I attended an Inc. Business Owner’s Council CEO Roundtable meeting this morning in NYC. It gave me the opportunity to speak with several other owners of similar sized companies that are in high growth mode like us. Not surprisingly, many of our current challenges are the same… how to manage growth, how to plan for the future, yada, yada, yada, blah, blah, blah.
What was really inspiring to me was to be in the presence of these other businesses, who like us, beat the odds and are succeeding in highly competitive industries. When you are working in the business day in and day out, sometimes it is extraordinarily difficult to do something that should be extraordinarily easy… and that is to pick your head up and stop to recognize what you’ve accomplished.
Here are my observations of a few of the commonalities that we shared that I totally did not expect or foresee:
- WE ARE A SPECIAL BREED. We are a rare mish mash of talent, drive, guts, smarts and common sense. While you can be successful as an individual in a company, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you can manage and grow your own business—vice versa can be true too. One guy in the meeting said something to the effect of I thought I could hire a president to do what I do, what I realized is that I have to build a team.
- WE DID SOMETHING GREAT TO GET TO WHERE WE ARE. The chances of failure are far `greater than the chances of success when running a small business (we’ve seen stats that say anywhere from 50% – 90% of new businesses fail within the first 5 years). Each one of us in that room today did great things to not only survive (and believe me all of us had stories of near death) but thrive in today’s business world.
- NONE OF US LIKES TO WORK WITH JERKS. Maybe this one sounds like a no-duh, but everyone of us, with our partners, had built a team, an organization, of nice, motivated, passionate people… emphasis on NICE. If you’ve ever worked in a large organization, there are so many people around that there is bound to be a jerk or two in the bunch. When you are in a small company, jerks don’t last long. David Klineberg, our VP Strategy, said to me one day when talking about talent, “just one person can make a big impact on our agency for the good or the bad.” And it is so true.
I’m glad I took the time to make the trek into the city to meet with this group. It forced me to think about some things that I might not of… and while we do know that we’re not alone it is still helpful to meet others are walking down a similar path in similar shoes.