Attention small-business owners: Keith McFarland, the best-selling author of The Breakthrough Company, a book on how to take a business from small to big, is giving a luncheon presentation Tuesday in Santa Barbara.
The event starts with a book signing at 11 a.m. in the San Rafael Room of Fess Parker’s DoubleTree Resort, and continues with a lunch, an hour-long presentation and a half-hour Q&A session. Tickets are $75 per person.
The book, which is subtitled “How Everyday Companies Become Extraordinary Performers,” reached No. 1 on The Wall Street Journal‘s best-sellers’ list.
It represents the most exhaustive study of successful growth companies in history, according to McFarland. He and his research team spent five years assembling and analyzing a database of more than 7,000 companies — every company to ever be named to Inc. magazine’s annual list of 500 fastest-growing companies.
As a technology CEO, business school dean, consultant and writer, McFarland has provided management advice to organizations for about 20 years. He writes a monthly online column for BusinessWeek (Click here for his Friday column, “The Problem with Business as Usual”), a blog for INC. magazine, and is founder of McFarland Strategy Partners. His firm provides strategic advisory services to companies such as Microsoft, Morgan Stanley, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Vans, House of Blues, Motorola and scores of middle-market growth firms.
When he was 26, McFarland became one of the youngest business school deans in the nation. As a dean for the Pepperdine University’s Graziadio School of Business and Management (once named by BusinessWeek as the 11th best executive program in the world), he developed joint-venture executive education programs in the United States, Asia and Europe, and founded the quarterly business journal Management Insight.
McFarland is a frequent speaker to executive groups and business organizations. He lives with his wife and two young sons just down the hill from the chairlifts at Snowbird, Utah.
Tuesday’s event is being sponsored by Business First Bank and Express Employment Professionals.