3 well-known names in business community team up

A dim, poorly heated basement in an obscure corner of Old Colorado City is not where you’d expect to find the former CEO of the Greater Colorado Springs Chamber of Commerce, the former publisher of the Colorado Springs Business Journal or the former chief operating officer for the multinational Century Casinos. And yet, in adjacent offices, here are Will Temby, Lon Matejczyk and Larry Hannappel.

For the three prominent businessmen, these humble quarters represent a new beginning, but they’re not starting from scratch. Temby, Matejczyk and Hannappel teamed up last year to form a company, Mountain Prairie Holdings, with the intention of buying an existing business with the potential for growth.

“Will and I had been playing with hanging our own shingle for a year or two,” Matejczyk said. “We met Larry through another contact — he brought the financial expertise.”

Why would three men with such long resumes put their financial necks on the line by running their own shop? The same reasons many people dream of being their own boss, Hannappel said.

“You’re able to expand your horizons when you have your own business,” he said. “Nobody gets exactly what they want when they work for someone else.”

The Mountain Prairie partners found their match at the end of December, when they bought Apprentice Personnel, a temporary staffing service with offices in Colorado Springs, Kansas City and Wichita, Kansas.

Temporary staffing is a new field for all three, but they believe that their depth of experience will allow them to get up to speed quickly and then, hopefully, grow the business.
“We knew we’d have a little bit of a learning curve,” Temby said. “A lot of this is taking care of people — our customers and our employees.”

“We have so many different experiences,” Matejczyk said. “I can take my experiences over the last 20 years and say, ‘Oh, that will fit here.’”

The partners looked at about a dozen potential acquisitions along the Front Range before settling on Apprentice, Hannappel said. Founded in 1991, Apprentice is an established, profitable business with 800 clients and a database of more than 12,000 temporary employees to call on.

“This is a good business,” Temby said. “They’ve done a good job over the years with their clients.”

Getting started in the depths of winter — traditionally the slow months in the temporary staffing business — and just as the economy shows signs of turning around should give them time to learn the ropes and craft plans for growth, Temby said.

“We certainly have a steep list of things we’d like to get accomplished,” he said. “The days are a blur.”

So far, Hannappel, Matejczyk and Temby aren’t trying to reinvent the wheel at Apprentice. They say they’re learning from their staff, most of whom have been with the business for some time, and trying to identify where they can make a difference.

“In some ways, we might have learned what not to do,” Matejczyk said.

The three are each managing partners and, so far, all decisions have been made by consensus, they said. The big changes so far are in technology: a new website, which they commissioned before they even closed on the business, giving employees e-mail access and adding new servers.

Jed Davis, who founded Apprentice and owned it with two partners, said the fresh approach is good for the business.

“We needed to move into the future and, frankly, I was getting a little dated,” Davis said. “They’re going to modernize Apprentice Personnel and make it more efficient. A  month into it and I like what I see.”

Enoch Johnson, Apprentice’s general manager, said the new bosses are bringing a lot of energy to the business.

“These guys have a lot of fresh ideas and a lot of enthusiasm,” he said.

The short- and medium-term goals are to build up Apprentice, Matejczyk said, but if they’re successful, they’d someday like to expand Mountain Prairie’s holdings beyond just one.

“There is something I like about the thrill of the acquisition,” Matejczyk said.
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DETAILS

The managing partners of Mountain Prairie Holdings and the new owners of Apprentice Personnel had high-profile careers in Colorado Springs before striking out on their own:

Will Temby
President and CEO, Greater Colorado Springs Chamber of Commerce, 2000-2007

Lon Matejczyk
Publisher, Colorado Springs Business Journal and vice president, Dolan Media, 2003-2010

Larry Hannappel
Chief operating officer and principal financial officer, Century Casinos, 2004-2010