The Leaders of the Inc. 500

I think that the Inc. 500/5000 intrigues me because it is really a list of inspiration.  It turns out to really be about the men and women who lead those companies.  The Inc. 500 publication is full of profiles and stories of the individuals who took a dream or an idea and pushed and pulled and manipulated that dream or idea until it became a fast growing company.

In today's blog, I want to take a brief look at the thoughts and thinking of the men and women who lead the fast growing companies who made the list.

• 42% said that their greatest challenge is "finding and keeping skilled workers."
• Asked to rank 21 traits associated with outstanding leaders, trustworthiness came in first, sincerity second and capacity to inspire third.  Likability came in 21st.
• 38% said they get their best ideas for new products and services from customers, 20% from employees.  Yet only 37% of companies have a formal method for collecting customer ideas.
• In one of the more intriguing factoids in the magazine, 87% of Inc. 500 leaders said that the right question is more important than the right answer.
• 93% believe managing and leading are two different things.
• 15% worked more than 100 hours per week in the first year.  Just 3% work that much now.
• Only 27% started paying themselves when they started the business.  9% waited until the fourth year.  
• 20% started their own business because they wanted to be their own boss.  18% did it because they had an idea they had to try out.  29% felt that entrepreneurship suited their skills and abilities.
• 61% started their business with less than $10,000.
• The entrepreneur the Inc. 500 leaders admire most is Richard Branson, followed by Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, and Mom and/or Dad.
• 29% said that work-life balance is "a nice fantasy."  The other 71% say they are working on it.

There are tons of stories behind the Inc. 500.  The editors of the magazine have admitted that one of the benefits of creating this annual list is that it helps highlight subjects for future magazine profiles.  I know some bloggers who might do the same!

A List of What's Unique About The Inc. 500

We love lists and rankings.  My daughter's college just sent out their alumni magazine and the cover was festooned with their latest rankings on the various publications that list and rank colleges and universities.  The local newspaper does an annual best of the county and some local companies work very hard to generate the votes to allow them to claim that they are "One of the Best of the County."  Whenever I write a blog that has a numbered list of points, I get more readers and more comments.  We love lists.

So with that in mind, I present to you the 11 things that make the Inc. 500/5000 interesting and a top list among lists!

1. The Inc. 500 recognizes and ranks private companies.  Private companies are...well...private.  They don't have the public reporting requirements that publicly-traded corporations do.  Because of that, it is harder to get information on these companies.  Each year the Inc. listing provides a peek behind the private boardroom doors.
2. The Inc. 500 has more.  If you pour over the list of the 500 fastest growing companies and just haven't had enough, you can go online and find 4500 more companies, similarly ranked and similarly laid out for inspection.
3. The Inc. 500 has longevity.  This is the 32nd annual list.  It started out as the Inc. 100, expanded to 500 shortly thereafter and has been the Inc. 5000 for the last several years.
4. The Inc. 500 is a positive sign of the times.  The Inc. editors headed this year's 500 list with the statement "Five hundred reasons to be optimistic about leadership, innovation, and the health of the American dream."  In the American mindset, business growth has always been a sign that things are going well.  If we look at the growth represented by the Inc. 500/5000, things are going very well!
5. The Inc. 500 seems attainable.  We are talking about companies that a few years ago were operating out of someone's garage or basement.  We are talking about leaders who started companies by maxing out their credit cards and asking their friends and relatives for a financial vote of confidence.  Only 15% of the Inc. 500 got their start-up capital from venture capital or angel funding. 71% used personal savings.  This is grassroots stuff. This is how we would all have to do it if we were starting a business.  
6. The Inc. 500 is about superstars and no-names.  And often the no-names beat out the superstars.  Yeah!
7. The Inc. 500 is about individuals as much as it is about companies.  Related to #5 and #6, many of the companies on the Inc. 500 (and even more on the Inc. 5000) are on the list because of the dreams, determination and drive of an individual.  As important as Steve Jobs was to the resurgence of  Apple, it is impossible to say that it was just because of him.  He was the conductor, but he had an orchestra to conduct.  Many on the Inc. 500/5000 list are like conductors of one-man bands.
8. The Inc. 500 is about the American Dream.  Actually it is about entrepreneurial dreams which I think goes well beyond the shores of the United States.  While the list focuses on US private companies, it is easy to see that the entrepreneurs behind those US companies come from all over the world.
9. The Inc. 500 is understandable.  Inc. uses a simple, straightforward formula for calculating its list.  Agree or disagree with the value of listing companies in terms of growth (I questioned if it was the best measure of company success in my last blog) you can understand how the rankings are determined.  This simplicity is one of their strengths.
10. The Inc. 500 is about growth, not size.  There are some pretty small, regional companies on the list.  There is a good chance that you may do business with a company or two on the list.  It is guaranteed there are several companies on the list that you have never heard of, or never will hear of again.
11. The Inc. 500 is constantly changing.  By its very nature, it is hard for companies to sustain the level of growth that puts them on the Inc. 500 for very long.  Because of that, the Inc. 500 avoids the type of list stagnation that plagues many lists.  For example, the company that topped the Inc. 500 in 2012, Unified Payments, is at #2374 on the 2013 list.  The company that topped the list in 2011, Ideeli, is not on the list in 2013.  That doesn't happen with regularity on the Fortune 500 or the Forbes list of wealthiest individuals or US News and World's top colleges and universities list.

Next blog I will have a few final observations from the Inc. 500 list.

Questions About The Inc. 500

Inc. Magazine came out with its list of the top 500 fastest growing private companies in America last week.  4500 more are listed on the website for the list obsessed.

This list shines an interesting spotlight on American culture.  It also raises several questions in my mind.  I intend to spend the next few blog posts looking at the Inc. 500/5000.

Inc. says, at the top of their list, "Five hundred reasons to be optimistic about leadership, innovation, and the health of the American dream."  And I suppose they are right.  These 500 companies enjoyed an average 1,739% three year growth rate.  They earned $14.1 billion in total revenues in 2012 and created 44,912 jobs over the last three years.

I think the list raises some significant questions pertaining to important societal issues.  I was surprised and a little thrilled when I read that the best represented industry was the advertising and marketing industry with 58 companies represented.   When you compare it to only 9 manufacturing companies on the list, it seems to confirm that we are becoming a service economy.

Another area that concerned me was the demographics of the Inc. 500 CEOs.  90% are male and 77% are Caucasian.  I don't know how this compares to previous years.  I also don't know if this is because  fewer women and non-Caucasians have the inclination to become entrepreneurs or if it is they don't have access to the resources to start and grow a business.

Finally, and most significantly, I have to question if Inc.'s focus on growth is really the best measure of a private company's success.  When focusing just on growth, the Inc. editors only capture certain types of companies at certain points along the growth curve.   Fuhu, maker of the children's tablet, Nabi, is the number one company on the list this year.  They posted an amazing 42,148% growth over the last three years.  I will be surprised if Fuhu is even on the list in a few years.

The editor of the magazine dubs the 500 list as "an unapologetic celebration of entrepreneurial success."  While there is no doubt a lot to celebrate, there is just as much to ponder and examine.

The Poetry of Immediate Feedback

In a poetry slam, a poet gets up in front of a live audience and a handful of judges who have numbered cards and reads his or her poetry.  The poetry slam I have been to was a loud raucous event, fueled by alcohol, a rock band and an emcee with a sarcastic sense of humor.

The appeal of a poetry slam for the audience is easy to see.  You get to cheer and jeer as the spirit moves you.  You get to hear short creative works, presented by their creators and pass certain and swift judgement on their creation.  It has a bit of a Roman Coliseum feel to it.

It had me wondering, however, what the appeal was to the poets who participate.  The prize money is small and the venue is obscure.  The crowd can be downright hostile.  What would drive a poet, presumably a soul sensitive enough to create poetry worthy of performance, to step in front of the verbal firing line of the poetry slam.

Then it occurred to me.  For the poet, the appeal of the slam was the feedback, immediate feedback.  Audiences at slams hold little back.  If they think something is funny, you will hear belly laughs.  If something touches them, they don't hide their tears.  And if they don't like what they are hearing...well, let's just say the poet finds out about it!

Employees are no different than the poets at the slam.  They are hungry for feedback.  They are willing to stick their neck out, if means getting feedback.  Especially if its immediate feedback.

Feedback is a powerful and often neglected management tool.  The things about feedback is that it has a fairly short half life.  The power of feedback diminishes as the distance increases between the situation/action/event being critiqued and the feedback of that situation/action/event.

Too many managers see that annual evaluation process as a time for feedback.  If the first time your staff member is hearing about what you thought about something they did is during the annual evaluation session, you might as well save your breath.  Because unless the thing you are talking about happened on the way into the meeting, it probably won't have any impact.

At a poetry slam, poets almost always know if the audience likes their poem long before they finish reading their three minute creation.  If it is bad enough, the poet won't even get to finish.

I am not suggesting that we start providing managers with numbered cards and encourage them to cut people off in mid-sentance.  I am, however, suggesting that managers should connect their feedback as closely as possible to the situation being evaluated.  Otherwise it is a bit like someone saying, "I like the haircut you got last April."

If you ask most employees about what they lack, 

My estimation is they will say feedback.

It is easy and cheap to address that need

In a timely and forthright manner, indeed.

I am ready to be booed off the stage!

The Medici's of the 21st Century

I received a message a little while ago on LinkedIn.  The sender was not someone I knew well or corresponded with often.  But his message was unusual.  Trevor Gilette wanted to start a business, but he lacked the resources to do so.  So Trevor decided to try to work his contacts.

Trevor's message, in part, read:

This is what I'm asking for help on. I need to raise some capital for my business, $5000 by Friday, July 19. I'm asking for 1000 people in my networks to donate just $5 to me. It's less than a cup of Starbucks Coffee. I'm very excited to become a business owner and I am very much grateful to anybody who is willing to donate just $5 to help me get there. If you can spare $5, please send it to me via paypal at trevgillette@gmail.com.

In the 14th century, if you were an artist and you were looking for a commission or an entreprenuer looking to start a new enterprise, you often found yourself talking to a member of the Medici family.  The Medici family is often credited with helping jump start the Renaissance, a time of great growth and productivity in virtually all of the arts and commerce.

In the 21st century, if you are an artist and you are looking for funding to pursue an artistic endeavor or a visionary looking to start a new business, you often turn to one of the many crowdsourcing sites like Kickstarter.  Or LinkedIn.

I was intrigued by Trevor's initiative, so I reached out to him with permission to write about his effort.  He agreed and we exchanged a few emails in which he answered some questions.  Trevor characterized the response he got to his message as a mix of supportive and skeptical.   His effort did not generate the support he had hoped, although Trevor did get some inquiries asking to see a business plan and more details on the proposed business. At the time we talked, Trevor was still deciding whether he would put together a business plan to share with those who inquired.

There are a few lessons that can be learned from Trevor's project:

• The landscape has changed and there are many more ways to accumulate capital and support for a project than there were just a few years ago.
• The increase of funding options does not minimize the need to do good solid preplanning and the need to be able to communicate that plan in an effective way.  Trevor indicated that if he were to change anything about his appeal, he would have done a business plan prior to making the ask.
• A cup or Starbucks coffee has become the new standard cost comparison.
• Some people are generous to a fault.  Some people are jerks whenever they get a chance.  Most people ignore an opportunity most of the time.  The challenge of the artist or the entreprenuer making an ask is to capture the reader or viewers' attention and ignite their excitement or at least their curiosity.
• If at first you don't succeed...

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Privacy

Privacy is an issue getting lots of media attention right now.  Privacy is in the headlines virtually every day lately.  While privacy and the protection of it HAS become a political issue, it also is an issue of great social significance.  It is also shaping up to be an issue of generational divide.  Young people today seem to have a different view about privacy than their parents.

According to a recent Pew Internet study, about teen social media use and privacy:

• Students are sharing much more personal information about themselves of social media

• 91% of teens posted a photo of themselves in 2012, up from 79% in 2006
• 71% posted their school name, up from 49%
• 71% posted the city or town where they live, up from 61%
• 53% posted their email address, up from 29% in 2006
• 20% posted their cell phone number, where virtually no one (2%) did just 6 years earlier
• At the same time, 60% of teen Facebook users report high levels of confidence in their ability to manager their settings.
• Just 9% of teens indicated that they were "very" concerned about third party access to their data on social media sites.

On the other hand, there are a lot of adults over the age of 40 that won't even dip their toe into the Facebook pool because of concerns of privacy.

I cannot tell if these differences are generational or experiential in nature.  Are teenagers less worried about someone mining their personal data from Facebook because they are young and naive or because they are used to the quirks and tendencies of a Facebook-driven life?

This is not to say that young people are not concerned about privacy issues.  They undoubtedly are. According to the Pew study, more than half of them limit access to their information using privacy settings.

Despite all of this, there is a growing school of thought among all generations of users that the greatest danger to internet privacy over social media is advertisers, not individuals with malcontent.  People are genuinely afraid of the time in the near future when advertisers have gleaned all there is to know about an individual and use that hyper personal information to make highly personalized offers.

The challenge for marketers is to be culturally and demographically sensitive to the issue of privacy.  Most people sincerely enjoy the recommendations on Amazon or Netflix that are based on past purchases.  Fewer people enjoy those same recommendations when they are based on non-purchase past behavior on the site.  There are even fewer (dare I say almost no one) who would enjoy recommendations based on their internet activity on other sites other than the recommendor's site.

The opportunity for marketers is to recognize that privacy is an important issue in the marketplace, albeit one that is viewed differently by different generations.  A smart marketer can use respect for customers' privacy as a marketing advantage.  A smart marketer can identify the generational similarities in views about different types of privacy and/or can take advantage of the differences.

A smart marketer will recognize that privacy is not just a political issue or a generational issue but also an image issue.  Companies that are seen as respecting our individual views on marketing will, I predict, have an advantage over those who are seen as indifferent to those issues.

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Storytelling

All good marketing is essentially storytelling.

Marketing at its essence is connecting with people and since the beginning of time, one of the best ways to connect with others is through telling stories.  Whether you call them fables, tales, parables or pictographs, storytelling connects  us emotionally with what the speaker is saying.

Marketing is about sharing how you can solve a customer's problem.  Often, however, you need to convince the customer that you know what you are talking about.

Therefore, the following rules, originally tweeted by Emma Coats, Pixar’s Story Artist, have relevance, even if you aren't crafting the script for a major studio animated feature.  I would be interested to know what rule or rules resonates most with readers.  For me, number 2 is an important, and often challenging,  rule to keep in mind.

1. You admire a character for trying more than for their successes.
2. You gotta keep in mind what’s interesting to you as an audience, not what’s fun to do as a writer. They can be very different.
3. Trying for theme is important, but you won’t see what the story is actually about til you’re at the end of it. Now rewrite.
4. Once upon a time there was ___. Every day, ___. One day ___. Because of that, ___. Because of that, ___. Until finally ___.
5. Simplify. Focus. Combine characters. Hop over detours. You’ll feel like you’re losing valuable stuff but it sets you free.
6. What is your character good at, comfortable with? Throw the polar opposite at them. Challenge them. How do they deal?
7. Come up with your ending before you figure out your middle. Seriously. Endings are hard, get yours working up front.
8. Finish your story, let go even if it’s not perfect. In an ideal world you have both, but move on. Do better next time.
9. When you’re stuck, make a list of what WOULDN’T happen next. Lots of times the material to get you unstuck will show up.
10. Pull apart the stories you like. What you like in them is a part of you; you’ve got to recognize it before you can use it.
11. Putting it on paper lets you start fixing it. If it stays in your head, a perfect idea, you’ll never share it with anyone.
12. Discount the 1st thing that comes to mind. And the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th – get the obvious out of the way. Surprise yourself.
13. Give your characters opinions. Passive/malleable might seem likable to you as you write, but it’s poison to the audience.
14. Why must you tell THIS story? What’s the belief burning within you that your story feeds off of? That’s the heart of it.
15. If you were your character, in this situation, how would you feel? Honesty lends credibility to unbelievable situations.
16. What are the stakes? Give us reason to root for the character. What happens if they don’t succeed? Stack the odds against.
17. No work is ever wasted. If it’s not working, let go and move on – it’ll come back around to be useful later.
18. You have to know yourself: the difference between doing your best & fussing. Story is testing, not refining.
19. Coincidences to get characters into trouble are great; coincidences to get them out of it are cheating.
20. Exercise: take the building blocks of a movie you dislike. How d’you rearrange them into what you DO like?
21. You gotta identify with your situation/characters, can’t just write ‘cool’. What would make YOU act that way?
22. What’s the essence of your story? Most economical telling of it? If you know that, you can build out from there.

Happy storytelling!

• Read More About The Story Spine: Pixar’s 4th Rule of Storytelling

A Coke By Any Other Name...

What we name things matters.  What we call things impacts our perceptions of them and our perceptions impact how we react or don't react to a product or a service.

Marketers typically spend a lot of time and resources on selecting an appropriate name for new product or service.  The marketing trash bin is full of good products that failed because they had a name that didn't connect with customers, or worse, had unintended connotations!

I wonder, for example, how much the famous flame-out of New Coke would have differed if the marketers in Atlanta had chosen a name that didn't remind everyone that the formula for their beloved Coca-Cola had been changed.  Would a wholly different name made New Coke a success?

Renaming happens a lot in politics.  Recently, Republicans realized it would be hard to drum up opposition to the new health care law if they used then formal name of The Affordable Care Act.  First of all, it is a boring So they dubbed the new law Obamacare.  This made it seem more like an ego-driven project of one man, not an affordable national health care program.

Sometimes, a rose by another name is just a thorn bush.

A Parable About Leadership

Leadership is a subject that seems to continually confound us.  A Bing search for "leadership books" generates 39 million results.  It seems to me that there are at least that many different perspectives about leadership and how to be a good leader out there.  

That is one of the reasons I like the story I am about to share with you.  I first read this story on Michael Josephson's excellent blog, "What Will Matter" and am reposting it here with his permission.  

Listening to politicians’ nasty rhetoric, one might think that leadership has to be aggressive and confrontational, but consider this parable about leadership.

A student assigned to write an essay about an effective leader wrote this story:

“I’ve been taking a bus to school for years. Most passengers keep to themselves and no one ever talks to anyone else.

“About a year ago, an elderly man got on the bus and said loudly to the driver, ‘Good morning!’ Most people looked up, annoyed, and the bus driver just grunted. The next day the man got on at the same stop and again he said loudly, ‘Good morning!’ to the driver. Another grunt. By the fifth day, the driver relented and greeted the man with a semi-cheerful ‘Good morning!’ The man announced, ‘My name is Benny,’ and asked the driver, ‘What’s yours?’ The driver said his name was Ralph.

“That was the first time any of us heard the driver’s name and soon people began to talk to each other and say hello to Ralph and Benny. Soon Benny extended his cheerful ‘Good morning!’ to the whole bus. Within a few days his ‘Good morning!’ was returned by a whole bunch of ‘Good mornings’ and the entire bus seemed to be friendlier. People got to know each other.

“If a leader is someone who makes something happen, Benny was our leader in friendliness.

“A month ago, Benny didn’t get on the bus and we haven’t seen him since. Everyone began to ask about Benny and lots of people said he may have died. No one knew what to do and the bus got awful quiet again.

“So last week, I started to act like Benny and say, ‘Good morning!’ to everyone and they cheered up again. I guess I’m the leader now. I hope Benny comes back to see what he started.”

I think that the student who wrote this essay hits the mark on so many levels about leadership.  Leadership is about attitude and perseverance much more than title or position.  Leadership is transformational.  Leadership can be transferred.

In my opinion, you don't need to buy any of the 39 million books on leadership.  All you need to do is read about Benny and the bus!

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Lessons Learned

It is easy to dismiss those that have gone before us.  They operated in a different world, when the rules were different/easier/not relevant.  The lessons they have to share, it often seems, do not apply to today’s world which has been turned on its head and inside out by the internet and the innovations it has wrought.  What relevance could the gray hairs have to today’s wired world?

So really, why bother?

The easy answer is to recite the quote "Those who ignore the past are destined to repeat it."  That, however, is not the point of this blog.  Rather, I think that the lessons learned are more subtle and much more valuable.  

Those that have gone before can share with us the lessons they have learned.  They can talk about the mistakes they have made, and the challenges they have overcome.  They can tell us where the skeletons are buried and which sacred cows to steer clear of.  Those that have gone before you have walked the same walk you are.  They have been there.  

Because, you see, things haven't really changed all that much.  Certainly there are new tools and new rules for how things get done.  Absolutely some processes and products and services have evolved and changed.  Definately things are different, in some aspects.

But people are still the same.  People still make decisions emotionally with pretty much the same motivations (acceptance, success, avoidance of pain) that they have for centuries.  Organizations, which are comprised of people, haven't changed how they operate that much.  Sure, they use email instead of messengers and LinkedIn to recruit candidates instead of a headhunter.  But at the end of the day, things run pretty much like they have for at least 50 or 60 years.  

Which means that old guy at work who can never figure out how to work the scanner, might just be able to teach you a thing or two if you take the time to listen.  

Face to Face

Try as we might, email and Skype will never replace all of our face to face interactions; webinars and conference calls will never be the same as sitting across a table from someone and solving the world’s problems; Facebook and LinkedIn will never take the place of grabbing dinner and drinks with friends.

Don’t get me wrong, conference calls and webinars serve a valuable purpose, but they don’t do a good job of establishing relationships, which is the basis for any successful business or marketing effort.  I have run successful events almost entirely by conference call, but I believe that worked because most of the people on the conference call already knew each other.  We had met many times in face to face meetings and networking opportunities and had worked together before.

What is it about face to face meetings that make them so powerful and important?  There are the obvious benefits.  You can read body language and facial expressions.  The fact that someone took the time to meet in person denotes a value to the meeting.

The real benefits of meeting in person are more subtle.  With apologies to all the online dating sites out there, I think it is nigh impossible to develop a solid relationship entirely online, regardless if the relationship is business-oriented, platonic or otherwise!  There are too many nuances and subtleties that are not a part of communications when you are separated by screens.   

I also think that promises and commitments made in person are more solid and harder to ignore than those made online.  This is especially true if you’ve only known the person online.

I think that there are wonderful tools out there that allow us to improve our productivity, increase our connections and talk to more people for much less investment (in time and resources).  I think these tools are most effective as supplements to existing relationships.  I also think that there will never be technology that truly takes the place of a face to face conversation. 

If only because it’s harder to share an appetizer that way!

The Life Cycle of a Mediocre Product

"You marketers," a friend of mine angrily said to me the other day, "need to give those of us that actually produce something a break!"

She was upset, but not really at me.  It turns out that a manager where she worked had made a comment that quality marketing (I'm sure he was referring to promotions) could take the place of quality product.  He indicated that the organization didn't need to put out a high quality (in his mind more expensive) product.  He suggested that they could still get customers with high quality promotions.  Customers, according to the erroneous manager, can't tell a good product from a bad one!

After I quickly explained to her that product WAS a part of marketing, I cautiously told my friend that the object of her scorn was right.  Marketing CAN generate sales with a poor product or service.  But only for one or two business cycles.

Often times, customers have no reasonable way to assess the quality of what they are buying until they buy it.  This is particularly true with services.  Usually, the customer who doesn't have past experience has to rely on word of mouth and the trustworthiness of the marketer.  If I am planning on hiring a neighbor kid to mow my lawn, unless she has mowed it before, or I have seen her work on other lawns, I have only her reputation to guide my decision.  After she has mowed my lawn once, I have a lot more information to inform future buying decisions.

I suggested to my friend that she only needed to wait out the object of her ire for a short while.  Mediocre products, after all, tend to have very short life cycles.  So do managers who eschew quality products.

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Do you have an Oak Marketing Strategy?

Last weekend, my daughter and I were discussing the trees in our backyard.  Specifically we were discussing what to do about a Burr Oak that we planted several years ago and a Maple that had grown nearby. I was touting the benefits of the Maple, because it had gotten so tall, so fast.  My daughter called it a "weed tree" and complained that it was crowding out the Burr Oak, keeping it from getting the sunlight and water it needed.

Burr Oak tree, West Dundee, IL.
Diameter: 49.7". Estimated age: 300+ years.
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It struck me that the debate we were having was a good metaphor for the debate marketers have all the time between short term promotional campaigns and brand building; between short term and long term marketing.

Just like the trees in our back yard, short term marketing has the potential to crowd out long term marketing and brand building.  Opportunistic one-shot advertising and promotional campaigns have their place.  They can be very effective and useful...in the short term.  Like the maple tree, they are nice to look at and it is easy to see their benefits.  But if those campaigns aren't managed, and carefully used within the framework of a larger, long term marketing strategy, you run the risk of using all your resources, all your sunlight and water, on something that grows fast and then is gone.

For those of you who don't have an arborist nearby, let me explain. Burr Oaks are slow growing and long lasting trees.  Burr Oaks can live to be 300 to 400 years old.  That means there are Burr Oaks around that could have provided shade for a young Benjamin Franklin.  Maple trees grow fast and last an average of 75 to 100 years.

Like the Burr Oak, a strategic marketing plan provides long-lasting benefits.  It takes a long time and a lot of patience to build a lasting brand image.  But if you give it the resources it needs, and manage the other activities competing for those resources, your time and efforts will be rewarded with something truly special. You develop something long-lasting and awe inspiring.

You develop an Oak Marketing Strategy.