There’s been a lot of talk in the news about how important the small business community is to the economy as they are the source of 65 percent of all new jobs created in the U.S. in the past 15 years. This week is set to be another important one for small businesses. Reuters says the Obama administration will hold a small business forum with lenders, lawmakers, regulators and business owners this Wednesday, November 18. The aim is to “define a new initiative to boost lending to smaller firms and help reverse U.S. job losses.”

I usually try to leave the politics at the door in my small business VerticalResponse, but when I noticed just how often small businesses are being included in political debates, I decided to investigate more.

So we set up a quick survey to ask our customers what they think. We also partnered with the Small Business Development Center, which helped us to reach 831 small businesses across America.

For me, one of the most concerning things reported in this survey was the difference in healthcare offered by small business of various sizes. A whopping 71.8 percent of businesses with one to 10 employees do not offer healthcare to employees, versus the 69.4 percent of businesses with 11 to 100 employees who do offer healthcare to employees. Some people may not be surprised by that statistic, but that’s no comfort to the small businesses that are currently unable to offer healthcare to their employees.

Seeing the huge disparity between small businesses on providing healthcare, you may think that we consistently saw differences reflected across all of our questions. This was definitely not the case. When we asked whether small businesses would cancel their current employer-provided coverage if given a public offering, only about 16 percent of respondents in both the one to 10, and 11 to 100 employee range said they would.

In the longer answer section, we saw that many of our customers chimed in with passionate opinions on this particular question. So we asked some of our local customers to elaborate on their survey results, and got two notable opposing views.

Theron Kabrich, CEO of San Francisco Art Exchange, had great reasons for supporting a public healthcare offering: “A public offering of healthcare unburdens small businesses and entrepreneurs alike, as it allows them to focus on core parts of their business such as innovations and new products. It also removes an unfair competitive advantage for small businesses when trying to attract the best employees, and levels the playing field.”

However, Leslie Hennessy, owner of Hennessy's Wines and Spirits, was on the other side of the fence for this one: "I don’t believe government-sponsored health care is a good thing for small businesses. Americans don't want socialized medicine, we want a free market."

Both of these VerticalResponse customers have between one and 10 employees, and completely different points of view. I’m not a policymaker, and I don’t profess to have all of the answers. However, I think the large difference in opinions between small businesses of different employee sizes highlights the need for the current government to consider the diversity of the small business community when deciding on public policy.

Regardless of whatever new initiatives are decided in the small business forum on November 18, I am happy that small businesses are front and center in the ongoing political debates. I know I’ll be watching them closely to see how VerticalResponse and our customers are affected. What are your feelings about healthcare? Please share your thoughts below.

I don’t know what kind of boss I am at VerticalResponse—you’d have to ask my staff about that. I think they’d say I’m fair, fun, I like to cut to the chase, and will use fewer words than most to try to get my point across. They’d probably say that as long as they’re getting their jobs done, I don’t interfere too much, and I’d like to think I try to remove obstacles for them. I hope that they’d say I believe in growth from within a company. I like to think I learned this from a few bosses in my past that just happened to be women.

Cut back to the early 90’s and my second job out of college when I was a sales assistant at a major media corporation in New York. I was privileged to have a wonderful boss, Tracy. I was a bit nervous to take the job because I was leaving one department to go to another and I felt guilty for leaving my current boss, but I was really in a dead-end position. Tracy really gave me a chance given that I didn’t know anything about sales in a media corporation and she went out of her way to help me grow.

Tracy was a nice, elegant, Southern woman, about late 30’s, and even though there was nothing pretentious about her, she probably made over $250K a year. She took me under her wing and made the time to sit with me and teach me the ropes. It was my job to make sure her sales orders got processed and instead of telling me to “just do it,” she explained why it had to be done. It took an investment of her time up front, which took away from her selling, but in the end, she knew it would benefit her.

Tracy had respect. When things were going awry with her clients, she never let it get to her and never blamed me. “What’s the worst thing that can happen?” she always said. She made me feel very much a part of her work life and let me really get to know our clients. And although I made a mere $19,000 a year, she always took care of me and encouraged me with spot bonuses and beautiful holiday gifts all tied to work well done.

In the end, she wanted to help elevate me so that one day, if I wanted it, perhaps I could “graduate” into a successful salesperson like her.

Now for the dark side.

When Tracy left her job, I was re-assigned to Liz. She was a tough, divorced, single, fast-moving, New Yorker who was looking to “climb to the top” and she was taking no prisoners on the way. Liz was anything but calm; she ran around the office shouting orders at me, but always stamped her shouts with a wink and a smile as if that would make me feel better about being yelled at. If something was going wrong with a client, her first thought was to point the finger at me: “Let me see the order YOU wrote up.” She rarely took responsibility.

She never made me feel like I was part of her accounts and often kept the clients to herself. I often wondered, Was she so shallow that she thought I would rise up through the ranks and compete with her? Or did she simply want to keep me in the current position forever and not help elevate a young up-and-comer?

You might be thinking I wasn’t lucky for having Liz in my life, but I don’t see it that way! I learned a lesson from her that year—what I don’t want to be and how I don’t want to treat people—which can be just as valuable.

When I started VerticalResponse we had just four employees. With such a tight knit group there wasn’t really a need for company or product training. We all knew everything that was happening, who our customers were, how our product worked, and how to sell it.

But what happens when a company starts to grow and the tight knit group starts to unravel? Inevitably you hire people you don’t know and people that might not know your product or market as well as you.

I can tell you that we waited way too long to start formally training our new employees, and for a while it showed. We didn’t take the time to invest early in our employees so that they understood our company, our customers, our culture, and our product.

One day I witnessed one of our salespeople who had been with the company for a few months selling something we didn’t offer. We could have lost a valuable sale and had an unhappy customer as a result. How could they not have known such a simple thing after months of being here? I cringed. So I put them through a demo of our product with three product experts. They failed miserably. I gave them two more shots. They rose to a C. Could they have gotten past a C with proper training? That remains to be seen. But what I did do that very weekend was go home and construct the first VerticalResponse training program. I also made it someone’s job at the company to train all new employees.

I take our training program very seriously. New employees are not only tested on a bit of history about the company, but everyone hired from finance to engineering is put through a training program made up of 12+ chapters. It culminates with a written quiz and a live demo. Engineers can see how our customers use our product so they can make more informed decisions when they write code. Finance can see exactly what they are accounting for, and obviously sales, support, and marketing know exactly what it is they’re selling and to whom.

It’s never too early to start your own training program in your company. It can start out being pretty simple depending on what your business is. Take the first week of a new employee’s time and really engage with them to make them feel welcome. You might follow these simple steps.

• Create a document that the employee can be walked through and refer back to.
• Go over how the company was started and what your story is. You want to get across why you’re passionate about what you do.
• Highlight your culture. If you’ve got published culture, bring them in on it early on.
• Get them understanding your products or services and who your customers are.

Investing up front in your new employees will save a lot of time -- and even customer service -- from all parts of your company in the long run, and it’ll show in your sales numbers. Start today.

Last week I was at the Inc. 500 Conference listening to Doug Tatum, CEO of Tatum LLC, an executive services consulting firm. He’s also the author of No Man’s Land, What to Do When Your Company is Too Big to be Small but Too Small to be Big.

I didn’t really know what I was in for, because I haven’t yet read his book, which was the basis of this session. Since there were over 200 people in the room, it seemed there was a lot of interest in what he had to say. Doug defined No Man’s Land as “fatal” for many businesses. Let me see if I can illustrate his graph with words.

The left hand side of the line graph showed smaller companies having less than 25 employees, which was higher in relation to the area for No Man’s Land. These companies are highly innovative and probably very productive.

But get much bigger, and you start to enter No Man’s Land—the huge middle area of the graph that slumped down. This is where the millions of businesses that are trying to power through growth end up. According to his statistics, 350,000 U.S. businesses survive this downward slump and make it out of No Man’s Land. These are typically companies that have more than 100 employees. In comparison, only 50,000 to 75,000 businesses make it beyond No Man’s Land into the safe zone. However, these companies are responsible for 65 percents of America’s jobs.

See how important small businesses are? It’s pretty scary in my opinion; only one in 10 companies actually survive No Man’s Land.

Doug then asked the room: Do your objectives fit better as a small giant or do you want to go through the transition of No Man’s Land? It was a great question for all of us because depending on your objectives it’s OK to go either way.

Let’s look at Doug’s 4 M’s when entering No Man’s Land: your market, management, model, and money.

Realign with Your Market & Customers

As a CEO early on you have your hands in everything. You have one hand in the operations and one hand on the customer. You can make promises you can deliver on. Because of this you are simple to do business with.

But as you grow, there’s a physical limit to your ability to direct the operations of your business. So other people take your place in making promises to the customer. These people may not have the instincts or judgment you have, and you may end up with a misalignment between your company and your customers.

To get through this, Doug says you need to follow this rule: identify a value proposition that’s unique to what you’re good at. The business has to focus on your same strengths in order to re-create market alignment. Everyone has to be on the same page -- your page.

He has one important note about this strategy: It’s ok to build a business around your personal talents, but you won’t scale to 200 people that way.

You need to also ask yourself, Are there promises I made that looking back I shouldn’t have? I know early on at VerticalResponse we took on some customers we probably shouldn’t have. Over time they were asking us to do things for them that other customers would never benefit from. This trend had us focusing resources away from many customers and focusing on one, which wasn’t the business we were growing into. It wasn’t scalable at all. We had to let a few customers go. Did I choke because of the revenue loss? You bet, but these promises weren’t scalable. When you’re small you want to keep everyone happy, as you get bigger you just can’t.

Hire Your Senior Management

Doug outlined the most terrifying emotional transition any entrepreneur can go through which is hiring their management team. If you want to enter No Man’s Land, you can’t have everyone on the management team learning how to build a large company. It’s a very dangerous position to put yourself in.

Doug mentions that the some people in your inner circle will have to change. Not all of them will make the transition. He illustrated that loyalty was the ticket to your inner circle in the early stages. Those team members were there when you couldn’t pay them. The truth is that you are going to need people who know more about building a business than they do. The new ticket to your inner circle needs to be performance, not loyalty.

I know VerticalResponse went through a stage where some of the people who got the company going and growing were at a point where they started to halt the growth of the company. I’m sure the employees at the time recognized it long before I did it, but we had to let them go to ensure that the company would maintain its growth and the shareholders would continue to be happy. It has been and continues to be one of the hardest parts of my job. It never gets easier.

Doug’s final point on hiring? As you get bigger your number one job is picking who should & shouldn’t be on the team.

Understand Your Model

Early on as a small giant you can be profitable and scale because you’re efficient. As you scale you hit fixed costs and you need to make sure to add more infrastructure according to what you can afford. Ask yourself, Where are the profit zones in my industry?

He talked about high-growth companies and how even as a profitable company you could dip into the no-profit zone if you’re not careful. A shocking thing he pointed out was that if you hire someone at $56K annually, the capital market equivalent would be borrowing $300K, or a seven- year 8 percent note!

Rule: Your value prop must be scalable!

At my company, we became profitable in 2005. We’ve maintained profitability while investing our profits back into the company to grow it. But it’s not easy. This year we’re at the point where we need to put more money than we ever have into infrastructure to scale our business. Luckily we recognized this early in the year so that we could budget for it.

Money

Doug’s point for this “M” was to watch your cash at all times. Even in a downturn, many businesses have an increase in cash. Why? You liquidate receivables. You are careful not to hire. You watch your bottom line. His point was that statistically you’re more likely to go out of business in the upturn not the downturn.

Rule: It’s all about reducing real and perceived risk of the company.

Adjust your business model for reality now. Generate your capital out of your business.
Doug hit a few nerves with me, that’s for sure. He started off his session saying he would be our doom and gloom guy, and he proved it! But hey, that’s OK. If we’re not feeling what Doug is talking about, either we love being small giants, or he scared us into staying small giants! It’s our own decision to go big or stay small. Thanks Doug!

Last week I was at the Inc. 500 Conference and caught a session with Michael Sheehan, CEO of Sheehan Associates. His company helps businesses, people, and government officials craft messaging. At this session he was discussing how hard it has become to get your message right and get it understood by your audience in a world where we all have information overload.

Michael stressed that your message isn’t your brand. I’ll admit, at first I was a bit confused by this. But he went on to give a couple of great examples, one of which was Nike. When Nike got bad press for working with overseas companies that employed young children that were barely paid, “Just Do It” was not their answer. With Coca Cola and the health debate, the “Coke Side of Life” isn’t their answer to childhood obesity. So he stresses that there is a concentration on branding but not necessarily messaging.

In Michael’s eyes we’ve got what he calls the “4 Horsemen of Contemporary Communication”; I call it “What we’re up against.”

• Homogenization of Information – Translation: There are far more channels of information for your customers and prospects to access -- it’s not just the newspaper anymore. You need to be defensive and offensive about all of your business communications. In my opinion, that means getting up to speed quick on Twitter to find out what your customers are saying about you in real time.
• Tsunami-like Characteristics of Issues – Translation: We used to have time to get our messaging correct if there was an issue that arose. Now issues hit big. Think Joe Wilson. Think Obama and the Cambridge Police.
• Speed Kill on the Informational Superhighway – Translation: Information is coming in from everywhere; things are covered as it happens. This puts pressure on businesses more than ever to respond quickly.
• One Word or Comment is all it Takes – We need to give more attention to what we say and how we say it so there are not misunderstandings in interpretation.

Finally, first impressions are lasting. Opinions are formed quickly and take forever to change.

What We Can Do About It

Michael must like 4’s because he also has 4 Principles of Bressaging (Brand + Messaging). I like that one BTW.

• (Clutter) – This one is in parenthesis because it’s negative. He quoted a stat that said the average person gets 3200 new pieces of data every day. So we need to learn to not clutter our messaging or our points.
• Salience – By definition salience is the state or quality of an item that stands out relative to neighboring items. How can you convince your different audiences (e.g.: customers, employees, suppliers) about your message and have it clear enough to be noticed?
• Simple – Be as straight forward as possible. Are your employees on the same page regarding what you do when they speak about your business? It needs to be simple or it won’t be heard.
• Repetition – You need to say it over and over, maybe in different ways to illustrate your message. You may have said it a million times, but there’s a new person every day that hasn’t heard it.

Michael ended his session with the advice to watch your language! No, he doesn’t mean cursing and swearing, he means watching the specific words you use. Do you use words that calm people down or create attention? One good example was an HMO he was working with who used the term “subscriber” instead of “patient,” and “provider” instead of “doctor”. It was off-putting to both sets of customers, so they changed how they were communicating. Another great example was the “surge” that President Bush was touting versus the “escalation” that the Democrats were using. It all depends on the message you’re trying to send.

It sounds to me like we all need to carefully watch what we write and how we speak. As entrepreneurs we’re all moving so fast that from time to time we should step back (pull back the camera as Erika Andersen was telling us to do at her session) and look at our key messages to make sure they make sense to everyone we talk to. I know I’m going home to do that at my company VerticalResponse.

Last week, I heard Jill Blashack Strahan, CEO of Tastefully Simple, speak on the main stage at the Inc. 500 Conference. Today Tastefully Simple is a $140 million company that sells easy to prepare food for busy people.

Jill’s story is interesting and inspirational. It actually started with the death of her brother when she was just 26, which was a major wake up call and ultimately what motivated her to start her business. The saying “Life is Short” became very real to her and she decided that it was time to DO something. She has three major points she lives by: Just Start, Know Where You’re Going, Don’t Stop.

Just Start

Jill claims that often times it’s actually the start that stops us. Many people just stop before they even have a chance to really start. You may or may not have a plan, but you’ve got to give yourself a shot.

Tastefully Simple started with $36K, and Jill’s mom kicked in another $15K just in case she needed it. She started her business in a shed with no running water, and packed packages on a pool table.

She had one employee (herself), and for a long while, she didn’t even take a salary. That was never really problem for her because at the time, she had never earned more than $14K in one year. I know a lot of business owners that have lived the “no pay” story, including myself.

She asked herself, “What’s the worse thing that can happen if I just start?” I think that was one of the best parts of her session.

Know Where You’re Going (not necessarily what you’re doing)

What I loved about Jill’s story of starting out was that she admitted she was clueless. Furthermore, she hated to cook, which actually became her message. She talked about how easy it was to prepare these meals, and that if she could do it, anyone could. In the first six months, she had seven consultants and $100K in sales. Jill’s biggest selling point was she believed that her business concept would work, and that in turn translated to customers.

Once she had faith, she was able to focus and pinpoint where she was going. She told herself and her employees that in five years the company would do $11 million in sales. Five years later, Tastefully Simple did $11.8 million in sales. It was about dreaming, believing, and working hard.

Don’t Stop

Two months after she started Tastefully Simple, her brother David was sentenced to prison for 20 years. Eight short months later her husband died, and she had a five-year-old son to raise on her own. Talk about a strong woman!

Jill told us that during that time, she thought a lot about giving up, and that’s what happens when we allow feelings of fear to take over. In her mind, fear is the gatekeeper to strength. She went on to say that we only get stronger when conquering our fears. Her best advice: get through fear.

In her situation of continual tragedy, she said to herself: “I will not accept this.” And she didn’t. Another great motto Jill lives by: “Get through it one minute at a time.”
How does she do it? Here are her tips:

1 – Compartmentalize in your mind; you have to put some things aside so you can control your present actions.
2 - Get through fear; get better or get bitter.
3 – Hang on to your supporters, your sunshine people. These are the people that walk into the room and make it light up.

All in all, this was a moving and inspirational story of a successful entrepreneur persevering and conquering the odds. Do you have a story where you persevered and conquered your own odds? Comment!

I'm at the Inc. 500 Conference, America's leading conference for entrepreneurs. I'm at a seminar listening to speaker Erika Andersen who is the CEO of Proteus International. Her company helps other companies think about ways to grow through being strategic. By the size of the room and the attendance of this session (130 people and full) it sure seems like entrepreneurs are craving information for how to grow in this economy.

Erika’s session is all about how to think and be strategic when it comes to your business. Her definition of strategic is “consistently making those core directional choices that will best move you toward your hoped-for future.” She believes it's particularly important for entrepreneurs because our businesses can be very volatile, and I couldn’t agree more.

What all companies need to start off with is a clear vision. Then strategy develops out of that. You as the leader need talk about vision so that everyone in your company knows where you're heading. In Erika’s opinion, you need to be thinking 4 years out for your vision.

Then it comes to strategy. Erika talks of strategy being something that you think about 1+ years in the future, enough time to see your desired result. She was kind enough to hand out a template for thinking strategically and we all walked through it for our own businesses. What a great template that any business can put to work now. I’ve shared it below.

Overarching Issue: What is your challenge?

1. Ask yourself what isn't working. One example is there might be a disconnect between what your customers are asking for and what your team is providing. Sales might think the product they sell has the features it needs. The product team also thinks the product has all the features it needs. Your customers are saying the product doesn't meets their needs.
2. Ask yourself how can I/we fix this? For example, you might try talking to the customers and find that they just didn’t know about the features and benefits you provide.
3. Ask yourself, would this feel like success?

I wrote down that at my company VerticalResponse one of our challenges is that we need to be more customer-focused. What’s your challenge?

Through this entire process Erika outlines a common thread you need to be aware of:
Become a fair witness - You need to be neutral and objective. Ask yourself; "Am I being accurate and true to myself about my situation?"

Pull back the camera - People that don't can be too tactical. See the situation you’re assessing from a wider lens and what effects any decisions you make would have.

Sort for Impact - Can you figure out what the impact of your decisions will be?

Once you’re clear on this, get clear on your current situation. You need to know where you’re starting from relative to the challenge.

Envision: What's Your Hope?

1. Pick a timeframe that's appropriate relative to the size of your challenge.
2. Imagine yourself there. Ask yourself what's it like to be there?
3. Describe it - Pick out 5-6 key elements and describe them.

Face What's in the Way

1. List the things that can get in the way of your vision and the challenge you want to overcome.
2. Define how you’ll overcome them.

For VerticalResponse a few hurdles included access to people resources and capital for equipment. We found that by looking at our overall budgets and seeing what we could do without, we could find the money and the resources.

Determine: What's the Path to get there with Strategy?

1. What does the roadmap look like?
2. What do you need to accomplish to overcome your challenges?

At VerticalResponse for instance our strategies are to give even better customer service and offer a better product that is more reliable.

What's the path to get there with Tactics or Action items?

1. Tactics need to arise from strategy
2. Tactics need to be FIT (Feasible, Have a high Impact, a bang for your buck and Timely)
3. Tactics include a Who, What, and When (Here’s where you don't pull back the camera, you’re laser-focused)
4. Tactics take 6+ months to see any changes in your business.

At our company we’ve put more effort into our CRM tool so that our Customer Service reps will have access to the customer. We’re also developing new features for our customers in the next 6 months, and we’ve beefed up the back-end of our product to be more reliable. Of course all of these come with a ton of tactics, but I won’t bore you with them.

Being Strategic is an Ongoing Process.

You should be looking at your progress every quarter or 6 months to assess how it’s going or if things need to change. To do that assess:

1. What is Now
2. Re-confirm The Hope
3. Re-assess What's in the Way
4. Revise the Path

One thing we do at VerticalResponse is have an executive offsite every 6 months to go over where we are, what's happened in the industry, and where we need to focus for the next 6 months.

The great thing that Erika ended on was a quote from Michelangelo: “We’re still learning.” I think it’s something all entrepreneurs need to be aware of. I sure am.

I'll admit it, I love watching any TV show with Gordon Ramsay in it, but “Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares” is my current favorite. He’s the antithesis of the stereotypical woman leader; he’s brazen and harsh. He swears like a sailor and belittles people. Not my style of leadership, but it makes for great TV.

I like the show because he gets down into the inner workings of a small business and peels away the onion to find any issues that might be hampering the business from growing.

So, I've outlined 6 things we can all learn from Gordon Ramsay, followed by a question you can ask yourself to see how you rate by his business strategy.

#1 - It all starts with the customer.

One of the first questions Chef asks the restaurant he is working with is how many people have reserved for the evening. More often than not, it's a pretty low number, so he observes for a night to find out why. In most cases (or there wouldn't be a TV show) there are serious issues with the way the entire restaurant is run.

He also takes to the streets; in many shows he walks the streets of the town to observe other restaurants and he'll stop people and ask what they think about the restaurant he's trying to help.

Question: When was the last time you surveyed your customers to find out what they think about your business, your product or your service?

#2 - Chef Ramsay gets at the foundation of the business.

He wants to get to know the owner of the place to find out how the business got into bad shape in the first place. He wants to see the owner's passion for what they do. He works with the staff to make sure they have a proper foundation and that the person leading the charge is truly leading the charge.

Then he gets into the real foundation of the business. According to Ramsay, success starts with a clean kitchen and in many cases that's the first thing that gets done.

Question: When was the last time you did a proper "cleaning" of your business to make sure it’s in order? It could be cleaning out old inventory lying around or it could be actually cleaning up your office environment. Spring cleaning is always a great idea for a fresh start!

#3 - The product needs to be good.

Chef wants to know who is making the food and what ingredients are being used. He wants to know if the staff is capable of doing what needs to be done. Then he works with them to make a great product (in this case, menu) and changes the way they think about what they're making and how they're presenting it.

Question: Is your product or service the best it can be? What would it take to get it to the next level? Do you need to change the way your staff thinks?

#4 - The experience needs to be good.

Ramsay will go to the extent of training the staff himself to make sure that reservations are being booked in a way that doesn’t overflow the kitchen. He'll make sure that the staff is offering entrées that the kitchen can make quickly and tries to get them thinking about the customer experience. Then he'll go to extremes and redesign the restaurant and give it a clean, friendly and updated look. Doing this has often given the staff a morale boost, which often leads to a great experience.

Question: When was the last time you looked at your location, or your website? Putting a fresh coat of paint on your walls, changing your front door entrance, or reducing the number of clicks your website visitors have to go through might be just the thing your business needs.

#5 - A business needs to market itself.

Obviously you can't get the word out without a great product and a great experience, but now there's something to talk about. My favorite thing about this show is that Chef knows how important it is to get the word out, from the signage out front to winning over customers on the street. For an Indian food restaurant, he had Indian dancers perform in the neighborhood and hand out food; for a Soul Food restaurant he set up an outdoor BBQ and gave food away. He's a true marketer at heart, which is what I love about him.

Question: What creative things are you doing to get the word out for your business?

#6 - Get back to the customer.

After it's all said and done, Chef Ramsay asks for feedback. After the dining experience, he wants to keep the business in check so getting comment cards back from the customers is critical.

Question: Are you asking your customers for feedback constantly?

There you have it, 6 reasons why I think there's a lot to learn from Gordon Ramsay. The meat of why he’s effective is laid out above; imagine what can happen when you interpret these tips with your own special sauce.

I'm really proud that for the 4th year in a row, VerticalResponse has made the Inc. 500|5000 list. I was recently asked what I get out of being on the list and it took me just minutes to count the ways.

Good company We're in the company of so many other great companies and successful leaders

It's great for company morale It's a stamp of approval for being a strong company that continues to grow. Our employees are proud of our achievements, especially being among the top 5000 of so many millions of private companies out there.

It helps us attract the best talent In this tough economy, potential employees are looking to awards and company rankings to determine who will prosper in the future. The Inc. 500 logo on our website stands out in the crowd!

It makes us strive What company doesn't want to strive to stay on an elite list?

It's strategic VCs and the banking community look to this list for powerful growers. When and if we want to raise money, our name is known.

It's a conversation starter We have something in common with other companies we want to do business with. If there is a partnership to be had, we can point to the fact that we're both successful and growing Inc. 500 companies then continue on from there.

It's a recipe for success So many Inc. companies have gone on to grow, be profitable, get purchased, or do an IPO; we could be one of them.

When will it be your year to be listed?

Here at VerticalResponse, because of the nature of our low-cost, easy-to-use e-mail marketing solution, we tend to cater to a lot of small businesses. We have a pretty low risk product with a free online trial. Because of this, we attract all walks of life on the business front from the mom and pop shop, to a company that has 500 employees and umpteen thousand customers.

Over the course of the eight years we’ve been in business, we’ve had to “break up” with a bunch of customers for various reasons, and you know what I’ve come to terms with? It’s OK. Not every customer is right for every business.

It’s really all about what type of company you’re setting out to be, what your core values are, and how you handle the situation. It doesn’t matter what your business is -- you could be an online software company or even a dentist’s office -- from time to time you’ll have to deal with an unwanted customer. I’ve outlined a few break-up scenarios we’ve gone through over the course of our eight years that will hopefully shed some light on why it’s OK to walk away.

It’s Not You, It’s Me

Problem: A large retail company outgrew our services and wanted us to use our resources to develop features for them specifically, instead of giving our thousands of other customers the features they needed.

Solution: I swallowed a tough pill (the loss was thousands of dollars per month) but decided to build features for the masses instead of the one big gun that might leave at any moment anyway. We did our diligence for a few companies that catered to larger businesses and provided them a three-month window to transition.

You Dined and Dashed

Problem: We had a customer who continued to use our service but wouldn’t pay. I gave him five months to pay with a lot of notices, both e-mail and verbally. Not only did he not pay attention, but he also lied and every few weeks told us the checks had been cut.

Solution: I gave him a two-week notice to find another provider and a harsh date of when we’d cease service. This time I stuck to it. You don’t want to send the message to customers and employees that it’s OK not to be paid for services rendered. It took me a while but I finally did it.

It’s Not Me, It’s You

Problem: Respect for customers, colleagues, and our company is at the core of our values here at VerticalResponse. So when a customer was berating one of the team members at all hours of the day and night for no good reason, obviously I had a problem with that. We like to think the “customer is always right,” but there’s no sense in taking continued abuse and making morale diminish internally, even at the prices they were paying.

Solution: I had a talk with the CEO of that company and gave them two weeks to find a new provider. I gave them my recommendations for a company with a more “hands on” feel so that they had a team of people to go to when they needed them and sent them on their way.

You Dropped a Bomb on Me, Baby

Problem: A customer was violating our Terms and Conditions.

Solution: We always approach all of our issues with an open mind, but in this instance we found that a customer was obviously in violation and would never “right their wrongs.” In this case they were instantly terminated, but in a friendly way.

Like I said, not every customer is right for every business. Taking on the wrong type of customer and chasing the almighty short-term dollar may or may not be good for your business in the long run. You should always think about not forfeiting the long-term growth of your business by focusing too much on what may be an unhealthy short-term customer.