Owner hits brakes on growth to ensure long-term success

The 41-year-old Bart Vandamme hopes to retire by the time he's 50.

And as an important step along that course, he recently shut down growth of his company shut it down cold for the better part of nine months.

Crazy? Hardly.

Vandamme's Reno-based Going Places Inc. provides support to people with developmental disabilities, helping them live as independently as possible.

At nine homes around the Reno and Carson City areas, Going Places staff members live with two or three developmentally disabled adults.

Other members of the company's 48-person staff regularly visit clients with disabilities who live on their own, helping them with the chores money management in some instances, heavy housekeeping in others.

And a handful of the company's approximately 30 clients receive assistance from its staff in finding and keeping a private-sector job.

"We keep the people that we serve content, safe and secure," Vandamme says.

In all, the business demands heavy amounts of one-on-one service for independent clients, and Vandamme figures his company's success depends entirely on the quality of the service provided by his employees.

"If you create the quality, the money will follow," he says.

Faced with growing demand for his company's service his sole customer is the state government, which pays Going Places and a handful of other firms to provide the service Vandamme worried last year that quality might begin to erode.

Only in the past few weeks has the company begun taking on a modest number of new clients after a nine-month freeze.

The breathing spell followed a rapid burst of growth that followed the creation of Going Places in May 2004.

Setting out with a five-year plan to grow the business, Vandamme saw the company grow from one supported home to a second in a couple of weeks. In 18 months, Going Places had reached its owner's five-year goals.

It was a heady experience for Vandamme, who'd initially put his college degree in therapeutic recreation to work in the state prison system. After a couple of years as a high school soccer coach, he began working for a large provider of supportive services for people with disabilities and then struck out on his own.

Even though the company has only one paying customer the state government Vandamme doesn't lose sleep at night. Nevada routinely ranks near the bottom among the states in support for people with disabilities, he says, and lawmakers have voiced embarrassment. More critically, the state government appears committed to providing more funding to help people with disabilities lead independent lives.

And Vandamme isn't one to lose sleep at night for business anyway.

His priorities, he says, are his religious faith, his family and only then his career.

So long as he can keep his faith and spend time with his family among other things, he coaches sports for his three children then Vandamme considers himself a success.