NYReport.com Contest Winners: Puglisi Consulting Group, Inc.

Puglisi Consulting Group, Inc.

Year founded: 2005

Headquartered in: Hauppauge, NY

Number of employees: 3 employees, 5 contract consultants

Basil C. Puglisi, Founder

Website: www.puglisiconsulting.com

Email: staff@puglisiconsulting.com

Twitter: @Puglisi

Facebook: www.facebook.com/puglisiconsulting

YouTube: www.youtube.com/puglisiconsulting

How and why was your business founded?

I kept getting requests from people I knew to come and help them with their business. I did it as a side business for a few years and then one day I got tired of not being able to commit 100 percent, so I took the leap.

What is your leadership style?

Why? I always want to know why someone thinks or considers something. In fact, when I was a professional at Stony Brook University, I got a leadership award from a staff nomination for what was described as "always willing to listen, even if it seems like my mind was made up". What's the point of surrounding yourself with people if you’re not going to teach and learn from them?

What is your company's growth strategy?

Individual digital "World of Mouth" to generate new leads, the emphasis is on the individual accounts. Compare @Puglisi, the company Twitter account: it has about 5,000 followers compared to @BasilPuglisi, which has 20,000. This is because people in digital are more likely to follow and relate to a personal brand rather then a company or organizational brand. The best digital relationships build from people, not a company.

We then execute and scale through a network of professional consultants based on project need. I constantly attend conferences and events to have a pool of qualified talent to bring in on any project, and they tend to be some of the best talent in their field. It keeps us nimble and trendy.

Tell us about a difficult time you went through with your business, and how you overcame it.

When I launched dbmei.com, a non profit publication that is helping to establish a training and continuing education program for the industry and myself, I had to turn over projects to my staff. The process of teaching them to think like me and handle client relationships was rough. At first we lost some clients, but once I gave them freedom to be themselves, the staff developed and became stronger. It was a tough process having to ride the rollercoaster, but it was a necessity for growth.

Do you have any words of advice you’d like to share with our readers?

Collaboration is so important to success; if you try to do everything yourself you'll prevent your staff and colleagues from growing and it will show in your bottom line. The best part of collaboration is that you'll learn new things and be able to compete with larger companies without the long term overhead.

What movie did you last see?

Cars 2 with my two-year-old son. He is a big Tow Mater fan!