Creativity and a persistent, unblinking response to failure helped

Mr. Best Places
COVER STORY
Creativity and a persistent, unblinking response to failure helped
Bert Sperling become the best at showing people what is best.
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OREGON STATER
COVER STORY
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The world headquarters of Sperling’s
BestPlaces is a small room upstairs in
the Sperlings’ comfortable 1920s-era
home in Portland’s Eastmoreland
neighborhood, where the company’s
founder makes a nice living discovering new and useful ways to analyze
relationships between places and
vast databases of information about
how people live. PHOTO BY DENNIS
WOLVERTON
FALL 2011
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COVER STORY
By Kevin Miller
B
ert Sperling is big on the benefits of failure.
Today, the 1972 business graduate makes a
nice living helping people decide where to live or to
find manly men or to get a great night’s sleep.
He has built a small empire out of his
ability to employ science and a bit of whimsy
to, as he says, “add quality to data,” and then
present his results in ways that help people
make important life decisions or maybe just
give them a few laughs and garner attention
for Sperling’s clients.
A fun example, he said, was when the giant
Mars food corporation wanted publicity for its
Combos snacks — “the official cheese-filled
snack of NASCAR” — and turned to Sperling’s BestPlaces.
“Combos wanted me to rate the manliest
cities, with ‘manly’ being sort of tongue-incheek, because Combos is a salty snack and
men love salty snacks,” Sperling said. “I guess
women are too smart to eat those sorts of
things.”
Sperling and his staff analyzed factors like
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Portland, whose downtown skyline is visible across the Willamette River from
Bert Sperling’s perch near the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry, has appeared high and low on many of his lists. It has been deemed at various times to
be the best place to live, the least manly city and the most chill city. PHOTO BY
DENNIS WOLVERTON
the number of home improvement stores,
steakhouses, pickup trucks and motorcycles
per capita, and the proximity to race tracks,
drag strips and major sports venues. Circulation of magazines like Sports Illustrated, Car &
Driver and Popular Mechanics boosted a city’s
manliness ratings, while magazines like Vanity
Fair, Martha Stewart Living and Vogue were
deemed “manly Kryptonite” and lowered the
scores.
In consecutive years, Sperling named
Nashville, Tenn., and Charlotte, N.C., as the
manliest cities in America, with Portland —
his longtime home — finishing 47th out of 50
the first year and dead last in 2010.
When a reporter asked Sperling if it made
him nervous to walk around the city after he
had named it “least manly,” he smiled and
responded that if his ratings were correct, he
had little to worry about.
“I mean, what are they going to do to me?”
he said.
Other customers at Sperling’s BestPlaces
include well-known consumer brands like
Pepto-Bismol, which hired him to list the
best places for Thanksgiving dinner (winner
Akron, Ohio); Baileys Irish Cream, which
wanted a list of America’s “most chill” cities
(winner Portland), and Edge Shave Gel, which
asked him to name the 10 most irritated cities
(winner Atlanta).
His client list is a roll call of major corporations and publications. His books sell well. His
online analysis tools are offered on his website
— www.bestplaces.net — and licensed to
other sites across the Internet. With the tools,
people trying to find their own best place can
compare customized ratings for hundreds
OREGON STATER
COVER STORY
of communities based on criteria they choose. If a person wants a list of
medium-sized cities with low crime, great schools and a healthy appreciation for the arts, Sperling can produce it.
He and his wife and business partner, Gretchen Sperling, enjoy a comfortable but not ostentatious life in a restored 1920s home in Portland’s
quiet Eastmoreland neighborhood. They also have a place on the coast at
Depoe Bay. Their two grown sons are developing careers in show business
in Southern California.
Sperling’s BestPlaces is both highly successful and extremely lean. World
headquarters is a small room upstairs from the family kitchen. The entire
corporate motor pool is in the driveway — a Honda Odyssey van and a
Honda Fit subcompact. All five Sperling’s BestPlaces employees work out
of their own homes or personal offices.
The founder’s approach to financial security — indeed to life in general
— is that of a man who enjoys good fortune but never takes it for granted.
During a recent chat with students at Weatherford Hall as a visiting fellow at OSU’s Austin Entrepreneurship Center, Sperling spoke of his early
struggles. He warned the students that it takes a lot more than a good idea
and a willingness to work hard to make it as an entrepreneur. He urged
them to be brave and bold and persistent, and not to be hyper-focused on
getting perfect grades and avoiding mistakes at all costs.
“If you want to succeed you really have to be willing to fail a lot,” he
advised the would-be entrepreneurs. “If you really feel uncomfortable with
that — with trying something that might fail — that’s something you have
to push over and get past.”
Sperling arrived at OSU as a freshman in the tumultuous late 1960s. He
thought he wanted to pilot a Phantom fighter-bomber in Vietnam, so he
took Air Force ROTC classes for his first two years. Told that his eyesight
would prevent him from being a pilot, he abandoned his military aspirations but didn’t replace them with a particular drive to do anything else.
“I figured a job was just going to come,” he said. “I guess I was sort of
fat, dumb and happy at that age.”
He took classes that satisfied his curiosity, including a home economics
course that explored the scientific aspects of cooking, and a Shakespeare
class in the Department of English. “I didn’t know it was going to be
FALL 2011
Sperling’s Cities Ranked & Rated books sell well and help diversify the
company. He says a third edition should be forthcoming. PHOTO BY
DENNIS WOLVERTON
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COVER STORY
A partial list of Sperling’s lists
“Best Places to Live” (Money, 20 years)
“Healthiest Cities for Women” (SELF, 10 years)
“Best Retirement Places” (AARP)
“Best Cities for Women” (Ladies’ Home Journal)
“Great College Towns”(Newsweek)
“This Town Rocks! — Best Cities for Teens”
(Seventeen)
“Most Photogenic Cities“ (Fujifilm)
“Most Romantic Cities” (Korbel champagne)
“Best and Worst Cities for Skin Care” (Keri Lotion)
“Worst Places for Fleas” (Hartz Mountain)
“Most Hazardous Places” (Duracell)
“Pet Healthiest Cities” (Purina)
“Asthma HotSpots” (Glaxo Smith Kline)
“America’s Sweetest Cities” (Hersheys)
“Most Drivable Cities” (Pep Boys)
“Best Cities for Sleep” (Ambien)
“Best Cities for Dating” (AXE bodyspray)
“Sites for Sore Eyes” (ACUVUE)
“Best and Worst Cities for Navigation” (Avis/Motorola)
“Most Fiscally Fit Cities” (State Farm)
“America’s Healthiest Cities” (Centrum)
“Best Cities for Seniors” (Bankers Life)
“Best Cities for Singles” (Primacy Relocation, 5 years)
“Best Places for Families” (Primacy Relocation, 5
years)
“Sexual Awareness on Campus” (Trojan, 5 years)
“Most Chill Cities” (Baileys)
“America’s Saving Cities” (American Express)
“Heart Friendly Cities” (American Heart Association)
“Most Secure Places” (Farmers Insurance, 7 years)
“Teen Driving Hotspots” (Allstate Insurance)
“Best Places for Boomer Romance” (Cialis)
“Best Airports for a Layover - USA” (AXE bodyspray,
2007)
“Best Airports for a Layover - International”
(AXE bodyspray, 2009)
“Allergy Hotspots” (Clarinex)
“Most Energetic Cities” (Hiro Noni)
“Most Hair-Aware Places” (Rogaine)
“Migraine Hotspots” (Ortho-McNeil Neurologics)
“Best Cities for Teleworking” (Intel)
“Best Videogame Cities” (Microsoft Xbox)
“Best Cities for Tooth Care” (ACT mouthwash)
“Best Places for Block Parties” (Clorox/Kingsford)
“Most Fun Cities” (Ritz crackers)
“America’s Overworked Cities” (Universal-Orlando)
“Happiest Cities for Families” (McDonald’s)
“Cities with the Most Sensitive Guys” (AXE body lotion)
“Most Manly Cities” (Combos, 2009 & 2010)
“Riskiest Cybercrime Cities – USA” (Symantec)
“Most Visually Inspiring Places in America”
(Bausch & Lomb)
“Ten Most Irritated Cities in the United States”
(Edge Shave Gel)
“Playful Cities for Women” (Dove chocolate)
“Best Cities for Thanksgiving” (Pepto-Bismol)
“Best Military Retirement Cities” (USAA)
“Best Places to Live and Launch” (Fortune)
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advanced Shakespeare for English majors, so it
was a little more of a challenge than it should
have been.”
He graduated from the College of Business
in 1972 as an industrial engineer and went to
work for Freightliner Corp. in Portland.
“There was a huge layoff and I got laid
off because I was one of the recent hires.
Now, looking back, I realize we were in a
huge recession at the time, but I don’t think I
understood the role the greater economy was
playing in the troubles I was having. It kind
of went on like that. Later I worked for an
accounting firm — I was going to get my CPA
license — and they went under.”
He found himself with a wife and two
sons to support, but without a clear plan for
financial stability.
“After getting laid off from different jobs, I
thought ‘Well, I’ll take matters into my own
hands,’ so I worked at home, writing business
software. I was more confident than I should
have been.
“It was more unusual to work at home in
those days. People thought I must be selling
Amway or something like that. One guy asked
me, ‘What makes you get out of bed in the
morning if you don’t have to go in to work?’
and I said, ‘Well, there’s the mortgage bill and
the grocery bill and the power bill and ...’”
The family scraped by. Sperling wrote a
piece of software that helped analyze data
for making decisions, and his clients talked
him up to their professional colleagues. That
earned him a small mention in USA Today,
which in turn led to more work.
“I was doing studies for magazines and
PR firms,” he said. “We weren’t starving, but
we had no certainty about what was going to
come in, or when it was going to come in. I
remember once Gretchen said, ‘We should
have a budget.’ I said, ‘Let’s talk about that,’
and she said, ‘How much money do we make
a month?’ and I said ‘I have no idea.’ That sort
of ended the budget discussion.
“With Gretchen’s encouragement, I put
some of my software on the Internet so people
could get it there. People found it and started
coming to me.
“This is something I tell students today.
A great thing about the Internet is that if
you have something people can use, and you
make yourself known, when they’re ready to
spend money they can find you. Otherwise,
if you’re just going around asking people to
spend money when they’re not ready to spend
During a couple of days as visiting fellows at the
Austin Entrepreneurship Program in Weatherford
Hall, Bert Sperling and his wife and co-worker,
Gretchen Sperling (center left), shared their success
story and encouraged students to not be afraid of
taking risks. PHOTO BY DENNIS WOLVERTON
OREGON STATER
COVER STORY
A former member of The Sawtooth Mountain Boys, a popular country-bluegrass from the Corvallis area,
Sperling keeps his guitar close by and still has fun doing gigs as crooner “Hank Sinatra.” PHOTO BY DENNIS
WOLVERTON
money, that’s a waste of their time and your
time.
“I’ve never had to spend a dime on marketing,” he said. “I like to joke that my approach
is to sit aggressively by the telephone.”
He also tells students that once that call
comes — “Today, of course, it’s an email
and not a phone call” — they’d better have a
product that works as advertised, and they’d
better be consistently reliable so they can build
a reputation for integrity.
“One day a call came from some engineer
at Microsoft, and he said, ‘Hey, we’re working on a real estate site and we really like your
content, and we’d be interested in licensing it.
How much would you want for it?’”
Sperling laughs and shakes his head at the
memory of that day in 2000. He figured it
would be sweet to get Microsoft to pay an annual fee of “something in the five figures.”
“It’s one of those moments in your life,” he
said. “You don’t want to say too much because
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you want to see what they’re going to offer. So
after a little back and forth, we had an idea of
what kind of figure they were looking at, and
it was five figures — a month.
“And that,” he said, “was really great. I
remember I walked downstairs to the kitchen
and I said, ‘Honey, I think we might have a
business model.’”
As media reaction to his studies began to
raise his profile, Sperling’s knack as
a performer became a major asset. A
talented guitarist and singer, he was a
member of The Sawtooth Mountain
Boys, a regionally famous country-bluegrass band, while at OSU. Today, he still
plays gigs as a country-swing crooner
named “Hank Sinatra.” Samples of
Hank’s work are available at www.
hanksinatra.com.
Gretchen, who met her husbandto-be when she went to a performance
hoping to connect with another guy in
the band, provides both tangible and intangible support for the family business.
She remembers how much fun it was when
Sperling’s BestPlaces listed the worst places
for flea problems for Hartz Mountain pet
products. Little Rock, Ark., was deemed the
most hospitable city for fleas, which led to a
television bit by Jay Leno in which the Miss
Arkansas pageant winner was crowned with a
flea collar instead of a tiara.
While Bert Sperling seems to have plenty
of fun at work and away from it, he is zealous
when it comes to protecting his reputation for
doing good work.
“When a company hires me for one of
these studies, they trust me with their brand,
because they’re going to want me to go to the
press and talk about it,” he said. “I’m honored
by their trust, and it often makes me the
beneficiary of a million dollar ad campaign.
That in turn makes it more desirable for other
companies to license my material, because of
the profile I have, and the credibility, and it
grows from there.
“Everybody has a brand,” he said. “I like to
think a brand is an emotional connection to
who you are and what you do. I take care of
my brand.
“I feel very lucky, but I also believe that the
harder you work, the luckier you get.” q
Kevin Miller, ’78, is editor of the Oregon
Stater.
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