One client grew to 60% of his revenue. When they left, Michael Trkolta laid off nearly 40% of his staff — and made a rule he has never broken since.

Michael Trkolta is the Founder and Managing Director of WebOracle and founder of Premium Links, part of Network Media Group in Melbourne, Australia. He came out of professional tennis, studied at RMIT, and started a directory publishing business with no business acumen and one idea: give local businesses in small townships a place to advertise that they could actually afford. He grew it to 1.5 million readers across the entire east coast of Australia, then sold it — because he could see where dial-up was heading and knew the window would not stay open.

That instinct for moving before he has to has defined the twenty-plus years since. He moved into web while most of the market still did no ...