Forrest Whittaker offers advice to those contemplating entrepreneuring: 1. Carefully assess your own personal skills and abilities. 2. Develop your vision and learn to execute your ideas effectively yourself. This can be a hard transition. As there is no momentum in a small company, you have to seize the opportunities that create that momentum. 3. Build a multi-skilled team which shares your vision!   "Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life." Confucius   Forrest sees his role of CEO as having four primary areas of focus: 1. Developing strategy. 2. Assessing resources. 3. Building solid management. 4. Achieving desired goals.

by Forrest Whittaker, President and CEO, Paidos Healthcare, and RL Graduate, Robertson Lowstuter Advantage Newsletter, Spring 1996   As you enter the lobby of Paidos Healthcare, you are captivated by the beautiful eyes and smiles of babies photographed by a Boston artist. This work, which tugs at your heart, is featured in all of Paidos' literature and brochures. Forrest Whittaker, a Robertson Lowstuter Executive Outplacement graduate, explained his shift in direction from his 16 years at Baxter Healthcare Corporation/American Hospital Supply. Upon leaving Baxter, he elected to explore opportunities which were more entrepreneurial and on the medical service side. He saw tremendous opportunity for expansion, growth, and innovation in the delivery of various healthcare services. As an idea guy, Forrest brought to a big company his strengths in strategic planning. What he struggled with there was the frustration of missed opportunities due to the multiple layers of management. On the other hand, Forrest knew that in a small company, resources are more limited and decisions need to be made more quickly without the fact base or the history to make deliberate, fully-informed decisions. Becoming grounded in his career focus at RL, Forrest was able to move forward in seeking his entrepreneurial dream. Forrest discovered Paidos through networking. Paidos was an early-stage company (revenue under $1 million per year) which had developed a high-tech home care service for medically fragile infants. Paidos had positioned itself as a bridge between the high-tech environment of a hospital ICU and the home where infants could move out of the hospital sooner. This effort saved insurance companies millions of dollars and resulted in more satisfied families and better clinical outcomes. Paidos had some phenomenal results! In a three-month pilot program with a sponsor HMO, Paidos produced an initial annualized savings of $2 million. Paidos is presently negotiating contracts with five different payers and expects 1996 revenues to exceed $15 million. Forrest raised $7 million within the first six months of joining Paidos, and he will be raising another $5-10 million in 1996 until, eventually, Paidos will go public. Establishing credibility in the marketplace through its staff was also key to Paidos' success. Forrest sees that the ultimate test of his contributions will be measured over the course of the next 12 months. Paidos is truly seeking to become the gold standard for managing premature infants and fully expects to become the nation's leading provider of neonatal services to managed care customers. It believes that its innovative model, highly-trained staff, and physician support will revolutionize care for these special patients. Forrest is extremely excited about the future prospects for Paidos and obviously enjoys the rush of entrepreneurship, although he mentions that the time commitments of running a small company are pretty severe. Nevertheless, Forrest says that building a successful small company makes the hard work worthwhile. Robertson Lowstuter is proud of its ability to support Forrest in his pursuit of entrepreneurship. We congratulate Forrest Whittaker for his significant contribution to patients, families, and the healthcare field. Interested in the kind of highly-personalized careering support Forrest received as he was exploring his career options? Check out Career Transition and Outplacement.