How do the fastest-growing businesses in Springfield handle their success? To find out, Springfield Business Journal Editorial Director Eric Olson sat down with leaders from four companies ranking on this year’s Dynamic Dozen list for fast growth: GigSalad CEO and co-founder Mark Steiner, Corporate Business Systems President Tyson Johns and MaMa Jean’s Natural Foods Market LLC co-owners Susie Farbin and Diana Hicks.
Eric Olson: In one word, how would you characterize fast-growth companies?
Tyson Johns: I think it’s being progressive.
Mark Steiner: Usefulness.
Susie Farbin: Encouraging. Keep going.
Olson: What do you see that fast-growth companies share?
Johns: I think there is a culture of people being committed and engaged, whatever the mission is. Shopping in (MaMa Jean’s) store all of the time you can see most of the employees. The first thing they see is your employees. People come into our office all the time and it doesn’t matter who they are, they can say what the overall mission is to the customer.
Steiner: Similarly, to usefulness on that point, is helpfulness. They get it from your staff. If I am wandering around looking lost, I don’t have to seek it out. People are coming up asking, “What can I help you with?”
Diana Hicks: All growing companies recognize the needs of the customer.
Olson: As a leader, how do you empower someone to handle and address problems to find solutions?
Steiner: Our official launch was January of 2007 ... and probably not until around 2010 got on our feet. There was a time when it was just me and a co-founder and that was the case for the first few years. Every email and letter that went out was signed Mark and Steve. I was in the talent booking industry prior and my hallmark was honesty, integrity, forthrightness and people knew that I had their best interests at heart. That’s what we’ve bred from the beginning. It is a mantra, we preach it, so you can’t forget it.
Olson: Do any of the other companies here have similar meetings or discussions?
Johns: I think it gets to be harder as your company is larger, especially if you are spread out. We have four offices, we have technicians in the field that are hours away from the office, so it’s a lot harder for us to pull something together for everybody.
Farbin: We always just try to listen to our employees because if you have a happy employee it is going to be a good employee, and a happy employee means a happy customer. We try to spoil them as much as we can.
Olson: What are some of the ways you spoil employees?
Hicks: Last week, we had our manager’s meeting at Andy B’s and 18 of us went. We bowled, played games, and played laser tag and we skipped the whole meeting. (group laughter) You would have thought we had taken them to a rock concert or something. I mean, they were so appreciative.
Steiner: I can definitely see it within your companies, your employees, that everyone who applies for a job at MaMa Jean’s is passionate about what it is you guys are about.
Hicks: You know, sometimes they are, and sometimes they aren’t.
Farbin: They get exposed to things in the store.
Hicks: We hire for attitude; we train for performance.
Farbin: We try not to cram it down anybody’s throat because hopefully they will just start picking up on things. Of course, if they’re in a bulk department, we want them to know what quinoa is or at least how to pronounce it. People butcher that word pretty bad. “Where’s you quaw-Noah?”
(group laughter)
Hicks: The punctuality incentive. We give those, too, because people just don’t like to get to work on time.
Farbin: We just recently changed our company to, just this year, establishing budgets for the first time because it was a necessity.
Olson: Companywide?
Farbin: Per department, per store, based on their prior sales, profit margins. In September, we’re going to be giving out those checks for people who have done very well and so it is going to become more incentive based.
Olson: Did you build your companies to be fast-growth companies or did that just happen?
Hicks: If we had known we would be this big, we might have changed a few things along the way.
Farbin: The first three years we thought it would just be the one location, and then we are running out of room with lines of employees waiting for the restroom. We could hardly fit the freight in when the trucks reached the building. It was harder to do the first time we expanded out, and by the time we did the third store it wasn’t quite as scary.
Steiner: We never thought in terms of fast growth, but I always wanted to be big and I knew we would get there. The idea that we are fast growing was never part of the equation. In fact, I think we would’ve wanted to avoid that because of pitfalls and challenges that can come with fast growth that I would read in business magazines. We were not a company that had gotten any capital injection. We were always slow and steady until we added another revenue component to the company. Then all of a sudden, it looked like we just came on like gangbusters. Our goal is to double every year for five years.
Olson: Do you communicate that to your employees?
Steiner: Yes, we are cracking the whip. Our skills are so massive for what we do, and we have so much potential that we are skimming the surface of what we could do. There is only one other company with a similar business model in the country. The first goal is just to annihilate them, make them insignificant and move on.
Olson: What is big in terms of your company?
Steiner: My goal from the beginning was to be a $100 million company, and if we double every year for five, we will do that. That was our goal five or six or seven years ago, and now I think it was such a pie in the sky, audacious goal that it looked like a stupid thing.
Olson: Is it hard to put an end to that term of, “This is how we’ve always done it?” What kind of language do you not permit?
Farbin: We don’t want to hear an employee tell a manager, “I was afraid I was going to get in trouble.” What? We want to remove that fear factor of working for us.
Johns: Also, you hear somebody say, “Well, that’s not my job.” That drives me crazy. Or when I first got to the organization, it was, “I’m not sure whose responsibility that falls under.” You know, if there’s a question, there’s a problem, they don’t know who to take it to. When I took over, we actually provided an organizational chart so there was transparency. Then we painted this war admiral’s mural up on the wall that said, “It’s your company. Do what you think is best. Act as if it is your company, too.”
Olson: What are the challenges to managing fast growth?
Johns: I think you always have growth hurdles. Every time you move into a new store, it’s a new endeavor. You have to buy property, staff it; it’s a huge leap of faith. Especially with an entrepreneurial spirit, you go straight back to the black and white. You have growing pains. That’s the cool thing about a fast-growing business: you never know because it is always changing and it keeps you excited.
Olson: When you came in as a president, did you set a tangible goal?
Johns: I was promoted president almost three years ago. I said I was going to work five years and then retire because I was sure I was going to be burnt out by all the managers harassing me. I’m significantly younger than them, and we have a good relationship, so they thought that was funny. I thought we would double to 43 employees and now we’re at 81. In two and a half years, we have gained about 40 employees.
Olson: Is that your five-year plan?
Johns: Yes, and that really wasn’t set in stone, I was just giving them a hard time that there was no way I was willing to work with them more than five years.
Steiner: And you have two and a half more years to go?
Johns: Yes, and they remind me of that.
(group laughter)
Olson: How have you financed your fast growth?
Steiner: $1,000 Steve and I put in 10 or 15 years ago or something. That’s it.
Olson: That’s it? No loans?
Steiner: No loans.
Farbin: Well, we’ve had to get loans. It was interesting when I wrote a three-year business plan for our loan and for our second one, I was like, “I want to check, see how we’re tracking.” You know, because you’re just estimating, I pulled it back out and went, “You know what? That was pretty close to where we’re at.” Because you need to make it sound pretty good when writing those. Sorry, but you do.
(group laughter)
Olson: Can you grow too quickly?
Johns: I’m now introducing budgets and that whole transparency thing. Just like the Jack Stack model, we had an education thing with every employee. Being able to sit down with them and be like, “Hey, here’s our revenue number and here’s are profit number. Major difference. And oh, just because that’s going on, doesn’t mean that’s like cash. We’re not sitting with all this cash. And oh by the way, here is our last acquisition and this is what it looked like financially.”
Olson: So you introduced some open-book management?
Johns: I think it was better for all of the employees to actually understand that and feel trusted like that. Now, all of a sudden they’re more engaged in the process. They understand what you’re doing, why they’re doing it. You know when I first got to CBS, we had meetings about meetings just to get ready to have a meeting. It was always behind the closed door. Then you would come out and roll out this plan like it was the Da Vinci Code. Now, we don’t have so much disconnect between an employee and a manager. We’ve filled the gap. I think it is great. We give bonuses based off performance and I actually started sending that home to their spouse. So, their spouse knew, “Hey, by the way, they didn’t do so hot this month, they’ve missed their bonus of X.” Well, all of a sudden, all that has shifted way up, because no one wants to go home and say, “Hey, they gave away a trip to Big Cedar, and I didn’t qualify.”
Steiner: Ow, that’s pretty lethal.
Johns: By the same token, we have a barbecue that’s larger where we have that engagement and several people come up and say, “Hey, when I work long hours, now my wife or my husband knows what I’m doing.” They’re more involved and more engaged in what they’re doing and understand it.
Olson: Has the growth of the company made you think about selling it or have you thought about continuing to build it?
Hicks: We have two different opinions on this.
Steiner: Let’s hear them both.
Farbin: Diana was approached by and got an email from a major chain, about a year ago, that said, “What do you think about partnering up?” I was like, “Don’t even respond to them!” My thing is that if we got a large offer, somebody came in, it’s my loyalty and commitment to everyone who works there, their jobs would change so much, that I don’t know if I could live with myself. Diana was like, “I’d take it and go to Mexico!”
(group laughter)
Hicks: I’d have a big house where they could all come together and spend a week with me.
Steiner: Tyson’s only got two and a half years and he’s out. For me, I’m in it to win it. It’s the moon or bust. It’s got to be or I’ll feel I failed.
Interview excerpts by Features Editor Emily Letterman, eletterman@sbj.net, and editorial assistant Barrett Young, sbj@sbj.net
