Darragh Fitzpatrick believes in making things simple. As a partner and Executive VP at The Tabush Group, a cloud and IT managed services provider, he says his business is built on three key pillars: simplifying IT, promoting productivity, and helping its customers scale. And during his time as a fellow at the Birthing of Giants program, Darragh realized that keeping things simple applies to his role as well—since he needs to extricate himself from core parts of the business’s day-to-day running to focus on growth. 

The Tabush Group has doubled in size in the last seven years. Today, it has 28 employees and close to $7 million in annual revenue, which has grown by 20% every year. Darragh says the key to the company’s success is its focus on recurring revenue, which makes up about 65% of its sales.

Scaling was on Darragh’s mind when he set his one-year plan at the Birthing of Giants program in April. But that plan is made up of three parts, and he recognizes that the first—trusting his team to take over the running of things he had previously handled himself—is by far the hardest. Joining fellow business leaders at the Gathering of Giants event in January offered him some much-needed distance to recharge and reflect.

“I think it’s so necessary to take yourself away from it all, be around people who are all doing the same things, so we can all have clear minds and just focus on those things,” he says. “This pitstop allows me to look back at what I’ve done in the last eight months.”

Talking to like-minded entrepreneurs helped Darragh see the missteps he’s taken along the path to his one-year growth plan.

“I made some mistakes that I identified by talking to some people,” he said. Some were beyond his control, like a complicated partnership that came with some unexpected challenges, despite being positive overall. Others he’s dedicated to working on, refocusing his energies on finding the right people to lead the processes that are a drain on his time.

The Gathering of Giants event also gave Darragh a chance to reflect on his company’s culture. To extricate himself from daily processes, he realized that a culture of accountability was vital.

“What came out of that was, it’s not my job to hold people accountable,” he says. “It’s to make them understand that they’re accountable themselves to the standards set.”

Theresa Smith has a few big transitions ahead of her. She is currently in the process of becoming CEO at her company NaturaLawn of America, where she was previously Marketing Director. A provider of natural, environmentally-friendly lawn care products and services, NaturaLawn today makes 98% of its revenue from its treatment services. But Theresa hopes that under her leadership, the burgeoning retail side of the business will bloom. 

“I don’t see why the retail side can’t either be equal to the service side of the business or even dwarf it,” she says. “There’s always going to be people who want someone to do their lawn for them, and there’s always going to be people who want to do it themselves.”

When she was last at Birthing of Giants, Theresa set herself the one-year goal of breaking even on the retail line. Within five years, she’s hopefully that this side of the business will grow to account for 15% of its revenue. Speaking to her fellow entrepreneurs at the program has made her more confident about this ambitious goal.

“It’s helped give me the confidence that, yes, this is a good idea, and don’t be afraid to fail,” she says. “It’s scary, but it’s true.”

A few conversations in particular opened gave Theresa a new perspective on the marketing possibilities of her product. She recalls that one entrepreneur advised against placing all her eggs in one online basket.

“He said that Amazon is not the be all and end all, but just another platform like Google to get brand awareness and then direct people back to your website,” she says. “Which is something I wanted to do but didn’t know how.”

Another entrepreneur gave Theresa some savvy advice about Facebook marketing, which her company had dabbled in but found little success with.

“We didn’t put a full effort into it,” she admits. “[They] said you should give it another go, because if you’re not making money on Facebook ads, something’s wrong.”

Joining her fellow entrepreneurs at the program gave Theresa the opportunity to get out of her own head and look at her business with a fresh set of eyes. During such an important transition, this kind of clarity is especially valuable.

“This has really helped me get out of my comfort zone, hear good ideas outside of my business model, and stay accountable to the plan,” she says.

When Anthony Abdy joined the Birthing of Giants program last year, he was looking for the next big challenge. As the president of Stonework Design and Consulting, Inc., a stone and tile contractor serving the construction industry in the tri-state area of New York, Anthony had recently achieved a large milestone for his company and was considering his next move. 

“Before I became part of this program, I set the goal for myself to really get the business on autopilot,” he said. “It took a while to get there, and then I was thinking, what now? What do I need to be doing as the CEO and the founder?”

Anthony’s 48-person company saw revenue of $15 million this year. But the entrepreneur admits that maintaining this momentum is one of his biggest concerns.

“What keeps me up at night is sustainability, and to keep the credit growth and interest growth we’ve been experiencing over the last five years,” he says.

After attending the Birthing of Giants event in September, Anthony set himself a new one-year plan: to target other sectors of his market review. When he returned in January for the Gathering of Giants meeting, he was on track to meet his goal and eager to continue refining it.

“I’ve implemented those goals by identifying the people that I need to work with in the market,” he reveals. “I’ve built relationships with them, and started some RFPs with them. I was able to implement with some failures and some successes.”

Anthony initially intended to pursue his one-year goal with only his existing staff. But after talking to his fellow entrepreneurs and weighing the options, he decided he need to bring others onboard.

“There’s just too much on the table,” he says. “It helped me bring the right people to the right seats.”

Despite a few setbacks, Anthony says he’s pleased with the progress he’s made and is optimistic about what the future holds for him and his company.

“I’ve made a lot of discoveries over the last year about myself,” he reflects. “Doing work like this really guides you in the right direction. I’m definitely excited.”

Hailing from the fast-moving world of tech, Angela Nadeau is always excited to have her mindset challenged. Her company CompuData is a successful Philadelphia-based IT services provider that specializes in enterprise resource planning (ERP) and cloud solutions, particularly for companies with a large data components. Today, CompuData has more than 40 employees and is approaching $10 million in revenue for the year. But during her time at the Birthing of Giants Fellowship Program, Angela says her fellow entrepreneurs have suggested both expansion and downsizing—and these perspectives have given her plenty to think about.

“Everybody has new, original thoughts—things that I hadn’t thought of before,” Angela explains. “And they’re not just pulling them from the top of their heads: they have experiences with these things and can tell you about them confidently.”

Angela’s conversations with fellow business leaders proved especially constructive when she joined us for the Gathering of Giants at West Point in January. In September of last year, she set herself the one-year plan of rethinking the different verticals that her company is targeting. Since then, opportunities for acquisition have caused her priorities to shift. She was pleased to be able to talk frankly about this with her peers, since such discussions are not always possible with employees.

“Some of these things, like mergers and acquisitions, aren’t things that you talk about with a lot of people,” she says. “So it’s really good to be open and honest here, and everybody gives you good feedback.”

Ultimately, Angela says that the Birthing of Giants Fellowship Week and her conversations with the other fellows have allowed her to look at her business with a fresh set of eyes. Her perspectives have been challenged and that, she thinks, is a positive thing.

Jere Simpson loves it when a plan comes together. As President and CEO of KITEWIRE Inc., a software development company that serves high security government departments and corporate security clients, made the Inc. 5000 list in 2016 for the third consecutive year in a row, Jere is a big believer in setting detailed strategic plans for his business that he’s diligent about measuring. He calls it his playbook, identifying what each department and employee needs to do to help KITEWIRE reach its goals—and letting him see which plays have worked, and which haven’t. 

When he was last at Birthing of Giants in April, Jere laid out a high-level six-year plan that he segmented into three-year and one-year goals. After returning to his company, he broke it down even further.

“We took that home and really started dissecting it into minutiae,” he says. “We actually broke it all the way down to the day.”

“I’m in a bit of an echo chamber in my industry,” he says. “The thing that’s been really valuable for me is listening to how people solved things in other industries. Often their solutions apply to ours and no one in our industry had thought of it. It spurs some really good ideas.”

The opportunity to receive an outsider’s perspective on the challenges his company is facing has been rewarding for Jere—but it’s also required him to adopt a new mindset himself.

“It’s a practice to say these are the things that keep me up at night—to be vulnerable,” he admits. “It takes a bit of jostling.”

Jere is confident that he’s moving in the right direction. That confidence has been bolstered by the clear plan he began developing at the program, and by the guidance he’s received from the community.

“I feel like I have more structure in place, so that when the winds of change come, I’ll feel less shaken by them,” he says.

John McDonald faced a big decision when he joined his fellow entrepreneurs at the Gathering of Giants event this January. His company Semihandmade, Inc. creates custom doors for Ikea-brand kitchen, bathroom, closet, and media cabinets, and when he was last at the Birthing of Giants Fellowship Program in September, John set himself the one-year plan of formalizing his company’s relationship with Ikea. But after some reflection, he’s uncertain if this is the way to go.

“At this point, I’m still on the fence about whether that’s the right course of action,” he says. “We’ve had a lot of success without it.”

Part of John’s dilemma is deciding what role he envisions for himself in the company’s future. If he successfully executes the plan he set, he will likely sell the company.

“If I want to just grow the company and sell it, that’s the way to go,” he says. “If I want to be around, to continue to expand what we do and go from a product-based company to a lifestyle brand, then we’re better off steering clear.”

Speaking to his fellow entrepreneurs at the program has helped John weigh up the pros and cons of each option. He says that even conversations over lunch have given him a lot to think about.

“Part of the value for me is coming here, being locked in a room, and talking to people who on the surface don’t do anything similar to what I do, but really they do,” he reflects. “They have a lot of clarity that I don’t have because I’m so close to things.”

Regardless of the direction he ultimately takes, John’s one-year plan has helped him lay strategic groundwork that will help the business grow, increasing brand awareness and putting the company in a position to build the crucial relationships it may need.

Stephen Fernands is a problem solver at heart. His company Customized Energy Solutions, a 10-time Inc. 5000 honoree, helps businesses save money by providing customized management services in the wholesale and retail gas markets.

But after attending Birthing of Giants Fellowship Week in September, Stephen realized that he needs to spend more time problem-solving for his own business, and allow others to do that for his clients.

“You should be doing the thing that you’re best at, as opposed to things that you enjoy but that you’re not necessarily the best at,” he says, reflecting on his biggest takeaways from the program so far. While he enjoys consulting with clients, he acknowledges that there may be others at the company who are better at it than he is—while the most important work he can do to help the company grow simply can’t be delegated to anyone else.

Stephen set himself the one-year goal of developing a software roadmap that would allow the company’s systems to become a leading business process outsourcing solution for electric and natural gas companies. Initially, he thought that taking a more hands-off role in the technology side of the business was the best move he could make. To his surprise, his fellow entrepreneurs told him to be more hands-on in the tech side and to remove himself from other tasks.

“Like most ideas in retrospect, it makes a lot of sense,” he says. While the company integrates its complex software solutions, his problem-solving prowess will be invaluable.

Discussing the challenges that other business leaders face has also helped Stephen find clarity in another area.

“Hearing people talk about partners definitely has reinforced my desire to stay the sole owner of the company!” he explains.

Stephen says he’s already met many of the milestones he set for himself along the path to his one-year goal. He’s merged several teams, brought his business line leads together to discuss their tech visions, and is working toward creating a culture of continuous learning.

“The work that was done in September was tremendously helpful for me,” he says. “It helped clarify my own thinking.”

For Todd Graves, making the trip from Oklahoma to New York for the Gathering of Giants event in January offered a chance for the entrepreneur to gain some clarity. His company Graves Golf Academy is made up of three core offerings—a physical golf school, retail instructional golf products, and an online instructional course. With 20 employees and an annual revenue of around $5 million, business is booming—but Todd recognizes that he needs to step back to gain some perspective before he can move forward.

“This class is a way to get some optics on your business,” he says. “It’s a bunch of people trying to pull you by the arm out of your business to take a look at it, and that’s what I get most out of it.”

This is a common theme among entrepreneurs who take part in the program. It often takes a fresh set of eyes to analyze what’s going wrong and where the biggest opportunities for growth lie.

“Entrepreneurs are way too close to our business—we’ve dug ourselves in, and half of us are trying to dig our way out,” Todd says. “Every one of these meetings, someone will bring up something that they see objectively that I should have thought of, but it’s almost too simple.”

A lot has changed for Todd since he attended Birthing of Giants Fellowship Week in September. A large-scale restructuring effort has seen his marketing division and golf school rolled into a single company to improve performance. Now Todd is considering which areas of his business are most scalable, and the systems he will need to put in place to make that growth happen.

“The meeting in September allowed us to really look at the company and decide where we would focus the most attention,” he says. “We all want clarity, and that’s helped a lot.”

Todd’s discussions with his fellow entrepreneurs at the program have helped him gain a clearer understanding of the issues he’s facing, and potential solutions.

“A big part of the Birthing of Giants group is you get to see problems being solved from a lot of different perspectives,” he says. “Entrepreneurs are not afraid to make mistakes—it’s about finding ways to do it better the next time.”

Overall, Todd says the program has helped him find the clarity he needed to push his business in the right direction.

“When you get that kind of clarity, you just go for it and you figure it out as you go,” he says. “I’m not guessing anymore.”

As CEO of Heritage Building Maintenance, Greg Theroux has seen business soar in the last six years. Heritage Building Maintenance is the legacy company of The Heritage Group, which saw an annual revenue of $3.4 million in 2016—netting it a spot on the Inc. 5000 list for the second year in a row. But while looking toward the company’s future, Greg says that relaying its past is no small feat. 

“Probably the biggest challenge when people say ‘what’s your plan?’ is explaining what led me to this day, why I took this route—without taking four hours,” he reflects.

As a fellow at the Birthing of Giants Fellowship Program, Greg encountered this problem when discussing his company with fellow entrepreneurs. But at a time when he is making several strategic hires, he believes these discussions have helped him to better articulate his company’s past and future.

“I think this is helping me explain it to other people in the office,” he says. “Having this growth pattern come up this quick is difficult. It’s been interesting and challenging.”

Greg set himself the one-year plan of increasing revenue for the Heritage Group by 30%. He hopes to achieve this through the sudden growth of another company under its umbrella, Heritage Microbial Control, which provides health-driven infection control services.

Since he last met with his fellow entrepreneurs at Birthing of Giants Fellowship Week in September, he admits there have been some setbacks along the way, like a crucial hire that ultimately didn’t work out. But Greg says his time at the program has helped him realize that he’s not alone in facing these issues.

“The one thing I’ve noticed is that we’re all different, but we all have extremely similar challenges,” he says. “Everyone is in a growth mode, and everyone wants to go to the next level. Sometimes by helping them, it truly helps me, too.”

Greg says he hopes to communicate more with his fellow business leaders over the coming months. He feels confident about the direction his company is moving in, and says his time at the program has helped shape and refine his growth mindset.

“I think that I’m better poised to make that transition,” he says. “This has helped the organization get more on the fast track. We would get there, but I don’t think we’d get there as quickly, efficiently, or as thoughtfully without this.”

Gaining a new perspective has helped Michael Ellison finally kickoff a plan he’s had for years. As President of Corporate Insight, Inc., a New York-based research and consulting firm that helps companies improve their digital offerings, Michael has long considered buying out his business partner. But it wasn’t until he spoke to his fellow entrepreneurs at the Birthing of Giants Fellowship Program that he decided it was time to get the ball rolling.

“It’s always been something on my mind, but they helped me recognize it even faster.”

Initially, Michael set himself the one-year goal of putting together a stellar management team to help take his company to the next level. He was surprised by the response this plan received.

“I had it all wrapped up in a nice pretty package,” he reflects. “And then I presented it on the last day and everyone said, ‘That’s not your goal. Your goal is you need to move forward in buying out your business partner.’”

For Michael, there’s an extra complication to this plan. His business partner is also his father. But after attending the Birthing of Giants Fellowship Program in September, he broached the topic for the first time and began conversations with his advisors. By June, he intends to present three vetted options to his partner, along with a vision of where he sees the company going.

“It’s given me confidence to realize I have support for when that next step comes,” he says.

Meeting with his fellow entrepreneurs has also given Michael a much-needed opportunity to talk frankly about his business and the challenges he faces.

“It’s nice to talk business with people,” he says. “I have 50 employees and I can’t talk about all the challenges to all of them. There are things they don’t need to know and that they wouldn’t understand. So it’s nice to have an environment where I can connect with other business owners, share war stories, and wrestle with some issues.”

The Birthing of Giants community offered Michael a fresh set of eyes to help him see what was right in front of him. He says he’s learned a lot from the other fellows, and enjoys the opportunity to pick their brain.

“You get an outside perspective from folks who are not so close to the problems you see on a day-to-day basis,” he explains. “Even though we’re all in different businesses, we all have successful businesses and we all have challenges.”

Nick Sotos calls himself an eternal optimist, and that mindset seems to be paying off. As President of iD Additives, Inc., a supplier of foaming agents and other products for the plastics industry, his leadership has helped the company make the Inc. 5000 list six times since 2011. Today, iD Additives makes around $8 million annually in sales—and Nick’s plans for growth are only just beginning.

When he attended Birthing of Giants Fellowship Week in September, Nick set himself the one-year goal of getting the company’s new product line to market and increasing the brand’s visibility. His plan worked out so well that several new opportunities have arisen from it.

“We have the marketing and we have the opportunities,” Nick says. “Now I need people to help me with the follow up.”

Part of this follow up requires Nick to take a step back from some aspects of the business. In the past, he viewed himself as an entrepreneur who does everything. But during his time at Birthing of Giants, he’s come to realize that this isn’t sustainable.

“That’s how I’ve always done things,” he says. “But I’ve learned to think about getting stuff off of my plate, letting other people grow into those spots, so that we can continue to grow.”

This is one of many realizations Nick has had since joining the program—and not all of them have been easy. He recalls one instance when he pitched his plan to Norm Brodsky only to receive some challenging questions he hadn’t expected. Despite his initial hesitancy, he admits that Norm was right, and he’s pleased to have had his mindset challenged.

“Sometimes it’s a little difficult, a little uncomfortable,” he says. “But you have to trust in the process. It’s advice and you’re going to choose to do what you want to do, but having someone with that level of experience offering you advice helps you rethink things.”