Slow down

Health care executive Jennifer Phelps was in an enviable spot in 2012.

The company she founded in 2008 while in graduate school, Tampa-based Engage Behavioral Health, was overflowing with clients. The firm had 50 employees, and nearly $2 million a year in revenues. Its niche in providing Applied Behavior Analysis therapy to help children with autism, Asperger's syndrome or developmental disabilities resonated — with kids and their parents.

Then Phelps made one of the gutsiest calls of her career: She shut the doors to new patients. Engage Behavioral Health, she says, grew too fast. It didn't have the right internal systems and processes to provide good service for clients. She also believed the company's hiring and retention strategy was jagged and hasty, and was a long-term risk to the company's mission to create lasting change.