Launch Magazine - Fall 2007 - (Page 28) Jim Holland: Another obvious parallel between our businesses and good advice for any would-be entrepreneur is to follow your passions. That is an undertone of what has worked at both of our companies. Speaking for myself I know that I have followed what I have really connected with in my head and I was fired up about the Internet and technology and into recreating in the backcountry and the outdoors. Entrepreneurship obviously involves lots of long hours and lots of hard work but if you connect with what you are doing it is a lot easier to do that. Again, probably some more good advice for would-be entrepreneurs is focus. Throughout our evolution there have been so many tempting tributaries that we might have taken. We sort of lifted up our head as we really started to figure out all of the different Internet marketing channels and put together the teams to drive traffic to Web sites. We could be selling toilet paper over the Internet. We probably could be successful at it, but lets face it. You focus on something that you really connect with and you are much more likely to be successful. At the same time focus on being the best at what you do. Why in the heck would you aspire to do anything else? Chris Grover: Who defined the culture and the attitude during the early days at Backcountry.com? Is that something that you consciously tried to instill in the organization or was it just organic? Jim Holland: I think it was organic. I think we are a little more conscious of it now and we try to do things to make sure that we try to spur it on as it gets harder to maintain that culture when you go from 20 people to 400 people as we have. I think our culture just sort of arose because we were following our passions. What kind of things do you guys do to try and maintain your culture as you have grown? Isn’t that a challenge? As you keep bringing on new people that knew nothing about Black Diamond or very little when they came through the door, how do you instill those values and get them thinking and aligned with the way you guys think? Chris Grover: Yes. I totally agree with you, it is job No. 1 and certainly at Black Diamond it is our biggest challenge. How do we generate the focus and the discipline and the dogged determination and the appropriate values and attitudes? How do you stay connected to that and evolve forward knowing that if you are going to be successful in five years as you are today, you are going to be different? It is not about staying the same. If you stay the same you are done. At Black Diamond, back in the day it was a very homogenous organization and you could get 20 people in a room and it took little or no energy to get everyone on the same page. Everyone would walk away with a relatively clear understanding of what we were doing and how we were going to do it. That is certainly not the case anymore and to get to that same level of that unification in terms of a point of view takes a lot more energy and time. Jim Holland: You guys have been very successful. What do you think are some of the things that are at the root of that? What are some of the things that have worked in Black Diamond? Chris Grover: We’ve been good at finding a way to hook our passion to some sort of commercial activity and being totally in love and obsessed. You spend way too much time at work to have it any other way. We’re opened minded, thoughtful and try to think of things in a strategic manner. We recognize that the worst reason for doing anything is that “we have always done it that way” or “it worked last time.” You have to be willing to always tear everything down to the floor and go, OK how do we want to deal with it this time around? I think it is really important to not get too rooted in anything. Sure you need values, you need belief, but when you get to the point where you are not pulling your head up out of the trench and looking around and assessing the situation as objectively and as realistically as you can, and then taking that back down into our hole and figuring out how you are going to change your approach to things. I’ve seen certain types of people who are very skilled and have good experience come into Black Diamond and just fall flat on their face because the environment just isn’t right for them. I wonder if you have seen the same thing at Backcountry.com? Jim Holland: Here and there definitely. Obviously we try to filter people — one of the most important things about being an entrepreneur is finding the right people. We are super patient. If we have a position that opens we never panic into filling it. We have a new hire boot camp where we try to fill them in on the culture and try to fill then in on how different things work. We start every employee out in customer service and they actually spend one week in customer service on the phones so they are in touch with our customer. Some people do fall flat. That is true. It is often people who maybe come from bigger organizations where they are used to more or used to having someone constantly telling them what to do. We try to give people high-level goals and let them figure it out. Chris, how do you guys incentivize people? Sometimes that gets a little tricky. Is there an incentive for people just being in this industry? Chris Grover: Yes, but that is not enough. You get to be in the industry. You get to be in a good environment if it is the right environment for you. You get to be part of something you are passionate about. There is a lot that comes with working at companies like ours but you are absolutely right, at some point the answer to, “Where is the rest of my paycheck?” can’t be, “Look at the view out the window.” No matter how magnificent the view is, you have got to be competitive because you have to have the skill set and you have to have the right people because people are everything. It is hard to do. We constantly re-evaluate. We are always surveying our salary windows. We try and go through those salary windows within the context of how they impact the quality of life at Black Diamond the performance of Black Diamond. We are always trying to rank that stuff and make sure that we are appropriate within the organization. $ Click here for the HTML version of this article on launchutah.com. 28 launch fall http://Backcountry.com http://www.launchutah.com/article-e2e-q32007.php http://Backcountry.com
For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.