Quotes from Bo Burlingham

be successful over the long term, the company has to have and maintain: (1) steady gross margins that it protects; (2) a healthy balance sheet, as reflected in the current, cash-to-debt, and debt-to-equity ratios, among other measures; and (3) a sound business model governing how the company delivers value to customers and earns a profit in the process.

I've used pseudonyms, in some instances because of my source's legal commitments, in others to avoid gratuitous harm to the people mentioned. When I have disguised an individual, I have so indicated. Other than changing names and, in two instances, some telltale details about the company, I have reported what actually happened.

He remembered a story he'd once heard about a girl throwing starfish into the ocean. "An old man comes along and says to her, 'Don't bother. There's millions of them out here. You can't save them. What you're doing won't make a difference.' She looks at the starfish in her hand and says, 'It makes a difference to this one.' And she throws it into the ocean. Lily was one of my starfish.

The companies I was looking for all operated on what you might call human scale, that is, a size at which it's still possible for an individual to be acquainted with everyone else in the organization, still possible for the CEO to meet with new hires, still possible for employees to feel closely connected to the rest of the company. That was not accidental, either. On the contrary, scale played an important role in their approach to business.

What had been lost in the financial crisis and the leadership transition was trust, and it was a steep price to pay. Without trust, you can't have the kind of culture that Reell once had. For that matter, you can't be a small giant without trust. Once you've lost it, moreover, it's extremely difficult to get back—especially if you lack consensus about the source of the problem and alignment around a course to follow.

Unfortunately, many people have to pass through a major crisis to recognize the choice they have.

The partners had recently settled a lawsuit against one such copycat, and the experience had convinced Saginaw that legal protections were a poor substitute for innovation.

I don't feel the need to get out, but I can't work forever, so I guess I'd better think about it," said Paul Saginaw of Zingerman's. "Currently our exit strategy is death.

Brodsky knew in his heart that external events weren't really to blame, and he eventually forced himself to face up to the truth: He had single-handedly destroyed a solid, profitable business by putting it in harm's way. Without his decision to acquire Sky Courier, and to keep pouring cash into it, CitiPostal would not have been vulnerable to the events that brought it down.

Because of their success, they find themselves faced with so many opportunities that it takes a conscious effort on their part to keep from heading off in the wrong direction.

It's far more difficult than most people realize to keep ownership and control inside a privately owned business as it grows, but unless you do you will wind up with a company driven not by your own aspirations but rather by the need to meet growth targets set by outsiders. Even if you succeed in retaining control, moreover, you still have to deal with a variety of forces pushing you to grow whether you want to or not.

Meyer himself was ready for a change. "Union Square Cafe was a great canvas, but I needed a new place to express my creativity," he said. "I didn't think I should alter a successful restaurant just because I was restless. I didn't have to get all of my ideas into one place.

Pagano put out a suggestion box to capture them and took care to respond to each one. He also began writing monthly letters to employees' families, which he sent to their homes, and invited family members to come in to view new products. "We truly wanted to involve everyone in the business," he said.

Norm Brodsky, for one, had what he called his knock-your-socks-off policy. When there was an opportunity to reward people, he wanted the reward to take their breath away, which meant doing what they didn't expect when they didn't expect it.

The concept of value disciplines was popularized by consultants Michael Treacy and Fred Wiersema in their 1995 bestseller, The Discipline of Market Leaders, which was the expanded version of an earlier article they'd written in Harvard Business Review. They argued that, to be really successful, a company had to focus on providing one of three types of value to its customers: the best price, the best product, or the best overall solution.

The third imperative concerns an attribute that, at first glance, you might think companies have little control over, namely, collegiality. I'm referring to feelings that employees have toward one another, the mutual trust and respect they feel, the enjoyment they get out of spending time together, their willingness to work through any conflicts that might arise, their collective pride in what they do, and their collective commitment to doing it well.

The point here is that such policies affect not only the way that people feel about the company but also the relationships among the employees themselves—indeed, the whole texture of life inside the business.

I think of culture as the unwritten constitution," said Fritz Maytag. "Rome had no written constitution, just a common understanding about how people should behave. When that fell apart, the Roman Empire did, too.

ECCO was still spending only 5 percent of its revenues on engineering, as compared to 3 percent a decade earlier. That was possible because of the dramatic increase in productivity that accompanied the changes. In 1994, the company had had $70,000 in sales per employee. By 2004, the figure had more than doubled to $156,000 in sales per employee. At the same time, technological advances allowed the company to respond more quickly to customers needs, and to do it at a dramatically lower cost.

they focus on survival. Some never leave the survival stage. The more fortunate ones move on to the growth stage. Either way, they run the risk of getting caught in what Covey calls "the activity trap," the tendency "in the busy-ness of life to work harder and harder at climbing the ladder of success only to discover it's leaning against the wrong wall.

Busyness is certainly one of the reasons that owners don't think about whether or not their journey is taking them to a place they really want to wind up. They're constantly preoccupied—it goes with the territory—and figuring out the ultimate destination doesn't seem particularly urgent alongside, say, meeting the next payroll or landing the next big customer

The mistake they make grows partly out of their tendency to regard the exit as simply an event, and a relatively distant one at that. But the exit is actually a critical phase of a business owner's journey and an integral part of the entrepreneurial experience. "It's like passing the 26.2-mile mark of a marathon, or crossing home plate after a home run

People who choose to stay private and closely held and to place other goals ahead of growth get two things back in return: control and time. The combination equals freedom—or, more precisely, the opportunity for freedom. I wanted to include those who had made the most creative use of it.

And yet the end result is not always a happy one, even for those who wind up with a pile of money on the table. Despite having absolute financial security, often for the first time in their lives, many owners find themselves dealing with unanticipated regrets, fighting against depression, and desperately in need of a new identity and sense of purpose. For them, life after the exit is a bleak period, and it can last for years.