If there’s a common theme among the 2009 Cascade Capital Corp. Business Growth Award honorees, it’s that the spirit of entrepreneurship is alive and well in the region.
Despite a tough economy, 32 companies are being honored this year, having demonstrated five years of growth — either in the number of employees or in revenue. Getting to this point wasn’t easy, and dogged persistence played a huge role.
That’s where entrepreneurship comes in.
Many professional managers are problem solvers. After the founders have done all they can do, managers are brought in to take a company to the next level, to turn around organizations in trouble or to lead combined entities after mergers or acquisitions.
They do these things quite well, but that doesn’t make them entrepreneurs.
Entrepreneurs are those people who go to sleep thinking about the baby they founded. They’re the ones kept awake in the middle of the night by ideas rattling around in their heads about how to beat the competition. And they’re the people who wake up in the morning with a fire in their belly, ready to grab the helm and steer the ship through uncharted waters.
The 2009 Legacy Award winner, Shearer’s Foods Inc., and our Entrepreneurial Spirit Award honoree, Keeven White of WhiteSpace Creative, both embody an entrepreneurial spirit.
White founded his marketing agency in 1994 after working at The Little Tikes Co. He relies on a strong work ethic that was instilled in him as a youth. With more than 25 professionals who mirror his passion for wowing clients and giving back to the community, WhiteSpace has quietly become one of those scrappy, growing organizations that most people wish they worked at.
At Shearer’s, CEO Bob Shearer views his more than 800 employees as a large group of entrepreneurs, and he continually seeks ways to push future leaders forward. Shearer welcomes employee input at every level and views it as a key ingredient in forging a lean, competitive snack-food maker that has been able to grow when its competitors were struggling.
There are 30 more companies just like these two, and I invite you to read about them in this month’s issue. Their successes work as models for how to rise above the circumstances we all face in business, during good economic times and bad.
Contact executive editor Dustin S. Klein at [email protected]..