The following is an excerpt from the book:

by Bo Burlingham
Editor-at-Large, Inc. magazine
Author of Small Giants: Companies That Choose to Be Great Instead of Big

Every now and then, I run into companies that have something very special going for them. It’s not just that they’re successful in a traditional business sense, although they always are. They also have a certain intangible, indefinable quality that you can sense as soon as you set foot in the business, or spend time around its employees, or talk to its customers and suppliers. There’s a magnetism, a power of attraction, that draws people to the company and makes them feel a strong desire to be connected to it.

I first began to notice companies with this special quality in the early 1980s, after I joined the staff of Inc. magazine and got to know some of the terrific young businesses that were revitalizing the U.S. economy back then. Their names are familiar today: Apple Computer, Patagonia, Intel, Southwest Airlines, Quad/Graphics, Microsoft, Nucor Steel, Ben & Jerry’s, Federal Express, and so on. I didn’t have a name for the quality back then, but I do now. It’s what I call mojo, and I think of it as the business equivalent of charisma. When a leader has charisma, you want to follow him or her. When a company has charisma, you want to be associated with it—buy from it, sell to it, work for it, wear its t-shirts and baseball caps, read books and articles about it, recommend it to friends, whatever.

In doing research for my book Small Giants: Companies That Choose to Be Great Instead of Big, I studied fourteen companies that radiated mojo, and I tried to figure out where it came from, what they did to generate it. I wondered, in particular, how it was related to something I had noticed about the owners of these companies, namely, their common conviction that business could be a means for experiencing some of the best things in life—exciting challenges, camaraderie, compassion, hope, community, a sense of purpose, feelings of accomplishment. The closer I looked, the clearer it became that this conviction was intimately tied to the companies’ mojo. In effect, the owners had organized their companies so that they and their employees could experience these good things on a regular basis.

I have since come across many other companies that fit the small giants mold. Some of them fit it so well that I have caught myself wishing I had encountered them a couple of years earlier, so that I could have included them in my book. The Beryl Companies falls squarely into that exclusive group. Like other small giants, Beryl enjoyed the kind of success early on that brought with it numerous opportunities to expand, as well as relentless pressure to grow as fast as possible and get as big as possible. But Paul Spiegelman and his brothers decided to resist that pressure, keep ownership and control inside the business, and focus instead on building a company that would be the best at what it did—connecting people to healthcare—with an engaged and loyal workforce that had the same passion for the business, its mission, its vision, and its values as the owners.

And they succeeded. Over the past twenty years, Paul and his colleagues have created an incredibly vibrant culture, based on open book communication, continuous learning, personal growth, and unabashed fun. You don’t need me to explain how they did it, or to recount all the struggles they went through to build the extraordinary business they have today. Paul tells the story eloquently and insightfully in the pages that follow. But perhaps I can add a little context.

What Paul presents here is a thoroughly absorbing account of how one great company implemented some timeless business principles and thereby rose to the top of its industry. Along the way, he provides countless take-away lessons for other companies. Not that he has some sort of recipe for success. I don’t believe there is a recipe for building a Small Giant. But it always helps to know what you’re striving for, and—as role models go—Beryl is as good as they come. It has all the characteristics of the other small giants I have seen, in particular the five key characteristics that give them their mojo. Those are: (1) owners and leaders with a clear understanding of who they are, what they want out of business, and why; (2) deep connections to the community in which they do business; (3) close, personal, one-on-one relationships with customers and suppliers; (4) a culture of intimacy, built around “caring for people in the totality of their lives,” to borrow a phrase from Herb Kelleher of Southwest Airlines; and (5) owners and leaders who love what their companies do, who are so passionate about it that they want everyone they come into contact with to feel the same way.

That said, it’s also important to take note of the differences in the paths that Beryl and the other companies have taken to wind up in more or less the same place. When you think about it, that’s not so surprising, considering the infinite number of variables in business—from the personalities of people involved, to the nature of the industry, to all the unforeseeable twists and turns of fortune. It’s a reminder that every company has to find its own way. No formula exists for making small giants, and if you’re looking for one, you’re going to be disappointed.

But while there isn’t a formula, there are certain higher laws in business, as I learned long ago from my erstwhile co-author and mentor Jack Stack—the CEO of SRC Holdings and pioneer of open-book management. You find out what those laws are either by your own process of trial and error, or by studying the trials and errors, as well as the successes, of other people. And therein lies the true value of this book. It is obvious from what Paul Spiegelman and his colleagues have accomplished that they have discovered the higher laws of business. By sharing what he’s learned, Paul has done us all a great service. I just hope you will feel as inspired by his story as I have been.