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If anyone had told Kathy Reehling nine years ago that sheíd one day be managing technical support for a local pharmaceutical giant, she would have chuckled. If theyíd said sheíd later be president of her own successful contracting service, she would have laughed aloud. And if that same person told her a temp job would launch it all, she would have flat-out guffawed.

Though the business track didnít seem out of reach to the stay-at-home mother in the early 1990s, Reehling had never entertained thoughts of running her own business. Indeed, she had her hands plenty full coordinating youth activities and judging 27 county fairs as the Marion County Extension agent in charge of 4-H. And with her large vegetable garden and couple of cows, she spent the majority of her free time tending to the earth and the animals with help from husband Ron, a construction engineer.

Then came son Grant, who unexpectedly changed Reehlingís career path. Though she found her 4-H work a natural fit with her interests and abilities, Reehling didnít want to miss her sonís milestones. She resigned from her position and took up a new title as a full-time mom. Caring for Grant didnít consume her entire schedule, however, so Reehling enthusiastically tackled household repair projects, volunteered in the community, attended Bible studies and maintained her garden ñ all tasks she felt made the house a home. Daughter Amandaís birth 3 1/2 years later reinforced her decision to care for the two children herself.

But try as she might to stay challenged by the domestic work, Reehling found herself feeling confined. Taking two children on outings ñ or even routine errands, for that matter ñ grew difficult, so she gradually cut back on the number of trips outside the house. Then Grant and Mandy came down with simultaneous bouts of chicken pox the summer of 1990, and the family was quarantined at home for six weeks.

The stir-crazy Reehling finally hit her limit and applied for a temporary 12-week data entry position with Eli Lilly & Co. to combat her restlessness. "As much as I love my children, they werenít good conversationalists at that age," she says. "I needed something more."

It seems her creativity earned her the position as much as her organizational skills: When the Lilly department head called to set up an interview, he was so impressed with the rhymed answering machine message she recorded in an especially bored moment ñ "Hello, youíve reached the home of Ron, Kathy, Mandy and Grant. Weíd love to take your call but we just canít. If you leave your name, number and time of day, unless youíre a salesman, weíll call right away." ñ that he hired her on the spot.

Though Reehling lacked a polished corporate background, she knew what it took to make an impression: Reflect what you admire in others. She vowed to show her commitment to the job and to back up the supportive, ambitious and competent qualities she listed on her resumÈ. So she arrived at work her first Monday dressed to the nines in a suit ñ only to discover that her assignment took her to a construction site, where stockings and heels were taboo. The supervisors dredged up a pair of pants she could wear under her skirt and a pair of fashionably backward steel-toed shoes. Even then, she garnered catcalls. That was the only day she didnít appear to fit.

"Women often believe that an 8-to-5 job means we are limited to secretarial or clerical work ñ so thatís what I expected myself," she says of the job. Instead, she found herself getting an inside look at many of the companyís construction and engineering tasks. Eventually, she grew restless with the data entry work and took a chance: She asked to try her hand at more of the work lying undone. Within three weeks she was assigned to work as an engineering aide on Eli Lillyís ground-breaking biosynthetic human insulin project. She kept track of the companyís progress, completed technical paperwork, managed documentation and helped organize the finished results ñ all tasks that a temp clerk wasnít typically entrusted with. Then again, Reehling had branched well beyond that status by that point. "Why didnít I believe myself capable of that from the beginning?" she asks. "Being a mother requires a lot of marketable skills that I needed for that type of job."

When the 12 weeks ended, the department asked her to stay on as an aide ñ and to name her terms. Reehling chose to enjoy the best of a career and family by working three days a week, then hired a friend from her Bible study to cover the remaining time.

Great Expectations

The job-sharing gig worked so well that by 1992 her department head asked her to step up to another challenge: to organize all the companyís contractors in a subdivision of Lilly to make sure everyone received the same benefits, performance reviews and pay proportions. Reehling successfully negotiated an arrangement with Jim Maddox, president of local electrical consulting company ERMCO, to handle the contracts and unify the employees. She then set up her own division, called Crew Technical Services, to oversee the process.

At first, Lilly contracted only engineering work, but as their needs expanded to computers, Reehling saw an area ripe for opportunity. In February 1995 she made Crew Technical Services an independent operation and became president of her own business. Among its many tasks, the company provides workers for engineering and computer industries, organizes contractors for many Indiana companies and links corporations with technical writers, computer technicians and support workers. As president, Reehling spends most of her time securing new clients, establishing marketing strategies and tracking down solutions to the companyís challenges. "Itís really not hard to meet the need thatís there ñ itís just hard at first to understand what it takes to fill those needs," she says.

Life on the Farm

Hard work is certainly nothing new to the animal science graduate from Purdue. Raised on a farm in Logansport, she bailed hay, pitched manure and drove tractors during the summers. Her father has spent the past 40 years working the midnight shift at Chryslerís casting plant in Kokomo, then returning to eat breakfast with the family before heading out to run the farm all day. He sleeps after dinner until 10 p.m., then starts the cycle again. Not to be outdone, Reehlingís mom ñ standing 5 feet tall and weighing 95 pounds ñ single-handedly controls a 65-head cattle herd; she even artificially inseminates the cows, then castrates and dehorns the calves. "Iíve watched her do things that most men are afraid to do," says Reehling. "It never occurred to me thereís anything that canít be done by a woman."

Reehlingís 10 years in 4-H competing for top prizes in beef, photography, veterinary science, forestry and foods projects at Cass County fairs also would stand her good stead. (However, she claims her yeast rolls were always as hard as rocks and her pig became almost too fat for showing after chowing down on the rejects from her oven.) "I gained a lot just from livestock judging contests because you had to make a decision and justify it," she says. "Believe me, I use that every day now. Presenting your own project to the judges, answering an adult strangerís questions, accepting their advice on how to do it better ñ those are life skills. Without them, it would have been easy for me to be just a shy, backward farm kid."

Though her childhood set the stage for the business world, Reehling says she primarily founded a new company because she believes that raising children and growing a corporation involve same recipe: Trust people completely with responsibility for a task. She put that philosophy into practice by building the dream company she herself would want to work for ñÝeven though the price meant she wouldnít always share in the rewards. For instance, she says she operates on a smaller profit margin than most of her competitors in order to pay employees maximum dollars. "It gets hairy at times," she says. "When sales drop ñ and those things happen as part of business ñ thereís no cushion."

Thanks to her own need to balance work and family, Reehling is open to flex time, job-sharing and work-at-home arrangements, despite the additional management burdens such nontraditional approaches drop at her doorstep. Her family-friendly policies know no gender, so fathers command the same respect as mothers. Each employee cross-trains to cover for colleagues who might need the afternoon off to attend a parent-teacher conference or a school play. Additionally, if an employee isnít working successfully with a particular customer, Reehling places him with another customer instead of firing him. "We salvage a lot of people," she says. "Sometimes thereís a feeling that you canít be a successful business person and have a good set of Judeo-Christian values. Thatís a huge myth."

Thatís one reason she tore up her industryís popular non-compete forms, opting instead to trust her employees not to backstab her in these days where everyone is on the grab for competent electrical and computer consultants. "I donít believe itís my right to control where someone works," she says. "And, yes, weíve had clients hire our employees from under us. But thatís actually landed us a lot of work ñ the former employees become our best friends working for our best customers."

Still, she admits that losing some of her prized people to competing companies bothers her because she always tries to understand what she and her company might have done wrong ñ or what might have been done to make that person happier. Such policies paid off when they won her small, 90-person company one of Lillyís nine coveted preferred vendor slots over hundreds of seekers earlier this year.

Overall Woman

Reehling doesnít focus entirely on her business side, though. When she returns each evening to her farm home near Thorntown, she slips comfortably into her other role as Mom. She still cleans her house because, she contends, it sets a good example for her children. She puts a full dinner on the table. She irons the familyís clothes. She bakes pies. She sews. She gardens and cans the produce. She heads the Boone County 4-H cat club consisting of 26 kids, and she still judges three county fairs. She teaches fifth-grade Sunday school at Zionsville Presbyterian Church and pitches in to help with church activities. She wheels off on tandem bike rides with 8-year-old Mandy. And she sleeps an average of nine hours each night.

All of that would be enough to drive most anyone else to exhaustion, but Reehling says she needs the constant activity to stay stimulated. "Iím at full-charge all day long," she says. "Iím easily bored, so I make sure I take advantage of every minute." During weekends in the summer, when most people slow down, she drives six hours to fetch 11-year-old Grant from spending the week at his grandparentsí farm. She also looks for new ways to combine activities, such as typing furiously on her laptop while waiting in the car when Grantís soccer practice runs overtime. She once tried to work on her laptop while atop her riding lawn mower, but that time-efficiency experiment failed.

One of her secrets, though, is finding her own network of support for those tasks she canít accomplish on her own. For example, one of her friends watched her children during her temporary days at Lilly, and since then Reehling has relied on many other day care situations to balance her duties. First, Mandy and Grant attended a preschool day care center in Plainfield until Grant started kindergarten. Then Reehling hired a young mother to come to her home and provide necessary transportation. (She even negotiated unlimited use of the washer and dryer with the financially strapped nanny as a benefit.) Last year, when the childrenís part- and full-time school schedules wreaked havoc with her work, Reehling adjusted her hours to beat the school bus to her front door. Currently, both grade-schoolers attend an after-school program until Ron gets off work at 4 p.m. "Of course, I couldnít do everything if it werenít for every person who touches my life," she says. "Each helps me somehow, and that goes a long way in helping me meet all my obligations."

Funny thing is, Reehling believes anyone can do it ñ with that boost from a loving spouse and friends. "God gives me the strength and energy ñ I donít just make it up myself, so itís all in the attitude," she says. "You have to know that you can do it. And too many people get too focused on the details." Indeed, Reehling keeps an eye on the big picture ñÝin many cases, that means all the tasks that must be accomplished in a month ñÝto avoid being paralyzed with overwhelming chunks. Then she chips away at the task, combining as many things as possible.

"People tend to departmentalize: I should bake a pie and I need to spend time with my kids. Combine them," she says. "You just canít get hung up on the fact that theyíre getting flour all over your kitchen." Because time is precious, she also evaluates why she takes on each project, requiring every task to clear two vital hurdles before she commits: 1) Is it important that I do this personally? 2) If not, do I want to do it? After several siftings, she narrows her commitments to what she deems truly important. "Guilt is part of every motherís life ñ and probably every CEOís," she admits. "But itís such a waste of time, and I donít have any time to waste."

For instance, Reehling bakes pies because she finds that rolling out dough is the best stress reliever she knows. "Peeling apples helps me put the weekís events at work into perspective," she says. "I call it the Scarlett OíHara syndrome because, like that scene in Gone With the Wind where she clutches the dirt after her world fell apart, I need the earth and lots of physical activity to stay sane."

The Veil of Tears

Reehling also cultivates an active belief in God, to whom she turns over everyday events, whether good or bad. It was that enveloping faith that saw her through personal tragedy last October. Thinking the emergency phone call that found her at a clientís office was a school nurse informing her that her daughterís tooth was bleeding, Reehling grabbed the handset at the receptionistís desk. Instead, it was her brother-in-law, who blurted out that her sister Kandy had been in a car accident. She had turned around to check on her son in the back seat of the car, crossed the center line and slammed head-on into an oncoming semi-truck, killing both herself and her son instantly. Reehling crumpled to the floor. "Never take an emergency phone call in a public place," was all she could say.

She was so shaken that she couldnít remember how to dial a telephone to summon her husband. Her relationship with Kandy had been golden: Of the four siblings, Kandy was the sister who chipped in her teen-age earnings to share a Plymouth Volare when Reehling was a high school senior and Kandy a junior. It worked so well that the women later bought a wedding dress to share. Just two days before the accident, they had marched side by side in a Purdue University alumni band homecoming activity.

"The good thing about being so close is that I have no regrets about our relationship," Reehling says. "The bad thing is that I miss her horribly." Her anger after the funeral threatened to sidetrack her business future and the can-do image she strives to pass on to her children. There was no one to blame ñ no drunk driver, malfunctioning brakes or a slippery road. It was, she says, simply an act of God. "But it doesnít make a lot of sense to be angry at God," she says. So instead she uncharacteristically told off a client in her now-defunct medical management division and lashed out when clients needed special attention.

Eventually, four of her employees converged on her office, each bearing the same message: "Youíre alienating people, and it has to stop." One caring soul captured the sentiment with a politely worded card. Those words, Reehling recalls, cut almost as deep as the emergency phone call itself. "Iím not an especially empathetic woman," she says. "If you donít tell me directly, I may not ever pick up that something is bothering you. But when you confide in me, I want to help you fix whateverís wrong."

So Reehling stepped up to heal herself. She reached out through her company newsletter to warn others of the need to drive carefully, hoping to spare another family similar pain. "Value your time with your loved ones," she says. "Crew has always tried to be a family-friendly company ñ now, I canít imagine ever losing that essence thanks to the accident."

But itís her personal inspiration ñ her children ñ who finally pulled her spirits from the mire. During a routine commute home in March, Mandy piped up with a suggestion for the eveningís entertainment. Why not make stone soup? The adult voice of reason fell from Reehlingís lips: "We donít really have time to stop at the grocery and pick up the vegetables. And I donít know how much of each thing we should put in to make a good soup. Besides, itís raining ñÝhow will we find a stone without getting muddy?"

Her daughter wasnít about to take that for an answer. "Take chances! Get messy!" she challenged, mimicking The Magic School Bus mantra she picked up from television. "You used to be the kind of mom who believed in such things." It was the one battle cry that could pierce Reehlingís armor.

The two stopped and bought barley and long, thin carrots. They searched the fields outside their house for a smooth, gray stone. They made the best soup that an adventurous mother-and-child team ever could. The worry, stress and grief melted right into that pot and disappeared as fast as the soup. Says Reehling: "My children are the daily reminders that we have all been born with a sense of wonder, a boundless energy, a drive to explore and learn, and the ability to enjoy life."

Hot Tip: Ask to Receive

If anything, the window of opportunity for women to enjoy the benefits of work and family has expanded to storefront size. The trick, says Reehling, is to walk into the interview knowing exactly what you want, whether itís a two-day week, a home-based operation or afternoons off. And never underestimate what you can accomplish.

"Employers are starting to truly understand what a vast resource this pool of mothers is," she says. "We want to bring women back into the work force after they have babies, and all it takes is a little flexibility."