Richard Howe wouldn’t call himself a “turnaround guy,” but based on his track record of turning around struggling companies, some of his peers might.
“I’m not a ‘turnaround guy’ just because I’ve done three turnarounds,” Howe says. “You get kind of branded that way, but I’m not really the turnaround guy. Really, I’m a business grower.”
As president and CEO of Inuvo Inc., Howe has already helped reposition the $50 million company to generate fourth quarter revenues 46 percent higher than the same quarter of 2009, which was also the year he joined Inuvo. Part of his strategy to accomplish this was improving Inuvo’s organizational structure to eliminate inefficiency and better carry out the company’s vision.
“I’ve run about a dozen businesses and three of them were turnarounds, and they all have similar characteristic traits to them,” Howe says. “One specifically, is the company has been excessive in its spending of money, so that needs to be curtailed. The costs need to get under control. Two, the team, the people around you often need to be changed, retooled and improved.”
One of the biggest expenses most companies have is in employee head count.
“I believe in team, so I spend a lot of time making sure we have the right people in the right roles in the company,” Howe says.
“You go through an exercise of evaluating staff. We created a system and the system had variables in it, different characteristic traits for what constitutes a great employee and what constitutes a not-so-great employee, and we rank ordered them. We took a look and said, ‘Going forward, what are the parts of the company that we’re going to focus on? From the collection of resources that we have and scores that we’ve gotten from everybody, who’s best to help us achieve the vision of the company?’”
