Jason Kaplan is not an advocate of driving blindly, yet when he looks back at when he launched his chauffeured transportation business, The Driver Provider, he attributes some of his success to his naiveté. He came up with concept in 1995 and, in 1997, sold his car to lease his first company vehicle — which he drove himself, working odd hours to gain clients — and then … [More]
Todd Davis: Building LifeLock on Technology and Trust
As Todd Davis, founder of LifeLock, has learned first-hand, success comes from identifying an issue society is facing and then creating a new, easily identifiable industry to help solve it. Just as Kimberly-Clark Corp. got people asking their friends to hand them a “Kleenex” rather than a “facial tissue,” Davis set out to create a company that would not only solve a serious … [More]
John Leonesio: Forging Chains of Success
Referring to his decades of experience creating successful businesses, John Leonesio, CEO of The Joint…the chiropractic place, jokingly refers to himself as a “one-trick pony.” His “trick”? Growing four businesses from the idea stage to hundreds of locations around the country. The key, Leonesio says, is taking specific parts of industries that need to be improved, finding a … [More]
Ted Schuman: Master of Communications Skills
Nearly 20 years ago while working for a long-distance company called Allnet Communications, Ted Schuman decided he had the necessary tools to run his own telecommunications company, so he saved up some money, took out a line of credit, and became CEO of what would eventually become an award-winning company. PlanetOne Communications, providing businesses with a free audit of … [More]
Jerry Mills: Breakthrough CFO Model
The company’s upcoming 25th anniversary and a recent string of awards are solid validation of the pioneering concept on which Jerry Mills, founder and chief executive officer of Phoenix-based B2B CFO, founded his company. Back in the mid-1980s, while he was a manager with Arthur Andersen & Company, Mills came up with the idea of creating a company that would provide CFO … [More]
Ann Siner Gives First-Class Appeal to Second-Hand Shops
If there is one thing Ann Siner has learned in her almost-20 years as chief executive officer of My Sister’s Closet, it is to never rest on her laurels. “We can have a good year, and sales will be great, but we will not take it easy. I am always looking ahead,” says Siner, who founded the company that will celebrate its 20-year anniversary in August. My Sister’s Closet is a … [More]
Prescription for Success
As John Musil, Pharm.D., founder, president and chief executive officer of The Apothecary Shops, has learned first-hand, the key to creating a successful company is positioning it in a unique niche in a crowded market. With that in mind, when Musil opened his company on May 1, 1996, he focused on one main goal: to provide his customers with knowledgeable and approachable … [More]
Perseverance: How Sweet It Is
How do you get from selling a sweet herb called stevia out of your garage to being head of the leading U.S. manufacturer of stevia products? In a word: perseverance. James May, founder and president of Wisdom Natural Brands, maker of SweetLeaf Sweetener®, recalls being introduced to stevia, a naturally sweet herb from Paraguay, in 1982. He says a friend of a friend who had … [More]
Making the Web Human: A Healthy Sense of Business
If anyone knows about silver linings, it’s Michelle King Robson. The vivacious entrepreneur is founder, chairperson and CEO of EmpowHER, a health media company for women. But it was less than a decade ago that this dynamo was physically ill enough to have moments so dark that she considered taking her own life. Still, she wouldn’t change the past. “I am so happy now that I … [More]
Small but Mighty in Business
CaseTech, Inc., a distributor of reusable shipping cases, did the impossible during a recession: It increased its revenue by 311 percent in the past three years. This earned CaseTech the #11 spot among Arizona companies on Inc. Magazine’s 2010 Inc. 500 awards for fastest-growing private companies — 958th nationally. The woman-owned company of six people in a small office in … [More]
