Q&A With TargetGov President Gloria Berthold Larkin

By Mark R. Smith, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

Gloria Berthold Larkin has worn a few different hats during her career, but she has found her greatest success as president of TargetGov, a national company that provides government procurement, business development and marketing services.
Founded in 2003, the company has grown by approximately 20% annually and has reported an increase of a whopping 40% for the past year. Not bad, especially during a recession.
She has taken her success with TargetGov and parlayed it into other endeavors, such as authoring "The Veterans Business Guide: How to Build a Successful Government Contracting Business," and creating a series of Government Business Development audio CDs and toolkits (or e-books) focusing on successful business development processes for federal contractors.
Berthold Larkin also writes articles regarding business development that have reached print in local, regional, national and international publications (including this issue of The Business Monthly) and serves as the national Procurement Committee co-chair for Women Impacting Public Policy (WIPP), a non-partisan organization representing more than 500,000 members.
She has also spoken at international, national, regional and local conferences, such as the Middle East and North Africa Businesswomen's Summit, the Annual 2008 OSDBU Procurement Conference and the 2009 Annual National Veteran's Conference; and has been interviewed for television and radio shows, as well as podcasts for BusinessWeek.com. She has been quoted in such publications as Government Executive and Entrepreneur StartUps magazines, TheStreet.com and USA Today.
Her accolades include being named National Member of the Year in 2007 by WIPP, receiving the Bravo Business Achievement Award 2007 from SmartCEO, being named among Maryland's Top 100 Women in 2004 and 2007 by The Daily Record, a Maryland's Top 100 Minority Business Enterprises award in 2008 and 2006 by the Maryland Governor's Office of Minority Affairs and recognition by that office as one of the state's top women entrepreneurs.
All told, that's an intriguing background for someone who began her career as a landscape designer.

Aside from landscape design, what fields were you involved in earlier in your career? And at what point did your career path start to point toward TargetGov?
I have always been involved in business development, sales and marketing. In the '90s, I worked in the IT field for different medical computer systems companies in the mid-Atlantic area during an eight-year period - when a 20 megabyte hard drive was all anyone ever needed (laughing).
It was in 1997 that I started my own firm here in Elkridge, Marketing Outsource Associates (MOA), and focused on marketing services in the business-to-business market. It was then that I developed a keenly targeted marketing and business development approach that was very successful for our clients.

What was the genesis of TargetGov?
That occurred when a few of my clients asked me to help them break into the federal market. I found that business development in government was entirely different (and much more difficult) than it is in the commercial market. So, I invested two years and more than $150,000 in developing the first database of government decision makers and found that it was a hit.
People subscribed to have access to that information and as that business grew, I decided to create a new entity: TargetGov, as a division of MOA. It began as a searchable database and now includes national teleconferences, books, CDs, workshops, the Government Contracting Institute and expert consulting services.

Did you have any concept back then how the business would grow?
My original concept for the business was different from what the reality has turned out to be as the business grew. That's because we found that, by answering the needs of our customers, we were pulled into areas we didn't initially plan to address, such as teleconferencing, writing books, consulting and speaking nationwide.

What did you do on your trip to Abu Dhabi? What did you learn? And what is the status of women-owned businesses there?
I was invited with five other U.S. businesswomen in 2006 to participate in a U.S. State Department program to teach women from 17 countries in the Middle East and North Africa about business-related issues.
It was an opportunity of a lifetime. In addition to leading roundtable discussions, providing one-on-one counseling and speaking to women in all stages of business development, we participated in state functions, were invited to an official dinner at the Palace, went to Dubai and the Al Burj Arab, which is the world's tallest hotel (which is shaped like a ship's sail).
In most of the Middle Eastern countries, women are willing to struggle to achieve even modest goals of small business success. But some of the key lessons I learned were that we still had more in common than we had differences; that success must sometimes be measured in infinitesimal steps; and by supporting each other, even if a world away in distance and cultures, that we can all benefit in wondrous ways.

How did you help market the Howard Transit system?
MOA was hired by Corridor Transportation Corp. to help increase bus ridership of the then-called Howard Area Transit System (also known as HATS, previously known as ColumBus) in Howard County.
My team recommended that Howard County consider painting the buses green so that they would be noticeable, changing the name to Howard Transit to reflect the new commitment to customer service and increased routes, a new logo and color theme to all collateral materials. As a result, Howard Transit has exceeded ridership goals since the change from a nondescript bus service to an easily recognizable, environmentally and Columbia-friendly professional transit system.

How has the national women's group you are involved with, WIPP, help you in your current station in your career?
I have always been drawn to leadership roles, I guess because I find challenge in trying to improve a given set of circumstances. After chairing the regional Baltimore Washington Corridor Chamber board, I wanted to move to a nationwide organization and WIPP provided the opportunity to learn the political process.
I became as involved as I could and feel that I really helped in changing the laws related to small and women-owned businesses. The relationships that have grown as a result of WIPP are fueling my personal and business growth in unimaginable ways.

What have you shared and gained with your mentoring?
Mentoring has been a natural process for me since I first asked for help from one of my mentors, Malynda Madzel, who impressed me with her business acumen. When I was thinking of starting my business in 1996, I met with her and asked her how I could be successful. Ever since, I felt the best thing to do was pay it forward with other business owners and students. Since then, we have mentored at least two students a year through internship programs and a number of business owners through personal connections, chambers, associations and referrals.

What's the biggest challenge you've had to overcome during your career?
The biggest practical challenge was getting the financing needed for funding my business growth about a decade ago when the dotcoms were crashing. But I persevered and found what I needed from BUCS National Bank (which merged with Community Banks and is now part of Susquehanna Bank), a community bank that welcomed me with open arms - after the larger banks did not.

What advice would you like to share?
One of the most valuable lessons I learned was that one person can do a much better job and be so much more effective by surrounding oneself with people who know more and then being open to their recommendations.