What’s Your Success Wheel? – Forecasting 50

(0:00 – 0:57)
I was asked if I would kind of jump on stage in an impromptu session, deliver a 24-year story of how we went from really fast growth, five out of seven years doubling growth sales, and then kind of flat for a few years, and then we doubled or tripled again a few times, and then very flat, almost lost everything, caused a lot of people a lot of pain, and then the last decade or so, steady growth and then absolute explosion the last six years. So how did that happen? So I was asked by a gentleman named Adam to jump on stage and take a flip chart and do the best I could to describe what exactly, what did we do, how did we do it, and some of the fundamentals we learned along the way. So I started by drawing on the bottom left.

(0:58 – 1:28)
I drew like a, if you could picture a growth chart that starts at the bottom left and it grows up kind of steady. That’s our first seven years, pretty steady growth, and then it went straight flat across for a little bit, then it climbed again for another rough five, seven years, but then it dipped down sharp for two years, and then that third spike, it’s just been, it’s been a phenomenal ride. We’re up to 70 employees now and we’re having some fun.

(1:29 – 2:01)
We’ve definitely laid some foundation, but the question was, could you share with the audience in 20 to 30 minutes some of the key points that you were able to understand and kind of lock in that has helped you guys become what is now a multiple Inc. 5000 company, to the point of even getting a letter from the editor of Inc. saying, you know, growth at a mature company like yours, I think he said at your age company, it’s pretty rare.

(2:01 – 2:20)
Usually the people that hit the Inc. 5000 list, they generate it off of maybe their first or second tax return year, and then they go four years out because it’s measured on four year gaps of gross sales. And very rarely does a mature company submit their first entry when they’re almost 20 years old.

(2:20 – 2:32)
So away we go. So I basically jumped on stage, took out a flip chart. I drew this graph of up into the right, flat, up into the right, flat dropping level, and then up into the right.

(2:32 – 3:02)
And so I started by saying, you know, what’s funny is I have never told this story before, but my very first presentation was in 1992. I had answered an ad for what I thought was a graphic design degree job, and it turned out to be, it was graphic design, it was, but it turned out I had to shadow a sales rep all around the country, quite frankly. And while he was selling, I had to draw things while the conversation was going on.

(3:03 – 3:25)
And of course, you’d almost, you’d almost guess this would happen. In one occasion, the sales rep got sick and they’re like, can you go do this whole presentation? And I’m like, sure, it seems simple. And so I remember going into a donut shop on Ogden Avenue in Downers Grove, Illinois, and I walk in the door.

(3:25 – 3:45)
We had like a sample, it was a product sample. And so I plug in this sample, I lift the cover on it, and I had practiced for a week or two a seven page typed presentation. And I lifted the cover and this is what I said, nothing, nothing.

(3:45 – 4:01)
I couldn’t speak, I was hyperventilating, I was sweating. I was soaking wet in under 30 seconds. I was in so much pain, meaning like so much uncomfort of not being able to speak.