In his ground-breaking book, “The Tipping Point,” Malcolm Gladwell identifies three types of people that make ideas, epidemics, or trends “tip” – that is, make the transition from a backwoods curiosity to the mainstream. “Mavens” are enthusiasts who know certain things very, very well, whether it’s supermarket deals or techno-gadgetry. “Salesmen” are translators who can take complex ideas and make them understandable to the average joe. And finally, “Connectors” are the people who have such a broad network of people across different spheres of life that they can introduce people to each other who never would have crossed paths otherwise.

This last category – the Connectors – perfectly describes what we do here at Exemplar. Sure, we have Mavens in certain areas (patents, securities, etc.) and we have Salesmen who can explain things and do it well, but our main strength as a company is in making the Connection.

First and foremost we’re entrepreneurs. And that means we’re always out in the community meeting people, looking for needs to be filled, trying to build our business by building yours. That is, we’re always making connections.

Some recent examples:
-A woman I met at a conference makes a one-of-a-kind product. She needs a distribution channel. A colleague at Exemplar knows the management team of the perfect distributor. We’ll be connecting the two.

-Some students I met at a technology expo who have come up with innovative designs relating to aircraft and would like to build and market their product. A woman I met at a technology expo works with a software company, so she knows the management team of a technology company who in turn know the team at an aircraft company who may be interested in the design the students came up with. The aircraft company may also be interested in applications of their technology in a different segment of general aviation than they have been exploring, and we happen to know the CEO of a company that can provide such a market. We’ll be exploring whether the connections are valuable.

-The advisor to the previously mentioned student team has an aircraft company with a design that can benefit third world communities. He is looking for other companies that might work in concert with his idea. As it happens, we have connections to two other companies that are focusing on building their very different but complementary business models in the third world. All three of these companies are eco-friendly and humanitarian-oriented. We are happy to make the introductions to see if they can work together.

None of these connections would happen if we sat on our laurels thinking about how to drive up our billable hours with a few solid customers. That’s not what we do and it’s not who we are.

We are entrepreneurs focused on finding and delivering value. We pro-actively engage in the marketplace, spanning a wide range of industries, in order to find those pockets of need where we can help. We have developed a powerful network of contacts that aids our customers in ways even we cannot predict.

We are Connectors.