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The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted on: Tuesday, February 26, 2008

'Darn happy to be back in Hawaii'

Full interview with Dusitn Sellers

By Curtis Lum
Advertiser Staff Writer

Hawaii news photo - The Honolulu Advertiser

Dustin Sellers, president of ProService Hawaii, which provides human resource administration to businesses, says ProService has grown 25 percent to 30 percent over the past four years.

Photos by REBECCA BREYER | The Honolulu Advertiser

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DUSTIN SELLERS

Age: 38

Title: President, business development and marketing

Organization: ProService Hawai'i

Born: Honolulu

High school: Punahou School

College: USC Entrepreneur Program; Kellogg Graduate School of Management (MBA) at Northwestern University

Breakthrough job: Vice president of marketing, www.Keen.com

Little-known fact: Played semi-pro soccer with the Sprint Tsunami after college

Mentor: Parents, Tom and Sherrie Sellers, who successfully managed their own Hawai'i small business, Sellers Advertising, for 35 years.

Major challenge: Balancing work and life

Hobbies: Soccer, surfing and fly-fishing

Books recently read: "Topgrading," by Bradford Smart

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Hawaii news photo - The Honolulu Advertiser

Dustin Sellers, president of ProService Hawaii, which provides human resource administration to businesses, says ProService has grown 25 percent to 30 percent over the past four years.

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Q. How did you get into this line of business?

A. It was basically a returning-to-Hawai'i experience. I'd been on the Mainland for 10 years, having gone to business school. My business partner and I were looking at businesses to purchase and one of the businesses that we looked at was what we do, PEO human resources outsourcing. Literally serendipitously, we got to know the business owner and were able to purchase the business in 2005 and have been running it ever since.

Q. Why did you choose a PEO (professional employer organization)?

A. It was a meeting of two perfect worlds in the sense that we looked at the industry itself, which we prefer to call employee administration, it was a very fast-growing, budding industry across the U.S. and in very strong labor markets. So we had been studying that industry. Having grown up in Hawai'i and my parents having a small advertising agency with about 20 employees, and one of the things that they always had issues with was employee administration, the constant upkeep of providing a good benefits package and a good administrative package for employees. So having known that Hawai'i was a fairly captive market and predominantly a small-business market, seeing an industry growing and seeing the opportunity to do business, it was kind of the eye of the needle coming together. It was a good fit and a good option to return home and practice my trade.

Q. How big an industry is it in Hawai'i?

A. When we bought the business, we estimated that the industry itself covered roughly 2 to 3 percent of the private sector employees. We've been the largest growth engine and estimate now that we're probably as an industry 4 to 5 percent of the private sector space, so obviously it's an intriguing space because there's quite a bit of runway left and quite a bit of businesses that are not using services like ours that could benefit tremendously from it.

Q. Do you target primarily small businesses?

A. The fabric of the business community in Hawai'i is inherently small business. You got close to 32,000 businesses in Hawai'i and nearly 2,000 are greater than 100 employees. So by default, just about everybody in Hawai'i is an entrepreneur or working for an entrepreneur so the market is very target-rich for the leverage model that we create, which is to be able to provide a full human resources solution without paying the full price.

Q. What are some advantages of hiring a PEO?

A. For the business owner, it's leverage, the ability to save time for himself or herself and their managers, not doing these administrative tasks. It's also at the same time being able to provide healthcare, payroll, worker's comp and human resource management at a level that is on par with any Fortune 500 business. That allows the business owner to feel much better about retention of their employees because they know they're getting a good healthcare package, they're able to track vacation pay, they're able to provide a number of things that, without a service like ours and without that leverage, they would not be competitive in the marketplace. The Society for Human Resource Management estimated that between 18 and 32 percent of time savings can be achieved in using an administrative firm like ours.

Q. How do companies save?

A. Savings are twofold. One is the opportunity for companies that, as you're growing, there isn't the need for redundant staff, doing tasks that are not core to the business. If you are an advertising agency, your goal is to be providing advertising and coming up with creative ideas. It's not necessarily, as you're growing, to be adding more staff that is going to be taking care of the TDI or the Family Leave Act, etc. We provide tremendous flexibility in the variable costs that come with growing your company or expanding your company to other offices. You don't have to change staff with us. The second piece of the puzzle is that we are providing a lot of escalation solutions for employers that they would not normally have. It would cost them money. If they have a compliance issue, such as with the Department of Labor or an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission issue, instead of having to go to a labor attorney or consult an HR consultant, those type of individuals reside at no extra cost within our facility.

Q. How large is your staff?

A. We have roughly 100 employees. We have offices on all islands, excluding Moloka'i and Lana'i.

Q. Do you have a philosophy that guides you in business and in life?

A. My business partner, Ben Godsey, and I became partners with the belief that we could become a good management team, not knowing that we would end up back in Honolulu. I definitely believe that there's an altruistic element to the business that you perform. There's no doubt about it that ProService Hawai'i is a very altruistic solution for businesses. It fits very closely to our view that helping others will eventually help you. It's kind of the unconditional love concept. Most people don't start becoming a hair salon or a restaurant with the desire to manage payroll and to deal with the day-to-day administrative burdens that come with labor laws and the compliance that is working in the state of Hawai'i. We're not a large-margin business by any means. It is a volume-based business and there's altruistic comfort that we are helping businesses become better and to stay in business. As we go into a tighter economic time, I do believe it's a very good moment in time for the PEO industry in Hawai'i and for ProService because we really do offer stability for business owners and employees.

Q. Where do you see ProService down the road?

A. We, over the last four years, have grown about 25-30 percent. Last year we grew close to 33 percent. I don't see much of that stopping because as the market continues to tighten up and people look at their bottom lines and ways to be more efficient with their time — you need more time out there to sell to create the same amount of revenue in a recession-based environment — the less time you have to spend on choosing a healthcare plan or following up on a worker's comp claim. Those things are not going to create more revenue for you. For us, we don't see any roadblocks and the business environment mixed with the business community's awareness is a positive perfect storm for the industry.

Q. What's in your future?

A. I'm darn happy to be back in Hawai'i. It was a long 10 years walking about, living in Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco. Did I think that I'd ever be working for a leading HR/outsourcing company that does employee administration? No. But I feel like I'm in the perfect seat and don't want to ever give it up.

Reach Curtis Lum at culum@honoluluadvertiser.com.