Brian Forth

Our third guest speaker was Brian Forth, CEO of SiteCrafting. As the name suggests, SiteCrafting is a web design company that creates and designs websites for its clients. Mr. Forth's story is similar to the story about 'My Uncle's Alders' in that Mr. Forth kind of stumbled across his idea. He had someone ask him to create a website for him, and word got around. Eventually, Mr. Forth realized that he had a good thing going, and the result was SiteCrafting.

There were a couple of things that stood out to me about Brian Forth and his company. First of all, his company does not have a sales department and has relied mostly on word-of-mouth. Second, the culture of Brian's company is unique. The office is just one big open area where all employees can easily access each other. Even Brian doesn't have his own office (in the conventional sense). I thought it was interesting when Brian talked about how some clients were let go. I wonder if sometimes a CEO or a company suffers abuse from a client and they are forced to endure it because they need the client. That might change if the company can afford to be without the client. I guess money and/or the lack of it is a huge factor in a lot of decisions when it comes to running a business.

In the end, I like Mr. Forth's approach to business, especially in the culture he instilled in his company. It would be interesting to compare other speakers and how they run their businesses.

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