Gazelle Guru

As founder and CEO of Gazelles Inc. — just up the 'pike from Washington, D.C. — Verne Harnish '82/87 has become so much the sensei to fast-growth businesses that he is fast becoming known as "Mr. Gazelle."

The increasingly used term "gazelles" denotes the fast-growth subset of small- and mid-sized businesses that, as the major job-generators, are the engine of the economy; growing by 20 percent for four years in a row, gazelles are by definition almost always entrepreneurial, and their success is crucial to the country's economic health. "I founded Gazelles in 1997," Harnish says, "because I saw that such companies need help to succeed." Gazelles Inc.'s mantra — "Increasing the Value of Fast Growth Companies" — defines the goal, and Harnish's business is itself a model of the agile yet disciplined, small- to mid-sized, entrepreneurial venture.

Currently, Gazelles is the undisputed leader in its niche. Arthur Lipper, chairman of British Far East Holdings Ltd. and former editor-in-chief of Venture Magazine, remarks, "Verne's ‘edge' is that he is successfully managing his own business and is therefore in a better position to identify — and identify with — the needs and pressures of business owners like him than would be, say, journalists or academicians."

Gazelles Inc. is a corporate university for gazelles. To address their growth challenges, Harnish offers an integrated set of organizational and business development tools previously available only to the Fortune 500. "I'm an educator of entrepreneurs," he explains. "Our niche is the companies that generate $5 million to $200 million in revenue. They're no longer really small, but they aren't big enough to afford their own well-staffed corporate team-building and educational programs, like ge's Crotonville and Motorola University." In print, on-line and in person, Harnish offers them an affordable and pragmatic option.

Gazelles' tools of the trade include an outsource faculty of the top business thinkers and writers in the world who present high-powered, reality-driven programs and seminars. They include Geoff Smart, one of the trailblazers of "topgrading"; Jim Collins, author of Good to Great; and Jack Stack, president and CEO of src Holdings Corporation and author of A Stake in the Outcome. Other tools include FlashReport, a web-based software application that automates all enterprisewide management protocols — "I call it the poor man's digital dashboard," says Harnish, smiling — and a recently launched consortium for boutique consulting firms around the world.

Changes and Breakthroughs

This is all pretty interesting stuff, given that Harnish earned his undergraduate degree from Wichita State in mechanical engineering. A Beech Scholar, he participated in WSU's Honors Program and in student politics. "I ran for sga president and lost three times," Harnish divulges, with a hearty laugh, "but I got an education from cream-of-the-crop professors, I received the Swett Award for the highest cumulative gpa, and I earned my degree in mechanical engineering. I was pretty happy, all things considered."

But the mechanism that would trigger Harnish's tsunami of a career shift had been in place since his freshman year. Don Simpson, owner of Superior Supply, hired Harnish-the-engineering-student to work as a draftsman in his company's commercial building controls department. Jack Simpson '62, president of the company at the time, comments, "Verne is incredibly inquisitive, and he figured out pretty fast that he could make more money as a salesman. So we let him get into selling, and it wasn't long before some clients asked us where we had found this guy. Verne could sell." Harnish still remembers what a rush he got out of selling his first $100,000 energy management system; as graduation neared, he became Superior's acting director of sales and marketing

Don Simpson, now deceased, was one of those businessmen who put Wichita on the map as the Entrepreneurship Capital of the World, and Harnish sought his advice on what to do next. According to Jack Simpson, "My father had really evangelized Verne on the possibilities of entrepreneurship, and he sent him to see Fran Jabara, who had just launched WSU's Center for Entrepreneurship." Harnish says, "Fran became my mentor, as he has for so many students. He hired me to work for the center and I signed up for the mba program."

It took him five years to complete that degree because he had plenty of irons in the fire. With Jabara's mentoring input, Harnish founded the Association of Collegiate Entrepreneurs in 1983, and burgeoning ace activities kept him on the move. ace's first conference in 1984 brought 225 students from 55 colleges and universities to mit. A mere four years later, 1,156 students from around the world attended the ace convention in Los Angeles. Steven Jobs was the keynote speaker.

Leaps and Bounds

With the mba under his belt, Harnish launched the Young Entrepreneurs' Organization, because, he explains, "There just wasn't a group for entrepreneurs who were out of college." The culmination of Harnish's tenure at yeo was his co-founding of the Birthing of Giants Executive Program, a leadership-focused curriculum for young entrepreneurs. Ted Leonsis, vice chairman of aol, majority owner of the Washington Capitals and Harnish's friend since their yeo days, says, "Verne has been part of my life for more than 15 years, and I credit his karma for my successful career as a serial entrepreneur. I just love this guy!"

Harnish left yeo because of a weakness he perceived: "yeo is great, but it's only for CEOs. We'd get them all hyped up and they'd run back and make their people nuts." He realized that what was needed was a means of educating an entire executive team to, in turn, communicate consistent concepts down through the ranks — and Gazelles was born. Lipper, who first became acquainted with Harnish through ace, says, "Verne is an opportunist in the best sense of the word. His genius is in perceiving needs and then packaging relevant experience conveniently and usefully."

Super-successful Gazelles recently went global via a Far East base in Malaysia, and Harnish has been invited to visit Russia. "We occupy a nice little niche that in itself has tremendous growth potential," he says. And Mastering the Rockefeller Habits, released only last April, has already been translated into several languages to evangelize every gazelle in the global village. Comments Leonsis, "Verne is one of the great advocates for small business startups and growth ventures, which we need very badly right now."

Don Hackett, director of WSU's Center for Entrepreneurship and also a Harnish mentor, says, "We all knew Verne was going to be successful at whatever he decided to do." Today, gazelles the world over are assured that their growth guru can help them nimbly negotiate the global economy's fast-growth track.

— Kat Schneider '72