Quotes from Bo Burlingham

You can't build a small giant if you're in an industry where your success depends on how big your company becomes.

They were also interested in being great at what they did, creating a great place to work, providing great service to customers, having great relationships with their suppliers, making great contributions to the communities they lived and worked in, and finding great ways to lead their lives.

The point is, your growth is absolutely limited by your capital, or your ability to borrow capital.

Recognizing the huge challenge that lay ahead, Murdock brought in a speaker to inspire the troops. A renowned rock climber named Todd Skinner, had been the first person ever to ascend a Himalayan peak called Trango Tower. "We needed a metaphor," Murdock said. "Todd came and talked to us about how intimidating the peak looked from base camp as they started to sort their gear. He said they realized they could only climb it by getting on the wall.

You might reasonably ask why Erickson didn't simply sell the business and start another company. In his book, he noted that his ex-partner's attorney asked him that very question, and his immediate, visceral reaction was no. He said he refused to consider the option. He later saw other entrepreneurs try that, and they all regretted it. Besides, he added, Clif Bar was where he belonged—"my place in the world.

These companies were searching for something indefinable and immeasurable, something that went beyond the standard definitions of success in business, something that could easily be lost unless it was protected against the homogenizing influences brought to bear on every company. I call that quality mojo. (See the introduction.) If you are not involved in helping to generate mojo, you have nothing to contribute except, perhaps, capital, and the capital usually comes at too high a price.

If you want a company that cares, you need people who care, and they need to be motivated by more than money.

In addition to having the right people on board, you need to keep the bus in good running condition. That may seem obvious, but you'd be surprised how many companies with wonderful intentions trip themselves up by having poor internal communications, or bad coordination between departments, or inadequate follow-through on decisions, or any of a thousand other fundamental management issues that can negate all the positive initiatives those companies undertake.

Whatever their particular ownership structure, all of the companies guarded their equity zealously to make sure it remained in the hands of people committed to the same goals.

their distributors: The more you sell, the more they sell. But, ironically, the most intense pressure often comes from two sources that both determine and define your success as a business, namely, your employees and your customers.

but you can't attract them, let alone hold on to them, unless they have room to grow. That is, in fact, why many owners wind up putting their companies on a path of aggressive growth, even if they themselves might prefer to rein it in.

I have never encountered angrier and more cynical employees than those I've met in socially responsible companies that have been so focused on saving the world they neglected to do what was necessary to save themselves.

The CEOs of our small giants had all faced the same issue. One way or another, they had to keep their best people engaged and challenged or run the risk of losing them. In most cases, the answer had been a kind of controlled growth that preserved the company's culture while creating new opportunities for employees.

Growth was a natural by-product of the company's success in pursuing its central purpose and reason for being, whatever that may have been.

The notion that bigger—and more—is better has so pervaded our culture that most people assume all entrepreneurs want to capitalize on every business opportunity, grow their companies as fast as they can, and build the next Google or Facebook.

All those three-step things really do work," said Amy Emberling, a managing partner at Zingerman's Bakehouse, "but they also gave us a language we could use to talk to each other. Everyone in the different businesses had the same vocabulary, which helped create the culture in the community as a whole.

Meyer's version of service, however, was a little different from the norm and sprang from another source. "What I've learned," he said, "is that I have an intense, nearly neurotic interest in seeing people have a good time." Enlightened hospitality was his name for the process of making sure they did.

Goltz was the first to admit how much he had learned over the years and how hard it had been to learn it. "I tell people there are three stages to every business," he said. "The start-up phase, the throw-up phase, and the grow-up phase. I went through ten years of being overwhelmed until I got things under control. I finally figured out that managing isn't just about learning how to motivate people. It's also about learning how not to demotivate them.

didn't understand the role of the boss. I had to learn the difference between a mistake, which I can live with, and haphazard conduct. Backing into a pole is a mistake. A crooked label is a sign of carelessness.

When you look closely at our small giants, one characteristic immediately jumps out at you. Like Righteous Babe, they were all so intimately connected to the place where they were located that it was hard to imagine them being anywhere else.

And the influence ran both ways. The companies shaped their respective communities, and the communities shaped them.

I had to begin by clarifying in my own mind what a good exit consisted of. For most people, I'd found, there were four elements:         1) Owners felt that they'd been treated fairly during the exit process and appropriately

businesses. They had new lives that they were fully engaged in and excited about. For some people, there was a fifth element:         5) The companies they'd created were going on without them and doing better than ever, and they could take pride in the way they'd handled one of the most difficult tasks faced by any CEO: succession.

circumstances change. Industries change. Technologies change. And what may once have been a sound business model can become unsound faster than anyone could have imagined. During the transition, moreover, the company is likely to be confronted with unpleasant choices, mainly because its culture has been built around a business model that is no longer sustainable.