book The E-Myth Revisited,1 stating: “the entrepreneur’s job is to create the process, management’s job is to make sure the process is followed, and the technician’s job is to use the process.

identified the concrete, measurable results of having a strong workplace culture: a 4 percent turnover rate in 2006 versus a 30 percent industry benchmark and the 30 percent of unused available sick days.

proponent of tough love. “I kind of manage with a Bobby Knight-type9 of mentality with my direct reports,” Lindsey said. “I’ve always said I need people with thick skin who themselves do not tolerate mistakes.

Several entrepreneurs emphasized the need to allocate time to get away from the business to think clearly about what the business needed to do in the longer term.

Sometimes, a business catapults to a new level of growth by acquiring a new major

The business axiom that all business must “grow or die” is not true. Your business does not have to keep growing. However, you do have to continuously improve its customer value proposition and do so better than your competition does. “Improve or die” is true.

Never, never stop learning and improving.

To attain high employee engagement, employees need to feel like they “own” their job in that they have input into how it is done and some stake in the outcome.

One lesson that came through clearly was to hire slowly (and fire quickly).