LEHI - In less than a decade, Josh James and partner John Pestana pushed, pulled and dreamed their little Web design company into today's Omniture, an international giant in e-commerce analytics.

The keys to successful entrepreneurship? Get an idea, find like-minded partners with the skills you lack to make it work, and then "start it. Stop talking about it, just do it," James told a crowd of several hundred business people Thursday.

"Fortunately, we were in a position where we had nothing to lose," he added. "The next milestone [of success] is to follow your gut."

In the launch year of 1996, that meant 110-hour plus weeks, maxed out credit cards and having the Orem company's early headquarters in James' basement apartment. His wife, Cherie, answered all calls in her best receptionist demeanor - just in case the caller was a customer instead of her mother-in-law.

"She'd say, 'Mr. James? Oh, yes, just a moment please,' ” James recalled during a joint luncheon of the Utah Information Technology Association, Mountain West Capital Network and the Utah Valley Entrepreneurial Forum.

The rule then was to wait a full minute - five minutes if a train was passing by - before he answered.

Then, James mustered his most confident voice, hoping the potential client on the other end of the line would imagine him as a young, genius entrepreneur in a spacious, well-appointed office - not a Brigham Young University student juggling $50,000 in credit card charges and student loans used to launch his dot-com startup.

Today, that scene is not imaginary. James, Pestana and more than 300 employees are thriving. Still privately held, Omniture is a $40 million-a-year revenue company that has recorded four straight years of 100 percent or more growth. Two thirds of its work force has been hired in the past 18 months.

Omniture's client list is long and impressive, too, spanning the travel, entertainment, automotive, retail and financial services sectors - names such as Wal-Mart, eBay, America Online, Sony, The New York Times, Hyatt and General Motors.