On Monday, Oct. 16, I’ll be speaking at the Xerox Premier Partners event in Chicago, and I’m looking forward to it. I’ve never spoken to a group of printers before, but I suspect many of those in attendance will strongly identify with the businesses I write about in my book, Small Giant: Companies That Choose To Be Great Instead of Big. In the nearly 24 years I’ve been at Inc. magazine, I’ve seen thousands of companies, including quite a few printing businesses, and I’ve had the privilege of getting to know their founders, leaders, and owners. As a group, they are among the most forward-thinking business practitioners I’ve met. They understand that it takes more than sales to make a company great.

My message, in a nutshell, is this: There is no rule that says you have to grow your business as much and as fast as you can. Whether you realize it or not, you have a choice. Your company can be great—the best at what it does, fabulous to do business with, a terrific place to work, an integral part of its community—without going public, doing mergers and acquisitions, spreading out geographically, or generally following the well-worn route of other successful companies. You can do none of those things and still be extremely successful, be on the cutting edge of change, make lots of money, and have a great life.

Not that there’s anything wrong with being great and big, but greatness and bigness are not the same, as the companies in my book demonstrate. What’s more, the drive to ramp up sales can sometimes create obstacles to greatness. That’s why small giants like Anchor Brewing, Clif Bar, Righteous Babe Records, and CitiStorage, among others, have been very careful in deciding which growth opportunities to seize and which ones to forego. In the process, they have discovered how to generate a kind of excitement and magnetism that people inside and outside the business find irresistible. It’s what I call “mojo.”

Printers face the same challenges, opportunities, and choices that the companies I write about have confronted. I’m sure that some printers have made similar decisions and generated their own brand of mojo. A few of them may even be in the audience on Monday, and I look forward to sharing what I’ve learned from the small giants I know—and to meeting others.

Bo Burlingham
Editor at Large, Inc. Magazine
Author of Small Giants: Companies That Choose to be Great Instead of Big