Kimberly Adams-Russell

Category: Executive of the Month
Published: November 2007

Success Magazine's Executive of the Month, Kimberly Adams Russell of Frank Adams Jewelers, started working part-time in her father's store right out of college. Since then, she has battled through marketing miscues and serious health problems to run one of the region's most successful jewelers, and also achieve true synergy between business and personal success.

Success Magazine: What does success mean to you?
Kimberly Adams-Russell: Success to me is all about balancing my life. It's about feeling like I've accomplished everything I could as a mother and as a businesswoman. Trying to pull everything together so that I can go home at night and have a nice dinner and a glass of wine. I can just sit down and say that I accomplished something at work, my family is all together and organized, and I can go to sleep at night thinking that I made things exist in harmony for the day. To me, that is a successful day.

SM: You're president of this company. You've taken the company to the next level, opening a new store. You're still running your family and you're working with your husband as your partner. Balance is important, but how do you achieve it?
KAR: I'm just incredibly organized. The busier that I am, the more organized that I become. I have all of my lists, and I delegate responsibility. I've learned that proper delegation is rewarding. I have a wonderful caretaker who takes care of my children, so I feel really comfortable with that during the day, and I know that when I get home, or when she brings them to me, or however that works out, that I'm comfortable with where they are for the day. I'm fortunate enough right now that I can go home and spend quality time with my children. So, I think it's about getting the right help and support team. I've really surrounded myself with people that I have so much faith in, and when you really trust someone, and you know that they'll be able to follow through with the responsibility that you give them, everything is made a lot easier. I could have never taken the next step to open another location if I didn't have the support team that I have around me.

SM: With the delegation, the type-A personality comes out. Some people like it because it helps them where they can come along for the ride and enjoy your success, and some people don't. How do you deal with the personality types who don't like it?
KAR: They don't have to like it. But, I really haven't had that many conflicts over the years with staff. My staff will be the first ones to tell you that I try to be very fair. I'm sensitive to their family needs. However, I don't appreciate people who make excuses for themselves. We all make mistakes.

SM: You are personally involved in the hiring process, especially with the new store. What do you look for in a potential employee?
KAR: Spark, enthusiasm and willingness to learn new things. The rest can all be trained.

SM: You're trying to manage not just one location and group of employees, but two. You are now going to kick off a new location. Ideally, will you then delegate more of that responsibility and sphere of influence so that you can merely manage as opposed to micro-manage?
KAR: My HR department pretty much manages the human resources part, following through on my terms. She tracks their sick and vacation time, as well as their payroll hours. This keeps us all on track.

SM: What made you go into the family business?
KAR: I've always been interested in the family business. I was always Daddy's little girl growing up, and it was one of things that if anyone was going to do it, I was pretty sure it would be me. My father never pushed me, and I've got to give him a lot of respect for that. I went off to Ithaca College, where I was a communications major. At the time, we had this wonderful little store in downtown Albany. I just started to help my father out whenever I could. Eventually, I said, "Alright, we need to create a new campaign. We need new television, we need new radio, and we've got to get rid of whoever is doing our script writing." We needed to come up with a fresh and new idea, as well as a way that we could branch the store into a new target market. I felt like the store was kind of stuck, and our target market was a 60-year-old working man in downtown Albany. But what else was there out there?

SM: You were trying to change the image in the market?
KAR: Yes. We butted heads, but the bottom line was that, even though we butted heads, I was fortunate in the fact that my father truly trusted me. He knew I was smart, and that I was a driver, and that some ideas might work, and some ideas might not. The truth is I worked my butt off.

SM: Can you give us an example of an idea that didn't work?
KAR: Well, I was out every night trying to create business. I went to all kinds of classes where I studied how to redo the windows. At that time, the storefront was kind of like 47th Street, we had this huge front window, and they used to line all of the jewelry boxes up in the windows. At Christmas time they were all red velvet, otherwise they were royal blue velvet, and they lined up box after box. They take it all out every night, but it was lined up in there all day long. So I joined the New York State Jewelers Association and we talked about window simplicity; it was taught by this person who taught Tiffany how to do their windows. So I come back thinking I'm all brilliant, and I took everything out of the window. I redid the window so that there was nothing in it except for a fish bowl and a betta fighting fish, and I was going to put the Rolex watch in the fish bowl, to let the people know that the watch was submergible and waterproof. One fish bowl and one watch, which is a little too simple, by the way. Two days later, a customer walks through the door and asks me if I know that there is a dead, shriveled-up fish in the window. It was so hot in the window that the fish committed suicide. Ultimately, I learned how to do it properly. We can learn from those lessons, right? And then the Downtown Business Association actually gave us an award the following year for our window display. My mother was a big help in that as well. She did up the side window to look like the old Macy's. We had all moving characters for Christmas. It was really beautiful.

SM: To whom do you attribute your personality traits?
KAR: Definitely a mix of my parents. My mother is the feisty one of the group. She has more of the driving personality, for sure. My father has the business side. He's analytical, loves to run reports, and loves to analyze them.

SM: You have to be a visionary to continue the success of the business, and to know when to move, when not to move, when to expand, when not to expand. What makes you well-suited to that?
KAR: I like change. Change makes people very nervous. My staff is constantly in upheaval, but we're working on it. Change is tough. You're asking people to go along with you, and you're asking them to go along with the change, when they were perfectly happy the way things were.

SM: When you hit a brick wall, what did you do? Was there a specific time in your life when you came against something that didn't work?
KAR: The opening of the Stuyvesant Plaza store was a bit of a disaster. That was a very difficult time. We decided to open the second store and we were running two stores at once. But we embraced it together as a family. If my father didn't feel confident that I could manage the business, run it in the future, take it to another level, and be successful, he wouldn't have moved.

SM: So the grand opening was a disaster?
KAR: It was a mess, but people came anyway, and we made money. People were sympathetic, but it was just not the way you want your grand opening to be.

SM: They say that stress can bring out latent health problems. You were diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. You were already under tremendous duress because the store still wasn't complete, and now you have this medical emergency. Even your body was telling you to stop. So what carried you through that?
KAR: That was kind of a big slap in the face for me. I realized that I was burning the candle at both ends, and I was just physically and mentally exhausted, and probably not giving the care to the kids that I should have been giving. There was no balance at that time. In some sort of strange way, that turned me around. It sounds weird, but it was actually a good thing that it happened, because it really was a huge wakeup call for me. I got back into exercise, I took Pilates classes, I was eating much better. Instead of coming home at 9:00 at night, and eating whatever, I was concentrating much more closely on my nutrition, vitamins, and exercise. I started keeping a log about my daily activities, and what was triggering me. It got me back to my roots of being really organized. It got me out of being frazzled and I stopped doing things that got me nowhere like screaming at the contractor. I'm not like that now. This project has been smooth sailing. I'm about three weeks overdue, and I'm not stressed about it in the least. I really learned from all of that how to manage myself as well as other people. It was a big turning point for me emotionally and maturity-wise, both in life and in managing the company, because that's when I started delegating things. Really, that's when all of that organization became so much better for me. Before that, I was trying to do everything and be everything to everybody, and you just can't do it.

SM: A difficult time can be a blessing because it forces you to slow down?
KAR: It does. It forces you to really put your life in perspective. Actually, in a strange way, even though I'm busier than I ever have been, and I'm doing a project that's a whole other avenue in my life to make my life busier and more challenged, I'm more emotionally mature now than ever.

SM: Who helped you to get through this? Who was your support group?
KAR: My family was definitely there for me. My sister is well-connected in Albany County and familiar with the medical field, and she knows a lot of people who have M.S. I quickly dove into the local M.S. Society. I made contact with people. I have no shame, it's not like I was hiding from anything; I just wanted help. I found peers of mine who became friends of mine, specifically this one other woman named Christine Mertes, who runs a company called Capital Affairs. We found each other, and we were a big support team for each other then, and we still are today. Together, we came up with WAMS, which is Women Against M.S., and she runs the WAMS luncheon here. We really dove into the gala committee, and started getting involved in the M.S. community. She's been an integral part of the M.S. Society. We joined the board of directors together, although, given my time lately, I had to let that portion go. I think having those people around me really helped.

SM: The decision to expand is always a risky one. How did you prepare for the venture?
KAR: I prepared for a long time. This wasn't just a whim. For some, maybe it's just a whim. For some others, it's a defensive tactic. It wasn't like that for me. For me, it was really mostly about the ties to the community. I've lived in Saratoga County ever since I graduated from college, my children go to school in Saratoga County, that's where I eat out, that's where I cut my hair, and I'm completely comfortable there. I felt tied to that community already. People were constantly asking me to deliver this and that product, asking me to do a party at their house with my products. It was just one of those things where I said it's definitely going to fall into place.

SM: Everyone involved knew it would be a good fit?
KAR: Pretty much. A few years ago, David Zecchini, who owns Il Forno Tuscano and Chianti's, and Sonny Bonacio were having dinner at Chianti's and I was having dinner with my husband and the conversation started there. They said, "We're doing this project, and Chianti's is going to move in on one side, and it's perfect for you." I was very comfortable knowing that I was in good hands in Saratoga, and that the relationship between us would really work. We're going to open in a few weeks, and it has been an incredibly smooth building process.

SM: What are your future plans? What are you looking to achieve?
KAR: At this point, we'll get ourselves open, and get comfortable with running the two locations. I'm sure there's going to be a lot that I'll have to iron out. I think going from one to two stores is like going from one kid to two kids. Once you have two kids, it's easy. I know how to take all that on. I'm sure that there will be some changes that will have to be addressed, but I don't see myself stopping at that.

SM: If you had to describe yourself in one word, what would it be?
KAR: I don't know if I can fit it all into one word. I like the word "driven." That definitely defines me in many ways.