The tim­ing couldn’t have been more per­fect for KC Round­table to hear from , Owner and CEO of Mail­Print . In cel­e­bra­tion of MailPrint’s 25th anniver­sary this year, Gina pre­pared 25 unique lessons about entre­pre­neur­ship. And, con­sid­er­ing the lessons’ author — whose hard work has resulted in tens of mil­lions in rev­enue per year, and who is on track to hire the 70th employee this year — peo­ple took notes.

The 25 Biggest Things I Have Learned as a CEO for 25 Years

1. “Per­se­ver­ance doesn’t run on air but on desire. You can han­dle any hell only if you have a burn­ing, bigger-than-life heaven in your chest, which must express itself, no mat­ter what — even if it costs you your smaller, so-called life.” –Charles Bukowski
2. It’s your job to cre­ate that point in the dis­tance and lead your team there. The biggest chal­lenge for entre­pre­neurs is to real­ize it is not about them — it is about the achieve­ment of that vision.
3. Hire to fit YOUR cul­ture. As a leader, you must cre­ate it, nur­ture it, know it, and pro­tect it. Be able to state it with con­vic­tion in a sin­gle sentence.
4. Don’t cre­ate a lifestyle that out­paces your check­book. Hold on to your cash. Doing so will allow you to make big moves later, when every­one else is doggy-paddling. Read more ›

KC Round­table wel­comed a dif­fer­ent setup this week. Rather than invit­ing one speaker to the table, we had the lux­ury of three entre­pre­neurs in the form of a TechPanel.

Our pre­sen­ters included:

: Ser­vices Direc­tor at Umzuzu

Pas­sion­ate about the value propo­si­tion of cloud com­put­ing ser­vices, Joe’s work with Umzuzu helps orga­ni­za­tions replace anti­quated tech­nolo­gies with Google Apps for sim­ple, pow­er­ful com­mu­ni­ca­tion and col­lab­o­ra­tion tools.

: Oper­a­tions at Engage Mobile

Todd has entre­pre­neur­ial man­age­ment expe­ri­ence across mul­ti­ple indus­tries. He is pri­mar­ily focused on high-growth and technology-based ven­tures from startup to harvest.

: Pres­i­dent & CEO of Sae­pio

In 2007, John joined Sae­pio, which is a pre­mier provider of soft­ware and solu­tions that max­i­mize brand effec­tive­ness for orga­ni­za­tions with cor­po­rate and dis­trib­uted mar­ket­ing networks.

of RFP365 facil­i­tated the panel, ask­ing our respon­dents about the chal­lenges and rewards of build­ing a com­pany in Kansas City. Read more ›

On the morn­ing after Hal­loween, entre­pre­neurs gath­ered for KC Round­table at First Watch in West­port. Many were still sleepy-eyed from tak­ing their chil­dren trick-or-treating the night before — and calm­ing down mid­night sugar highs from the kids’ con­sump­tions of too many Reese’s Pieces.

Regard­less, all ears were fas­tened to hear speak about BATS Global Mar­kets : a mod­ern day story of David ver­sus Goliah; an infant stock exchange from the Mid­west ver­sus the pre-existing, inde­struc­tible indus­try giants, NASDAQ and the New York Stock Exchange. Read more ›

After last session’s heart-racing story about Vin­So­lu­tions and Matt Watson’s cut-throat jour­ney to a 9-figure buy­out, KC Round­table switched gears to an uplift­ing, inspi­ra­tional story of the small-by-design Kansas City non­profit, Boys Grow . Read more ›

This week, KC Round­table wel­comed , founder and CEO of Stack­ify , the much antic­i­pated start-up due to launch in Novem­ber. But rather than gush about his excit­ing new ven­ture, Wat­son shared bat­tle sto­ries from his last multi-million dol­lar endeavor, the com­pany he claims should have failed 1,000 dif­fer­ent times: Vin­So­lu­tions . Read more ›

is the founder of Pro­gres­sive Med­ical, Inc. ( PMI ), a med­ical device com­pany spe­cial­iz­ing in air mat­tresses for patients suf­fer­ing from bed sores. Carlile owned and oper­ated the com­pany for 18 years before sell­ing the com­pany early last year.

Carlile cred­its much of PMI ’s suc­cess with “luck,” but, after detail­ing the company’s his­tory to KC Round­table , it’s easy to see that “luck” was mostly derived from delib­er­ate, strate­gic design, like con­cen­tra­tion on: Read more ›