Woman markets professionals

By Joseph Busler, Courier Post - Work & Save, September 5, 2003

Haddonfield resident turns layoff into dream of owning own firm

Starting in March, elder-law attorney Michael D. Weinraub's professional universe began to get larger and richer, thanks in considerable part to Valerie Schlitt and her gang of soccer moms.

Schlitt, 46, a marketing veteran of more than two decades, operates Valerie Schlitt Associates, Inc. from the pine paneled family room of her two-story brick home on Station Avenue in Haddonfield. Her five employees, all part time, are her friends, one dating back, 20 years. They're all women with professional backgrounds who veered onto the mommy track.

The services Schlitt offers are those that busy professionals need but often lack the time, skills, or just the chutzpah to do themselves.

"Valerie has opened up a lot of horizons for me by marketing me to other attorneys who don't do elder law and to other related professionals like accountants and financial planners in the area who may have clients who need elder law services," said Weinraub, a Cherry Hill resident whose office is in Margate.

"She has also put me in contact with institutions, such as assisted-living facilities and nursing homes, and arranged some speaking engagements for me at different facilities.

Schlitt had cold-called Weinraub to expand her work in elder law. She won't work for clients competing against each other, and she already had Cherry Hill elder-law attorney Jerold E. Rothkoff as a client. Weinraub, who knows Rothkoff, called him and got a glowing recommendation.

"Valerie assists me in marketing my elder law practice, speaking engagements, meeting potential referral sources and putting promotional materials together like letterhead, my Web site content and press releases," Rothkoff said. "It's absolutely benefited me by expanding my elder-law practice."

Schlitt also helped him launch The Elder Law Report, a monthly newsletter faxed to, among others, the contacts she generated for him.

Valerie Schlitt Associates began, as so many home-based consultancies do, with a lay-off.

For more than two decades, Schlitt held marketing and consulting jobs at Fortune 100 companies in Manhattan, Hartford and Philadelphia while harboring a dream of starting her own business.

But the dream carried a price-loss of a guaranteed paycheck and the other comforts of a corporate cocoon-and the price was too high.

Then came the recession. KPMG Consulting eliminated her position, and the distant dream suddenly became the only job in town.

She formed Valerie Schlitt Associates in July 2001, and landed her first client that October.

"I thought it was only something to do until I got a job at a big corporation, but then I got hooked with the fever and decided this was what I wanted to do."

But "this" has changed.

"At first I was doing standard marketing consulting: analyzing operations at Fortune 100 companies, identifying deficiencies, filing reports and preparing marketing brochures," she said.

"But then I realized that companies don't need all this fluff. They want help getting business done. It all crystallized for me in the last six months or so."

She had already taken on Peggy Hansler of Collingswood, a longtime friend and marketing veteran, to assist her. Now she added Diane Godlewski, Amy Reinicker and Rosemary LaMaina, all Haddonfield women with professional backgrounds and a need for flexible hours.

They make the cold calls, using the three phone lines in Schlitt's house, and Hansler, working from her Collingswood home, works the company's expanding network of developed contacts. Sharon Schwalm is the computer whiz who handles the graphic and design work and mail merge projects. Valerie Schlitt Associates can handle everything for its clients from mailings to telesales to creating client specific mailing and telephone lists that cannot be purchased elsewhere.

Schlitt brings it all together.

"I like making things run smoothly, and fixing them when they don't," she said.

Already her business has turned profitable - although not yet as much as her last corporate job - and she is adding clients all the time.

If she grows much more, she will need a real office, and her husband and two kids may get their family room back.

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