GEORGIA COMPANIES IN THE INC. 500
No. 3 Edge Solutions
No. 6 Capital Payments
No. 29 Valuation Management Group
No. 170 Flip Flop Shops
No. 172 Pardot
No. 201 PalmerHouse Properties
No. 239 Careers in Transition
No. 243 Capitol Media Solutions
No. 245 VDart
No. 255 EndoChoice
No. 288 Sovereign Systems
No. 312 NRG Vision
No. 330 REPAY - Realtime Electronic Payments
No. 426 BOS Security
No. 428 OmniPoint
No. 467 AirWatch
No. 474 The Pedowitz Group
COMPANY: Edge Solutions
LOCATED: Alpharetta
FOUNDED: 2008
BUSINESS: IT solutions provider
3-YEAR GROWTH RATE: 21,036 percent
REVENUE: $21.8 million
EMPLOYEES: 25
CO-FOUNDER: Julie Haley
AGE: 52
PRIOR EXPERIENCE: Attorney
FAMILY: Married with children
COMPANY: Valuation Management Group
LOCATED: Marietta
FOUNDED: 2006
BUSINESS: Commercial and residential appraisal management
3-YEAR GROWTH RATE: 6,267 percent
REVENUE: $34.3 million
EMPLOYEES: 70
FOUNDER: Vicky Thompson
AGE: 57
PRIOR EXPERIENCE: Finance and mortgage industry
FAMILY: Engaged to be married, with children
COMPANY: CAREERS IN TRANSITION
LOCATED: Tucker
FOUNDED: 1995, incorporated 1997
BUSINESS: Talent management
3-YEAR GROWTH RATE: 1,500 percent
REVENUE: $5.2 million
EMPLOYEES: 35
FOUNDER: Indigo Triplett
AGE: 48
PRIOR EXPERIENCE: Human resources consultant
FAMILY: Married, three children
In 2011, Inc. magazine ranked Valuation Management Group, a Marietta appraisal services firm, as the top Georgia business in its list of 500 fastest-growing private companies in America. This year, Inc. ranked Edge Solutions, an Alpharetta IT solutions provider, as the state’s fastest-growing private company.
Different businesses in different industries, but they have one thing in common: Their owners are women: Vicky Thompson and Julie Haley, respectively.
Their appearance on the prestigious annual list is still an exception. Inc. notes that of the 500 companies this year, only 10 percent are headed by women. But three of the top seven Georgia companies on the latest list, including Tucker-based talent management firm Careers In Transition, were founded and are run by women.
Victoria Colligan, founder of Ladies Who Launch, a 10-year-old provider of resources and networking for women entrepreneurs, said, “We’re starting to see more smart, determined women making the choice to start a business as an alternative to rising up the ranks in the corporate world.”
Those three Georgia women agreed that starting and running a business — particularly a growing one — is demanding. They also think there should be more of them.
“I’m disappointed that there’s only three of us,” said Indigo Triplett of Careers In Transition. “You remember that old slogan, ‘We’ve come a long way, baby.’ We haven’t.”
Current and aspiring women business owners may take hope in some recent data. According to a report this year from American Express OPEN, Georgia led all states in the growth of the number of women-owned businesses over the last 15 years at 95 percent, nearly double the U.S. average.
Those businesses lag in revenue, however, with growth falling off once they achieve some size. Georgia women-owned companies ranked 27th in revenue growth over that time, and 15th in employment growth.
Haley, Thompson and Triplett talked about what it took to grow the companies they founded, and the issues they faced along the way.
Julie Haley
Edge Solutions
When Julie Haley’s husband Michael lost his IT job in a merger in 2007, the couple were ready to go into business for themselves.
He had the contacts and expertise in his field, and she had the operational, strategic and financial skills honed during her former career as an attorney doing business and commercial litigation.
“We had talked about starting a company for many years,” Haley said. “Sometimes you just need a kick in the hiney.”
In 2008, Haley, 52, founded Edge Solutions, an Alpharetta IT solutions provider.
The company had annual revenue of nearly $22 million last year and employs 25. Inc. calculates its three-year growth rate at an eye-popping 21,000 percent.
“It means all the risks we’ve taken and sacrifices we’ve made these past four years are paying off,” Haley said.
Among the decisions Haley cited as most critical to her company’s success was adding the right people at the start. In her case, that meant bringing on a pair of industry veterans with excellent reputations to head up sales and marketing/business development, and giving them equity stakes.
“We were still a new, untested company started at the beginning of the great recession,” she said. Edge overcame that timing thanks to a decision to focus on underserved markets and growth sectors.
The company got a big boost, too, from Georgia Commerce Bank. It provided a “generous” credit line “which has grown with us. They’ve really been there for us,” she said. She noted that Michael’s former company provided Edge with various resources and remains “an integral partner in our growth.”
Her top advice to would-be business owners: Don’t burn bridges, and don’t be afraid to fail.
As for mistakes, she said, “We made our share, and will probably make lots more. As Samuel Beckett said: ‘Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.’”
Vicky Thompson
Valuation Management Group
Vicky Thompson’s decision to go into business for herself in 1994 carried plenty of risk. Then a single mother of two, she gave up a successful corporate career in banking. Relying on credit cards to fund it, she launched an appraisal company against the advice of others in the industry.
One thing she had going for her was her commitment.
“I had a friend who left the corporate environment to start a business with the thought, ‘If this doesn’t work out I can always go back,’ ” Thompson recalled. “My thought was, ‘I’m going to make this work — even if I have to sell my house.’ ”
She didn’t sell her house, and she has made it. The Marietta company’s three-year growth rate is more than 6,000 percent, it has more than 70 employees, and revenue tops $34 million. Last year, it ranked No. 1 on the Inc. list.
Valuation Management was founded in 2006, after Thompson bought another appraisal company and merged it with her first business.
Its business model was to provide independent appraisal services to lenders who wanted to outsource them because of cost and inconvenience. It was profitable, but the company really prospered after laws were put in place after the housing meltdown to keep lenders from hiring their own appraisers.
Thompson, 57, was in position to fill the resulting need. Now, she has a network of contract appraisers around the country, with a staff that chooses them and reviews their work.
It’s a lucrative niche in what’s been a shrinking industry.
One thing that distinguishes Thompson from some other business owners is that she did not get a college degree. She came from a poor family and jumped into the work world while in her teens. She is a strong advocate of continuing education, however, and said she has taken many classes over the years.
Her advice for others looking to start their own business: “Be passionate, and expect to work very hard. Being a business owner can be very challenging and requires a strong commitment.”
Indigo Triplett
Careers In Transition
Indigo Triplett likens the development of her company to that of a child. She birthed it in 1995 and incorporated in 1997 and said, “I don’t have a baby anymore. Not even a toddler. It’s a teen with its own personality.”
That awareness was heightened, she said, when Inc. listed her company at No. 239 among its fastest-growing private businesses.
Careers In Transition ranks 7th among Georgia firms, with 1,500 percent growth over the past three years, $5.2 million in revenue, and 35 employees in addition to contract consultants.
Her own company’s growth, she said, strengthened her realization that a company founder goes through phases as the business develops. They include: the entrepreneurial phase, “where you do everything by yourself”; the business owner phase, “where you actually have a real business” and not just an idea; the small to medium enterprise owner phase, “where you manage all your people and processes”; and the growth firm owner phase, where “you don’t deliver products anymore and where it’s all about being a ‘leader.’ ”
Many small businesses fail, she said, because the owners don’t become leaders. “They don’t develop people.”
Triplett, 48, said she’s still learning about leadership while running her business, which provides performance consulting, talent optimization and other services to client companies.
She had worked as an independent consultant doing outplacement work for another firm when she decided to go on her own.
The company lived contract to contract, she said, until it landed a line of credit from Sun Trust about five years ago that allowed her to hire the people she needed to grow. “That turned everything around.”
Triplett said she can foresee a time, perhaps five years from now, when she would sell her company, even though “I absolutely love it. I can’t imagine doing anything else besides being a CEO of an organization. I want to create jobs and change lives.”
But, by then, she will have provided jobs for a lot of people and learned something about herself.
“You hear about the successes of others, but you never know what it takes,” she said. “But now I know the formula. Now I know it’s in my DNA to be able to grow a company. I know from scratch I can do it.”
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