Sherri Leopard: from tech writer to CEO.

• Author: Chavez, Lorenzo
• Position: Executive Edge; Leopard Communications - Interview

ON THE CORK BOARD BESIDE SHERRI LEOPARD'S COMPUTER HANGS A SIGN: "It's the content, stupid...." It's a stern reminder of what's most important for Boulder-based Leopard Communications, a $8.6 million business-to-business marketing communications company serving high-tech clients.

Three years ago, the company started its recovery from the dot-com collapse and a stumbling economy. "Now with 20-20 hindsight I would say that we imploded on ourselves," says Leopard, founder & CEO. "We grew way too fast and we just didn't have the infrastructure and systems. We spent about four years in survival mode."

A lot has changed.

Sherri Leopard took those lean times to heart, focusing on core strengths, empowering employees and cutting overhead. Since then, the Colorado native has guided the company through six quarters of stability and profits. And, it has helped her forget the gloom 'n doom days of 1999 to 2002.

Lessons learned, she remains a fierce competitor in the lucrative but highly volatile information-technology industry. With a staff of 75, the company today handles sophisticated marketing materials for some of the best-known Fortune 500 stars, including Best Buy, Sun Microsystems, IBM, J.D. Edwards and Hewlett-Packard.

"We always choose clients who are either in technology, or that have a very complex offering, or a very complex value proposition," she says. "Typically, there's technology that's a part of their solution.

"We work bloody hard but we also have lives," she says. "We want to create a flexibility that most companies don't have."

In the marketing world, results are everything. So, Leopard's B2B strategy must attract and maintain clients with several...