There are Alpha Dog companies in every sector of the economy, and I want to introduce you to some of them in this book. You'll meet entrepreneurs in a variety of industries from all over the United States whose companies appear quite ordinary, even mundane, but who have moved to the head of the pack. And I think they have more to teach us than the high tech and high glitz companies we so often read about in the business press. Like most businesses, they didn't have mountains of money, clever inventions, or stables of MBAs. But they did have a passion for business and a talent for seeing opportunities where others saw limitations; the grew in spite of the lackluster or, in some cases, moribund, industries. And so they illustrate one of the most important and inspiring lessons that any business owner can take to heart: it's possible to grow a great company in any industry or any economy.
It wasn't easy to choose the businesses in this book. Based upon more than 20 years of studying entrepreneurial companies, I identified a handful of growth strategies that I felt were important to emphasize:
- customer service
- employee engagement
- use of technology
- community connections
- innovation
- branding
- alliances
- reinvention
Then, keeping in mind geographic and industry diversity, I went through my own extensive database of contacts, and put the word out among friends and colleagues. I was looking for:
- companies in low-tech industries - the kinds of businesses you might find just about anywhere.
- bootstrapped or traditionally financed companies with well under $100 million in sales, solid revenue growth, and strong histories of profitability. The companies I chose were all forthcoming with numbers, but because they are privately-held, those numbers were not independently verified.
- impeccable industry reputations as innovators or leaders.
- companies that were great places to work, regardless of the strategy they were illustrating, because every company's lasting success rests upon its employees.
- companies that had been around for at least 10 years, because I wanted them to have experienced good economic times and bad ones; companies that don't have a few war wounds aren't terribly interesting to me.
I wanted to include some family businesses because, according to The Family Firm Institute, 80% to 90% of all businesses in North America are family-owned; they contribute 64% of the GDP and employ 62% of the American workforce. Approximately 39% of those businesses will change hands within the next five years; I hope this book will be a useful resource for that next generation of managers, who should be seeking out ways to professionalize their companies.
Manufacturing firms were high on my list of "must haves", because I believe passionately that U.S. manufacturing companies can still play a vital role in our economy provided they pull themselves out of the commodity game.
Women play a prominent role in the book as well. According to the Center for Women's Business Research, 48% of all privately-held companies are now majority-owned by women; between 1997 and 2004, the number of women-owned companies grew 17%, compared with 9% for all firms.
I think you'll learn as much from these entrepreneurs and their stories as I did, and I hope that you'll have as much fun reading about them as I did getting to know them and writing about them. But most of all, I hope you'll be enlightened with a few sparks of recognition, and inspired enough to move to the head of your own pack.
