Turning Values into Action
Great Lakes Dental Technologies has been a fixture in the orthodontic and dental lab industry for decades, since long before I joined as President & CEO in 2022. And, I’d venture to say, it has been Evergreen® since its founding in 1967. Our co-founders’ commitment to our industry and their staff led them to sell the company to the employees, creating a 100% Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) in 1990. Great Lakes is an industry leader, and a wonderful community in itself; for all these reasons, when the opportunity to join the team was presented to me, I jumped at the chance. It matched my desire to transition away from companies that were building to sell. Some of them were great companies, but something was missing for me without the long-term, Evergreen mindset. However, just because a company is already Evergreen doesn’t mean it’s perfect, or right where it needs to be.
Great Lakes has a simple vision statement: “Delight our customers. Respect and help our co-workers.” I love the simplicity of that, and I never want to change it. It’s so straightforward and effective. The great company culture and long-term decision-making created strong employee loyalty, with some employees staying over 46 years. However, despite being deeply grounded in strong values, the company has seen the development of some poor habits over time. While longevity and culture are strengths, they can also lead to complacency if not paired with ongoing discipline and intentional efforts to continually align values with specific, teachable behaviors.
Coming in as an outside CEO, one advantage I brought with me was the ability to see things with fresh eyes. I could see things that the long tenured team could not. I saw this as an opportunity – find a way to get back to best practices and increase the power and impact of the values and vision that were already ingrained in the company and the people. But I wanted to be careful to do it in a way that didn’t alienate or disempower the amazing team that had been at the company for so long.
To tackle this work, I enlisted the help of an organization called CultureWise. They provided a helpful framework and process for achieving our goal: match our great values with specific behaviors that will allow us to easily and clearly take the values off the walls and put them into action. CultureWise taught us that ritualizing and ingraining a finite number of behaviors in your team is what really reinforces the transfer of the value to a behavior. That made a lot of sense to me, because the values were already in place.
We started by creating a group to work on this that consisted of team members from a variety of departments, in a variety of roles, and with a variety of tenures at Great Lakes. The first exercise we walked through was to have everyone reflect and share the ‘Great, Great Lakers’ who most exemplified the best of our company and its values. Once we had the brainstormed list on the whiteboard, we started talking through why each person had nominated their choices. It got powerfully emotional, actually, with one long-time employee talking about a new HR Director and how profoundly she had changed his life in the laboratory. It was extremely meaningful, and it was completely sincere.
Our next task was to connect these great stories to qualities and values. This took some work, and in the first few versions, some sounded too journalistic, while others sounded too “gotcha.” For each value, we then connected them to a behavior; what would it look like to act on that value? We ultimately identified 27 fundamental behaviors that encapsulated the company’s values. It was so great because at the end of the exercise, I looked at the list and realized that these were the values that had existed since 1967. All we had done was document them.
27 behaviors may seem like a lot, but we wanted to get granular and to be extremely clear in articulating what it looked like, for example, to “embrace all perspectives” or “invest in yourself.” We didn’t want to run the risk of any of it being too abstract and therefore ineffective.
The list is not ranked, but at the heart of the 27 fundamentals are three core behaviors that are essential to Great Lakes’ success: Think and Act Like an Owner, Never Compromise on Quality, and Do What’s Best for the Customer.
Think and Act Like an Owner: This behavior is about instilling a sense of ownership in every employee. We are an ESOP company, we own our building, and we own our land. We have no debt. When we recruit somebody, we make it clear that this is our place. If there’s a snowstorm, we come dig out. This is ours.
This sense of ownership extends beyond physical property to include our reputation and relationships with customers. Employees are encouraged to take initiative and make decisions with an owner’s mentality, reinforcing a culture of accountability and pride.
Never Compromise on Quality: As a medical device company, Great Lakes serves a highly demanding clientele—doctors who expect nothing less than perfection. We like to say that we treat the customer like we would our own child in the chair. This commitment to quality is non-negotiable, and employee-owners understand that their work directly impacts the well-being of patients.
Do What’s Best for the Customer: This behavior encapsulates the company’s customer-first mentality. We refer people to our competitor if they’re better at something than us because we expect to work with these doctors 25 years from now. Our long-term perspective ensures that employees always prioritize the customer’s needs, even if it means foregoing short-term gains.
27 behaviors are far too many to memorize, so you may be wondering how a list of this length can be effective. To ensure that these behaviors are not just words on a wall, we have ritualized them into the daily routines of its employees. After we implemented our fundamental values, for 27 weeks, I wrote a piece every Monday morning, each focused on one of them and shared it with the full team. These pieces were often deeply personal, and each aimed at illustrating the importance of each behavior. Once I had made my way through all 27, the leadership team took over, and now one of them highlights one fundamental behavior each week.
The fundamentals are also incorporated into meetings and performance reviews. I don’t start every meeting with a behavior, but I often do. I also start every board meeting with a story illustrating a behavior. When we have monthly all-company meetings, I get a volunteer to talk about that week’s fundamental behavior.
These rituals serve as constant reminders of what Great Lakes stands for and how employees are expected to behave. They also provide a common language for employees to give and receive feedback, making it easier to address issues and celebrate successes.
One of the most powerful outcomes of this approach has been the empowerment of employees, especially those in leadership positions. We recently promoted seven technicians to supervisory roles. They are now managing their former peers, which can be a challenging transition. However, the fundamentals provided a language and a framework for giving constructive feedback and coaching. They can say, for example, “Hey, how are you being relentless on improvement? Maybe you can be a little more exacting.” This approach has also helped create a more open and honest culture, where employees feel comfortable discussing difficult topics. “Speak courageously” has moved us forward on this front a great deal.
I’m happy to report that this initiative has moved the needle and has brought the values, which were already excellent, back to life in the day to day of each employee-owner at Great Lakes. The sense of ownership is at the heart of what makes this all so effective and powerful. It extends to every aspect of the business, from the quality of the products to the relationships with customers. It’s a model that has stood the test of time and, especially now that we have moved through this exercise, will continue to drive Great Lakes’ success long into the future.
Be the Buffalo: Why an Optics Company Opened a Preschool
It always surprises me how often an opportunity presents itself as a problem.
In 2018, Vortex moved to a new location with adjacent space we owned and that was built to be a preschool. We were merely the landlord and leased the space to a new tenant. However, it quickly became clear that the school had issues. Feedback from employees and the public highlighted significant operational challenges, and because the school was connected to Vortex, we knew we had to make a change.
Initially, we thought the best option was simply not to renew the lease. But upon reflection, we realized that having a preschool on site had real advantages. Our team trends young, and many have children. We realized it would be wonderful for them, and therefore for us as a business, to offer childcare services on site. Of course, we had zero expertise in running a preschool, so we knew there would be problems. The path forward wasn’t clear, but we committed ourselves to finding a way.
Today, the Little Buffalos Preschool is thriving. By providing subsidized, high-quality childcare, we’re saving parents on our team both money and time, while making it easy to keep the most important people in their lives close by.
Here’s how that preschool got its name, and in the bigger picture, the story of how Vortex does business today.
ONWARD, INTO THE STORM
Like many of you, I’m constantly searching for stories that challenge and inspire me as a leader. When I read Rory Vaden’s book Take the Stairs, I was struck by the metaphor of the buffalo.
In short, when storms approach herds of cows, the cows will turn away, moving with the storm to lessen the suffering they face in the moment. Buffalo, on the other hand, charge directly into the storm, facing it head on. In the short term, they face more intense pain than the cows. But in the long run, they get through the storm quicker and suffer less. This metaphor of facing challenges resonated deeply with me. When we undertook to rework our core values a few years ago, we decided that ‘Be the Buffalo’ captured the spirit we were trying to articulate the best; we adopted it as one of our Core Values.
In practice and at the most fundamental level, one of the most crucial applications of ‘Being the Buffalo’ is having difficult conversations. Engaging in difficult conversations is uncomfortable, but it is essential for growth and improvement. Most people, including myself, can be cows, avoiding problems and challenges. But effective leadership means facing these situations head-on.
With the development of Little Buffalos Preschool, we saw a problem and had to address it directly. That involved ending one preschool to start another, a long conversation that was far from easy. Further, as an optics company, we’d never done anything like opening a preschool. We had to learn new skills, hire the right people, and build the right facility. But together, our team not only faced the problem; we turned it into an opportunity. We chose to be the buffalo, so we gave the preschool that name.
THE BUFFALO IN OUR DNA
As a CEO, I benefit from the guidance of great leaders, including my father. In fact, under his guidance, I’ve realized that Vortex has been thinking like a buffalo for years.
Take our VIP Warranty, which promises to repair or replace any Vortex product free of charge. When we introduced this policy years ago, we didn’t yet have the data to back its financial viability; it was a huge risk.
We went ahead because we were a young, small company up against giant competitors who had a lot of advantages we simply did not, including far more experience in the field. The one thing we had was the ability to choose to do the right thing for our customers. Without knowing it, we decided to be the buffalo, and prepared ourselves for whatever challenges we might face to make our dream work.
If we dismantled the VIP Warranty now, our profitability would go up in the short term. But what we’d lose in terms of culture and customer loyalty would be significant, and those losses would start to show up in the long term. Like all businesses who are part of Tugboat Institute®, we’re not here for short-term gains. Even in 2024, the VIP Warranty is still one of the things our customers tell us they appreciate the most.
LITTLE BUFFALOS, BIG IMPACT
Every day, I have the pleasure of driving past Little Buffalos on my way to work. I get to watch my team dropping the most precious people in their lives at a preschool that is safe, caring, and completely dedicated to their happiness. In seeing the Little Buffalos’ name, I am reminded of the challenges we initially faced in getting the preschool up and running, which were painful in the short term. But, as with our VIP Warranty, the long-term benefits for the people we care about far outweigh the initial discomfort.
Today, Little Buffalos receives overwhelmingly positive feedback from our team and the public, and it’s now the top perk for our employees. We’re proud to say that at least in this one small way, our Little Buffalos are being cared for and nurtured in a place that encourages them to face the challenges in their lives head on, turning problems into the opportunities that will shape their futures.
Prioritize Character in Your Hiring Process and Protect Your Culture
Running a business in Alaska’s travel industry is a unique challenge. Here at Alaska Riverways we operate tours on traditional sternwheeler riverboats and offer guests an experience that allows them to discover the rich history of travel, trade, and discovery in Fairbanks and the surrounding area. It’s a highly seasonal business; we flex from 15-20 full time employees year-round up to over 200 for the summer season. Operating boats in Alaska and Canada has been my family’s way of life for over 125 years and five generations and that experience and history have shaped Alaska Riverway’s identity since 1950. Despite the specificity of our operation, we still face many of the same challenges that most businesses do. Maintaining culture is one that, as an Evergreen® business, is of the utmost importance, but also one that can be particularly challenging with the ebb and flow of a seasonal workforce.
In the years before 2020, when I was a member of the executive team and then company president starting in 2019, we began addressing the question of culture. Since we bring in so many new employees year after year, we must pay extra attention to this. We have been lucky in that, over time, we have had a very high return rate for our summer employees – 60%-70% – and our culture was strong and positive. But we noticed that every year, despite our careful hiring process, we nevertheless had a certain number of employees who ended up not being a match. Most of them didn’t make it through a full season. Although the number wasn’t high, we wondered if we could do better.
The positions we hire for in the summer include entry level hospitality jobs like retail associates, reservationists, tour guides, food servers, dishwashers, kitchen assistants, and deckhands. Our workforce tended to be quite young; most averaged in age between 18-23 and were college students or college-aged students. Because we are so grounded in the culture of Alaska (and because housing is so challenging in the Fairbanks area) we sought to hire primarily from our own community, or at least from Alaska. Historically, our interviews were fairly standard, and we looked at things like work and life experience and education as a big part of our evaluation of each candidate.
When we decided to review our hiring process, we started at the beginning and asked ourselves, what makes a good Alaska Riverways employee? Conversely, what kind of employee doesn’t fit us? It became clear that it mostly came down to culture; people who were friendly, authentic, and engaging were a great match, and those who weren’t, were not. As a result, we decided that we would re-work the interview process to focus exclusively on character, rather than experience. In answer to the question, what makes a good Alaska Riverways employee, we narrowed it down to four traits: nice, outgoing, optimistic, and enthusiastic.
Our new hiring plan was different, but it was fun! We created a long list of questions that got at those four characteristics – questions that would allow us to understand who the candidates were as people and how they saw the world. We asked, for example, “How would you explain the color yellow to someone who is blind?” This was aimed at gauging the empathy of a candidate and finding out if they were nice. We asked, “Say you have a wonderful time at a party. Is this because everyone was friendly or because you were friendly?” This is intended to gauge how outgoing a candidate is and to what extent they take responsibility for their own happiness. A lot of the questions may sound silly, but they helped us measure each candidate against the four traits we had identified as core to our culture. We even did some group interviews for the second round where multiple candidates came in together and collaborated on a task to see how well they worked together in a group.
Finally, we instituted an improved post-season analysis, to see how well we had done in hiring the right people for the jobs. And if an employee scored high initially, but didn’t perform as expected on the job, could we learn something from that experience? After a couple years of iteration and calibration, we were starting to notice that fewer people were leaving, and it seemed to be working. Then covid hit.
During the first year of covid, we shut down completely. We had to withdraw our offers to the people we had hired for the summer, and had to furlough most of our full-time staff. We kept just a few people to keep the lights on and we hunkered down. The following year, we were only able to open on an extremely limited basis, so we hired very few people in comparison with our usual surge. Finally, moving into the 2022 season, we were ready to scale back up again, and we realized we had a big problem; we had lost all of our culture keepers – all of the people who tended to return for two, three, or even five seasons. We had to start over, rebuilding our pipeline and with it, our culture.
An additional challenge we faced, which I expect many others have been facing for a few years now, is the shift in the talent pool. Demographics are such that the pool of qualified candidates for just about any role in any company in any industry is shrinking, often drastically. This means that the college kids suddenly have better paying and more professionally oriented opportunities. As a result, the candidates we had previously seen entering our pipeline weren’t applying for our jobs anymore. We solved this problem by hiring younger employees; now the majority of our summer staff are 14 to 17 year old high school students. Even without the work we had done pre-covid to reorient the hiring process toward character, it would no longer have made any sense to look at experience at all. These kids are often walking into their very first job! So, we leaned heavily into our revamped hiring process and continued to focus exclusively on character.
In so many ways, we are fortunate that we undertook this shift before we found ourselves with a problem to solve. It’s not perfect; recruiting and hiring this way is more time consuming than the way we used to do it. It would be easier to hire the first people who show up, especially given the number of jobs we look to fill each season, but it’s clear to us that it’s worth it to do it the hard way. And it seems to be working; we are starting to see our return rate move back up. We are at 55% from last year for this year, which is a huge improvement!
A real advantage we have in this work is that despite recent challenges, we have a strong history of generations of happy employees we can lean on. Working for Alaska Riverways for the summer is quite a memorable experience. We have alumni groups that stay in touch and get together for reunions. Our network is so strong that we are now seeing children of former employees applying to work with us.
However, just because something is good, doesn’t mean it can't be better. And it doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be protected, because time can erode just about anything if you don’t pay attention. For decades, we didn’t talk about culture much or work on it overtly because we were so nose to the ground just running the business and getting it all off the ground for each new season. We can’t grow and continuously improve if we don’t pay attention to such an important aspect of our business. It’s one of the things I have learned as a member of Tugboat Institute® – the power of learning from others. I’ve come to see that while it is harder to do it this way, it’s critical, especially if you are an Evergreen company for whom company culture is the bedrock of your People First environment.
How is this relevant to non-seasonal companies? Well, you could say it’s an extreme example of managing fast growth in any company. It’s more compressed and the candidates are from a specific group, but the bottom-line concerns are the same – how to identify the right people and increase your chances of success in maintaining culture, so you can stay strong, retain your people, and attract the best team members for the long term. In lots of businesses, skill and experience matter more than they do for us, but it is also true that not every candidate who is qualified from a skills perspective is a good fit for the company. Ultimately, the best strategy is to make sure your company is an absolutely great place to work. To be Evergreen. To make sure your employees are happy, so they return or stay, depending on your structure.
Managing Success: The Art of Persevering Through Upturns
Perseverance is one of the Evergreen 7Ps® principles and it’s critical for any Evergreen® company’s survival. Contrary to what many assume, however, it doesn’t just come into play when times get tough. In my time as President & CEO of MCG Explore Design, an Architecture and Interior Design firm based in Alaska, my team and I have gained insights into the importance of persevering through both downturns and upturns. MCG has weathered storms and soared to new heights in the more than 30 years I’ve been with the firm. Through the vagaries of the past few decades, there have been several pivotal moments that have driven home this important truth.
I joined MCG straight out of graduate school. I started drafting and moved into my current role 25 years ago. Like any company that intends to endure for the long term, at MCG, we expected that the road to success would not be a straight line, and right from the start, put some strategies in place to enable us to get through the downturns that were sure to come. Early on, for example, we adopted a ‘distributed leadership model’, in order to foster equal opportunity through independent agency, accountability, and shared success among the leadership team. This approach not only empowers individuals but also fosters super-collaboration and innovation, leading to exponential-paced growth for our company.
One specific outcome of this leadership structure has been reducing our vulnerability. Each of our seven leaders has complete freedom to pursue projects and clients on their own. The intended result has been to create a diversity of ‘lines of service,’ each on their own timeline and following their own cadence. As we move through any project, we “roll on” in the early stages and as we near completion, we “roll off.” The rolling off on the backside is where we are making the most profit, as bills come due and are paid and work closes out. This creates a sine wave of work, billings, and income with each 'line of service.’ By creating space for multiple lines of service, each driven by their own engine and following their own plan, we end up with multiple sine waves that move at a variety of frequencies; as we are rolling onto one project, we are rolling off another, and so on. Overlapping sine waves create a median between high and low waves that is a line that is nearly flat, indicating economic stability. This means the money is coming in more or less steadily and we avoid periods of drought where we could become vulnerable to unexpected costs or expenses.
This is just good hygiene; it is part of our plan to level ‘Booms’ and ‘Busts’ both locally and nationally. It helps us stay disciplined and gives us the courage to take risks when the right opportunities arise. It also reduces the feeling of having lots of ‘extra’ cash that might cause us to become careless if it all came in at once.
Another strategy we employ that helps us stay poised for opportunities and avoid unanticipated consequences is a deep look at long term management and success. Like any strong and successful company, our strategic planning includes looking out ten or even 15 years, and doing what we can to create lines of service that will start to prosper in that timeframe; this process of assessing the now and lensing into the future is essential for cultivating a generational company. We need to keep imagining what is coming next, knowing that what makes us competitive today will not suffice tomorrow. A current example of this is our initiative in construction management; we will open a construction management line of service later this year which will, over time, allow us to compete with the larger companies offering industry specific expertise with nuanced, clever stewardship. It will take time to grow it to maturity, but we see this as an area where demand will be high in the future, and we want to be ready to be super-collaborators when that time comes.
Our distributed-leadership model and our strategic planning are examples of safeguards against vulnerability in tough times, and they’ve been remarkably successful, to date. A final, important way we guard against complacency and vulnerability is our commitment to smart growth; it’s an essential tenet to success.
Both 2012 and 2017 were tough years for us. We didn’t have our lines of service where they needed to be, and we had to reduce overhead. I had to make some hard choices and let a few people go, including one person who had been with us for 20 years. It was awful. Eventually, we started to move back into better territory, won some great contracts, and were feeling like the rough patch was behind us. In the last four years, in fact, we have had our biggest years ever – one after the other.
This created pressure to ‘staff-up’; I started hearing, “We’re doing really well – maybe we should look at hiring a few people?” But our experience in 2012-2017 taught us that this is not good discipline. We learned that a nimble, light, and quick super-collaboration suits us best. We leverage each other to turn the corner and accelerate to success together. In response to the calls for renewed hiring, therefore, we had to tap the brakes on that and re-center the conversation. We spent some time thinking about the impact on our overhead. Were these new lines of service going to endure? If so, what did we need to do to support that? If we’re not sure yet, we wait.
Over-hiring during upturns is one of the biggest mistakes we made in the past. In general, when it comes to growing the team, we choose instead to stay nimble, light, and quick. We use consultancy to add resources where we need them and to do the heavy lifts we can’t manage. This is not only a strategy for avoiding layoffs in downturns; this also keeps us, the core of the company, involved in important areas like client relationships, business development, and strategic thinking.
More is not always better. Maintaining this discipline during upturns can be challenging, because when you are feeling flush, there always seem to be easier, faster ways to resolve tensions. Perseverance here is critical; if done right, it will help lessen the need for extreme perseverance during the next downturn!
The key lies in being cautious with success. It's about not resting on your laurels and leveraging opportunities wisely. Instead of succumbing to overconfidence during boom times, we aim for strategic, Paced Growth, we evaluate risks meticulously, and we stay prepared for unforeseen circumstances.
I’ll leave you with a metaphor I like to use that I believe is relevant. In my mind, everyone is either leaning in or leaning over, at all times. ‘Leaning in’ declares “I’m here to help you” but I have discovered that ‘Help’ and ‘Control’ are the same word – a shocking realization actually. When we are leaning in, we are not listening, collaborating, or really engaging with our interlocutor at all. Agency is lost because it is usurped by a leader’s efforts to ‘help.’ When we are ‘leaning over,’ on the other hand, we are looking in front of us to shine light on what needs to be done, all while preserving the agency of our interlocutor, who retains full rein of the outcome. Both people involved in the interaction have their eyes wide open, focused on the task at hand and on what lies ahead. Leaning over is like Inception.
Our energy is trained forward, and we are ready for anything. As a business leader, no matter how flush you feel or how impressive your success, the moment you start leaning in more than leaning over, you lose the perspective of agency and trust. This can be the first step toward the precipice where you are no longer ready for what lies ahead. Lean over at all times, and you will be ready to persevere through whatever lies ahead be it challenges or opportunities. We are all creatives and need to embrace ‘Our Design’.
A 77 Year-Old Startup
Building a multi-generational business is hard and it is rare. About 13% of U.S. family-owned businesses are passed down successfully to a third generation, while just 3% survive to a fourth generation (Businessweek.com, 2010). Information on successful transitions of fourth-generation family businesses is rare, making it evident that sustaining success across multiple generations is a formidable challenge.
However, there are exceptions. I am President of Capitol City Produce, a fourth-generation family business that has thrived for over seven decades since its founding in 1947, just two years after the end of World War II. How have we managed to beat the odds? In short, through relationships and innovation, and through consistently embodying the spirit of a startup despite our decades-long legacy.
The first and most critical ingredient to our success over the years has been our unwavering commitment to nurturing relationships—with both customers and suppliers. As an Evergreen® business, we have a People First orientation, and this extends beyond our team to all the people in our universe. We exist to serve them, and we are driven by a profound focus on understanding and engaging with them as often as possible. Importantly, this is not just a strategy; when we approach a customer and ask how we can improve their experience, it has to be about them, and it has to be genuine. We interact with our suppliers and customers all the time, traveling around to visit them in person to be sure we have a solid understanding of their experience, their pain points, and what we can do to improve our service to them.
Here is a concrete example of what this looks like. In Louisiana, in early Spring we boil a lot of seafood. It’s a big family and social thing here. It’s also a big deal for our retail supermarket customers to provide all the seasonings for boiling season. We created a new product for boiling season; we took all the produce seasonings that go into a boil, the garlic, onions, lemons, potatoes, etc., and we put it all in one bag and marketed it as a “boiling bag”. Some members of our team were talking to a supermarket customer who loved the idea, but remarked, “I love it, but I don’t know how I am going to display it to my customers.” Our team listened. In Louisiana they have these traditional Cajun boats called pirogues. We found a custom pirogue builder and engaged him to build a miniature, custom pirogue. We presented it to our customer and said it would be great for displaying the boiling bags to his customers. He was stunned. Like many of our customers, he was waiting for the part where we said what we wanted out of the interaction, but it never came. We just did it for him. His comment was simply “Wow, I can’t believe y’all did that”. This is what valuing relationships looks like to us.
With a diverse customer base spanning food service and retail supermarkets, comprising over 3,000 customers, listening and tending to our customers’ needs and wants is a big project, and it is driven by a singular strategy: envisioning the future through their eyes. We want to align with our customers as we build toward the future. What do they value most? What will they need from us? This is where our attention to relationships joins together with our attention to innovation.
In thinking about how to best serve our customers’ ever-evolving needs, we felt that we could adapt in tandem with them, in a harmonized way, if we truly were to understand their perspectives about the future of their business and their future challenges. We wanted information that was unique, deep, proprietary, and attained through trust that would foster a unique candor. To expand the population of perspectives, we reached out to a respected industry peer serving additional markets in Houston, Dallas, and Austin. We collaborated to create a “Customer Insights” dialog questionnaire that was used by both companies to hold discussions with each of our top customers. The “Why” was explained to customers like this; we want to better understand how exceptional supply partners should evolve over the upcoming three-year horizon. We explained that we wanted to understand their specific perspective, so that we could plan to evolve our business with keener insights.
Once we had collected insights from forward-thinking key customers across six major markets, the leadership from Sales, Operations, Finance, and the Executive leadership of both companies met in person to distill the key insights from each customer. The insights were validated through the multi-company and multi-markets approach. This initiative strengthened customer relationships, engaged key sales leadership in learning, developed foresight, changed viewpoints, and influenced the service culture of both companies. A specific insight that stuck was this; “You are an exceptional supply partner because you show that you care more than you should! I feel like when I am talking with your team, they are wearing my company’s shirt.” Three years later, the key insights are still on my office whiteboard.
Another pivotal moment came during a conversation with a leading sports bar and restaurant customer expanding nationally. We had great ideas for new technologies and were considering how we might deliver these technologies to them. We explained what we were thinking, and they replied, “Our future employees are going to want to have everything they need right on their phone. Don’t develop something new and proprietary – just engage with them on their phones.” This insight revolutionized our approach. We shifted our focus to not only developing cutting-edge solutions but also delivering them in a manner that resonated with our customers. One example of a change in path was to text “Where’s My Truck” delivery commitments to our customers vs. requiring a mobile app to be opened (download, login, password, etc.) to get the information.
All of this work and attention has a very simple focus: taking care of people. Our customers and suppliers have a choice. We need to give them a reason to choose to do business with us. We have a saying at CCP – the Wow Zone. It’s from a visual we use to onboard new team members titled “The Depth of Effort for Long-Term Customer Retention.” A certain percentage of our efforts should be expended in creating Wow Zone customer experiences where they are pleasantly surprised by an innovation, an idea, or a solution. That’s where a customer engages with us and the levels of attention and service they receive cause them to say, “Wow. You’ve got to be kidding. You’re willing to do that for me?”
Ultimately, I think a possible reason many multi-generational businesses fail is closely tied to the reason we are able to continue to operate like a start-up, even after 77 years. Companies that manage to be successful for more than one generation can be tempted to slide into ‘complacency mode,' where they sit back to enjoy the success they have achieved. That can be the first step toward the end.
By directing our focus not just on our business today but on what our business will look like in the coming years, we stay on our toes, we stay agile, and we stay energized. Our Evergreen grounding in relationships and focus on Pragmatic Innovation give us the tools to connect the past to the future, and to make our energy actionable. Through a combination of technological innovation and personalized service, we have not only retained existing customers but also expanded our market presence significantly. Furthermore, our ability to adapt and respond promptly to customer needs, as quickly as a one-minute response time for chats, has been a key differentiator. It distinguishes us from competitors and solidifies our reputation as a partner that is reliable, agile, and a quick adapter.
We know that the success of our business lies in the future, not the past, and not even the present. We have opted to continually embrace change, and thus, we stay young, we stay relevant, we remain curious, and we continue to believe we are a start-up.
Redefining an Industry
Last week, our Tugboat Institute® members made the trip to Omaha, Nebraska, for Tugboat Institute @Supportworks to learn about this exemplary Evergreen® company, reconnect with value-aligned peers, and enjoy a taste of Omaha. Dave and Dan Thrasher, who are brothers, co-owners, and leaders of their second-generation family business, put together a remarkable program and experience for our group.
On Wednesday morning, Dan and Dave welcomed us all to their beautiful and impressive campus, where Supportworks, The Thrasher Group, Thrasher Partners, and their newest business, Hello Garage, are headquartered. We opened the first day with a fireside chat with Dan, Dave, and Tugboat Institute CEO Dave Whorton, during which they shared the story of their parents bootstrapping the business slowly, over three decades, before handing the reins to their sons. Dan and Dave dug in and grew it from a $4.5M business in 2004 to an over $400M revenue business this year. Although the business remained relatively small in the 29 years Greg and Nancy Thrasher ran it before their sons returned, that period was critical to its later growth and success. In those first three decades, Greg and Nancy moved their business to Omaha to serve a larger market, added foundation repair to their original basement waterproofing business, and learned how to be a dealer of another manufacturer’s products and later that same manufacturer’s distributor to other dealers. During this period, they built a local brand that was deeply trusted by their community based upon always doing the right thing by their customers and employees. From there, Dave and Dan shared how they founded Supportworks, scaled both it and the original Thrasher business, adopted M&A to respond to the entry of private equity into their space, and key lessons they learned in scaling the overall enterprise at over 20% annual compounded growth rate for the past two decades.
In the second talk of the morning, Dave Thrasher dove into the evolution of their business strategy, breaking it down decade by decade and highlighting critical milestones and decision points along the way. Amanda Harrington, President of Supportworks, took the stage next to share the story of the companies’ journey toward codifying, articulating, and integrating their Purpose, Redefine Our Industry, across the entire organization and in all strategy, planning, and business processes. Finally, Dave returned to the stage to end the day of talks with a deep dive into the catalysts for growth through acquisitions with their Evergreen M&A playbook.
Before we left the campus for the day, we were treated to a tour of their impressive shared headquarters with both Supportworks and Thrasher Group employees as our guides along the way. We could see the incredible attention paid to every detail, from the design of the office space to the layout of their warehouses. It was clear from the way their employees talked about their work that they are deeply dedicated to their Purpose, take pride in their work, company, and team, and enjoy and support each other.
On day two, Dan and Dave collaborated on a presentation about their recent experience launching a new vertical, Hello Garage. They were candid in sharing not only how they selected this vertical for expansion and their successes with this venture, but also the mistakes made along the way and the lessons learned. Next, Amanda Harrington returned to the stage to share how People First comes to life at all the Thrasher companies and shared the details of their essential people programs and processes. She offered numerous specific, actionable ideas that attendees could take away, tweak, and implement in their own businesses. The last formal presentation of the day was from Dan, who shared what it means to them to create and sustain a remarkable customer experience. He cautioned that CEOs should not delegate responsibility for making sure that it remains remarkable and that it’s a never-ending process of continuous improvement for the team. Anything less than fierce attention to this aspect of the business, Dan warns, creates significant risk to longevity.
Finally, as is our custom at our Tugboat Institute Exemplar visits, we finished the day with a Q&A with both Dan and Dave, moderated by Dave Whorton. The candor and transparency that had characterized the entire experience extended through this conversation, during which Dan and Dave addressed questions pertaining to their operations, as well as ownership succession, governance, family harmony, their working relationship, and the future of the company.
After each of our busy days, we gathered for celebration in some of Omaha’s most iconic spots, including, of course, a steakhouse on one night and the historic and breathtaking Durham Museum on another. Dan and Dave proudly shared their beautiful city with us, and our community reveled in the support, friendship, trust, shared values, and love that exemplify this extraordinary group of Evergreen leaders. Thank you, Dan and Dave, for a wonderful and powerful week of connection, inspiration, learning, and growth.
The Power of Patience: Our Long-Term Talent Strategy
The years following the pandemic brought with them the tightest labor markets we’ve seen in decades. If you are paying attention to demographic data and the outlook for the coming decades, you know that this is not likely to abate soon. The quest for talent stands as a perpetual challenge; the pursuit of individuals who not only have the skills and experience we seek but who also bring fresh perspectives and untapped potential is a mission critical endeavor. At Force Factor, the global health company I founded 15 years ago, we have been tackling this challenge through an exciting and evolving initiative: robust internship programs and leadership development initiatives.
At Force Factor, we develop and sell nutritional supplements and formulas whose efficacy is founded in scientific research. However, we do not manufacture our own products. We are asset light, which has its advantages, but which also means that our people and the processes they help us create and maintain are, by far, our greatest asset. As an Evergreen® company with strong People First values, it is part of our strategic vision to build our company with our team. Our team is everything.
At 15 years old, Force Factor is still relatively young, but we have moved out of the beginning phases of company building. We have achieved a level of stability that allows me to lengthen my time horizons as I think and plan for the future. We compete against some giants, such as Nestle and Unilever, as well as a great many companies that have been acquired by private equity. In this competitive landscape, therefore, I am always asking myself, what is our greatest competitive advantage? Our greatest difference from most of our competition is our ability to think in long time horizons.
Because of our Evergreen orientation and because our people are paramount to our success, culture is critical. Paying attention to building culture is a long-term initiative. As a part of this, onboarding, training, and developing people is also something that takes time. There are advantages to hiring in people with deep experience in a specific area of leadership, and sometimes this is the right way to build out the team. But where possible, I find it is powerful and critical to building a strong culture to hire people early in their careers and invest in them, over time.
Like many companies, we have long had a summer internship program. As we considered strategy for team building and the future of our company, we have doubled down on this program, expanding its scope and objectives a great deal. Force Factor's internship ecosystem now includes four entry points tailored to various stages of academic and professional development.
At the core of this program is the summer internship program, providing college students with hands-on experience and exposure to the company's operations. This is our third year of scaling our internship program and it has grown significantly each of those three years. Last summer we had 11 interns, which was a jump from the year before, and we expect to see that number increase again this summer. We are a company of just under 50 employees, so this is quite significant. Our focus is hiring locally, because we figure these students had a college experience heavily impacted by covid and have spent quite a lot of the past few years online. We think the in-person experience is powerful for them, and it is easier to teach them the business when they are here with us. We are fortunate to be in Boston, which is home to a lot of great universities, so the pool we are drawing from is deep.
The next program we are piloting is called the Coop Program. The Coop program is something that has existed at Northeastern University for a long time and it is powerful and unique. Students at Northeastern are strongly encouraged – even required in some majors – to spend two to three semesters of their time in college doing a Coop, or an internship, for a company. The university has built an incredible network over the many years it has been doing this, and has partnerships with companies in Boston, across the US, and across the world. Students work full-time, are compensated, and receive college credit for their work. We’d been talking about participating in the program for a long time, and we finally jumped in. Our first three Coops started this winter. In a lot of ways their experience is similar to the summer interns, but it affords some advantages the summer positions do not. Coops are here for longer than the summer interns since they spend the whole semester with us. While the summer interns love being part of a large cohort, there is something powerful in the focus we can maintain on this much smaller group of Coops while they are here. We’re really excited about this and expect to see it develop in the future.
Beyond the internship and Coop programs, Force Factor also participates actively in recruiting recent college graduates. We do on-campus recruiting and hire for full-time positions. The students will graduate in May and start working with us in August through what we call our Leadership Development Program (LDP). For these hires, we have created a rotational program across six different functional groups, and all hires move through all six over the course of one year. They spend about two months in each one, and at the end of the first year, the have gained an education in the company that has both depth and breadth. At the end of that time, the hope is that there is strong Venn diagram overlap between a student and a department where they have really thrived and contributed. If this goes in both directions, we move that person permanently into that department. We are in the process of doing that now with the five hires from last year. We are refining it as we go, but basically, after completing the program, the new hire will come into their permanent department one level above where they would have if they had been just hired off the street straight into the job.
Finally, our fourth entry point is aimed at bringing in people who are a little less green. We are actively hiring people out of MBA programs for specific positions within the company as well. We have just hired two, one of whom has already started and one who will start at the end of the summer.
We have been paying attention to retention of the young people who come in through these various programs. The programs require a lot of time and investment from the current team and from the company. The idea is that many of them will come back and become full-time employees. We want to be careful not to become a school, where people come in, learn powerful lessons, and then say, “Thanks!” and head off to work somewhere else. We had this in mind as we designed the programs, and we work hard to give them an experience that will make the right ones want to come back. It’s early still, but it’s looking promising. The woman on our talent acquisition team, for example, who is working right now to hire the next class of interns, was our intern two years ago.
There are other tweaks and improvements we have made and will continue to make as we go forward, but we are getting better at this. The first hire is the hardest, and after that, as you take lessons from your experience, you learn and refine. For example, we hired a few people who, based on their resumes, looked like they were skilled in Excel, but they were not. We learned that it was important to control for specific skills that are important to us, so we have implemented a simple Excel test, and now we don’t have that problem anymore. Most importantly, as we gain experience and as a few intern cohorts pass through the program, it gains renown and popularity, which helps draw even better people the next time around.
While the immediate returns on hiring recent graduates may seem modest, and the cost and effort may not seem worth it to every company, the compounding effects over time are profound. By nurturing talent from the ground up, we not only instill our People First culture but also harness the potential for exponential growth. Moreover, with an emphasis on meritocracy and diversity, internship programs serve to inject fresh perspectives and innovative thinking into the organization. If you have an urgent problem and need someone with a specific skill to fix it, this is obviously not the best way to get there. But if you can operate with an Evergreen mindset and be patient, this could pay dividends over time. We are counting on it!
Passion Drives Industry-Changing Innovation
Even if you don’t own one, I imagine you are familiar with the KitchenAid mixer. It is a beautiful product: sleek, durable, made from highly recyclable materials, and built to last for a long, long time. I have had mine for about 35 years. Although I am CEO of ECRS, a company that specializes in retail automation for grocery store technology, such as point of sale, self-checkout, inventory, and supply chain, as well as the software that runs on a deli scale, one of our most important innovations in recent years was inspired by this product outside our industry – the KitchenAid mixer.
As an Evergreen® company, we are dedicated to Pragmatic Innovation and are always looking for opportunities to do what we do better. In this case, as is often true, innovation began with a seed of dissatisfaction, a spark that ignites a desire for change. I saw room for improvement, both in quality and sustainability, in the industry standard with which we had been working for years. Thus began the story of our AutoScale™ Max.
The most common point of sale products for grocery stores, whether they contain scales or not, are made from plastic. The standard labels have a backing to them because they must be adhesive, which means they produce a significant amount of waste. The standard scales we have used for ages, which we’ve typically bought from partners in China, are therefore able to hold a roll that will last maybe three days. They tend to run out when you are at your busiest, and it’s a pain to change them. For a long time, this was our reality; we bought the scales from China, loaded our software on them, and sold them to our customers. But I knew we could do better, and I found myself thinking about that KitchenAid mixer. I wanted something to match that in design, elegance, quality, and capacity.
As I started to imagine the product I wanted to build—one that would be the KitchenAid of scales—I knew a few things had to change from the norm. I wanted to build it to last, and it seemed that building it out of metal rather than plastic was the best bet. I also didn’t see why we couldn’t design something that could hold a bigger roll of labels. Not just a little bigger, but much bigger. Working with partners, we found a special label that didn’t require backing, so we were able to increase efficiency and reduce waste that way, but why couldn’t the roll in the scale be twice as big as the normal ones? Or bigger? I set the goal to develop something that could hold a roll of labels that was ten inches thick. That would represent an 11x increase in length and a very significant time savings for customers.
I was fixated on creating something excellent and I was willing to do whatever it took not just to build a product, but to revolutionize it. Design, functionality, and sustainability drove our team's quest, but our path was not without hurdles. Initially, we engaged a design firm whose work was terrible, and ultimately resulted in setbacks. The first prototype they created that could contain the ten-inch roll was much larger than competing scales, which was not the point at all. That phase of the project was frustrating and caused us to lose quite a bit of money. If I hadn’t been driven by such an intense passion to succeed, we might have given up. But we didn’t.
As we regrouped after the first failed design attempt, we happened to discover a local designer right here in my hometown of Boone, North Carolina. In terms of his experience and skills, he was younger with much less experience than our original design partner, but something stuck out to me: his passion. He seemed as excited as we were by the project, and thanks to our shared enthusiasm and expertise, we started to gain momentum.
One of the keys to our eventual success was the fact that our new design team had the brilliant idea to incorporate the Microsoft Surface Tablet into our new design. It is embedded into the scale and it’s extremely fast and powerful. Because of this integration, we tapped into Microsoft’s supply chain, and because they are making millions of these, the cost came down – something we had not necessarily expected. In the end, we managed to produce a gorgeous looking piece of equipment that is built like a KitchenAid mixer. It fits seamlessly into a deli, holds a ten-inch roll of labels, and is faster and more powerful than anything else out there—and built more cost-effectively by developing it with our own in-house team!
Once we innovated the machine itself, we were able to simply insert the software we had already developed into it. The software in the AutoScale Max is almost identical to the software we used in our other machines, meaning we hardly had to spend any money on the coding side of the innovation. Before the AutoScale Max, we mostly sold point of sale software, which is extremely similar to the scale software. Now, we can sell products for point of sale and scales. If a customer, for example, has ten point of sale lanes, we can sell them products for all ten and we can also sell them the ten scales they need. We just doubled our sales! That fact, combined with the lower cost of the new machine, has resulted in savings for our customers, increased sales, and thus increased revenue for ECRS to reinvest in more innovative solutions that continually serve our customers.
As an additional outcome of all this, this innovation has significantly reduced our dependence on China. This was not necessarily one of our initial goals, but because of increasing concerns over supply chain vulnerabilities and ethical considerations, this turned out to be an added bonus. Our relationship with our Chinese suppliers was not problematic, but it was primarily driven by concerns of cost, convenience, and efficiency above all else. With this innovation, we find that we can maximize all of these, and at the same time, bring production right back here to home.
What is the lesson here? What drove this innovation process? First, when I look back at the road we travelled from the idea to the finished product, I realize that it would not have happened without my own almost obsessive passion for it. And the fact that our second designer shared that same passion was key. The rest, honestly, was just great problem solving. The integration of the Microsoft Tablet was fortuitous, but that is just another example of hitting a roadblock and looking around for a creative way to overcome it. The answers often lie in unexpected places and are not always as hard as you think they’ll be. It’s funny how passion can drive a team to make hard things easy.
Family Harmony in an Evergreen® Company
Family harmony and sustaining an Evergreen® business do not always jive. It takes hard work, even when all family members are mostly in sync. Learning ways to navigate these challenges has been one of the unexpected benefits I’ve gained from joining Tugboat Institute®. Here are some of the insights I’ve gained from many conversations with other multi-generational ownership groups.
If absolute family harmony - with siblings, children, cousins, nieces and nephews, in-laws - is your highest priority, it’s probably best to sell the business. The odds are, if you’re going to sustain your business over many generations (the essence of an Evergreen business), you will experience some degree of family discord. Not everyone will believe all decisions are “fair.”
The decision-making generation has the most responsibility to lay the groundwork to remain Evergreen and promote family harmony. Ideally, this would begin with the first generation, but that’s uncommon. Things get messier with each successive generation, especially if there is a lack of clarity about “family ground rules.” The generation in leadership must start from where they are.
There are a myriad of issues and possibilities to sort out. What are the criteria and expectations of ownership, governance, executive leadership, and employment? What is a “fair” way to distribute existing and future wealth? How, if at all, should those who work in the business be treated differently than those who don’t? Should “rules” be solidified in a trust, or should each successive generation have the flexibility to modify how things work?
There is no right way to transition ownership and leadership of a business from one generation to the next. The key is for the decision-making generation to own and communicate decisions – over and over. The next generation deserves and benefits from clarity and context. Too often, families don’t have those conversations and each person is left to create their own story.
These questions should be an explicit part of your work. They should be an agenda item at family meetings, holding company or business board meetings - whatever is most appropriate for your context. The work requires the same level of rigor as any other critical issue. And it is critical. Your Evergreen business needs clear answers in order to thrive.
When I stepped into leadership, our family business, High Plains Bank, did not have a clear set of “rules” to move from one generation to the next. In part, this is because the first two generations were small and intimate. Generations 1 and 2 included six people (grandparents; parents; uncle and aunt) who acquired the business together and worked closely for more than 30 years.
Generation 3 includes nine who are actively engaged but scattered about the state and country. Generation four includes as many as 15 (our family has a history of spouses getting involved) who are even more geographically dispersed and who don’t know each other well.
We must become far clearer on our “family ground rules” if we hope to sustain our Evergreen business for another three generations and beyond. If we don’t add clarity and cultivate an ownership mindset in the next generation, the level of the attachment to the business is likely to dissipate to the point that people are indifferent to being Evergreen.
Our family has been making progress. I realized at Tugboat Institute Gathering of Teams we still have much to do. With the help of Tugboat colleagues, I have a clearer sense of the work to be done and growing confidence that we can remain both Evergreen and a harmonious family.
I have been part of structured and informal Tugboat conversations with colleagues such as Jeet Kumar, George Giudici, Karen Keim, Steven Burger, Tom Rosztoczy, John Egger and my Tugboat Forum members, among others. Many of the Tugboat colleagues who have helped me sort through family issues may not remember these conversations. That’s the power of Tugboat’ Institute's design. Even informal conversations can provide transformative ideas.
Revolutionizing our Health Care Plan Through Reference-Based Pricing
The economics of modern healthcare have become a labyrinth for employers to negotiate, usually annually, where costs typically spiral out of control year over year. In the face of these perpetually and rapidly rising costs, at Stotz Equipment, we have been seeking a better path – both for us and for our employees – for some time now. A few years ago, we hit on an innovative strategy that is proving extremely effective and successful: reference-based pricing (RBP). RBP has garnered attention in recent years for its potential to rein in healthcare expenses while ensuring quality care, so we decided to give it a try.
In short, through RBP, which we began offering as an option for our employees just three years ago, we have seen significant savings. Specifically, this year, in year three, I would estimate that at Stotz, we saved about 65% on health care costs with this plan. At the same time, we have been able to provide high quality health care to our employees, without compromise. It’s made a staggering difference.
As you consider whether or not this might work for your company, let’s begin by establishing a clear understanding of what RBP is and how it works. I am leaning on my CHRO, Jared Nielsen, as I lay this out.
RBP represents a departure from traditional models. Instead of relying on complex negotiations between insurers and healthcare providers to set a percentage discount on a service whose price may fluctuate wildly, RBP sets a predetermined reimbursement amount for medical procedures. The reference point is typically based on a percentage of what Medicare would pay for the same service. At Stotz, we aim for 150% of Medicare costs. RBP plans are administered by a third-party administrator (TPA), and variations do exist across different groups and regions, where targets may differ based on local dynamics.
In the traditional healthcare model, in addition to the inability of an employer or an employee to control or predict the cost of a given service, lack of choice is a limitation. If your preferred doctor is ‘out of network,’ you are out of luck. And for the company providing insurance, it is nearly impossible to control costs. Any efforts to keep employees’ costs relatively stable can mean huge, unexpected increases in costs for employers, often every year.
What does RBP actually look like in action? It’s not complicated. The employer, with the help of a TPA, sets the reference price for various medical services. Employees have access to this information, so they know what to expect. When the need arises, the employee seeks treatment, from whichever facility or provider they like. The insurance plan pays the healthcare provider the predetermined reference price. If the provider accepts the reference price as full payment, the process ends here. Occasionally, the provider will push back, which can lead to a process called ‘balance billing.’ More on that in a moment.
How much below standard prices will the RBP prices be? It varies widely, but usually, it’s between a 300%-700% difference, when you’re talking facility costs. Providers tend to be a little lower than that unless they’re specialty providers. The savings are felt on both the employer and employee side, at least at Stotz. Because we are an Evergreen® company, we share our successes with our employees no matter how we are winning. Therefore, the windfall created by these significant savings didn’t go straight to the company’s bottom line. Rather, we passed a great portion of it on to employees.
With the traditional plan, we cover most of the premium costs for the employee – $200 of $250 for an individual. The employee pays the remaining $50. When employees elect to enroll in RBP (it is optional at this point), we cover 100% of their costs. They are saving $50 per paycheck, or $100 per month. The savings for families are even deeper; the traditional plan starts at $260 per paycheck for a family, but with RBP, it drops to $50. Those on the family plans are saving over $400 per month.
Why aren’t 100% of our employees enrolled in RBP? There are several reasons that can help you, as a leader, decide if and how to implement this in your company. First, it is new and different, and often, people are wary of radical change like this, especially when it comes to something as important as health care. In the first year, we offered it as an option and about 50% of employees elected to enroll. Secondly, although the TPA has set a rate for service, this doesn’t mean that all providers will accept this right off the bat. This is where balance billing can occur. It is not uncommon for a big bill to arrive, and then the employee has the responsibility to bring it to the TPA and start the process of negotiating for a better price. This period of negotiating – balance billing – can take time. Employees might find it stressful to receive a series of huge medical bills and wait for a long time to have the negotiations resolve. These employees might prefer the traditional plan.
On the employer side, there are some downsides as well. Occasionally, a provider refuses to accept the TPA rate, and then we have to fight it. This is rare, and only happens in about 1% of claims, but it does happen. My team manages this when it happens, so it means time, effort, and therefore money for us. Occasionally, our team decides to settle and pay over the 150% of Medicare, and that is also a cost we bear, but again, it’s rare. Even when there is not a fight, employees are inevitably going to come to Human Resources when they have claims or bills that arrive and they are not educated on the process yet. So it does cost us, but the costs go down over time.
Despite initial hurdles and trepidation, RBP is gaining traction within our team. In year three, enrollment numbers have grown to about 2/3 of the company. This evolution underscores the growing acceptance and efficacy of RBP in mitigating healthcare costs. Our progress with this initiative so far is encouraging. I can envision a healthcare landscape where RBP becomes the norm at Stotz, obviating the need for traditional plans. The benefits are palpable: reduced administrative burdens once everyone gets used to the new program, stabilized premiums, and empowered employees making informed healthcare choices.
For us, reference-based pricing has been a game-changer in a healthcare landscape fraught with escalating costs. We are self-insured, and that is an important part of why this makes sense for us. Beyond that, the tolerance of your employees to try something new and the expertise on your team to manage the transition are the only other critical ingredients. It’s a great program. By anchoring itself on transparent reimbursement rates and empowering employees with cost-effective options, we believe that RBP could be the path to vastly improved affordability and accessibility in healthcare, not just for us, but for many companies.
