I vividly remember coming out of a meeting with one of the premier names in investing in Utah. We had prepared for weeks and were excited to finally have a sit-down meeting to pitch our business. 

It was 2015 and we were confident in our story: profitable since day one, growing 50 percent year-over-year in a high growth category, strong margins, more demand than we could supply, and purely e-commerce focused. At the time, Walker Edison was doing less than $20 million in revenue per year, but we were staring down the pipe of incredible growth and just needed more capital to fund inventory purchases.

Not only did we not land the deal, but the investor went out of his way to ridicule and mock what we had created. He told us he saw little value in the business and that they would never consider investing. We had pitched others that told us “no,” but this meeting seemed especially cruel. In that moment I felt deflated. I was perplexed as to why it seemed nobody else could see the potential for this company. 

It was a hard day at Walker Edison. This was a company that we had built from the ground up, with no outside capital whatsoever. We were profitable from day one because we had to be! The only way we could fund growth was through retained earnings. And yet the investor meeting forced us to reevaluate and refocus on four key areas within our business.

The first was to know where every dollar goes. We had the sales part covered, but we hadn’t been as maniacal as we needed to be around the expense side of the P&L. We began scrutinizing every expenditure within the business; if it wasn’t absolutely necessary to run the company, we cut it.  Those saved dollars went into funding future growth.

The second was to make sure we were hiring the right people. When Walker Edison began, we did every job in the business. We called on new channel partners, answered customer service phone calls, created all the digital content with my inexpensive point-and-shoot camera in the corner of my small condo, as well as picked and shipped all the products ourselves. 

As the business grew, we knew we needed help. Each potential hire was critical to our long-term success, so we took extra time to prioritize and scrutinize the positions and people that we brought on. 

The third was to maintain singular focus. We had opportunities to open retail stores, pursue omni-channel strategies, and branch into product categories we didn’t know much about. Our e-commerce focus was born from a relationship with Overstock.com and we had experienced rapid growth with them. E-commerce was growing ten times as fast as traditional retail, and we focused on being the best in that space.

Finally, we learned to trust ourselves. We started our business for a reason. We solved a problem. We saw the vision and the potential even when others couldn’t see it. We weren’t going to let an investor (or two or ten) tell us our company wasn’t valuable. Trusting in ourselves paid off. 

Focusing on these areas paid off and we eventually found investors that believed in us. But they weren’t just investors, they were partners in our company. In the six years since that crushing investor meeting, we have been one of Utah’s fastest growing businesses, ranking fourth last year on Utah Business’ Fast 50.  We passed the $1 billion in sales mark, built out a new 125,000 square foot corporate campus, hired hundreds of amazing people in Utah, and expanded our global supply chain and sales offices throughout Europe, South America, and Asia.