dobalash (dō-bä’lăsh’)

n.

1. An antagonistic reaction to a trend, development, or event involving Doba.
2. What happens if Doba doesn’t just stop it with all the awards and recognition: “The dobalash reached a new fervor with its recognition by Utah Business as Best Companies to Work For.”
3. The breakdown that will happen if Doba lets even a tiny bit of this go to our heads.

Doba was one of the companies that Utah Business has recognized as a 2007 Best Company to Work For (me, Blaine Nielsen, and Ashley Schaumburg were in the pic on the cover in front of our Doba Green wall). I have to admit I was impressed with the level of detail and the sophistication that Utah Business employs in the process of selecting these companies. The surveys that employees fill out during this process are very comprehensive and complete.

Here’s the part of the article about Doba:

Any visitor to Orem-based drop shipping company Doba can quickly see that this company believes in having fun at work. Employees might be seen playing ping pong, foosball or video games in break rooms. On Wednesday mornings, breakfast is provided for the entire company, and it may even be the CEO mixing the waffles. Doba doesn’t enforce a dress code, believing work can be done just as effectively in T-shirts and shorts as in traditional business attire.

Calling the company “employee-centric,” president Jeremy Hanks says taking care of workers will lead to the best customer service a company can provide. Doba sends gift cards to employees’ family members on birthdays and anniversaries and rents out entire theaters for family movie nights. It also sponsors Doba Day, a celebration of the company’s birthday that includes eating contests, stunts and giveaways.

With so many perks, clocking in at Doba may not even seem like going to work, employees say. And that’s just the way management likes it.

“We place so much emphasis on our employees because we feel like it’s a two-way street,” Hanks says. “They invest a lot into Doba and they believe in our company, so we invest as much as we can in them.”

Though employees love the generous health benefits and competitive compensation, it’s the way they are treated that makes them stay at Doba. Says one employee, “Perks such as a game room and a light-hearted working environment are nice, but the best benefit is working for a company that you can believe in and enjoy going to work at.”

Survey Highlights:

• Access to the Doba Truck, a Ford F-150 with Doba logos.

• Doba Dot awards, a monthly recognition program based on outstanding performance.

• Barbeques and movie nights throughout the year for employees and their families.

This is really awesome. I hope that there really isn’t a dobalash.

I posted over a year and a half ago about Focusing on Your Employees. I truly believe that success in building an amazing company that is a great place to work it’s the sum of many little things. I focus a lot on employees. Having the caliber of employees that we have at Doba makes that sure easier.

Finally, go try this experiment: 1. Get a copy of the November 2007 issue of Utah Business. 2. Hold it up in front of a mirror. 3. You’ll see the secret real title of the cover story: Best Employees in Utah.

In the end, it’s the employees that deserve the recognition more than the companies.

More info from the official Doba release: Doba Honored as a “Best Company to Work For” by Utah Business magazine.

Back in May, I attended a Utah Technology Council Roundtable with Governor Huntsman.

At the end of that session, right as the Governor was leaving, I interrupted and asked the pressing question that a lot of the CEOs in the room had on their minds: how do we get more talented and experienced employees to Utah? With unemployment rates in Utah so low, and business growth in Utah so hot, it’s a recipe for supply/demand problems.

At the time I suggested the idea of a coalition of Utah technology companies (through an organization like the Utah Technology Council) working with the Governor’s Office of Economic Development on a campaign to spread the good word about all the job opportunities in Utah ands our unique lifestyle and quality of life to the world in order to attract talent to Utah.

I suggested we brand the effort Work Elevated. A play off of Utah’s Office of Tourism Life Elevated campaign.

Well, they got most of it right. The smaller print on the ad says:

Ranked the “Most Dynamic Economy” in the United States by the Kaufmann Foundation and the second “Best State for Business” by Forbes Magazine, it’s no wonder we’re looking for engineers and other talented professionals and companies to join Utah in going to the next level. The scenery’s not bad either. Call 1-801-538-8743 for information or email your resume to resumes@utah.gov

And the email I received from Richard Nelson (President and CEO, Utah Technology Council) and Jason Perry (Executive Director, Governor’s Office of Economic Development) said the following:

Dear Utah Employer,

The Utah Technology Council has partnered with the Governor’s Office of Economic Development to tackle one of the most important issues facing our economy.
With the State of Utah at full-employment a major talent recruiting initiative has been developed in order to head off any potential labor shortage that could widely impact Utah’s employers.

At the request of Governor Jon Huntsman, GOED has formed an action group made up of key representatives from the private sector, government and education to develop and implement a national talent recruitment effort, beginning first in the fields of engineering and then other needed professionals.

The UTC and GOED have committed to help resolve this issue by launching an important program that seeks to recruit talent to Utah.

This effort will include among other things:

• A national marketing campaign highlighting Utah’s quality of life and encouraging potential employees to relocate and be a part of Utah’s great economy. One such ad placement will be featured on Sunday, October 28, 2007 in 14 major metropolitan areas and will be seen by an estimated 3.1 million readers.
• Attendance by the State of Utah in partnership with private industry to recruitment tradeshows nationwide.

Those interested in working in Utah, will be invited to submit resumes to the talent recruitment task force. All firms that would like to participate in the Utah Recruitment Initiative and receive resumes from GOED’s efforts will need to file a participation agreement that can be found at www.goed.utah.gov or requested by calling 801.538.8743.

Employers choosing to join this effort will receive, on a weekly basis, an email of all resumes submitted during that week.

Join this effort now by submitting this Participation Agreement, or please forward this request to the appropriate individuals if your department is not actively involved in recruitment.

We anticipate hundreds of resume submissions and inquiries from professionals all across America beginning with the October 28th advertisement.

Can I just say that it’s totally awesome that it’s only been 4 months since this idea was suggested and it’s already being put into practice! Goes against everything I’ve come to assume about trade organizations and government. Go UTC! Go Governor Huntsman!

I will keep working with the UTC in whatever part I can to help out with these efforts. My original thought in suggesting the idea was that Doba and other tech companies can and will do direct recruiting for specific job openings. But general awareness campaigns like this are perfect for trade organizations and governments to push and help with positive foundations around the country to support and heighten the more specific efforts.

I posted back in May about Doba’s growth from 2003 to 2006 of over 3,200%.

Last week, we found out that Doba has been recognized as the 23rd fastest-growing private company in the United States. The 2007 Inc. 500, as revealed in the September issue of Inc. magazine (on newsstands August 28 - October 2), also ranks Doba 2nd in the category of fastest growing software companies, and 5th in growth among companies intending to go public.

When I look back at the past almost 5 years, I always knew we were growing fast. But I didn’t realize how fast. Being ranked in the top 25 of the fastest growing private companies in the country, being the 2nd fastest growing software company in the country, I think it finally hit home for me. Doba literally exploded from 2003 to 2006.

The small part I’ve played in getting Doba to grow like this is tiny at best. So some thanks are in order to all of the other compatriots who have helped Doba fight the fight. First off, Doba’s other 2 co-founders, Dave Gray and Brandon Williams, don’t get the public recognition they should. They were there in the beginning, they’re there now, pushing and pulling Doba down the road we’re traveling. Next, Blaine Nielsen, Doba’s President and COO, needs to get a large amount of credit too. I firmly believe if Blaine hadn’t left Dell to come work for us in the spring of 2005, we would not exist as a company today. Over the years, we’ve had over 200 employees work for Doba. It goes without saying that without their efforts, Doba would have grown exactly 8.74645% (I figured this out scientifically, it’s Calculus, complex stuff). Doba’s employees are the best in the world! I’d be remiss if I didn’t also thank Doba’s customers. Without the support and business of our customers, our growth would have been exactly 0.0% (a less scientific calculation, but spot on nonetheless). Doba has also had some great partners over the years. Our partners form the foundation for our market position, give us credibility, and help us grow our business. Finally, for me personally, I need to thank my wife Amy. Without her support, I’d probably still be unemployed and dinking around doing nothing. Being the wife of an entrepreneur is definitely not easy. And I credit my Mom and Dad for teaching me to work hard.

All of these parties have that in common: we’ve worked hard (damn hard at times) to grow Doba. In the all-team meeting we had this morning, I told everyone that I’d bet them all that no one in the room (including myself) would ever work for a company that placed higher on the list than #23. I think that’s true, odds are that we all won’t.

I also told the Doba Team to pat ourselves on the back for a couple of minutes, then get back to work! Doba has a long way to go still in order to reach our full potential. The world ain’t seen nothing yet from Doba!!

That number represents Doba’s three year revenue growth percentage from 2003 to 2006. 3,206% It’s a big number. Actually, in terms of business growth, it’s a REALLY big number. What that means is that Doba has undergone extreme (one might even call it ridiculous) growth in the past 3 years.

This week Doba and I were featured in an article in Connect Magazine called The Dilemma of Growth.

The article also talked about fellow Utah entrepreneurs Lovesac (Shawn Nelson) and Omniture (Josh James) . Besides that it talks about Doba, you should read the article as is contains some hard learned lessons about managing growth. I’ve never met Shawn and Josh, but I ought to get together with them sometime to share stories about managing (and probably more often than not, mismanaging) growth.

The thing about growth is this: they don’t reference it as growing pains for nothing. And fundamentally, it’s Doba’s employees and customers that most often deal with these pains. Sure trying to lead a company through such extreme growth is difficult. But I’d wager that working for a company with this type of growth, or purchasing products from a company with this kind of growth, is were the true growing pains are.

So to Doba’s employees and customers: I’ve also heard it said that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Well, last I checked, Doba isn’t dead from these growing pains, so here’s to a stronger company for our employees and stronger products for our customers!! Thank you for your extremely hard work and dedication. And thank you for your business. Without both, we wouldn’t have any growth to worry about.

Anyone who’s been around me very much knows that as the CEO of Doba, I have a passion for treating our employees right. That passion is nothing I can take credit for. It just happens. It happens because Doba is staffed with talented, creative, and dedicated individuals who inspire passion and drive Doba’s vision.

We have a billboard along the I-15 freeway here in Utah. We use it for recruiting and for branding our company here locally. Currently, our billboard looks like this:

Recently, we named Ben Reece Doba Employee of the year. As a small (or not so small) token of our appreciation for Ben’s outstanding performance throughout 2006, we leased a Ford Mustang for him to drive for the year. Ben is a member of our engineering team and has worked with us for two and a half years, consistently going above and beyond his duties to redefine, in my mind, what being a stellar employee really means. Although I’m Doba’s CEO and one of its founders, at the end of the day, I’m still an employee working for this entity I helped create, and as a fellow employee, I look up to Ben. His dedication, effort, and focus are both remarkable and invigorating.

I’ve posted on the topic of valuing employees before when I added some thoughts to a Guy Kawasaki post back in April and said to Focus on Thy Employees! At Doba, our employees are so outstanding we can’t help but focus on them. We have three value statements at Doba relating to employees, customers, and community, and our employees come first. Without them, we wouldn’t be able to focus on our customers, and we certainly would not have achieved the strong sense of community we now enjoy.

The fact is that no business and no individual is really an isolated entity. Employees are not simply cogs that fit into the machinery of a business. I see Doba more as an organic organization whose health relies on the well being of everyone involved. We feed off of one another’s passions. We collaborate on ideas and projects. We toil side by side. And we celebrate both individual and collective achievements.

When we choose to celebrate the achievements of an outstanding employee, we provide a token of appreciation not as a reward but simply as a way of saying thanks for a job well done and thanks for inspiring us all to strive for higher levels of achievement in both our professional and personal lives.

I know that our passionate focus on employees ultimately will help us arrive at our goals to be the best place to work, to deliver our maximum value to our customers, and to positively impact the communities in which we live. I want Doba employees to feel as though working at Doba is the best job they’ve ever had… and the best job they ever will have. Our employees are certainly the best I’ve ever had the opportunity to work alongside.

My only concern is that Doba has so many employees at or approaching Ben’s caliber that we may end up with a fleet of bright yellow Mustang’s next year.