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Columbia Business Monthly

#18 - Advantage | Forbesbooks

Dec 11, 2018 10:03AM ● By Kathleen Maris
Year Founded: 2005
Founder: Adam Witty
Headquarters location: Charleston
Number of other locations: 4
Number of employees (start): 1
Number of employees (present): 125

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What are the keys to your company’s rapid growth?
Adam Witty (Founder and CEO): Listen to our customers. Stay focused on delivering products and services that our customers value and want. Having one strategic plan everyone is following to achieve our growth plan. This creates clarity and alignment. Focus on creating an internal culture and environment that breeds greatness. A great culture attracts A+ talent and keeps those people positive and engaged. Happy team members deliver great service for our members (customers). Happy members deliver profitable growth for the company.

What’s in store for your company?
Stay focused on our five-year growth plan. No deviations. Goal is for 70 percent of growth to be organic with no more than 30 percent coming from acquisitions.

Do you plan to add any employees in the coming year? If so, how many?
Achievement of our growth plan in 2019 would result in the addition of 60-80 team members.

What trends and innovations do you see down the line for your industry?
For our book publishing business, artificial intelligence is very interesting as it could provide the ability for computers to ghostwrite books for our authors. For our marketing agency business, the slow shift of marketing dollars from online back to offline (because of a lack of results online) is very interesting and provides unique opportunities for our members to reach their target audience online with less noise.

What word of advice, if any, has shaped your career and who gave it or where did you read it? 
My friend, mentor, and member Jack Daly reminded me: “Adam, your job is not to grow a company. Your job is to grow people that grow a company.” Our future success lies in talented and skilled people working together to achieve things bigger and better than any of them could have done alone.

What do you do to ensure that you are always learning?
I read lots of books and of business magazines, and attend lots of conferences. I also participate in three peer/mastermind groups to keep my mind sharp and learn what other businesses are doing.