Larry Lawson, president and CEO of eCardio Diagnostics LLC, a provider of cardiac monitoring products and services, has had to check his own pulse once or twice because of the rapid growth his company has seen in the past few years. ECardio has been one of the fastest-growing companies in Houston and has no plans to slow down.
“We’ve continued to experience solid growth,” Lawson says of the $44.8 million, 350-employee company. “That growth has come from our ability to continue to meet the needs of our customer base through the suite of products and services that we offer. We are rapidly becoming the No. 1 company in the world doing what we do.”
From excellent customer relationships to innovative products and a drive to be the best, eCardio is positioned to achieve great things.
Smart Business spoke to Lawson about how he keeps growing a company that’s already at the top of its game.
Develop a vision. You have to provide a vision. You have to listen to your senior leadership team on how to carry out the vision and listen to each of the teams about their daily implementation and what it takes to meet the needs of the customer. Sometimes the things that you hear back will provide you with an opportunity to expand your vision, which will further enhance your strategies. It not only gives employees a sense of contribution, but it also can be an important element to future success.
Once you provide the vision of your company, you need to listen to your senior leadership on how to carry out that vision. Many times, that senior leadership will bring things to the table from previous employment and previous opportunities they’ve had in the past. It’s very important for a CEO to listen to his senior team about these opportunities. A lot of CEOs think they have all the answers and they don’t do a lot of listening and I think that’s a huge mistake. The more successful CEOs do exactly that. They have the initial vision, but they rely upon their executive team and their senior leadership teams to carry out that vision and to come up with the incentivizing programs that will give them the results they are looking for.
Look to other industries. I think it’s important for every CEO out there to see beyond their industry that they’re in today. Even though our primary focus is in remote cardiac monitoring, we see technology trends in other companies that have been helpful for us to work with as we develop our technology. All CEOs need to look beyond their industry and look at all technologies beyond their industry.
You have to go to seminars outside of your own industry. Attend seminars that deal with the financial culture of their business and learn from other industry leaders, other key opinion leaders of other industries. I think that’s really beneficial to CEOs to get outside of their own forest so they can see how other trees are grown. CEOs need to look to other areas of high growth where they could extrapolate from.
Communicate with customers. We listen to our customers. That’s how we started our company, by listening to our customers, what they wanted and needed most. The cardiologists and electro-physiologists who are ordering our monitoring diagnostic tests for their patients know what tools they need to provide to get the best diagnosis possible. That technology stems from our ability to work with and understand our clients’ needs and our physicians’ needs.
One thing that we do that our competition doesn’t do is that we have very close conversations with our customers and clients. How we know that we are going above and beyond what our competition is doing is the physicians are telling us that we are. They’re collaborating with us and helping us develop processes and controls. That’s how we know we are exceeding our competition. We are continuing to grow and exceed year after year in our business where our competition isn’t.
You have to stay in constant contact with your customers and listen to your customers. You have to stay in touch with all those clients who are ordering your products. They know the tools that are needed and you have to listen to them and give them the tools. That’s how you know whether you’re keeping up with the change needed by adapting and innovating.
HOW TO REACH: eCardio Diagnostics, (888) 747-1442 or www.ecardio.com
