Inc. Magazine September 2022

It has not been easy, has it? This road toward birthing something and helping it grow and seeing it mature and succeed. That’s especially true these days, which, with each passing month, seem, disturbingly, less like a pandemic-induced anomaly and more like a way of life. And, yet, that did not stop you. You made it to the peak. You are a 2022 Inc. 5000 honoree. Congratulations, and salute, to BlockFi, the No. 1 company, to Kitrum, with offices in Ukraine, to the revolutionary SnapNurse, to Castillo Engineering, and to all the others in these pages or whom I’ve spoken to in the past months and the even more of you found on Inc.com. I know your struggle to get to this place, to the top 0.07 percent of all businesses, only…

With the backdrop of a worldwide pandemic, supply chain issues, the Great Resignation, and now rising inflation, running a company over the past three years—much less growing one—has been a daunting task. Which is why this year’s Inc. 5000 honorees just might be the most remarkable group we’ve seen. These founders have been resilient and innovative, driving their businesses forward and creating more jobs for their communities. Just consider that in the past three years, the 2022 Inc. 5000 companies added close to 1.2 million jobs. Beyond record-setting growth, the past year has seen a universal desire for a return to normalcy—and during that time, we at Inc. found ways to bring our communities together. We began with smaller gatherings at the end of 2021, and then in March unveiled the…

EXPERT ADVICE FROM THE ELITE FOUNDERS OF THE INC. 5000 Inc.5000 NO. 854 In 2022 2021: No. 215 2020: No. 362 YOU DON’T RIP OFF a man’s gi. It’s just common decency. Which is why, when Pete Roberts, a former world-class Brazilian jujitsu competitor, discovered that his overseas vendor was copying his company’s martial arts apparel, he went for a take-down—of sorts. The founder of Origin grabbed a chain saw and, in a fit of rage, began felling pine trees to build his own factory. Roberts had grown up watching American manufacturing—and dependent communities—crumble, and he wanted to fight back. He found a few scrapped L.L. Bean sewing machines, an abandoned loom in Lewiston, Maine, and one of five remaining “old-timers” who knew how to run it. Over the next decade, Roberts journeyed across the country, building…

1 | MENTEE Trina Spear Co-founder and co-CEO, Figs 2 | MENTOR Meg Whitman Former CEO, Hewlett-Packard, eBay "WHEN YOU’RE running a fastgrowing business that’s actually turning a profit, a lot of people have useful but conflicting advice. Most of the time, it’s a lot of noise—but my mentor, Meg Whitman, cuts through it. One of Figs’ investors introduced Meg and I two years ago when we were getting ready to IPO, and we really hit it off. Meg comes from public businesses, where profits matter, so her perspective has been very useful now that we are public. Plus, she knows how to lead with integrity—and how to do it your way. When I approach Meg with some thing my co-founder, Heather Hasson, and I are grappling with, she will name three situations that are exactly…

Should your employees’ happiness be your top priority? That’s the question we look at in our new book, Happy at Any Cost: The Revolutionary Vision and Fatal Quest of Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh. We explore how the Inc. 5000 alum strove to keep his staff content with parties, generous wages, and a quirky office culture. But, as we show, the search for more joy often makes people lonelier, so the best parts of Happy teach leaders that real satisfaction comes from focusing on more impactful ideals—like commitment, courage, and well-being. Read more at inc.com/happy-at-any-cost. SHAYAN ASGHARNIA/AUGUST; MARTINA ALBERTAZZI/BLOOMBERG VIA GETTY IMAGES; COURTESY PUBLISHER…

FOR MANY YEARS, WT Stevens supplemented his Detroit autoworker income with a small construction business. But there was nothing small about his impact on the people of Flint, Michigan. When Stevens, a father of eight, died in February 2002, his daughter Rhonda Grayer realized that the “nice, nonconfrontational guy” she had known had another side. “I was just amazed at his funeral, how many people’s lives he’d i mpacted,” she says. Many mourners told Grayer that her dad had trained them for free, given them a chance when nobody else would, and in some cases inspired them to start their own businesses. Those stories changed Grayer’s life: To carry on her father’s legacy, she registered his side business as a corporation, launching WT Stevens Construction in April 2002. By 2019, the…