Saving the “Gazelles”
By Tom Salonek, EO Minnesota member and CEO of Intertech
Eight years ago, when my company made the list of the 500 fastest-growing firms in the country, my young nephew noted: “I knew Uncle Tom had money, but I didn’t know he was a millionaire.”
That story, which ran in the Star Tribune, reported that my company’s sales were just more than US$2 million. Despite my nephew’s false impression, my wife and I were not millionaires. We just own a company with gross sales in the millions, and that is an important distinction. Sales aren’t profit, and today’s profits fund tomorrow’s growth.