Patrice Rice was the first female captain of the Chesapeake Bay.
It was the 1970s and Rice owned a fleet of 26 commercial ships and called the company Chesapeake Cruising. She would rent out the boats to people looking for a night away at sea or companies eager to host events on a yacht. It was an exciting job — planning parties and trips on luxury boats. It sure beat sitting behind a desk.
But a business on the sea meant that Rice also had to deal with the “salty dogs” who didn’t think she could handle what they considered a man’s job. She proved them wrong by backing the massive boats into narrow slips on the dock with grace. They didn’t say another word.
Unfortunately, though, that life wouldn’t last. The gas crisis of the late 1970s and early ’80s (plus her own personal reasons) would push Rice and her former husband to sell the business — leaving Rice with no clue what to do next.
Her story is a common one — bumps in the road leave you out of a job and then you have to figure out how to redefine your life. But Rice rose to the occasion. She started managing the office of an IT staffing firm. It wasn’t a dream job, but it was the beginning of a totally new career path, away from the ocean. Eventually, she would go on to start her own company, called Patrice & Associates, in 1989 in Maryland. It is now one of the largest restaurant and hospitality staffing firm in North America serving companies such as Panera and Chipotle — and it’s still growing today.
The transition from managing a fleet of ships to a corporate office job was tough. Rice went from spending her time on boats, planning parties, to sitting at a desk, wearing a headset.
“I would be depressed, I hated going to work,” Rice said. “You work your way back up again, like many other Americans in this country. It’s not all glamorous. No success story is all glamour, but I think the only people who fail are those who stop trying.”
So she stuck it out in a job she didn’t love and used that time at the IT staffing firm to learn about the recruiting industry. She also learned that she didn’t want to work for anyone else. She’d had enough “salty dogs” in her life. She left that job and wrote a book about resume writing before she felt confident enough to launch her own company.
“It’s a matter of survival,” Rice said. “You’ve got to pay the bills. It’s not like I could go out and get another job as a boat captain. It was a serious recession and there were not too many options. I looked at it as career training. So many people have had to do that — take skills they had and learn something brand new.”
Luckily she already had the core skills that made for a good recruiter.
“It’s all about people,” Rice said. “Having people skills and the ability to form bonds with people.”
Rice explained that as a boat captain, she had to make corporate America see the value in hosting luxury events on yachts. She had to sell her service to make companies spend money on her boat tours and events. Now she puts those same skills to use, hawking her hiring services to companies.
“The common denominator is communication skills and giving good customer service,” Rice said. “In boat service, you want them to have a wonderful experience, have a bottle of champagne on the boat for the first night at sea and, [in recruiting], remembering to send Christmas cards. It’s all sales. I’m a salesperson; you just have to learn the product, then apply the same skills.”
She was determined to make her company successful, so she took her sales lessons from her boating days and her industry knowledge from the IT staffing firm and built her own recruiting business that now staffs major corporate restaurant chains. Think Qdoba, Chipotle, The Cheesecake Factory and Darden Restaurants. Today Patrice & Associates has about 50 franchises across the country, and Rice said that they will have franchises in Canada soon. She declined to comment on revenue.
“I don’t care how hard I get knocked down; you’re stronger when you get up,” Rice said. “I just 100 percent believe that when you look at the successful people, they all have a story about how they failed and got back up. The real common denominator is: Do you get back up?”
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