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Inspired By Entrepreneurs

When trailblazing businesspeople set their minds to something, there really isn’t much they can’t accomplish.
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One of the great things about being a business journalist is all the opportunity that comes about to meet and learn from successful entrepreneurs.

As opposed to many of us in the ink-stained-scribe trade—who basically observe things for a living—the best businesspeople brainstorm new ideas, build things, and then persevere, through good times and bad.

Their creations sustain and advance our very standard of living, and their energies develop the jobs that give their employees better lives. Also, most of them are unfailingly optimistic—an increasingly precious commodity in a jaded age.

So, you can imagine my reaction when D CEO was selected to partner with Ernst & Young to document the 2008 finalists for E&Y’s Entrepreneur of the Year program for the Southwest Area-North, which includes North Texas and Oklahoma.

The E&Y program, which is now in its 22nd year, has a straightforward purpose: to identify those entrepreneurial businesspeople who “inspire others with their vision, leadership, and achievement.” As you’ll see in our special feature called “Following Their Hearts” about this region’s ’08 finalists—it starts here—that’s exactly what Ernst & Young has done.

Consider, for example, the way these following finalists have led by example, with guts, wisdom, and far-sightedness:

›› Joseph W Craft III, now the head honcho at Tulsa, Okla.-based Alliance Resource Partners, faced a crucial decision after his previous company decided to get out of the coal business. Should he abandon the business, too—or try to keep his team of “great people” together and continuing to work for a cause they believed in? Craft decided on the latter, and today Alliance has become the country’s ninth-largest coal producer.

›› Joseph Hillesheim founded Plano-based Aspire HR Inc. with a credit card, and stashed the company’s first computer servers in a spare bedroom in his house. Now Aspire has offices in Australia, the United Kingdom, and Dubai.

›› Joseph L. Harberg and Josh Stern, principal partners at Current Energy, started the Dallas company as a fairly conventional, “power broking” outfit after Texas deregulated its electricity market. Then fuel costs soared, and the environmental movement took off like kudzu. Stern and Harberg were astute enough to go with the flow, transforming Current into a pioneering, one-stop provider of energy-efficient solutions for homes and businesses.

›› Tahir Hussain, who founded Addison-based Fusion Solutions, has grown the niche staffing services firm to $24 million in revenue in six years. But it only took off after Hussain spotted big potential in the converging wireless and information-technology industries. “In a business, if you don’t shoot, you’re not going to make the basket,” he says. “I had tunnel vision and knew that I could do this. It was just a matter of time.”

›› Joe Caldwell turned things around at MJB Wood Group in Irving, even as his personal life was beset by unthinkable tragedy. But Caldwell never rested on his laurels. Even after the turnaround was accomplished, he has continued to push MJB Wood to the next level. “We’re always working on the next innovation,” he explains, “because there’s always someone on our heels.”

›› Fritzi Woods, president and CEO of PrimeSource Foodservice Equipment Co., believes the best top executives “anticipate the big picture”—even before the data is available to confirm it. It was Woods’ own decisiveness that may soon turn Dallas’ PrimeSource into a $100 million company. “A great leader,” she says, “knows how to prioritize, and when to stop and go on certain strategies.”

›› At RBC Life Sciences in Irving, CEO Clinton H. Howard points to imagination as the key attribute of the successful entrepreneur. Howard himself displayed that quality when he created and sold two innovative public companies before launching RBC.

›› Finally, like Craft of Alliance Resource, Robert Lloyd Snyder of Dallas’ Stream Energy views the work force as a company’s most important asset. “If you want to look like a genius,” Snider once was advised, “surround yourself with hard-working people who are more intelligent than you are, and let ’em have at it.”

When this magazine was founded two years ago, a major reason was to serve as an information clearinghouse, or networking tool, to connect the most influential C-level executives in North Texas. After reading about all the dynamic entrepreneurs in “Following Their Hearts,” you’ll agree, we hope, that our July issue fulfills that mission—in spades.

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