A Lehighton business just reached a significant milestone during the midst of its journey.

Dealer World, of Lehighton, was named one of Inc. 5000’s fastest-growing privately held companies in America earlier this month.

“We started Jan. 9, 2009,” said Dealer World’s Founder and CEO Troy Spring. “We just celebrated 10 years in business. We hired our first employee four years after that. I think that was kind of a pivotal moment, because we’ve really had all of this growth in the past six years.”

In order to apply and be in consideration, companies must submit three years worth of financial records to Inc. Additional criteria includes that each company must have generated a certain amount of revenue.

“I am pretty excited about it,” said Spring. “It is good credibility for our company. In a smaller, rural community, I’m proud to be an employer here.”

Dealer World specializes in automotive within the marketing and adverting industry. The company went from not having a single employee during its first four years of existence, to having over 30 in present day. That number should continue to rise, as Spring mentioned Dealer World recently opened up a second local office.

“It’s been a goal of mine for a few years to make the list, as a Carbon County employer,” Spring said. “I thought it was a good accolade, not only for us, but as an employer who has grown quite a bit over the last few years. I wanted to make the list more than anything for our employees. I wanted them to feel that we might be in the small rural community of Carbon County, and that they’re working for a progressive company that does business all over the county and is making some waves.”

In fact, Spring’s company didn’t just crack the list, Dealer World checked in at No. 2,701.

“We help auto dealers across the county,” Spring said. “We have dealerships from New York to California. We are proficient and extremely talented in automotive advertising. We are extremely proficient in all traditional media, we do our own in-house radio and television — from camera work, to production to delivering to stations across the country.”

From zero employees — to having multiples offices and ranking No. 2,701 on the Inc. 5000 list — Dealer World’s journey is exciting. What’s one of Spring’s keys to success?

“We’ve been able to hire a lot of really talented people in this market,” Spring said. “It boils down to the fact that we just have an incredibly good staff, and that staff is able to keep our clients very happy. For that reason, we grow rather organically, because we don’t lose a lot of clients. … If there’s a secret sauce to our growth, it’s our employees. They’re very talented, dedicated, hard working and they care. Our clients across the country feel it, and for that reason, we have a very high retention rate of clients.”