to over 50, with a worldwide reputation?

MM: There was a point in time, it was probably 15 years after I began, as I said, when I suddenly thought, “I’ve got something here. It has some value, and I have good employees, they are the value of my company.” Our assets are our portfolio, our ability to solve problems, and that all goes back to our employees. We have tried very had to have good benefits, to pay them well, plans to help them grow, but that’s a big struggle. You want them to be happy and working hard.

RBD: Who were your first partners—friends and family, financial institutions?

MM: None, no one. I always worked hand to mouth: I wasn’t making enough to do the whole financial planning thing. We got a LOC about 20 years ago, from Nanuet National, but we never really took a whole lot; it was more for an emergency. In my business, I didn’t have to go out and buy machinery; I had to hire people; that’s the cost in my business. When you’re constantly growing, you’re paying today’s bills with money you earned yesterday; there is a tremendous cost in growth.

RBD: Why grow then?

MM: There’s a motto, grow or die.

RBD: Can we talk about the need of expanding your expertise, your product line or whatever, to help growth. Can you remain static, just doing one thing really well, or today, do you need to branch out?

MM: You need to, for a few reasons. One is that markets change. In 1991, there was an absolute crash of the building design business; it was in terrible shape. We said, ‘buildings are slowing down, better start doing bridges and marine work,’ and we did fine. Having other fields of expertise is important. From a marketing standpoint, you push in all directions and something will yield. It is really strange; sometimes the biggest jobs are not hard to come by, and then you work and work for a small one that doesn’t come around. So, we’re sitting around saying, ‘what are we going to do next?’

RBD: How many projects do you juggle at time?

MM: We have probably 300 active projects at a time. We have a lot of mouths to feed. A large project can take years. We have one bridge in Connecticut for example, that we are in the 10th year. Typically, our projects last about 2-3 years.

RBD: How do you plan?

MM: We do a lot of forecasting. I have my division chiefs, we use a lot an analytical metrics, we need the manpower assessments, how long the project might take, and then we have to hire the right people. In years past, I just used do it by gut feeling. But now we have much more responsibility so you can’t plan so haphazardly. You can have projects start and the stop. That takes a lot of food out of our mouths.

When it comes to forecasting, even with all the metrics, it still comes back to your gut; the confidence that this will go ahead. We all sit around with several crystal balls…

RBD: Why have you maintained your location in Rockland?

MM: I don’t like to commute. I live in Blauvelt so it’s a four-mile drive to my office. But I do think we lose out sometimes being located in Rockland, and that’s why we’re considering opening a satellite office in Manhattan. There is this vision of New York City as the center of the universe. I’ve been told, ‘you’re the upstate firm.’ I say, ‘no that’s Buffalo.’ Also, you do lose employees being in Rockland; they’ll ask me, ‘what subway line do you take?’ I have a lot of people who come from Orange County, New Jersey, Westchester; again being in Rockland makes it make difficult to get employees, it’s hard to get here, housing is expensive.

Off Duty with Mal McLaren
What do you enjoy doing in your spare time?
It’s unusual if on my day off, I haven’t done 12 things. I feel like I’ve blown it. I also like being on the water. I have a boat and a Jet Ski, which we keep at our house upstate. I visit my daughter, who is a sophomore at Lehigh. She is studying anything but engineering.

Last great book you read?
I love to read, but mostly novels because it lets me escape. But I read ones that are technology-based like those by Michael Crichton and Dean Koontz. I think people don’t acknowledge the creativity that goes into engineering. We solve problems and then we build. Engineering is all about solving a problem creatively—it has to be economical, it has to last a long time, and be functional.

Favorite place to go in Rockland?
Hiking in Harriman Park, Haverstraw Marina. We’re currently working on the ferry pier in Haverstraw. That project is in the approval process right now.

Favorite part of your business?
I have a lot; I really do. Creatively solving problems, building an organization, which works well. I just had a meeting here, and brought in four guys and we sat and talked about how to solve problems. That interaction with smart people is energizing especially when they are people that you can trust and believe in. RBD

What Has MG McLaren Done?
You might ask, what haven’t they done? With offices in Rockland, Connecticut, Maryland, Virginia and Florida, the company is involved in skilled structural, civil, geotechnical, environmental, mechanical, site and marine engineers, as well as construction management specialists and technicians experienced in the latest computer-aided design equipment. Some of their projects:

• Superbowl LXI halftime show: For the fourth time in seven years, McLaren provided engineering services for the Superbowl halftime show. They’ve helped to stage tours for Mariah Carey, the Rolling Stones, Faith Hill, and The Red Hot Chili Peppers
• Engineered the ingenious see-saw set for a recent Toyota Tundra television commercial, in which the truck hauls a heavy load up the world’s longest “see saw” and then stops short of the end. The stunt required McLaren Engineers to determine the speed and kinetic effects of the motions, as well as evaluate the structural integrity of the bridge system and fulcrum frame.
• Food challenge: Yes, even food. McLaren’s expertise was called upon in the Food Network Popcorn Challenge. The show featured a team of world-class chefs constructing the world's tallest popcorn sculpture in the form of Mickey Mouse. Structural engineering played an important role in the construction of this sculpture, which enters the Guinness Book of World Records at 19'-8".
• City Center in White Plains, and New Roc City in New Rochelle
• The September 11 Memorial at Haverstraw Bay Park
• They are currently working on proposals for ferry terminals in both Haverstraw and at Battery Park City, which will eventually be a floating terminal.