Joe Gadell, Tom Stemm and I are so pleased to announce for the fifth year in a row, GadellNet has earned the prestigious honor of Inc. 5000’s Fastest Growing Companies.
Last year when we learned that we earned this award for the fourth year in a row, I reminisced on my first month with GadellNet. We were at a client’s office, and I was admiring their Inc. 5000 plaques. I looked to their leadership team with awe as they head steered their ship in the right direction. They were small at the time, but they were mighty. That is what we aspired to at GadellNet. We were very small at that time, only five of us, but if we were small, we wanted to be mighty.
We now boast just over 60 employees in the Midwest.
We learned four things which our growth can be attributed to:
- We learned how to hire: 5 different interviews, skills assessments and personality tests all help provide subjective and objective data on our hiring decisions
- We learned how to put clients first: We are far from perfect, but we handle mistakes with a “client first” approach and work tirelessly to ensure we learn from those errors. Our people know that when the client comes first, business goals will follow. It’s an easy way for our team to prioritize their activities for the day.
- We learned how to listen to our employees – with a 96% employee retention rate – we can enthusiastically spend money on training, development, technical skills, and leadership with the knowledge that our people will be around in the years to come to serve our clients. Nearly all of our best ideas are crowdsourced with our employees who live and work with our clients on a daily basis.
- We grew not only in scale but in how we can transform through technology – we are now big enough to have teams that consult on Cyber Security, Application Strategy, Education Strategy, Business Strategy and more!
Winning for the fifth year in a row puts us in the top 0.0002% of companies in the US.
GadellNet just celebrated our 14th birthday, and on days like today, when we are awarded for our growth and excellence, we look back on just how far we have come. We look back on how much our clients have grown. We look back on all we have learned and all of the good we have accomplished through technology.
Thank you to our clients who have made our growth possible.
Thank you to our employees for continually driving us forward.
And most importantly, thank you to my wife and children for providing me with daily reminders that it’s the people who make all the difference in the world.
