Surround Sound

Mark van den Broek went from climbing the corporate ladder to literally climbing a ladder when he ditched his executive marketing job with a Fortune 100 company.

He had been with Premier Industrial Corp., a Cleveland-based electronic component firm. “One day it hit me,” says van den Broek, “that corporate life just wasn't me.”

So in 1997 van den Broek launched SmartHouse Integration, a firm that wires homes and businesses for audio, sound, lights and everything else technical. That's how he found himself climbing steel ladders in suburban Cleveland, where he wired homes. The entrepreneurial move liberated van den Broek, though he quips “my wife wasn't thrilled with my pay cut.”