If Patrick Hampson ever hands you his business card, you’re just going to have to guess his title.
The same goes with any of MED3000 Inc.’s employees. While titles have some relevance at the health care management and technology company, positions purposefully have been left off each employee’s card since the company’s founding.
“That way we’re all partners at MED3000,” says Hampson, who actually holds the title of founder, chairman and CEO. “I think it’s just another thing that adds to the culture. You have to do a lot of things that just keep building at the culture, and at some point, the culture takes over for a company.”
Instilling a sound culture is important, but it’s especially vital when you’re taking a small entrepreneurial business as Hampson did, and you grow it to a national scale.
“It’s easy when you have one or two employees, and you can walk down the hallway and talk to them,” he says. “But you have to maintain it, and you have to hire people that believe in that culture.”
Since day one, Hampson has driven a culture based on strong relationships. The principle carries back to his youth where the hours spent on the court, on the baseball field and in the locker room taught him the true definition of team mentality.
“Whether it’s your clients or your employees, you’re less successful unless you have a relationship with these people,” Hampson says. “Everything we try to drive is relationship driven, and it makes us more successful on the service side, it makes us more successful on the sales side, and it makes us more successful on the employee-retention side.”
Hampson has grown the company from one employee to 1,760 at the end of 2009. MED3000 reached revenue of $137 million last year and is expecting $150 million for 2010.
Here are the two steps Hampson takes to maintain a culture of strong relationships and ultimately grow MED3000.
