- Font:
- +
- -
Victoria Tifft Photo credit: Diana Ransom
We all know the call to entrepreneurship can come from anywhere.
For Victoria Tifft, that urge to start up came to her after she
contracted malaria while being stationed in Tonga in West Africa
with the Peace Corps more than 20 years ago.
After that experience, Tifft told Entrepreneur, "I knew I wanted
to do something with malaria research."
So in 1992, Tifft established the Hinckley, Ohio-based vaccine researcher Clinical Research Management Inc., known as ClinicalRM. Today, the company supports the development of Food and Drug Administration-regulated vaccines, pharmaceuticals and medical devices for government and commercial customers. ClinicalRM also helped create and now manages the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research's Clinical Trials Center. That facility develops vaccines for infectious diseases such as malaria.
After 20 years in business, Tifft's company has more than 330 employees and annual revenues that reached $40 million in 2010, up from $17 million in 2007. Further, she says, the company plans to double its staff in the next three years.
For those achievements and others, Tifft was recognized yesterday as the Small Business Administration 's 2012 National Small Business Person of the Year by SBA chief Karen Mills at National Small Business Week in Washington, D.C. After the ceremony, she sat down with Entrepreneur to discuss managing the rapid growth that comes with success. Here is an edited version of that conversation:
Entrepreneur: You went from three employees in 1994 to more than 300. What was the tipping point for your company?
Tifft: Knowing how to take care of our customers has always helped us grow organically. As I always say to my staff, our customers do our selling for us, as a lot of our business is by referral or repeat business. So there was a certain point a couple years back that one customer told another and they told two more and they told two more. And that was the tipping point. We went from 25 or 50 folks to 150. We're at little over 330 now, and we have aggressive growth plans to double that figure in the next three years.
Related: Business Owners Take SBA Chief to Task
Entrepreneur: Sounds like there may be opportunities
stemming from today, too. Are you ready?
Tifft: We're ready. We've spent the past two years
building our systems, our infrastructure and our resources, while
expanding geographically, not only in the U.S. but overseas as
well. That way we'd be ready and poised for growth. You have to
do that in order to successfully grow.
Entrepreneur: What are your best tips for how to manage
rapid growth?
Tifft: Make sure that you've got a strategy and that you
know how to execute your strategy. Create the plan, vet the plan
out with different people and then make sure that you can execute
on the plan. Because as we all know so much fails on poor
execution.
Entrepreneur: What has been your biggest business
challenge and how did you overcome it?
Tifft: One of our mantras is: "Do the right thing." For
us, one of the key challenges is to make sure we do the right
thing when it's the hard thing to do. And we stick to our guns.
And make our decisions based on what's right for the customer.
And if you do that every time, in the end, you'll prosper because
doing the right thing for your customer is the right thing to do
for your business.
Entrpreneur: What advice would you give fellow
entrepreneurs who want to be in your shoes
someday?
Tifft: Create a strategy. Ask yourself what is
it that you want to do. And then figure out a way to do it by
seeking out advice from others. In addition to the folks at the
SBA, I seek out advice from all over. I just finished an
executive master's degree in business administration from Case
Western Reserve University's Weatherhead School of Management. So
constantly look and seek the advice of others, and don't assume
you know everything.
Related: How the 'Little Guy' Can Partner With Big Companies
This article originally posted on Entrepreneur.com
Copyright © 2013 Entrepreneur.com, Inc.
“ ”