By the age of 82, most people are slowing down, if they’re still in the game at all. But Hans Sternberg, who celebrated his 82nd birthday in July, has just launched a new company—his third such venture in a decades-long career that began in 1960, when he joined the department store business his parents founded in Baton Rouge shortly after fleeing Nazi Germany.
As Business Report details in its new cover story, Sternberg’s new company is called Highflyer Human Resources. It sells Human Capital Management software and service, which means it fuses payroll, benefits and HR systems into a single, customized, cloud-based platform for small and midsized companies.
It’s a highly technical company in a rapidly evolving industry—in other words, it’s not the kind of business most octogenarians would jump into. But then, Sternberg isn’t like most people.
Most people would have retired at 57, which is the age Sternberg was in 1992, when he sold his family’s legendary department store chain, Goudchaux’s/Maison Blanche, to a national retailer for $277 million. Instead, he and his wife, Donna, created Starmount Life Insurance/AlwaysCare Benefits and spent the next 25 years growing the company into a national insurance carrier with $180 million in annualized premiums and 940,000 covered lives.
Most people would have retired, as Sternberg could have earlier this year, when he and his family sold Starmount for $127 million to national insurance giant Unum. Instead, Sternberg delved headfirst into the increasingly competitive field of HCM sales and service, and is now promising to grow Highflyer into a national player in the market.
To Sternberg, it’s all unremarkable. He doesn’t know what he would do if he retired. He doesn’t play golf. In fact, he doesn’t really play—at all. Work is his passion, and Highflyer isn’t really any different than his retail or insurance businesses. It’s just the latest chapter in a long and fruitful career that has been defined by discipline and hard work, devotion to family and a focus on customer service.
“Why would I ever retire?” he says. “I enjoy doing things and watching things grow. I’ve done it all my life. My family’s anchors in the business community go back to 1739. That’s what we do. I’ve never had a member of my family retire.”
Read the full cover package, and check out a sidebar feature on the future of Starmount following its sale to Tennessee-based Unum. Send your comments to editors@businessreport.com.
