When Philip Verges started NewMarket
Technology Inc. in 1997, he traipsed around the
country to bring in new clients,
but when his office called him
one day to tell him it’d be a
squeaker to make payroll that
month, he was blindsided.
While he’d been doing a good
job of attracting new clients, he
realized that he had done a
poor job of collecting on his
receivables. He didn’t understand the balance sheet, and he
decided it was time to seek
advice from others who did.
Recognizing his weaknesses
and finding people who are
strong in those areas has
helped the chairman and CEO
take his company, which delivers systems integration and
emerging technology solutions,
to $93.1 million in revenue last
year.
Smart Business spoke with
Verges about how recognizing
your weaknesses can help you
grow your business.
Q. How does recognizing
your weaknesses help your
company?
The business’ strengths and
weaknesses reflect the entrepreneurial leader’s strengths
and weaknesses, so as the
entrepreneur overcomes weaknesses, that’s reflected in the
organization.
We all have our weaknesses.
In North America, we’ve had
this culture (develop) where we
don’t admit our weaknesses.
We hide them. I have a fun
game that I play in social settings. In conversations, just for
fun, I’ll admit a past problem or
issue I had ran into — whether
it’s parenting, business, management of my own credit card —
and as soon as one person
goes, then the room opens up,
and everybody starts rolling out
their mistakes and their problems and issues that they have.
Q. What weakness do you
have right now?
I have never grown a company from $100 million to $1 billion. While I have some ideas, I
need to get other people
involved that have that experience from the $100 million stage
to $1 billion.
It’s not difficult to identify people that have those experiences. What’s difficult is
to identify those people
that have those experiences and have the aptitude to be comfortable
inside the company that’s
just grown to that size.
I’ve been through a couple of great (chief operating officers) — very capable, great people, way
better resumes than me,
but ultimately, they’ve
been personally uncomfortable inside of the
organization.