# • LEAD The Leading Organizations of Greater Cincinnati 2014

Change and growth within a company is not only inevitable, it’s mandatory to stay afloat in a shifting economy. The difficult decisions facing entrepreneurs and business owners today is when to make calculated changes that minimize risk while maximizing the overall growth. Goals must be met, revenue should increase to cover new costs and needs must be tended.

Written by Felicia Jordan Photo by Wes Battoclette

Bold Solutions for Bold Moves

Taking the jump to a new market, a new product or a new direction with a company is always risky. It’s an intim-idating process rife with speed bumps and potholes, but it’s imperative that companies grow and change with the landscape of the economy and consumer needs. Without change and adaptation, companies stagnate.

The risks and challenges of growth can be mitigated if the company is able to identify market needs along-side its own strengths, weaknesses and abilities. Last year, VEGA Americas decided to make a foray into the waste-water treatment industry. Knowing that there was an op-portunity, but not quite sure how they could fulfill the gap, President, Ron Hegyesi sought out Ray Attiyah at Definity Partners who suggested contacting Paul Miklautsch and Micah Zender, co-founders of Start Something Bold. The consulting company designs revenue growth by helping companies create solutions around their customers.

“Part of what we communicate to people as consul-tants is that we’re brought in not to tell you that every-thing’s pretty, but we’re brought in to create tension with-in your team to get everyone thinking differently, which opens your team up to new ideas and ways of looking at your business,” says Miklautsch.

Before making the transition into wastewater treat-ment, VEGA simply worked to produce products for the measurement of level, density, weight and pressure. This move challenged Hegyesi to teach his team about waste-water treatment effectively and in a manner that would al-low the business to cohesively transition into the market.

“We are relatively established in the existing markets that we’ve served for anywhere from five to 15 years, and we were going to a new – new to us – but very estab-lished and competitive market,” says Hegyesi. “If we just worked in our normal way, the chances of success would be very low. So we brought in Start Something Bold to give us some tools or different ways of thinking to where

we can spike that curve and have a different way of enter-ing the market.”

Start Something Bold handled researching the world of wastewater treatment, producing a book of data, cul-ture and observation cultivated as a result of traveling all over the country to a multitude of locations. This data was combined with an analysis of what VEGA’s custom-ers thought of them as well, in an effort to patch holes in service while moving forward.

“For our research we listened to the voice of the con-sumer in multiple locations from multiple levels within the industry, from people who set the regulations to people that perform the ground work,” says Zender. “We hear things, make observations and bold, supported conclu-sions regarding a company’s future direction and we come back to present those ideas to the company.”

Between these consumer critiques and the back-ground information collected on the intricacies of the wastewater treatment world, Zender and Miklautsch’s team was able to craft 12 different concepts they be-lieved VEGA needed to implement to successfully move forward. “We cross-referenced environmental concerns and stakeholder issues to determine where problems could lie,” says Miklautsch. “From there, we figured out goals and ways to solve these problems based on criteria we knew was important to Ron.”

Zender adds that Start Something Bold works to em-power businesses to make smart bets that are based on the right information and the right ideals, but there is a need to know the company’s goals and how to also ac-commodate their needs within these bets.

“Part of what we do is we try to come in and under-stand where each business wants to go, what’s unique about each business and make sure that we filter every-thing that’s not relevant to growing their business,” says Miklautsch.

LEAD The Leading Organizations of Greater Cincinnati 2014 • #

Paul Miklautsch (left) Micah Zender (right)

Ron Hegyesi

Start Something Bold is located at 3914 Miami Road Suite 214, Cincinnati, OH 45227. You can reach Paul and Micah at 513.376.3998 or visit their website at startsomethingbold.com.

For more information on upcoming events featuring compa-nies like VEGA who are experiencing bold growth, check out definitypartners.com/events.

Start Something Bold has a partnership with Definity Partners, a manufacturing consulting firm focused on empowering front-line leaders. Together, they help companies Run, Improve and Grow their businesses. Definity Partners is headquartered at 8650 Governors Hill Dr. Suite 110, Cincinnati, OH 45249. You can reach them at 513.381.7200.