It took getting removed as the CEO of my own company for me to truly comprehend what my team and I needed to thrive. With more than a little grit and humility, I was able to Persevere through that difficult period and eventually return to grow my marketing communications firm, Firespring, into the Evergreen company it is today.

Before I founded Firespring, I launched an AlphaGraphics franchise in 1992 in Lincoln, Nebraska. I encouraged the franchisor to embrace the early promise of website design, making ours the first franchise to open a dedicated commercial website division. When one of my team members had a lucky encounter with the Backstreet Boys at the running of the bulls in Spain in the mid-1990s, we landed the boy band’s website design. Suddenly our website business was flourishing.