A Business Haven

A Business Haven

An entrepreneur new to the wonders of Longboat Key wants

to see the island grow into a business hub. It's a big challenge.

Charles Nechtem sounds like a Chamber of Commerce honcho.

He has some grandiose ideas about how to turn Longboat Key from a slow-and-sometimes steady resort and retirement village into a thriving destination for dozens of business executives and corporations. "We could make Longboat Key the Canyon Ranch of the East Coast," says Nechtem , referring to the luxury wellness and lifestyle center in Arizona.

But Nechtem isn't any old Pollyanna-infused local tourism promoter. Instead, he's a classic built from scratch entrepreneur who founded and grew his employee assistance and counseling firm, Charles Nechtem Associates, Inc., into one of the largest private companies in its field. While he declines to disclose revenues, the firm was ranked as the eighth largest employee assistance program company in the industry by Business Insurance magazine last year, with more than 300 clients and 4.2 million "lives covered."

And after moving his company's 12-employee headquarters from downtown Newark, N.J. to Longboat Key this past summer, Nechtem found his next, and greatest mission: To bring long-term business vitality to an area known just as much for its NIMBY mentality when it comes to development and growth as its Gulf views.

"There are people that don't want this area to become a thriving business area," says Nechtem, a fact he has learned first-hand after attending four months of planning, zoning and town council meetings. "But the growth of an area depends on revenues a business can bring in."

Besides, adds Nechtem, Longboat Key "is much prettier than Newark."

Nechtem's plan is to utilize the beauty of the Key, and the new corporate office he's leasing there, behind the island's only Publix, as a hub for his clients. He intends to run wellness seminars for rank-and-file employees and leadership training for some of the senior executives who work at those companies. Says Nechtem : "I see this place as a haven, where merchants can prosper."

Nechtem 's firm has been able to prosper more than 27 years by building a diverse client list that ranges from big corporations, such as Barnes & Noble, Walgreen's and Waste Pro, to schools and municipal governments in several states. The firm has clients in Canada and Europe, too.

The company serves as a starting point for its client's employees to seek confidential counseling on any issue that arises in their personal or work life. Once a call comes in, the company's licensed counselors or social workers will monitor the case, either providing counseling services or finding an appropriate therapist. Nechtem's staff of about 200 employees monitors 24-hour call-centers out of offices in New Jersey and St. Louis.

Nechtem , a Boston native, founded the company in 1981 after growing frustrated with his work as a psychologist for a hospital in New York City, where he said addictions and mental health issues were all treated with the same broad brush.

Back then, Nechtem bought his first suit - a wool one - and cold-called 80 possible clients from his fifth-floor walk-up apartment in Manhattan. He got 80 rejections.

Then, on a whim, he took a bus to Atlantic City and met with casino owners and managers, thinking a city of sin would be a great place to find clients - companies with employees who need counseling. He ended up landing a meeting with Steve Wynn, now a prominent Las Vegas developer.

Wynn told Nechtem that to treat his employees, he would have to learn the casino business, so he could know first-hand their problems. Nechtem took a job at the Golden Nugget, then owned by Wynn, starting as a greeter meeting people coming off the buses. He later worked in the restaurants and on the casino floor.

After two years, the gamble paid off. Wynn and his casinos became Nechtem's first client. He later moved the company to an office, first in Jersey City and then in Newark.

The move to Longboat Key stems from vacations he has been taking to the area for the past decade. "I kept saying Newark or Longboat Key," says Nechtem. "I finally said 'let's try a new adventure.'"

-Mark Gordon