"When you're in business, there are two doors you can walk through," says Bob Moore, of Bob's Red Mill, a natural-foods chain based in Milwaukee, Oregon. "You can walk through the door where you treat the customer like your guest, operating by the rule that the customer is always right. Or you can be cutthroat. The first door is the door of kindness. That's the one I decided to walk through."
"Early on, a management consultant told me to get a great board of directors," says Tim O'Reilly, founder of O'Reilly Media, a publishing company based in Sebastopol, California. "It's a great discipline to have to report to somebody—even if you're the sole owner."
"I like coding," says Justin Kan, the co-founder of Justin.tv, a San Francisco-based website that streams live video. "It helps keep me sharp. Plus, I find it hard to manage somebody's work unless I have an intimate knowledge of how to do it myself. Otherwise, how can you differentiate a good idea from a bad one or know how long something is going to take?"
"Our food prices fluctuate," says Jerry Murrell, founder of Five Guys Burgers and Fries, a franchise based in Washington, D.C. "We do not base our price on anything but margins. We raise our prices to reflect whatever our food costs are. So if the mayonnaise guy triples his price, we pay triple for the mayonnaise! And then we'll increase the price of our product."
"I carry a little notebook with the names of 35 or 40 people in the company, and I every week I look at it to make sure I'm in touch with everyone," says Kevin P. Ryan, founder of AlleyCorp, a New York City holding company that owns several Internet start-ups. "There are always 20 or 30 people who are up-and-comers or one or two levels down [in the organization], and I want them to know I'm paying attention. So I'll run down the list and notice I haven't talked to Mary in a long time and send her an e-mail, even if it's just to say, Great work."
"I make mistakes faster than anybody," says Josh James, founder of Omniture, a web analytics company based in Orem, Utah. "I think, go, do," he continues. "That's the Omniture mantra. While you're figuring out what to do, we've tried two different things and have figured out the right one."
