The Power of Balance

Daily Workouts

Will Smith III
Enscicon (#300) Denver
Three years ago, when Hunter Smith was only 10, he started donning a suit and accompanying his father, Enscicon CEO Will Smith III, to the office. Sometimes he'd man the stapler or hang out with the teenagers -- other employees' kids -- who were covering the phones for the day. Other times he'd sit in on board meetings or travel with his dad to the Denver-based company's remote offices, in Phoenix and Austin. "People have this myth that they have three different lives -- a work life, a home life, and a social life," says the elder Smith. "But we have only one life. And companies make the mistake of not integrating families into the work community so that they understand the stresses and can lend support."

"It alleviates stress and builds camaraderie."

Smith has been careful not to be so shortsighted in running Enscicon, a $12-million IT and engineering consultancy, which he launched six years ago. At the time he was a 27-year-old single father with full-time custody of his son. Putting his philosophy into practice, Smith takes his 30 corporate staffers and their spouses on a five-day houseboat excursion on Lake Powell in Utah every other year. He welcomes children in the workplace and endorses flextime. And perhaps most important, he encourages his employees to work out at a local gym by offering a 90-minute lunch hour and paying not just the workers' initiation fees but also half their dues -- if they stick with the exercise program for a year. "At any given lunch hour, about a third of the corporate staff will work out together," says Smith, who has been lifting weights and doing aerobics for 10 years. "It alleviates stress and builds capacity."

It also builds camaraderie. Nobody in the company works fewer than 50 hours a week, and Smith puts in a good 60 to 70 hours himself. Yet he believes that the emphasis on socializing, during trips and especially during workouts, helps narrow the divide between life and work. "It creates an atmosphere that says, 'Yes, we're working together, but we're also having fun,' " says Smith. " 'Live, love, laugh, and have the time of our lives' -- those words are part of our mission statement."

Evening Gig

Tom Melaragno
Compri Consulting (#124) Denver
Rollin' up our sleeves/lettin' down our hair/We got our attitude/We got our nose in the air." No, those aren't the words from a track wafting out of your teenage son's boom box. They're lyrics to a song written and recorded by Orphan Boy, a classic-rock band based in Denver, whose drummer, Tom Melaragno, 40, also heads $7.6-million Compri Consulting (#124), an IT consulting and staffing firm founded in 1992. Four of Orphan Boy's five members started playing music together when they were students at Colorado State University. The band, which rehearses every other Wednesday night in a member's garage, gets monthly gigs at private parties and occasionally at Josephina's, an Italian restaurant in downtown Denver. Once a year Orphan Boy holds a big benefit bash at Sunset Beach swimming pool. "My priorities are family, business, then the hobbies," says Melaragno. "My wife would like family to be even higher. But I think that taking care of myself makes me a better father and husband."

"Taking care of myself makes me a better father and husband."

Although Melaragno put in 12-hour days when he started the business, he now works just 8 or 9 and makes sure that he's available to catch his two sons' baseball games in the summer and to coach the older one's football team in the fall. He also exercises three or four times a week at a nearby health club. "It's a great escape -- better than having martinis at lunch," he says. "I lift some weights, grunt, and come back with a fresh attitude."

It's Melaragno's ability to delegate that has enabled him to, well, rock and roll. "Over the past three years, I've been able to identify gradually what things I can give to my CPA, or to my bookkeeper, or to my office manager," he says. "I read about people who work 60 or 90 hours a week and build multimillion-dollar businesses at the expense of their health and family. Those aren't success stories in my book. Success is having a multimillion-dollar business and the other stuff, too."

Thea Singer is an associate editor at Inc.

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