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47 Articles

LESSONS AND LEADERSHIP

When I started at Inc., just a few weeks before the pandemic, I admitted on this page that I came from a clan of failed entrepreneurs. The patriarch of that family, my grandfather and namesake, was a child of the Depression and an entirely self-made man. Sadly, he entirely unmade himself, too. Like many entrepreneurs, he saw opportunity and was creative and most definitely hard working. He went from time in a DuPont factory during World War II to owning what was then called a filling station, and from there to a school-bus company for a growing post-war town and ultimately to a construction company started when that same town discovered the joys of municipal sewer systems. Then he used what we’d call those “core competencies” to branch out into running…

LESSONS AND LEADERSHIP

HIRE YOUR CUSTOMERS

ONE YEAR AFTER launching organic baby food startup Little Spoon in 2017, Michelle Muller and her co-founders were still handling customer service for the company on their own—until one day, when a parent Muller was corresponding with asked for a job. That’s when Muller was struck by a notion so obvious it was easy to overlook: Parents would be really good at talking to other parents. Muller and her co-founders began to build out a distributed customer-care team composed entirely of (you guessed it) parents. Little Spoon now encourages its care team to engage with customers about more than just product selection, and to offer support when, say, a customer with a 2-year-old asks, “Does this get any easier?” Or, “Is this normal?” It was the latter question—which pops up again…

HIRE YOUR CUSTOMERS

THE RIGHT WAY IS RARELY EASY

BRAD BAXTER, FOUNDER AND CEO OF WHISKER “As a kid, I saw my dad struggle as an entrepreneur—and I didn’t realize that I was on that same path until one day, I was down in the basement, cleaning a mess my cats had made because their litterbox wasn’t clean enough, and I started thinking, how can I make this easier for myself and better for the cats? There was a self-cleaning litterbox already on the market, but it really didn’t work. I’d been thinking about a concept that would work with gravity, using a sifting rotational method, and started making some sketches. As is often the case, I lacked capital; I didn’t have enough cash to invest in the tools needed to make a prototype. My dad, though, was willing to take a…

THE RIGHT WAY IS RARELY EASY

WHEN TO MARRY YOUR ENEMIES

Jim Magats, PayPal’s senior vice president of payments and SMB solutions, says that since joining the company in 2004, he’s heard PayPal’s demise predicted many times—when Apple Pay came out in 2014, when PayPal was banned in Greece in 2015, and again that year when the company ended a 13-year alliance with eBay. But it wasn’t until 2016, when credit card firms got fed up with PayPal discouraging users from linking their plastic to complete transactions, that Magats—along with CEO Dan Schulman, former CCO Gary Marino, and former COO Bill Ready—found an unbeatable enemy.…

WHEN TO MARRY YOUR ENEMIES

I WASN’T OPEN TO CRITICISM

In 2014, Biggby Coffee CEO Mike McFall knew morale was crumbling in his Midwest coffee shop franchiser. The “midnight move-outs” were, for him, a red flag: Employees were resigning without even leaving a note. Plus, McFall and his co-CEO weren’t finding meaning in their work anymore. “Survival was no longer a question,” McFall says. “So what was the point of it all?” That’s when a chance encounter made him face some hard truths. “I went camping with my brother and son in 2014, and we shared a fire pit with a consultant who was talking about conscious capitalism. I handed him my card, and he came and did a survey of our employees. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever read. People said things like, ‘It’s an abusive relationship.’ I realized…

I WASN’T OPEN TO CRITICISM

MAKING SUSTAINABILITY SUSTAINABLE

How will the sustainability industry change over the next year? We will continue to see conscious consumerism grow. Industries are being forced to own up to the environmental cost of convenience that society had previously demanded above all else. Gen-Z, for example, has been known to boycott fast fashion companies whose products end up in landfills. The next decade? There will be an increased focus on “the how.” Manufacturing, distribution, and marketing of goods and services will be held to higher standards of transparency. That begins at the inception of the supply chain, what materials we use, how factory workers are treated—all the way through to the point of purchase and receipt. For us at Healthynest, it means working with our carbon-neutral facility to enhance our diaper with organic cotton, knowing that conventional…

MAKING SUSTAINABILITY SUSTAINABLE

HOW TO GET INTEL WITHOUT COOKIES

In the spring of 2016, when the European Union first introduced the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), savvy marketers began preparing for the inevitable demise of thirdparty cookies. Since then, such methods of tracking online customers have been getting gradually phased out by internet browsers. Now they’re set to be fully eliminated in Google Chrome by 2023—and businesses that used to binge on them must find other means of targeting and engaging their audiences. “In the past five years, it’s like we’ve been in a boxing ring,” says Diana Lee, co-founder of digital advertising firm Constellation Agency, of the battle to stay ahead of the changes. “To fight back, you have to innovate.” Here’s how to do just that. SYNTHESIZE EXISTING DATA Zero-party data (information that customers provide directly to companies) and…

HOW TO GET INTEL WITHOUT COOKIES

HOW TO MAKE THE ALOHA SPIRIT A SALES STRATEGY

Find the best productivity hacks at inc.com/magazine. IN 2003, ANDY KURTZIG started JustAnswer—a site where users can get immediate responses to questions from verified experts. In 2011, as the San Francisco-based startup grew and began offering experts in areas ranging from tech support to legal advice, Kurtzig decided to wear a Hawaiian shirt to work one day. Coincidentally or not, his team broke sales records. The next day, he wore another Hawaiian shirt; another record sales day. At which point, he decided to wear his favorite style of shirt every day—partly out of superstition, partly to set the tone in the office: “For me, a Hawaiian shirt brings tranquility and balance and peace, and it reminds me of the aloha spirit—of the beach, the ocean, and these things that are far…

HOW TO MAKE THE ALOHA SPIRIT A SALES STRATEGY

KEEP THEIR HANDS OFF YOUR BRAND

When I was in elementary school, we were regularly shown films designed to teach us life lessons, like the hazards of tobacco or how to be a good neighbor. Sometimes, I think I should make similar cautionary films for founders, to help them avoid the pitfalls and temptations they are likely to face. One film would definitely be about the perils of hiring a branding agency. Sooner or later, if they’re moderately successful, most entrepreneurs get persuaded by their peers to seek the counsel of a higher power to help them define their brands, certain that only the superior wisdom of a branding and marketing agency can set them on the road to hockey-stick growth. (Higher powers would never use hackneyed terms like hockey-stick growth, but never mind.) I’ve been roped into…

ENEMIES: CLOSER THAN YOU THINK

A few years ago, I was given an unorthodox assignment: Find out why an apparel company was losing market share to a competitor. Our client, which I’ll call BestCloth,* had a stronger brand and social presence, cooler spokespeople, cheaper prices, and greener fabric. And yet, month after month, its customers were fleeing to the competition (let’s call it Apparel Fire). BestCloth was convinced that standard market forces weren’t at play, and it wanted answers. Assembling competitive intelligence often involves hiring public relations firms, running customer surveys, chatting up attendees at trade conferences, and analyzing demographic data culled from social media advertising. BestCloth could have opted for this approach, and maybe it would have worked. Instead, it chose to tap us, a private investigations firm. It was a bold move. While my company…

ENEMIES: CLOSER THAN YOU THINK

Payroll Services Level the Playing Field for SMBs Competing for Top Talent

Small and midsize businesses (SMBs) have always faced challenges in the competition to attract and retain top talent. One big challenge is greater access to resources and deeper bench strength that larger corporations enjoy. As the economy continues to recover from the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic, competition is intensifying. In a recent survey of more than 560 employers, 66 percent ranked recruiting and hiring as their most challenging human resources (HR) issue in 2021. The way to meet this challenge is by enhancing employee experience (EX), and an increasing number of businesses are attempting to do just that. A 2021 Willis Towers Watson survey found that 94 percent of employers will make enhancing EX a priority over the next three years—a phenomenon the consulting firm has dubbed “a great EX…

Payroll Services Level the Playing Field for SMBs Competing for Top Talent

WOMEN, INCORPORATED

Mary Katharine Goddard HER REVOLUTIONARY NEWSPAPER GAVE REAL MEANING TO “PUBLISH OR PERISH” Between prison stints, the canny but less-than-dependable William Goddard handed his newish newspaper over to his older sister, Mary. The year was 1774, and Mary, most likely the colonies’ only woman newspaper publisher, wasted no time in giving the British what for, even printing Common Sense, Thomas Paine’s pro-revolutionary treatise. Mary was later named Baltimore postmaster, likely making her the first female federal employee. But Mary’s knee to the establishment’s groin did not stop there: When it came time to print that doc we call the Declaration of Independence, Congress turned to Mary—and she obliged, becoming the only woman whose name graces it: “Baltimore, in Maryland: Printed by Mary Katharine Goddard.” Madam C.J. Walker SHE DISCOVERED THE BEAUTY OF BLACK ENTERPRISE Starting…

WOMEN, INCORPORATED

FIRST YOU GROW THEN YOU MAKE IT STICK

The Mentor: Jim McKelvey Frustrated by losing a sale because he was unable to process a credit card transaction, Jim McKelvey co-founded fintech platform Square with Twitter’s Jack Dorsey in 2008. The San Francisco-based company went public in 2015 and booked $9.5 billion in revenue last year. Today, McKelvey sits on the firm’s board of directors and reportedly owns nearly 5 percent of the $120 billion company, while also running a data-sharing startup, Invisibly. He recently shared his experience building the company in his book The Innovation Stack. The Mentee: Ali Moloo Growing up in a family of hospitality workers in Alberta, Canada, Moloo saw firsthand how disconnected and old-school the process of running a hotel can be. In 2015, he founded my DigitalOffice, a Bethesda, Maryland-based company that places everything…

FIRST YOU GROW THEN YOU MAKE IT STICK

GARYVEE WANTS TO MAKE YOU RICH… AGAIN

IT’S the last weekend of summer and Gary Vaynerchuk is buying a soapbox derby car from a stranger. He’s already purchased a thumb-size figurine and a coffee mug (for 33ȼ). For the chairman of VaynerX, a nearly $300 million media umbrella company that encompasses nine brands, including Vayner-Media, of which he’s CEO, cruising garage sales in suburban New Jersey isn’t so unusual. Never mind that two companies he helped create, Resy and Empathy Wines, have sold in recent years for hundreds of millions of dollars, or that his net worth has been estimated to top $200 million, or that his companies have some 1,800 employees—this hobby is important to him, and he feels it might be educational for his 35 million social media followers. He holds up his phone to…

GARYVEE WANTS TO MAKE YOU RICH… AGAIN

GARYVEE’S GUIDE TO INVENTING THE FUTURE WITH NFTs

WRITE OFF NFTs at your own risk, says Gary Vaynerchuk. Rather than simply being collectible pieces of pixel art, they are tokens (literally, the acronym stands for “non-fungible token”) that represent whatever underlying value their creator writes into them. And because they are logged as data on a digital ledger—a blockchain—they offer a unique signature of ownership of that asset, be it intellectual-property rights, a ticket to an event, or a piece of land—either in a virtual world or this one. In the first half of 2021, investors spent $2.5 billion on NFTs. Vaynerchuk predicts that in a decade, every business on the planet will have an NFT strategy, “so you might as well get ahead of it now.” This is his advice for getting your business into tokens. THINK BEYOND…

GARYVEE’S GUIDE TO INVENTING THE FUTURE WITH NFTs

MEET INC.’S 250 BEST-LED U.S. COMPANIES

They are the unsung heroes of the U.S. economy. Annual revenue between $50 million and $2 billion. Lithe enough to maneuver, big enough to have a broad impact. They employ 35 million people-about one in four U.S. workers. They deliver nearly 40 percent of the country’s economic vitality. They are America’s midsize companies, and it’s time they are recognized. And while their growth may not be as fiery as, say, the companies we praise in the Inc. 5000 each year, the best ones (some of which are actually graduates of the Inc. 5000) boast all the true hallmarks of business success. Clients? Customers? Check. Check. Solid brand and mission? Check and check. Real, verifiable traction? Absolute verifiable check. None of that success has come by accident. While midmarket company leaders arguably have…

MEET INC.’S 250 BEST-LED U.S. COMPANIES

Best-Led: The List

1. Snowflake (NYS: SNOW) CEO: Frank Slootman Software 2. DocuSign (NAS: DOCU) CEO: Dan Springer Software 3. Robinhood (NAS: HOOD) CEO: Vlad Tenev Financial Services 4. CrowdStrike (NAS: CRWD) CEO: George Kurtz Security 5. Stripe CEO: Patrick Collison Software 6. SpaceX CEO: Elon Musk Logistics & Transportation 7. Cloudflare (NYS: NET) CEO: Matthew Prince Security 8. Okta (NAS: OKTA) CEO: Todd McKinnon Software 9. Dropbox (NAS: DBX) CEO: Drew Houston IT Management 10. Veeva Systems (NYS: VEEV) CEO: Peter Gassner Health 11. Databricks CEO: Ali Ghodsi Software 12. DraftKings (NAS: DKNG) CEO: Jason Robins Software 13. Sonos (NAS: SONO) CEO: Patrick Spence Retail 14. Asana (NYS: ASAN) CEO: Dustin Moskovitz Software 15. Lyra Health (NAS: LYRA) CEO: David Ebersman Health 16. MongoDB (NAS: MDB) CEO: Dev Ittycheria Software 17. Vir Biotechnology (NAS: VIR) CEO: George Scango Biotech & Pharmaceuticals 18. UiPath (NYS: PATH) CEO: Daniel Dines Software 19. 10x Genomics (NAS: TXG) CEO: Serge Saxonov Biotech & Pharmaceuticals 20. Anaplan (NYS: PLAN) CEO: Frank Calderoni Software 21. Marqeta (NAS: MQ) CEO: Jason Gardner Software 22. Elastic (NYS: ESTC) CEO: Shay Banon Software 23. Chime CEO: Chris Britt Software 24. Clarivate (NYS: CLVT) CEO: Jerre Stead Corporate Services 25. GitLab (NAS: GTLB) CEO: Sid Sijbrandij Software 26. Pacific Biosciences (NAS: PACB) CEO: Christian Henry Biotech & Pharmaceuticals 27. Zscaler (NAS: ZS) CEO: Jay Chaudhry IT Management 28. Avalara (NYS: AVLR) CEO: Scott McFarlane Software 29. ZoomInfo (NAS: ZI) CEO: Henry Schuck Software 30. Twist Bioscience (NAS: TWST) CEO: Emily…

Best-Led: The List

“GOTTA CATCH ’EM ALL”

• QUIZ WIZ “QUIZ WIZ—YOU REMEMBER that?” asks Al Kahn. We are sitting in his memorabilia-dense office, which occupies an upper floor of an old art deco edifice on Ninth Avenue in New York City’s theater district. And I do, in fact, remember Quiz Wiz—a handheld electronic trivia game that, somehow, became a must-have toy sensation in the early 1980s. Basically a hunk of rectangular plastic, it had a numerical keypad, a tiny speaker that buzzed, and an attached booklet of trivia questions that you answered by pressing certain keys—the whole apparatus as primitive as a glass-screened cathode-ray TV. “I think I got one of those for Christmas one year!” I say to Kahn, the very rhyming name of the game activating in my mind Super 8-ish images of childhood, of…

“GOTTA CATCH ’EM ALL”

EVIDENCE OF ABSURD POPULARITY

Cabbage Patch Kids $1.2 billion TOTAL SALES (U.S.) 1983 Newsweek cover • Parents arrested for assaults in frantic efforts to score the dolls for Christmas. 1985 Astronaut Cabbage Patch Kid flies on Space Shuttle; photo op with Pres. Reagan. Pokémon $100 billion TOTAL SALES (worldwide) 1999 Cover of Time 1999 to present Airplanes emblazoned with Pokémon characters begin flying for All Nippon Airways. 2016 to present Multiple people injured or killed playing Pokémon Go during national craze. Yu-Gi-Oh! 35 billion TOTAL CARDS SOLD (est.) 2011 Guinness World Records names it top-selling trading card game of all time. 2020 A Yu-Gi-Oh! trading card sells for nearly $50,000.…

EVIDENCE OF ABSURD POPULARITY

HOSTAGE SITUATION

SOURCE: FBI INTERNET CRIME COMPLAINT CENTER (FIGURES DO NOT INCLUDE ATTACKS THAT GO UNREPORTED) Every 11 seconds, business servers—even small-business servers— are infiltrated by hackers who encrypt their data and hold it hostage. Victims have few good options: You can pay the ransom, which might run into millions of dollars, but your data—and your reputation—might be beyond repair. Backups may save you, but you could lose weeks rebuilding, and sensitive information in the meantime. Here, founders who have been hacked, along with a slew of cybersecurity experts, explain what you need to know to keep yourself from joining their ranks. CONTAIN THE DAMAGE Nathan Thompson, CEO of data-storage company Spectra Logic My heart dropped when we found the ransom note last May. The attackers wanted $3.6 million in bitcoin within five days. An employee…

HOSTAGE SITUATION

The Barefoot CEO

IN 1996, BEFORE Silicon Valley geek went C-suite chic, Netscape co-founder and future VC king Marc Andreessen earned what was then the ultimate business establishment honor: the cover of Time. The story inside lauded the internetbrowser wizard as a new kind of visionary. Yes, Netscape’s recent IPO had made the 24-year-old fabulously wealthy overnight, but he claimed not to care about money. After all, he still lived in a rented two-bedroom house and spent all his money on CDs and dog toys. But before you even read the article, the cover photo of Andreessen conveyed all you needed to know about his particularity: There, in all of his disheveled glory, the young founder sat cross-legged on a red-velvet throne in jeans, a wrinkled black pullover-and shoeless feet as pale and naked…

The Barefoot CEO

SPONSORED BY THE INC. 5000 HONOREES WHOSE PROFILES APPEAR IN THE FOLLOWING PAGES YOU KNOW THIS: There are no million-dollar business ideas that don’t need at least a few bucks to get started. Those bucks might come in the form of bootstrapping, cashing out your savings, confident relatives, or even VCs—but one way or another, you don’t get from idea to satisfied customer without investment of some kind easing the way. And the need for money isn’t just to start. Scaling isn’t cheap either. There’s more staff, and more marketing, and more development and systems and inventory, and so much more. That requires more. Money, that is. No surprise that some 40 percent of the already successful Inc. 5000 are on the lookout for funding. So, whether it’s for the next month or the…

A Change of Domain

In 2014, hundreds of new top-level domains—the letters in a website address that come after the dot—were introduced, such as.live, .attorney, and.news. Businesses no longer needed to come up with a company name based on whether the.com address is available. They could now create a domain name that was a truer reflection of their business identity. Also that year, Donuts Inc., a Bellevue, Washington-based tech company was given the rights to sell more than 200 of these new top-level domains. (The Donuts name is itself a wordplay on the DNS servers that translate domain names to IP servers.) Until then, the domain name industry was dominated by one player, which focused on.com URLs. Donuts saw a chance to expand the web extension horizons. “Our founders saw a future where consumers had…

Powering Unprecedented Insights for Health Care and Beyond

Speeding up processes and improving decision making is a good thing for any business. But in health care, efficiencies can save lives. Analytical Wizards is a data analytics company that enables meaningful benefits in pharma and biotech, such as accelerating time to market for critical drugs and improving patient outcomes through better adherence to therapy. The company’s founders were determined to better use data and analytics in health care. Early partnerships with two leading pharmaceutical companies helped them develop their platforms. Today, six of the top 10 global pharmaceutical companies and five of the top 10 biotech companies are clients. IMPACTFUL PARTNERSHIPS, EXPERIENCE, AND PEOPLE Leading companies use Analytical Wizards to automate resource-heavy processes, scale complex analytical models using artificial insights (Al), and machine learning (ML) to analyze disparate sources of data. CEO…

Powering Unprecedented Insights for Health Care and Beyond

IP Law that Maximizes Clients’ Business Opportunities

Intellectual property (IP) law has a reputation as a hidebound corner of the legal field, but that’s not the case for Caldwell Intellectual Property Law. Just like the firm’s clients, many of whom are famous for being iconoclasts and innovators, founder and managing member Keegan Caldwell has developed a unique approach to the practice of IP law. He started the firm in 2016 to provide quality and strategic IP services focused on monetization. With a foundation built on the core values of transparent trust, team first, and empirical strategy, the firm aims to maximize its clients’ profitability. Caldwell qualified to take the bar exam not by attending law school but by reading the law, à la Abe Lincoln and Kim Kardashian. He credits the collaborative ethos of his client base as the…

IP Law that Maximizes Clients’ Business Opportunities

Al-Powered Contract Management

The lightbulb moment that sparked LinkSquares’ establishment occurred when co-founders Vishal Sunak and Chris Combs were working together at a tech company undergoing an acquisition. The parent company asked for a summary of the 6,000 or so existing customer contracts, and because the company hadn’t organized or been tracking its contracts, that request just wasn’t possible. It would take many months to complete. “That’s when we realized that we can’t be the only company that doesn’t know what’s inside its contracts,” Sunak says. “And that’s how LinkSquares got started.” Although companies haven’t paid much attention to contracts historically, says Sunak, the future of the business often depends on what you’ve agreed to in contracts. “Contracts define all the major relationships that you have with your employees, with partners, with suppliers, with…

Al-Powered Contract Management

Business With a Soul: People Before Profit Is a Success Secret

Hafiz Sikder has nearly 20 years of experience in various leadership roles in the life sciences industry. Partnering with several big-name consulting agencies, he noticed one thing: the relationship was often transactional. When he left to start his boutique oncology and rare disease think tank in 2016, he vowed to change that. At Axiom Healthcare Strategies, Sikder disrupted the model by building a team with deep clinical and commercial expertise and innovative minds. He embraced a people-first strategy, which turned out to be the secret to his success. An ecosystem that focuses on people—clients, patients, and teammates—all centered on a singular goal of transforming patients’ lives. “We’re not a traditional agency where we will take on a book of business and manage it like managing a budget line,” says Sikder. “We will…

Business With a Soul: People Before Profit Is a Success Secret

Partnering with America’s Leading Endodontists

One of the key challenges of any medical or dental practice is managing the administrative burden. Recognizing that, endodontic partnership organization (EPO™), Endo1 Partners was formed by four endodontists to provide comprehensive business and operational support services to endodontic practices. Endodontists’ dental surgical specialty focuses on the diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of injuries to the tooth pulp, including root canal treatments and other procedures related to the interior of the tooth. “At Endo1, we partner with best-in-class providers across the country to reduce their administrative burden, so they can spend more time at the heart of their practice, providing high-quality dental care to patients,” says Dr. Matthew Haddad, co-founder and co-chief executive officer of Endo1 Partners. DELEGATING ADMINISTRATIVE DUTIES Endo1 Partners was established in 2019 by Dr. Daryl Dudum, Dr. Matthew Haddad, co-founders…

Partnering with America’s Leading Endodontists

YouTube Marketing Pioneer Has a Billion-dollar Future

The tale of catching the entrepreneurial bug as a child by starting a lemonade stand is almost a cliché. But that’s what Aleric Heck, founder and CEO of AdOutreach, did. But Heck envisioned it as a way to generate seed capital for his real goal: a technology startup. He achieved that goal at the ripe old age of 12 and repeated the process several times over during the next dozen years. Now 24, he sits atop a digital marketing enterprise with an eight-figure annual run rate. Along the way, he used cash flow from his ventures to pay for his college education and, ultimately, to launch AdOutreach. His company’s flagship offering is The YouTube Ads Workshop, a 10week program where Heck and his team help their clients integrate YouTube ads into their…

YouTube Marketing Pioneer Has a Billion-dollar Future

Building a Movement, Building a Brand

Earning a spot on the Inc. 5000 is always an achievement. But the bigger you get, the harder it is to pull it off. POWERHOME SOLAR’s latest Inc. 5000 win–its fourth to date-may be the most impressive yet. The leading solar company grew from $35 million in 2017, to more than $365 million in 2020-a 940 percent three-year revenue growth. Jayson Waller, POWERHOME SOLAR founding CEO and host of True Underdog, a Top 3 Entrepreneur podcast on Apple, says it’s more than a business to him and the team-it’s a movement. THE BATTERY ADVANTAGE One reason behind the company’s latest growth spurt is that it started offering customers solar battery storage from Generac in 2020. The battery stores unused solar energy, so people aren’t left in the dark when solar panels aren’t producing.…

Prioritizing People Helps This Business Thrive During Challenging Times

Keith Sampson started a solo environmental consulting firm from his Shreveport, Louisiana, home in 1996. Today, SRP Environmental offers several distinct but related services with offices around the country. Sampson credits these diverse offerings, investments in technology, and proprietary methodologies as keys to the company’s success. But the founder and CEO says the people who work for SRP are its most valuable asset. STEADY AND INTENTIONAL GROWTH The original consulting business grew organically while adding new services, including industrial hygiene, safety training, Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA) compliance assessments, and natural disaster response. In 2012, SRP expanded to new locations nationwide, making its first acquisition of another firm in Denver and its second of a Charlotte, North Carolina, company in 2016. By operating as a single resource for environmental and safety compliance,…

Prioritizing People Helps This Business Thrive During Challenging Times

A “Made in the USA” Brand Makes Political History

When Christi Mahfouz started Ace Specialties in 2007, based in Lafayette, Louisiana, a major oil and gas industry hub, the company launched with a single client and product: branded work gloves for local oil field workers. A few months later, a chance encounter at a local restaurant led to a meeting with top executives at Anadarko Petroleum in Houston. She pitched her product and left that meeting with a contract to provide work uniforms to the company’s oil field clients. Applying technical knowledge gained in college, Mahfouz created a web portal that allowed offshore employees to order branded work gear online. This transformed the company into a one-stop shop for workwear, safety gear and uniforms. As its client roster swiftly grew, Ace expanded its offerings to include other branded items for their…

The Digital Consultancy for Mission-Driven Organizations

Publishing Resources Inc. (PRI), a digita consultancy that provides strategy, engineering, marketing, and creative services, is celebrating its 30-year anniversary-quite the feat in the dynamic digital world. Longevity is among several factors that makes this Inc. 5000 honoree unique, as well as its “never-stop-learning” ethos. Adaptability is woven into the fabric of PRI’s culture, says the company’s President and CEO Chintan Parikh. “Whether we’re partnering with a new client or onboarding a new member of the team, we look through a ‘long-haul’ lens,” he says. Over the past three decades, more than 90 percent of the company’s clients have become repeat customers. DIGITAL SOLUTIONS FOR SUSTAINABILITY AND EQUALITY Of PRI’s clients, more than half are nonprofits, and two-thirds are mission-driven. That is intentional, Parikh explains. “We put our values at the center of…

The Digital Consultancy for Mission-Driven Organizations

Specialized Commercial Cleaning Provides a Lucrative Niche

After Rinea Blanchard become a widow when her husband was killed in a 1992 car accident, she was left to support her two small children on her own. In 1997, a friend asked if she’d be interested in teaming up on a new venture, offering construction cleanup services in their home state of Louisiana. Eventually the partners went their separate ways, and Blanchard launched Superior Contract Cleaning, focusing on construction cleanup in the commercial sector. “I was a young woman with a lot of energy as well as a drive to succeed,” she says. Blanchard grew her company, adding new services like ongoing janitorial cleaning services. She partnered with another business that provided fire and water damage remediation services. But when Blanchard lost her biggest client, she had to file for bankruptcy…

Specialized Commercial Cleaning Provides a Lucrative Niche

Tech and Corporate Culture Drive Leadership in the Auto Transport Industry

Montway Auto Transport’s unique corporate culture is a primary driver of the Schaumburg, Illinois-based automotive transportation company’s ongoing success. “Everyone brings their own experience and perspective to the company, but we all have the same goal: to deliver a five-star experience to our customers,” says Dimitre Kirilov, president and CEO. Each of Montway’s 230-plus employees know they play a part in reaching that goal, and they share a sense of ownership and responsibility for achieving it. That attitude starts with training programs for new hires and ongoing learning opportunities. “Everyone understands how they impact the organization and how important the ideas they contribute are to improving our operation,” he says. IMPORTANCE OFTECHNOLOGY As one of the largest auto shipping brokers in the U.S., Montway is a leader in a highly competitive industry. To…

Tech and Corporate Culture Drive Leadership in the Auto Transport Industry

Co-Founders Prove There’s Power in Numbers

Most entrepreneurs start businesses because they have a passion or expertise. It’s the details that get in the way. From filing taxes to negotiating real estate leases, operations can take more time and attention than many owners expect, often causing a business to stall. Larry Barr and Wayne Joseph, two veteran flooring executives, know there’s power in numbers. The friends met at an industry event more than two decades ago, and each has more than 40 years of experience in the business. Barr was the CEO and president of Floors Inc., which focuses on single-family residential sales and installation. Joseph is the founder of Malibu Floors, which specializes in multifamily residential flooring installation and sales. In 2016, they got together and launched Artisan Design Group (ADG) to capture opportunities for entrepreneurs in…

Co-Founders Prove There’s Power in Numbers

Smart Choices Drive Hockey-Stick Growth for This Sales Training Company

After consistent 20 to 40 percent year-over-year growth during the previous eight years, Sales Gravy more than doubled in size in 2020 with a combination of foresight and smart business choices. It started in 2019, when Founder Jeb Blount began planning for the next recession. The Great Recession had caught him off guard, and he was determined to never let that happen again. “Because most training is delivered in person, recessions can be devastating to training companies when corporate travel budgets get cut to the bone,” he says. “But companies don’t quit training their people, they just quit traveling.” So, with no downturn in sight, he began building a state-of-the-art, broadcastquality studio complex to allow his trainers to deliver high-quality virtual instructor-led training(VI LT) when travel wasn’t an option. SALES GRAVY GOES ALL…

Smart Choices Drive Hockey-Stick Growth for This Sales Training Company

Real Talk Fuels Wealth Management Firm’s Fast Growth

Charisse Rivers founded Zinnia Wealth Management in 2007 because she didn’t like where the retirement planning industry was heading. Her colleagues were pushing “outdated practices and old-school theories,” and they weren’t keen to try fresh ideas. So, she launched Zinnia from her home. It wasn’t easy being a woman in what was then a man’s world. People warned her she wouldn’t make it. When she did, competitors tried to push her out. But Rivers never quit. Fifteen years later, her firm ranks No. 1673 on the Inc. 5000 list of America’s fastest-growing private companies, with five offices across Central and Northern Florida, all led by female teams. THE“COFFEE TALK” APPROACH Women have been known to take a safer, more analytical approach to managing money than their male counterparts, Rivers says. Zinnia Wealth Management…

Real Talk Fuels Wealth Management Firm’s Fast Growth

A Blueprint for Success

Most people who shop at the grocery store don’t think much about the packaging or label on their favorite foods and household products. Packaging connects us to brands, protects the foods we eat from diseases, extends shelf life, and keeps food cost lower than any place in the world. So, you may be surprised to find out that the flexible packaging industry is a multi-billion-dollar business. Tucson-based Poly Print is one of the country’s more successful flexographic printing and converting operations, supplying more than 30 billion packages and labels annually for major grocery chains and brand owners. Success didn’t happen overnight, with the company facing turbulent times more than once over its 29-year history. “This really is a success story, with the first 10 years in business being such a struggle,”…

A Blueprint for Success

Facilitating Access to Capital

One of the biggest challenges facing small businesses today is access to capital. In fact, the Guidant State of Small Business Report found that nearly 67 percent of small businesses cited lack of capital as their top concern. Cash flow is critical for small business success. “Right now, banks approve about 24 percent of small business applications,” says Kris Roglieri, CEO of Commercial Capital Training Group. The majority are left to fend for themselves, and many simply don’t know there are financing options beyond banks, Roglieri says. Many don’t understand the appropriate form of capital they should be pursuing, based on their situation, and they also don't know where to go get it. TRAINING COMMERCIAL LOAN BROKERS Enter Commercial Capital Training Group, which was formed in 2009 to help train professionals to become…

Facilitating Access to Capital

Facing Adversity with Conviction

Risking your financial livelihood is not for the faint of heart. Chuck McDowell felt like he was in a TV drama when he spent four days defending his actions before a federal judge as timeshare industry giants lobbed one accusation after another at him. At stake was $5.9 million that he would have to pay if he lost. During the hearing, he heard people talk about “what a horrible person I was by helping people cancel their timeshares that they had been lied to about,” he says. Though stressful, he persisted because he wanted to fight for others. “I knew I was in the right, and they were in the wrong,” he says. In the end, it took the jury 12 minutes to decide in his favor. It was this moment that…

Facing Adversity with Conviction

Disrupting Traditional Startup Filing Services

For more than a decade, the number of new businesses formed monthly in the U.S. hovered around 200,000, U.S. Census Bureau data reports. However, in 2020, in the midst of the pandemic, the number of startups climbed past 400,000 and continues to rise today, as workers assess what they want to be doing with their lives. Alongside the Great Resignation comes the Great Startup Surge. Per the National Bureau of Economic Research, 2020 was the highest year on record for new business applications in more than 15 years. That spike in new business applications has served to fuel both entrepreneurial activity nationwide and the growth of business formation specialists like Inc Authority, which provides provides free incorporation services. There is no cost to register an LLC or corporation through Inc Authority,…

Disrupting Traditional Startup Filing Services

Automation Makes SaaS Implementation Faster

Most apps, settings, and data transfer easily when moving from an Android to an iPhone. So why is there no automated mechanism to move from on-premises enterprise software to Software as a Service (SaaS)? A customer asked Hassan Ramay this when he was at a technology solutions company. A lightbulb went off. In 2017, Ramay and three colleagues co-founded GoSaaS to provide autonomous migrations and implementations, which they call Implementation as a Service (IMaaS). A traditional implementation can take up to two years, because vendors like Oracle require customization, Ramay says. In response, GoSaaS developed an implementation platform and applications for high tech, life sciences, and manufacturing to layer on top of Oracle’s software, speeding up the process. BEST PRACTICES BAKED INTO PLUG-AND-PLAY INDUSTRY APPS Instead of starting from scratch with each client’s…

Automation Makes SaaS Implementation Faster

Driven by Impact, Tax Firm Measures Success by Children Nourished

County Epps hates apppunting. That’s a strange thing for the founder and CEO of a full-service tax preparation firm to admit. But Epps realized that the tax work allows her to not just save her clients money but also provide nutrition and water to malnourished and medically fragile kids. That’s why at OTB Tax (Outside the Box Business Solutions), she has an impact goal, not a monetary goal. Epps was an accountant working for a big firm after college, but she quickly became an entrepreneur. She owned retail stores, wholesale companies, an insurance agency, and ultimately a nutrition-focused network marketing company. On the side, she continued preparing returns during tax season. A HOME-BASED BUSINESS FOCUS Network marketing gave Epps insights into the business and tax side of a home-based businesses. She realized that these…

Driven by Impact, Tax Firm Measures Success by Children Nourished

Connecting the Finance World

As a young equities trader, Mark Loehr had a special phone that could connect him with 120 different people at the touch of a button. About three times the size of a toaster, the “trading turret” had 120 buttons on it—one for each contact—so he could quickly and easily call the trading floor of the New York Stock Exchange or elsewhere to place trades. Turrets and technology have evolved since then, but the pleasure of that ease of use stayed with him. As video conferencing became more popular, Loehr saw an opportunity to make the experience easier and more pleasant. He helped launch OpenExchange to facilitate video meetings and virtual conferences. “I have always imagined that meetings would move from physical to virtual, very much like e-commerce,” he says. Just as there…

Connecting the Finance World

Wireless Company Creates Community Through Connectivity

The COVID-19 pandemic exposed the country’s digital divide, leaving low-income students, unemployed workers, and families at a painful disadvantage. Lack of connectivity made virtual learning, Job hunting, and telemedicine difficult. To Matthew and Nathan Johnson, co-CEOs of TruConnect, this divide was old news rising to a front-page crisis. When the brothers co-founded TruConnect in 2010, self-funding the company, their mission was to help bridge the gap for those without access to modern telecommunications and broadband. Their solution? Offer wireless service and free mobile devices to qualifying low-income consumers via Lifeline, the federal program established during President Ronald Reagan’s administration, along with budget-conscious, pre-paid plans. POWER THE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE WITH TECHNOLOGY TruConnect relies on industry-leading technology and efficient operations to deliver high-touch service to its customers. As a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO),…

Wireless Company Creates Community Through Connectivity

While managing private wealth at J.P. Morgan, Andre Swanston saw clients withdrawing funds to angel-invest in startups. “I thought most of them were the stupidest, worst ideas I’d heard in my life,” he says. Spotting an opportunity, he resolved to do a tech startup—but better. In 2013, he co-founded the Stamford, Connecticut-based data marketplace Tru Optik, which helps businesses target consumers in 80 million homes across streaming services and cloud-based gaming. As the pandemic kept people home and glued to their devices, the company began attracting attention of its own. —CHRISTINE LAGORIO-CHAFKIN Did you raise venture capital to fund Tru Optik? Through the first two and a half years, we had no traditional VC investment. In fact, a lot of the big blue-chip firms wouldn’t even take meetings with me. We were…

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