“All I can say on that one is that we may have come up with the name over a couple of margaritas at The Rio in Boulder.”

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Kevin Menzie is the Founder and CEO of Slice of Lime. He loves having one foot in design and the other in technology and growing a team of smart and talented people. When Kevin isn’t busy working on award winning campaigns and running his thriving company, he likes to write music, write and illustrate stories for his daughter and travel the world with his wife.

Slice of Lime focuses on marketing websites and user interface design for web apps and mobile apps. Now in their 12th year of business, they combine their expertise in strategy and design to create web experiences that deliver results for their clients and drive action.

MO: How did you come up with the name Slice of Lime for your company? It reminds me more of gin and tonics than marketing and design.

Kevin: All I can say on that one is that we may have come up with the name over a couple of margaritas at The Rio in Boulder. The name is great in that we can have fun playing off of it in marketing campaigns and that it doesn’t pigeon hole us into any one particular area of the ever changing industry we work in.

MO: You and your team are committed to “Creating Amazing Experiences” for your clients. That’s a pretty tall order to continually deliver, how are you doing it?

Kevin: “Create Amazing Experiences” is our internal mantra. This applies not only to what our clients’ customers feel when they arrive at a website created by Slice of Lime, but also to how our clients feel about their interaction with our team and how our team feels about coming to work each day.

When it comes to the client experience, we’re constantly self-evaluating and discussing how we can improve. This introspection has led to big changes (making our process more iterative, for example) to small details (handing out hot brand-ironed notebooks to our clients at our first meeting). All of this works towards a very positive experience for our clients that continues to get better over time.

MO: How does it feel to be recognized for 8 years in a row as one of the fast growing companies in the region? How are you able to keep the momentum going?

Kevin: The Mercury 100 Award recognizes significant growth in revenues over a two year period. Since it’s percentage based, a lot of young companies will get this award early in their business. What makes me proud is that we continue to win this award year after year. That means Slice of Lime has consistent growth in revenue. More important to our team than revenue, though, is profitability. Our team has stayed relatively the same size through the years, which means that the growth is due to optimizing our process and attracting more clients through word of mouth.

MO: Can you tell our readers what “Slice-ness” is, why you created it and how it influences your work environment?

Kevin: “Slice-ness” is all about celebrating our successes internally. We built a web app that allows team members to anonymously give virtual “limes” to each other throughout the week for a job well done. At the end of the week, we read these notes aloud and each month there’s a winner that gets a super secret prize. We also take this time to read client testimonials on how much they enjoyed working with us. Lastly, usually over a beer or two, we chat about new technologies or a cool project someone is working on.

MO: I love that you’ve made a commitment to experience your clients’ worlds more this year. What inspired this decision and what have you learned so far from the process?

Kevin: There’s only so much you can get from researching a client and their competitors on the web. We really want to get out from behind our computers and experience our clients first-hand. This has led to activities like flying to Vermont to visit the nation’s largest white marble quarry (one of our clients). We never would have been able to get a sense of the scale of their business without going 3 miles into the earth, meeting the miners, and touching the marble with our own hands. All of this impacts our understanding of how to approach a project from a strategic and design standpoint.

MO: What inspired you to write a children’s book for your daughter called “Snowflakes Don’t Wear Pants?” Do you have any other children’s books on the horizon?

Kevin: One cool thing about Slice of Lime is that we encourage creativity in other areas outside of the web. We have a Lego set in the office to help with inspiration, for example. All of us take on personal projects to make sure we’re remaining creatively energized. For example, our Project Manager just had an art showing at a local coffee shop and our Senior Designer has committed to posting an illustration a day to Flickr.

Snowflakes Don’t Wear Pants was my side project last year and finishing it for my daughter was all the inspiration I really needed. Since she can’t read yet, I also commissioned a stuffed animal of the main character from the website, Etsy. Seeing her face light up with the gift was priceless. And, yes, there are a lot more creative ideas on the horizon…