Onward and Upward: SPAN Enterprises Makes Inc. 5000's List of Fastest Growing Privately-Held Companies of 2015

Inspherio is proud to announce that SPAN Enterprises, our parent company, has made the 2015 Inc. 5000 list of fastest-growing privately-held companies in America! Out of this year's companies, SPAN ranks #1150 overall, #11 in the Charlotte Metro Area, and last but not least: #1 in its home state of South Carolina!

For those of you who haven’t heard of us, we’d like you to learn more about our growing company.

Some users have asked about our location–but we’ll never tell! Just kidding. Our home base is the SPAN Enterprises office, located in the small town of Rock Hill, South Carolina. It is here that Inspherio was born, and where we continue to thrive. We’ve stayed loyal to our roots, choosing to remain in the city that saw our birth and rapid growth into the worldwide industry leaders we are today.

Home to over 14 internationally used cloud-based applications (including Inspherio), SPAN Enterprises remains a pillar of the local community, never letting global success interfere with their commitment to the Rock Hill community.

That’s the where, but what about the when, why, and who?

Inspherio started, as all great products do, with a great idea. Having worked as a photographer in the event planning industry, Agie Sundaram, our CEO, set out to create an all-inclusive program that catered to the needs of all kinds of event professionals.

It was, to say the least, a large undertaking–but Agie knew that a comprehensive, user-friendly program was long overdue in the event industry. (Did you hear that? That was the collective sound of event professionals nodding their heads in agreement.) And in 2014, that’s just what he brought to the table with Inspherio.

As word spreads, event professionals everywhere are continually floored by Inspherio’s comprehensiveness and affordability. No longer tied to multiple applications or multiple websites, event professionals have found themselves with a lot more time to spend expanding and improving their businesses.

While we are proud of our product and of our service, we would be nothing without your support. Thank you for helping to make Inspherio the best program in the industry, and thank you for helping us grow. We strive to improve every day because, when it comes down to it, you are the only reason we exist!

When you consider the high quality of programs like Inspherio, it’s no wonder SPAN Enterprises has received recognition from Inc. 5000. SPAN continues to be a market leader in several industries across the globe, all from the small town it began in. We’re proud to be ranked in the Inc. 5000; the future certainly looks bright for Inspherio and SPAN Enterprises in sunny Rock Hill. We look forward to growing with you!

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5 Steps to Achieve Great Things

Les McKeown recently wrote an article for Inc magazine that outlined what he described as the "First 5 Steps to Achieving Great Things."  In his article, Les is focused on that all-important transition from Good to Great.  There has certainly been no shortage of advice on this transition, and that's because of its importance.  Anyone can become good at something simply through natural talents, but unless there is a conscious effort to become more than that, you will fall short of Greatness.  

Les' 5 Steps are as follows:
1.  Prioritize
2.  Plan Ruthlessly; Execute Relentlessly
3.  Get out of your inbox
4.  Get out of your office
5.  Review, revise, adapt, push on

Prioritize
To achieve great things, you must prioritize where your attention will be focused.  This also depends on how you will define greatness for your particular business.  Prioritization can include making Goals for the Long Term & Short Term.

Plan Ruthlessly; Execute Relentlessly
McKeown defines good planning as having a plan, working the plan, and not being trapped by the plan.  Obviously, you must work the plan in order to achieve your goals, but if you aren't adapting your performance based on your results then you are becoming trapped in a plan.  

Get out of your inbox
Not every email is worth checking the second it is received.  Recent studies indicate that smartphone users check their phone 150 times per day.  The constant notifications from your phone can bring about all sorts of distractions.  A great point that Les makes in his article is that by checking your inbox every chance you get "you're working to other people's agenda, not your own."

Get out of your office
The advice to get out of your office can be taken several different ways.  For example: your business' success in dependent on you getting out there, meeting with clients, and booking new events.  That doesn't all happen from within an office.  

Another way to take this advice is to get a change of scenery now and then.  Becoming comfortable is the enemy of innovation.  The more time you spend in one place,  the easier it is to fall into a routine complacency. 

Review, revise, adapt, push on
After a plan has been put in place, you need to review your success; revise anything that could be improved; adapt your plan to accomidate your recent findings, and push on.



Photo Credit: Squidish

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What Successful People Do With the First Hour of their Work Day

Photo Credit: Thomas Hawk

The following article was written by Kevin Purdy and first appeared in Fast Company

Remember when you used to have a period at the beginning of every day to think about your schedule, catch up with friends, maybe knock out a few tasks? It was called home room, and it went away after high school. But many successful people schedule themselves a kind of grown-up home room every day. You should too.

The first hour of the workday goes a bit differently for Craig Newmark of Craigslist, David Karp of Tumblr, motivational speaker Tony Robbins, career writer (and Fast Company blogger) Brian Tracy, and others, and they’ll tell you it makes a big difference. Here are the first items on their daily to-do list.

Don’t Check Your Email for the First Hour. Seriously. Stop That.

Tumblr founder David Karp will “try hard” not to check his email until 9:30 or 10 a.m., according to an Inc. profile of him. “Reading e-mails at home never feels good or productive,” Karp said. “If something urgently needs my attention, someone will call or text me.”

Not all of us can roll into the office whenever our Vespa happens to get us there, but most of us with jobs that don’t require constant on-call awareness can trade e-mail for organization and single-focus work. It’s an idea that serves as the title of Julie Morgenstern’s work management book Never Check Email In The Morning, and it’s a fine strategy for leaving the office with the feeling that, even on the most over-booked days, you got at least one real thing done.

If you need to make sure the most important messages from select people come through instantly, AwayFind can monitor your inbox and get your attention when something notable arrives. Otherwise, it’s a gradual but rewarding process of training interruptors and coworkers not to expect instantaneous morning response to anything they send in your off-hours.

Gain Awareness, Be Grateful

One smart, simple question on curated Q & A site Quora asked “How do the most successful people start their day?”. The most popular response came from a devotee of Tony Robbins, the self-help guru who pitched the power of mindful first-hour rituals long before we all had little computers next to our beds.

Robbins suggests setting up an “Hour of Power,” “30 Minutes to Thrive,” or at least “Fifteen Minutes to Fulfillment.” Part of it involves light exercise, part of it involves motivational incantations, but the most accessible piece involves 10 minutes of thinking of everything you’re grateful for: in yourself, among your family and friends, in your career, and the like. After that, visualize “everything you want in your life as if you had it today.”

Robbins offers the “Hour of Power” segment of his Ultimate Edge series as a free audio stream (here’s the direct MP3 download). Blogger Mike McGrath also wrote a concise summary of the Hour of Power). You can be sure that at least some of the more driven people you’ve met in your career are working on Robbins’ plan.

Do the Big, Shoulder-Sagging Stuff First

Brian Tracy’s classic time-management book Eat That Frog gets its title from a Mark Twain saying that, if you eat a live frog first thing in the morning, you’ve got it behind you for the rest of the day, and nothing else looks so bad. Gina Trapani explained it well in a video for her Work Smart series). Combine that with the concept of getting one thing done before you wade into email, and you’ve got a day-to-day system in place. Here’s how to force yourself to stick to it:

Choose Your Frog

"Choose your frog, and write it down on a piece of paper that you'll see when you arrive back at your desk in the morning, Tripani advises."If you can, gather together the material you'll need to get it done and have that out, too."

One benefit to tackling that terrible, weighty thing you don’t want to do first thing in the morning is that you get some space from the other people involved in that thing--the people who often make the thing more complicated and frustrating. Without their literal or figurative eyes over your shoulder, the terrible thing often feels less complex, and you can get more done.

Ask Yourself If You’re Doing What You Want to Do

Feeling unfulfilled at work shouldn’t be something you realize months too late, or even years. Consider making an earnest attempt every morning at what the late Apple CEO Steve Jobs told a graduating class at Stanford to do:

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

“Customer Service” (or Your Own Equivalent)

Craigslist founder Craig Newmark answered the first hour question succinctly: “Customer service.” He went on to explain (or expand) that he also worked on current projects, services for military families and veterans, and protecting voting rights. But customer service is what Newmark does every single day at Craigslist, responding to user complaints and smiting scammers and spammers. He almost certainly has bigger fish he could pitch in on every day, but Newmark says customers service “anchors me to reality.”

Your own version of customer service might be keeping in touch with contacts from year-ago projects, checking in with coworkers you don’t regularly interact with, asking questions of mentors, and just generally handling the human side of work that quickly gets lost between task list items. But do your customer service on the regular, and you’ll have a more reliable roster of helpers when the time comes.

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4 Signs of a True Entrepreneur

This article was originally posted on Inc.com by Mayra Jiminez

People often wonder how the kid who rarely talked or wasn't particularly popular in class went on to become a start-up genius. What was it about that person that helped him or her blossom into an icon of entrepreneurship? And how can you make sure you have what it takes?

It's a combination of factors. Start with these:

Passion
Passion is the fuel that drives the creation of dreams. This is a no-brainer. You have to wake up every day wanting your success. You have to become obsessed with the idea of achieving your goals, with attaining the grand objective that will yield meaning of great personal significance. The trick, of course, is to channel that passion into action. Sometimes the idea is so exciting that it becomes scary to try. And it's scary to fail. Successful entrepreneurs know that failure is part of the journey, and that without failure, there is no success.

Conviction
Passion without conviction is like a shooting star that fizzles before you even fully realize it's there. What keeps your passion alive? Conviction streamlines your passion into a steady flow. After all, most people have innovative ideas at some point in their lives. It's conviction that determines what you do with those ideas. Do you let it die? Or do you go for it?

Lunacy
Let's face it: You have to be a little bit crazy to achieve extreme success. It takes a particular type of lunacy to never want to quit, to believe in something so much that it defines you. It's this lunacy that takes you to a state of euphoria in which you think you can tackle some unachievable goal that others have never attempted to tackle. If you're not defined by what you want to accomplish, you'll impose limits on your efforts. People who change the world would never do such a thing.

Need for approval

Before the "how they did it" question comes the "why". Many experts believe that most entrepreneurs who have made history have been driven by a need for approval. Instead of creating a lack of confidence, this "I'll show 'em" attitude can foster an entrepreneur's conviction. It is the force that makes him or her fight harder. At the end of the day, everyone who told you no deserves some credit: He or she helped you become who you are.

If the list above describes you, congratulations. You're ready to be an entrepreneur. You are equipped with a set of virtues that are built to yield big things. You were born to make a difference. Get on with your idea if you believe you have something special. Challenge the paradigms that bind you, and go change the world.
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Mayra Jimenez and her husband founded The Orchid Boutique, which specializes in designer swimwear made in their native Colombia. Today Orchid Boutique is a multi-million dollar business with both online and brick-and-mortar stores.

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