PRC Featured in BIZ Magazine

A group of individuals sat around a conference room table in a Cheat Lake office recently. They were brought there by one woman – Kathy Clinton. Some have been there for a few years and some for just a few weeks, though all provide services to government and private sector contracts. Performance Results Corporation (PRC) provides “solutions to both government and private sectors in the areas of Project Management, Administrative Support, Communications Support and Information Technology services,” according to its profile. The solutions are the employees the company sends all over the nation to work on contracts. They are receptionists, IT techs, graphic designers, technical writers who provide multimedia services and intranet development, as well as dozens of other job titles and functions. These employees come to PRC through word of mouth or are simply inherited after their contracts run out.

PRC has been growing since its inception in 2000 but the idea had been in Kathy Clinton’s mind for some time. Clinton had done government contracting for 22 years and had experience in the field. With a partner, she began forming PRC. “I started thinking that I was tired of working for big business,” Clinton said. “I began working on a business plan of potential clients and the services to provide to the market.” Clinton contacted accounting firms, lawyers and the small business development center for guidance. “It would be nice if you had a checklist of all the things you have to do to start a small business,” she said. Clinton described the work she put into PRC. For the first seven years Clinton solely handled the existing contracts and did payroll, billing and taxes while still signing on new contracts. “I needed to keep overhead expenses low,” Clinton said. “I couldn’t afford to hire someone. I went my first six months without a paycheck. I did it all and I still made it to my son’s baseball games.” Brent Armstrong, a former client of PRC and a newcomer to the staff at the Cheat Lake headquarters, was a bit hesitant to believe her. “All of his games?” he said. “All but one,” Clinton said. Armstrong, as a client of PRC, was drawn to Clinton’s “commitment to customer satisfaction in an ethical manner.” “I always had a desire to work for a small business,” he said. “The primary role is to keep what we have. We want to keep the customers delighted and grow the business.”

PRC is classified as an SBA 8(a) certified small disadvantaged woman-owned business. This classification is for socially and economically disadvantaged companies that have to fit certain criteria to gain what Clinton called, “preferential treatment.” “It’s tough to get a business out there,” she said. “I knew what programs were out there and tried to pave the road to make it easy.” The company continued to grow in number of contracts and in 2005 gained the Support Administrative Service contract and overnight increased by 50 employees. Clinton began hiring employees for corporate headquarters adding Mark Gandolfi as in-house CPA and Shayne Naugle as assistant Program Manager for the SAS contract. “When I started with the company, we had roughly 23 people,” Naugle said. “We’ve grown since then to 150.” “It’s the people you hire,” said Armstrong – the newest addition to PRC. “I believe we hire the best people, we put the best foot forward.” In 2008, PRC restructured and Kathy Clinton became the sole owner of PRC. Clinton then brought in Dawn Fringley as Vice President of Technical and Engineering Support and promoted Naugle to Vice President of Administrative Support. Clinton began to put more emphasis on marketing the business after she made sure, “the employees are happy and the clients are happy.” One of the companies that falls in the support administrative service contract is the National Energy Technology Laboratory. David Anna, Public Affairs Director of NETL, said he was unable to comment on the performance of PRC because NETL is a Government agency, but said the two organizations had continuous working relationship. “They’ve been providing a wide range of administrative services for a number of years,” Anna said.

Back to News Main