50 Fastest Growing Private Companies 2017: BRANDED OFFERS.com

Westlake Village CEO: Rick Bennink Growth Rate: 263% Branded Offers owns websites in specific verticals – insurance, debt relief, beauty, tactical flashlights and water filters. To achieve two-year growth of 263 percent, Chief Executive Rick Bennink has developed a management style of empowering employees, as he explains here: Growth Strategy: Building a great team and having great business partners who all have similar mindsets but different ideas and management methods has allowed us to create an environment that puts people in a position to excel. Biggest Challenge: Balancing planning for the future versus what needs to be done today. We do our best to predict future issues and hurdles. This foresight gives us the ability to move quickly and resolve issues quicker than most teams. Management Style: “Own Your Desk” is the mantra that surrounds the team, empowering each team member to be fully responsible for what they do each day and at the same time giving them the tools they need to succeed.  Favorite Story: When a container filled with products showed up, we were excited. Come to find out, each product was missing key information to get it through customs. About 40,000 products were packaged incorrectly. Over the next two days, we drove 400 miles to the warehouse, hired a team of 12 people and manually removed products from boxes, added stickers to them, and placed them back into the original box. Sometimes you just have to do the dirty work. Outlook for 2018: We have spent the last year building the foundation, infrastructure, systems and people needed to expand. In 2018 we plan on leveraging this infrastructure and adding six to 12 new product lines to our portfolio. Growth Advice: Business is filled with ups and downs. Frustrations will come – most likely every day. Being aware of that and finding ways to overcome and adapt is critical to success. – Joel Russell