Way to grow Hyatt, Joshua
FSB : fortune small business,
07/2003, Letnik:
13, Številka:
6
Magazine Article
The founders of most of this year's speedy growers seem to gravitate toward industries in flux. The troika of trades that dominate this FSB 100-health care, banking, and energy-have experienced much ...upheaval of late. Banking, which represents more than a third of the list, has ballooned as mortgage rates have deflated. That's created a higher rate of interest on the part of consumers, who are willing to take on bigger first mortgages and tap into home-equity loans. Smaller players are scrambling to collect as many branches as they can, the better to reach those eager consumers. Some of the turbo-powered companies ranked on the following pages have also developed skills in drilling down-literally and figuratively-into the active oil industry. This year's FSB 100 includes nine companies in the straightforward business of exploration, yes, but also those that have positioned themselves as suppliers to the oil industry. However unglamorous some businesses on this list may look, they all had to meet the same qualifications. Aided by Zacks Investment Research, FSB started with a pool of U.S. companies, publicly traded on the major exchanges, that posted under $200 million in annual revenue. FSB ranked those companies not only by revenue growth but also by earnings growth and stock return (including dividends) over the past three calendar years. To come up with the final order, they averaged the rankings.
He began Blockbuster. So what? Hyatt, Joshua
FSB : fortune small business,
07/2003, Letnik:
13, Številka:
6
Magazine Article
Everone thinks that H. Wayne Huizenga founded Blockbuster Entertainment, but it was actually David Cook. Cook estimates that he sacrificed about $300 million by not holding onto his stock for a few ...more years. But Cook has truly make a fortune by being ahead of his time. His most recent startup, a provider of e-mail security servcies called ZixCorp, has attracted such brand-name investors as Huizenga, Bill Gates, and Jack Welch.
The second-business syndrome Hyatt, Joshua
FSB : fortune small business,
06/2003, Letnik:
13, Številka:
5
Magazine Article
George Howell was a coffee entrepreneur before the country overflowed with that species of entrepreneur. Inspired by a Java joint he frequented in Berkeley, he drove to Boston and invested $40,000 to ...open his first Coffee Connection outlet. Nineteen years and 23 units later, he sold out to his first serious competitor, Starbucks. Now he is back, with a just opened business called Copacafe. Howell's Grand cafe slles coffe in porcelain cups or by the pound. The cafe also features small plate foods, like petite lamb chops and baby burgers, as well as alcoholic beverages.
The inner game of business Hyatt, Joshua
FSB : fortune small business,
05/2003, Letnik:
13, Številka:
4
Magazine Article
Thomas J. Leonard, a former financial planner, created the profession of business coach. Before he spread the concept, people generally expected a coach to wield some form of sports expertise. After ...he finished there were maybe 10,000 folks calling themselves coaches who boasted of no particular expertise at all, beyond being certified as such. Leonard turned coaching into a viable business. And he made millions, but to him it was all about getting more chips on his side of the table. Coaches are like motivational speakers, except that they listen instead of talking. They offer support and guidance, serving as friends for CEOs who deservedly have none.
The business that time forgot Hyatt, Joshua
FSB : fortune small business,
04/2003, Letnik:
13, Številka:
3
Magazine Article
Edson D. De Castro built a company that was great State CIOs must be able to pull together massive, far-flung and often poorly integrated operations and must be adept at serving multiple ...constituencies. Computer maker Data General Corp. peaked with annual sales of $1.3 billion in 1988. De Castro built a successful product - minicomputers that were cheaper and easier to use than their clunky mainframe predecessors - and for a while that was enough. Castro's defection from computer giant Digital Equipment Corp. inspired others in the area to set off on their own, igniting a statewide entrepreneurial explosion that came to be called the Massachusetts Miracle. All those Massachusetts Miracle companies are gone now, victims of another generation of computer mavericks, which came up with smaller, nonproprietary machines first called microcomputers but better known today as PCs. De Castro says he might have been able to re-soul the machine maker had his board known enough to give him a chance to move the company into PCs, software, and workstations. But the board was not willing to put up with the years of losses the plan would have incurred in the short term.
The startup that nobody moved Hyatt, Joshua
FSB : fortune small business,
03/2003, Letnik:
13, Številka:
2
Magazine Article
Patrick Carroll is marketing his own brand of cigarettes, called Legal. He is positioning his business as a little tobacco company that is eager to spread the unfiltered truth about what it does. The ...business has cost him dearly, and not just in funds - he has spent $100,000 of his own and another $100,000 he managed to raise from 8 others. After concluding that there was demand for a boutique "microbrewery"-style cigarette brand, he decided to import tobacco from such countries as Colombia, South Africa, and Indonesia. He is distributing the cigarettes through nightclubs and bars, where dinosaurs like R.J. Reynolds and Altria Group rarely roam, and plans to devote his budget to advertising his creations above urinals and sinks.
Managing by the good book Hyatt, Joshua
FSB : fortune small business,
02/2003, Letnik:
13, Številka:
1
Magazine Article
S. Truett Cathy's handlers try to present him as a man of deep religious conviction who also runs a nationwide fast-food empire. But the two facts are more intertwined than that. Last summer, ...testifying before a House subcommittee on business ethics, he talked openly about incorporating biblical principles into business. All 1,100 or so Chick-fil-A units are required to close on Sunday. Dan Cathy, Truett's 49-year-old son and the company's president and chief operating officer, has no trouble explaining that Chick-fil-A schedules blatantly Christian worship during its annual meeting for operators. Aziz Latif, claims that he was training to become a franchise operator in November 2000 when he was fired because of his Muslim faith. Latif says he lost his job one day after he did not participate in a prayer to Jesus Christ.
Making a show of desperation Hyatt, Joshua
FSB : fortune small business,
12/2002, Letnik:
12, Številka:
10
Magazine Article
Just over a year ago Peter Senne looked at the entrepreneurial distress unfolding around him and asked himself how he could help fledgling, capital-starved company builders - while, not ...coincidentally, making a few bucks for himself. His answer took shape in IdeaSphere. IdeaSphere selects and grooms needy entrepreneurs, then invites them to make their case before a room of 90 others, including fellow entrepreneurs, executives, consultants, and assorted cronies. Wait, make that paying cronies. And therein lies the irrefutable shrewdness of IdeaSphere's business model: While the presenting entrepreneurs may or may not walk away from the meetings with helpful advice, leads, or even capital, IdeaSphere always wins. IdeaSphere's members - that group of 90 would-be investors and mentors - pay $1,500 a year to attend these invest fests.
What was he drinking? Hyatt, Joshua
FSB : fortune small business,
11/2002, Letnik:
12, Številka:
9
Magazine Article
Jerry Foley, proprietor of J.J. Foley's, a 92-year-old bar in Boston, thinks it was misguided of Samuel Adams Boston Lager founder and chairman Jim Koch to participate in a New York City radio ...broadcast in which couples competed for points by fornicating at assorted public locations in the New York City. What got to Foley this time was that one couple apparently took on the challenge of getting cozy in the vestibule of Saint Patrick's Cathedral. Koch eventually issued a public apology for his behavior, characterizing his presence as a lapse in judgment. The fact that apologies appeared in three newspapers about two weeks after the incident did not help Koch's case. Several bar owners say that Koch's calls included invitations for them to come to the company's brewery and settle their differences.
The Eureka moment Hyatt, Joshua
FSB : fortune small business,
10/2002, Letnik:
12, Številka:
8
Magazine Article
What 11 business founders interviewed by Fortune Small Business decided to share - not just individually but collectively - had little to do with crushing insights or burning cravings. Viewed up ...close, the entrepreneur's much-vaunted eureka moment is not a moment at all; it is a stretch of time that begins, and ends, with an intense focus on learning. In the middle these industry-changing entrepreneurs act with speed but not haste. They detect a pattern, make a move, then assess what they have achieved before forging on. They live at the intersection of thought and action, where they somehow manage to think deeply without becoming paralyzed. Entrepreneurs are perpetually collecting and processing the information they seem to find around them. The highest-achieving entrepreneurs know how to partner well. Entrepreneurs do listen to others - selectively. These entrepreneurs also were not afraid to stake their reputations and livelihoods on uncharted territories.
