Each Challenge Has Been Essential
My father started Nussbaum Transportation in 1945 with one truck. He had an eighth-grade education, but his intelligence and extraordinary work ethic led to expansion and success. If my siblings and I wanted to spend time with my dad, we spent time working in the family business.
I tell people that my involvement with the business truly started at ground level—I cleaned bathrooms, performed maintenance work, washed trucks, and worked the dock throughout my teenage years. I loved it all: the physical nature of the work suited me, and I loved working with the big and powerful trucks. I learned a lot as I worked alongside my dad, but his most consistent message to us was: “If you take care of your people, everything else will take care of itself.”
The problem was, when I stepped into an operations role at age 19 after driving our trucks right out of high school, the people picture presented a challenge. We were a unionized company at that time, and many aspects of that environment frustrated me. I got tired of the entitlement and what I felt was an abuse of power I saw in that model; so, though we had good employees and I felt loyalty toward all that my family had built, I decided that spending my years working in a unionized business was not what I wanted to do.
I left Nussbaum Transportation in 1989 to start my own business. While I had a burning desire to venture out on my own, I didn’t do enough research ahead of time, I didn’t know my market, and I failed miserably. I went back to the family business after that misadventure, and it was a very humbling experience to return. Our employees accepted me back, as they saw my return as a sign that the business had a future. However, despite my love for those loyal employees, my heart still wasn’t there.
After a year, I determined that if I was going to be successful, I needed a formal education. I pursued a bachelor’s degree in International Business and Business Management and then went on to do a Master’s in International Management.
I got out of school and took a job as the VP of Marketing at a small company in Indianapolis that had the North American market for large format digital color ink jet printers that had the capability to produce truck/trailer graphics. This job became very frustrating due to the ethics of the company, and I desperately sought direction for my next step. Should I stay? Should I return to the family business? With these questions in mind, I sat at my desk on a Monday morning and said a prayer: “Lord, you know that if I’m going to go back, you’re going to have to make this really clear to me.” Within five seconds, a truck from our family business, emblazoned with our logo, rolled by my office window. I was headed back.
As I stepped back into the family business, we were facing significant challenges. We had started a non-union trucking company while I was away, and we were now running both that business and the unionized business. Despite creating that second, non-union company, the unionized company was struggling to compete in a non-union industry with lower operating costs. Shortly after I returned, I was approached by our general manager who wanted to purchase the non-union business. Although it was the most profitable of the two, I sensed God telling me to sell it. We went through with the sale, and I now found myself tasked with turning around a long-time unionized trucking company, operating marginally with huge legacy costs.
The next few years presented many tests in Perseverance, as we attempted to sell our LTL (less than truckload) division in response to the growing presence of box stores, which required truckload deliveries. We were not able to sell the LTL division, though, and were forced to inform our employees that we could no longer afford to keep it open. The layoffs that resulted were devastating to me. We kept our TL (full truckload) division and began rebuilding, still burdened by union operating costs, and founded another non-union trucking company, which we grew while simultaneously shrinking the unionized company. In 2008, the drivers of the unionized company decided that they wanted to get out of the Teamsters Union and took it upon themselves to gather enough votes. By an overwhelming majority, they ultimately voted the union out, and we combined both companies.
While this was a very challenging period, it was also one in which I was able to recognize that my return to the family business was an opportunity to pursue my Purpose. I had sensed a calling to missionary work throughout my adult life, but, until this time, this deep-seated desire had felt in conflict with my obligation to the family business. Once I returned, however, I came to realize that God wanted our business to become a mission. We began tithing monthly and operating our company on Biblical principles. This included a revision of our website to help visitors understand our beliefs, our mission, vision, and values (honoring God, being good stewards of His provision). Finally, we also began installing full-wrap trailer graphics depicting family scenes on our trucks to help the traveling public understand what we held most important—faith and family.
In our business, our definition of family includes our employees. Harkening back to my father’s belief that if you take care of your employees, everything else will follow, we have continued to build our company from that People First foundation. Another piece of advice he offered has guided me—he said, “a business owner doesn’t have to know how to do everything, he or she just needs to know how to hire good people.” Today, we follow that principle as we seek out employees who first have character and integrity and are bright and coachable; experience comes second to these qualities for us.We can teach them what they need to know about our business and industry.
Our People First approach has resulted in driver turnover that is a fraction of the industry average. And, this year, we followed our commitment to our employees by completing a partial ESOP. Our plan is to be 100 percent employee-owned in three years.
As I reflect on my return to the family business and the years that have followed, the message that emerges clearly to me is that in God’s economy, nothing in life is wasted. Each challenge and stage of my journey has been essential: First, I learned to pray and listen for His answer. Trying to start my own business and failing taught me humility. Going back to school gave me a foundation. Had I not taken the job in Indianapolis, I would not have learned about trailer graphics and how important a role they would play in conveying our company values. Shutting down a division and putting a couple of hundred people out of work was the most difficult thing I’ve done in my career, but it taught me empathy and to care for others.
At the end of the day, prayer, Perseverance, faith, and a deep, abiding trust in God have been the reasons for our 73 years of success. It is our hope and plan to reach 100 years!
Brent Nussbaum is CEO of Nussbaum Transportation Services, Inc.
Solving for Success
As CEO and President of Contra Costa Medical Career College, I spend my days focused on higher education and serving students. But when I left high school, I could only dream of maybe one day going to college. Though I had done very well in school as a younger student and was especially interested in and excelled in the sciences, a dysfunctional family situation and related circumstances left me without direction, support, and energy to focus on my academic life.
But even as I made the decision to enter the workforce rather than college, I was aware that if I wanted sufficient income and the stability that my upbringing had not offered, I would need some type of professional training.
With that in mind, I took a job in a dental office and became certified as a dental assistant. Looking to advance in that role, I then sought further education to become a dental hygienist. This next step required that I successfully complete prerequisite science courses at the local community college, which I did. Even with a 3.8 GPA and practical experience, the competition for a seat in the dental hygiene training program became a roadblock. The scarcity of training programs had led to the creation of a lottery system for entry, in which 25 slots were made available each year for 500 applicants. I made multiple attempts over seven years before finally deciding to choose a new path.
I opted to pursue nursing instead, which launched me into another challenging application and training process. Finally, after what was ultimately 10 years in junior college from the beginning of my journey to apply to dental hygiene programs to the completion of my RN degree, I began what would be a 13-year career as a labor and delivery nurse.
My experience of continually coming up against challenges and roadblocks to training for allied health professionals—and, on the flipside, once employed in the medical field recognizing the scarcity of well-trained employees to fill those roles—revealed a broken system. Limited points of entry to training programs, wide-ranging curriculums that required students take unnecessary courses, ever-increasing tuition costs that lead to high drop-out rates and student debt, and, often, lack of placement in their chosen field were limiting opportunity for students.
But if my personal life and professional path had taught me anything, it was the ability to confront obstacles, find Pragmatic Innovations and act with Perseverance to find a way forward. In this case, the problem was a big one: the educational system for allied health professionals needed to be reformed. I saw the opportunity to start a small school and develop accessible, targeted, and efficient training programs for entry-level healthcare professionals. We would strip away many of the obstacles to vocational training, while maintaining high standards in education and ensuring placement of graduates.
I got to work. With the idea to start with one program—phlebotomy—I contacted the state, started filling out necessary applications, and developed curriculum. I wrote a 180-page business plan and mortgaged our family home to secure funds to start the business—all while continuing to work full-time as a nurse and trying my best to spend quality time with my family. In 2007, two years after I began my research and planning, I received approval and opened the doors.
Contra Costa Medical Career College started with three programs and a combined 12 student enrollment, in a tight 2,500 square-foot facility. Ten years on, we offer 12 Allied Health Education programs and are operating in a 26,000 square-foot state-of-the-art facility. I have plans to open additional campuses in California as well as in New Mexico and Arizona. We graduated a little over 1,200 students in 2017, and we hold National Institutional Accreditation through the Accrediting Council for Continuing Education and Training and National Programmatic Accreditation through Accrediting Bureau of Health Education Schools (ABHES). We are approved by the US Department of Education to offer Title IV Funding to our students.
As our Evergreen business grows, my purpose is to continue to serve our students by providing high-quality training and education at a reasonable cost in a reasonable time frame. I know the burden in time and cost of training and the desire to take care of your family. That’s my own story. Our programs are filling a need among a very specific group of students who, like myself, in most cases are not going to pursue a four-year degree and are facing financial constraints. Often, they are raising families while working and going to school. Many are the first in their families to graduate from high school. Our programs offer an opportunity for these students to advance and achieve in spite of what are, in the traditional higher education and vocational training landscape, significant obstacles.
How do we make it work for these students? We had to innovate in three key dimensions: access, cost, and job placement.
Access
Our admission process involves in-depth interviews to ensure our students are committed and are aware of the requirements and reality of the jobs for which they are training. We drug screen, do a pre-employment background check, and require the applicants to have a high school diploma or GED prior to registration. We provide flexible course scheduling that offers instruction on weekends and weeknights to accommodate our students’ needs.
Cost
Many schools offering allied health programs and certifications charge $20K or more for a 10-month program for a job that will pay $10-$15 per hour. Students often leave with huge loan debt and can’t find a job. There is no reward at the end for them. We have built the same exact programs with the same certification outcomes, for a lot less. For example, we offer a Clinical Medical Assistant Program that costs $3,200 for 14 weeks of didactic, laboratory, and clinical externship training. This program is not eligible for government funding because it is too short, so most students pay cash. In some cases, students receive partial Pell Grants or funding from other third-party payers, but they do not take out loans. That means that, first, they have skin in the game and are committed to completing their courses; second, it means our programs are relatively short, which also contributes to our very high completion rates; third, it means they aren’t graduating burdened by debt.
Placement
Our job placement rates are outstanding because we keep the cohorts relatively small to be sure we can provide the best possible opportunities for graduate placement. We also maintain very close relationships with our clinical partners who consist of major healthcare facilities and organizations, hospitals, surgery centers, urgent care clinics, pharmacies, specialty and family practices, and non-profits in our community, which provide a consistent funnel of opportunities for our graduates. We also dedicate significant staff to our career services department to ensure our students are mentored and directed to good opportunities.
As we continue to expand and improve our programming, I put myself in the shoes of my students every day. I am constantly asking myself: How would I feel if I were the student? And, as I answer that question and encounter new challenges, we will continue to solve for their success.
Stacey Orozco is the Founder and CEO of Contra Costa Medical Career College, Inc. After a 13-year career as a labor and delivery nurse, Stacey founded Contra Costa Medical Career College to provide quality, affordable vocational education and training for allied health professions.
Accelerating Gender Diversity
In the technology industry, and in computer science specifically, awareness of gender diversity is a hot topic. I was aware of the issue 10 years ago as I exited the academic world, where it was being actively discussed. Though I had a bit of a head start on awareness when I stepped into business, it wasn’t until I committed to making gender balance a priority and took specific actions toward that goal that I was able to truly make progress.
Our first attempt failed. In 2006, about five years into the life of my software development and design company, Atomic Object, I looked at my team and said, “We’re a bunch of guys, and we need to fix that. We need to hire women developers.” But mine was a young company at the time, and I didn’t do a good job of explaining why we needed to do that. So, facing push-back from others in the company, the issue stalled. We talked a lot about it, but we didn’t succeed in hiring even one woman as a developer. We remained at around 7-10 percent female employees for years.
Then, around five years ago, I finally said, “enough is enough.” This time around, we did things differently: we created a consistent, company-wide, focused conversation around the topic across our communication platforms; we tracked our progress; we made structural changes to compensation and benefits to become more appealing to women; we modified our hiring, diversity, and marketing collateral; we reached out internally and externally to make employees and the broader community aware of our commitment to gender balance.
The results have been pretty great: today, 23 of our 65 employees are women—that’s 35 percent of the company. And, 37 percent of our developers are women.
The steady progress has been consistent as we have continued to embrace gender diversity, but our Accelerator Program, a professional development program for newly-graduated developers, has propelled us even further, faster and gives me great hope for the future of sustainable gender balance on our team.
I think there are a few key reasons the Accelerator Program has served to boost the number of women at Atomic Object. First, the program is broadly appealing to young graduates, men and women, because it bridges the gap between their academic education and on-the-ground training as a developer, where they rotate through client projects and learn many skills they never encountered in school. Second, I think young women developers are drawn to the fact that participants enter the program as part of a cohort of 3-5, which means that they are joining the company with peers—and other women—who are the same age and at the same point in their professional lives. Finally, the structured mentorship within the program, which offers young people valuable, dedicated guidance, has also created great traction for the program among women.
As we have welcomed more women into our company through the Accelerator Program, our earlier commitment and ongoing work around gender balance has served us well. Because we had already made changes to be more attractive to women before we launched the Accelerator Program, we didn’t have obstacles to overcome when our goals began to become reality.
So, what does that reality look like? What are the benefits of these efforts? Atomic Object is a more interesting, welcoming place to work. We’re able to recruit more women and have become an employer of choice in an extremely tight job market because we are viewed as a balanced, positive environment. And, while we have always been an unusually profitable company for our industry—our margin is 2-3 times the industry average—the increased number of women on our team contributes to our ability to defend and maintain our good long-term financial health. The cognitive diversity among our gender diverse team leads to increased innovation, as well as better problem solving for clients, all of which contribute to our overall strength and resilience for the long-term.
All that said, there’s no question we still have work to do. We still don’t have any senior-level women developers—though not from lack of trying. The reality is that the shortage of women in computer science is not only a pipeline issue; women also leave computer science careers at greater rates than men do, so there are just very few women in these positions. This means our young women developers lack role models, something they struggle with. In response, I encourage them to look beyond senior developers, to seek out mentorship opportunities from colleagues in different departments who can be equally helpful. I also emphasize to these young women that they will be those mentors they are seeking one day.
I look forward to continuing to contribute to making that day a reality—sooner than later.
Carl Erickson, PhD is the CEO and Co-Founder of Atomic Object, a Michigan-based software design and development company. He is also an active angel investor and managing director for Tappan Hill Ventures, has served on the boards of several tech startups, and launched his professional life as a Professor of Computer Science at Grand Valley State University.
An Unexpected Gift of the Recession
My core Evergreen business, Spraggins Inc., is a building products and construction services company based in Orlando, Florida and focused on the contract residential market. In 2007, the great recession hit our business extremely hard. Homebuilders just stopped building.
By the fall of 2008, we were down to 17 employees from 135. The 17 employees who remained were the best, and they were successfully managing what business we had. At that point, while I had enough money saved to fund my family’s expenses, I had no cash to invest. What I did have was time.
The week of Thanksgiving, I got a call from my friend Peter Greer, who runs Hope International, a microfinance organization that does work in Africa. He wanted to take what he had learned in microfinance and deploy it in the healthcare sector in East Africa to fill a much-needed gap in healthcare access and delivery, specifically among rural communities in Burundi. The idea really resonated with me.
With time on my hands and the desire to dig into meaningful work, I told him I was in. Did I know anything about healthcare? No. Had I ever launched a nonprofit organization? No. But I did have entrepreneurial spirit, deep knowledge of business, and a faith-driven purpose to love my neighbor and to serve.
We got to work devising our plan, and we decided our core mission would address pharmaceutical distribution, which we determined was the most significant constraint.
Our first move was to go visit David Weekley, who, through his nonprofit, The David Weekley Foundation, was already dedicated to supporting healthcare efforts in Africa. The visit proved a critical eye-opener. After listening to Peter and me describe my idea, David looked at me and asked: “How many times have you been to Burundi?”
It was the right question. I hadn’t been there even once.
We put together a small team and started spending time in Burundi. Once on the ground, we engaged in some foundational market research and asked: Who is the customer? What does the customer want? If current services and resources were not meeting the need, we needed to innovate. And, more specifically, it was clear that if we wanted to address access and care in the rural population, where the greatest need existed, we needed to get out into the countryside and start asking questions and observing. When we did, we finally understood the issue.
It turns out, the main constraint in healthcare delivery in Burundi, and in much of sub-Saharan Africa, was not, as we had thought, with pharmaceutical distribution but rather at the point of patient contact: there were systemic problems that created dangerous mistakes in patient care. This was because of a lack of basic training among health workers and facility managers; they did not have access to the knowledge or tools they needed to care well for their communities. As I began to understand the scope of the limitations at health facilities, I recognized that these were actually simple problems that even I, with absolutely no expertise in healthcare, could help solve. It was about addressing basic processes, systems, and operational issues.
Pivoting from our initial focus on pharmaceutical distribution, we made the decision to engage in conversion franchising—converting existing health centers in rural communities to franchisees of our system, implementing medical training and business management training, teaching management of pharmaceutical and equipment supply, and providing quality assurance to build on existing local strengths to maximize impact.
Over the course of the next year, we tried three different conversion franchise models: we partnered with government, private, and faith-based health centers. At the end of that year, the faith-based health centers proved the best partners: they were motivated to earn enough income to sustain their work, but rather than being driven solely by profit, they were also motivated by care for their communities. We had landed on what would be our winning model: conversion franchising for church-based health centers.
Today,LifeNet International is thriving through this leveraged approach to philanthropy. Our services are donation driven, and we are operating with leverage because we’re overlaying our work on top of existing assets in health centers. This innovative design has allowed us to build a scalable, efficient model to change health outcomes—and, it’s one we can take Africa-wide. Currently, LifeNet International partners with 120 faith-based health facilities across Burundi, DRC, Uganda, and Malawi.
Ten years on from my decision to commit to LifeNet, it remains a gift of the recession. If we hadn’t experienced the downturn that offered me time and space to commit to the project, I would not have been able to take on this work. And, as we emerged from the recession, and Spraggins Inc. has grown and diversified, I have been able to bring lessons of innovation and inspiration learned through the nonprofit world into my business. My expectations have been raised for both people and operations, and my business is better for it.
Michael Spraggins is CEO of Spraggins Inc., a builder services company based in Orlando, Florida. He has held principal roles in a variety of entrepreneurial and investment ventures with an emphasis on distribution, service, and franchising. Michael founded LifeNet in 2009 with the vision of making quality healthcare an enduring reality for the world’s poor.
Our Purpose is Our People
When I stepped back into the restaurant business in my mid-twenties after nine months as a staff auditor with Arthur Andersen, I thought I was taking the easy road. After years of working in restaurants through high school and college, I had followed my dad’s advice to find a job in accounting. As a career IRS agent, he always told me that an accounting degree would guarantee me a job. But early on in my time as an auditor, I knew my heart wasn’t in it. I missed the energy and community in the hospitality world.
What I quickly realized after leaving my accounting job and taking a position as an assistant manager of a café in San Francisco, was that this path was anything but easy. Managing a restaurant staff means managing people whose education, cultural, professional, and language experiences are incredibly diverse. In place of my college accounting degree, I found myself wishing I had an advanced degree in psychology.
But, today, as owner of three Bay Area restaurants—Nopa, Nopalito, and Liholiho Yacht Club—those same challenges are what inspire me every day. The opportunity to bring people with such wide-ranging backgrounds together to deliver food and drink and create incredible experiences for our guests is magic.
Building a successful team of people who are capable of making that magic happen has become my Purpose. Our most important investment is the time and training we offer our employees; if we do that right, if we develop people with the skills, knowledge, and experience to deliver truly exceptional food service, our success as a business will follow.
In our restaurants, the process of building that team starts with the way we hire our people. Resumes and past professional experience are generally not the first thing I look at. The fact is, you don’t need a college degree—or even a high school education—to be a great food service employee. If you’re curious and committed, you can learn everything you need to know on the job. So, when I interview a potential employee, I pay attention to how they engage. Do they look me in the eye? Do they shake my hand? I think if you give someone an opportunity, if you look at them not from experience but who they are as a human being, if you give them a chance, you will find people who are as invested in your business as you are in their success.
After each interview, we ask each candidate to come in and work a paid shift; after that, we conduct a second interview. My partners and I interview and then provide orientation for every hire in the restaurant. It’s so important that staff know who we are and what we do—and that I know who they are because they are reflecting our attitude toward the guests.
As staff step into their roles, we continue to educate and mentor. I don’t want to just teach someone to ring in the food and take the money and go home. I want managers to constantly be listening and educating and feeling empowered to help our employees grow. This approach is reflected in the fact that our employees tend to stay around—85 percent of our managers formerly served as staff. They are happy to come to work, and our guests feel that. They tell us, “everyone who works for you is really nice; everyone really seems to enjoy working here.” I don’t’ think you can pull the wool over your guests’ eyes. If you’re not practicing these things with your staff, you guests will see that.
In the daily experience at our restaurants, the effort we extend toward our employees creates great experiences for our guests. And it does take effort—you have to commit to educating and empowering your staff, and your management has to believe in it. It takes time. And it matters every day.
My hope is that, in the bigger picture, this daily practice and the way this People First approach is ingrained in our culture will also help employees recognize the opportunity for a fulfilling, long-term career in food service. I want our industry to be viewed as more than a stopping ground—a means to pay for school or provide flexibility. To this end, we provide 401K with a four percent match and medical benefits. I try to impart to staff that this can be a career. Given the changing tip structure and increasing attention among restaurant management to finding middle ground between front-of-house and kitchen pay structure, my sense is that we are going to see changes in how people approach working in restaurants—and how we, as owners and managers, will need to respond. I hope that our continued investment in culture and training will help us maintain success in this changing landscape.
At the end of the day, the reality is that profitability for restaurants is slim. I know that my investment in my staff and in developing a culture that empowers happy, fulfilled employees will mean our noncontrollable expenses will be lower. I might spend more money up front, but over the long term, I will have better product, less breakage, and lower turnover—all things that can chip away at the bottom line. Ultimately, everything we do to honor, engage, and educate our staff will make a difference.
There is no question that restaurant work is hard work. It’s not the easy road I envisioned when I stepped away from the corporate world—but, for me, it’s so much more fulfilling. I love what I do, and I am grateful for the opportunity to share my passion for food and hospitality with the wonderful, quirky, talented, and interesting people who come together in our restaurants each day.
Jeff Hanak is co-owner of Nopa, Nopalito, and LihoLiho Yacht Club restaurants in San Francisco.
Creating a Happy Remote Workforce
When I was growing up, my dad worked at home. He was a clinical psychologist whose office was in our house. While this meant my sisters and I sometimes had to tone down the ferocity when we were playing in the house during working hours, it also meant he often had time to spend with us between appointments. And when his work day ended, we weren’t waiting at the end of a long commute. He was there if we needed him.
This model spoke to me 24 years ago when I started to develop my company, TCG, providing information technology solutions and consulting services. I knew that it was possible to have a productive career doing something you love, at home, with time to devote to family. Fortunately, I was successful.
At TCG, we have created an almost-entirely remote workforce. Currently, 100 of our 144 employees telecommute; 41 work onsite for clients at least once a week, and only three are at client sites daily. Nobody comes into the TCG office except for meetings. As we have grown our workforce, we have also been growing innovative programs and incentives to ensure that our remote community stays both happy and connected to one another and to our purpose of improving the world around us in big and small ways every day. We want our employees to enjoy their work. They need to be happier working for us than working for anybody else or being stay-at-home parents. That’s the toughest competition!
Developing a culture that nurtures that level of happiness among telecommuting employees and prioritizes putting People First has been a long, complicated, trial-and-error process. It certainly hasn’t happened overnight. We have had to build the benefits and programming into our cost structure and adjust as necessary, and we constantly test what works and what doesn’t. But the positive results of our efforts have been incalculable. We currently have a five-star rating on Glassdoor.com; we were recently named to Inc.’s 2018 Best Workplaces list; and, we were on the Fortune list of Best Workplaces two years in a row. The awards are great, but, more important, there isn’t a single other IT contractor in D.C. on most of these lists.
And in case you think I’m a creative genius, know that I have stolen almost every idea I have from other innovators (or, as my wife says, I’ve “learned” from them). In the early days of this process, our executive team sat down and went through all the “best places to work” listings, noting benefits and perks that we thought were interesting. We created a spreadsheet with three columns—the first listed ideas we liked; the second gave an estimated cost of each; and the third noted how we could implement them given our business and philosophical reality. And then we implemented every feasible one.
I hear you panicking at the thought of the cost and effort of all this. But many of the programs and incentives that can make a big difference in employee recruitment and retention do not come with a big price tag, either in dollars or in time. Here are a few of the key steps we’ve taken at TCG that have netted big returns.
Rethink HR Structure: Vice President of Employee Happiness
It had always bothered me that HR has two priorities: defend the company against employees and make employees as happy as possible. One is caring; one is paranoid. Finding one sufficiently two-faced person is very tough! I decided we needed to separate these roles and develop a position entirely focused on employee happiness. Our Vice President of Employee Happiness is charged with getting to know all the employees, training employees, guiding careers, and making sure employees feel their salaries are reasonable. She is the employees’ representative on the executive team.
Small Steps—or Rides—Reap Big Rewards: Transportation Incentives That Align with Our Purpose
Even though most of our employees work from home, they still commute occasionally for client meetings, or they may work onsite for a client for a period of time. When they do, we help cover costs such that we incentivize non-car travel. We match costs on the Metro; we pay for Capital Bikeshare membership for any employee who wants it; and we pay for shoes twice each year for those who walk.
Employee Sprees: Charitable and Social Gatherings
Because most of our employees don’t connect around the water cooler or coffee maker each day, we provide opportunities for friendships to blossom through social and charitable activities. Employees are encouraged to come up with an idea for a “spree” each month, and we pay the cost of any idea that generates interest from more than six employees. Past sprees have ranged from an Ethiopian restaurant meal to scuba diving to an escape room outing to volunteer service for area nonprofits.
Listen...and Learn
We have created opportunities for employees to feel heard, which empowers them and keeps them invested in our purpose. For example, I spend four hours in an orientation with every new employee. Every two-to-three weeks, I go out to lunch with eight employees, which is a win-win: we all get lunch, and I have the opportunity to connect with our people and understand their concerns. And we created committees, open to all employees, to allow the employees to decide which health plans to offer and which 401(k) options to provide. (As an added advantage to us, getting the opportunity to be involved means employees never complain about the health plan or the 401(k).)
The result of these and other efforts to connect with and respond to our employees? TCG employees are happy. And when our employees are happy, our clients are happy. Recently, we won a contract with a client who had been using another firm for many years. When I asked what made them make the switch, they said, “When I deal with a TCG employee, they are generally happier than employees from other companies.” The fact is, people like to work with happy people.
Another key benefit of putting people first is the positive reviews generated by employees across surveys and ranking platforms. Potential employees typically look first at our ranking on Glassdoor.com and other employee satisfaction surveys when they consider our offer of employment, which means those five stars are invaluable. Our consistently high reviews mean that we now have people waiting for positions to become available at our company.
Daniel Turner is Founder and President of TCG, a Federal IT services industry leader, with a culture focused on delivering Positively Distinct™ solutions for programs of national importance.
Never Share These Goals
As a child, I had a lot of health problems. Not knowing how long this life thing would last, I was in a rush to go out and build something at a young age. So I left high school at age 16 to go to the University of California, Berkeley, where in 2009 I started inDinero, my Evergreen company, which provides financial tools and data for small businesses.
From the start, I knew I wanted to build a profitable company that I would never sell. That was a strange idea to a lot of people. But I’ve built this for me for the long haul because I don’t ever want to start from scratch again—and so that I will never have to work for someone else. In order to make this intense drive sustainable — for me and for my company — I’ve had to get creative.
To manage my life and company goals and make them compatible, I came up with a personal operating system. This system is a combination of daily rituals and diligent goal-tracking on a spreadsheet that keeps me — and inDinero — on track and forward-thinking.
First, my daily priming ritual: Every day I pump some intense music and put on a 22-minute timer before running through a focused meditation on different topics. It’s a combination of three minutes focused on gratitude, five minutes on what goals I’ve accomplished, five minutes on what goals I’d like to accomplish, and 10 minutes on illuminating my beliefs and journaling. This routine really gives me a plan of attack for that day and week.
The spreadsheet where I outline my 50-year vision, mission, and goals is something I’ve been building for two years. On this simple document, I track my week-to-week progress and outcomes. Originally I had 10-, five- and one-year plans just for my business. I expanded this to include my personal goals, such as romance, career, physical health, and financial success. When I put a desired result on my spreadsheet, I then track my progress until I am successful.
A lot of people just let the day unfold. Living that way won’t help you achieve maximum potential. Some people say, “it must be so stressful to have goals hanging over you all the time,” but I think it’s more stressful not having a plan of attack.
Given my experience, I have some tips to offer Evergreen leaders interested in creating your own personal operating system:
Don’t be too committed to what you first put down. Be open to having your goals and desired outcomes change over time. Your goals may get bigger and bolder. Be open-minded, and you might be surprised.
I recommend modifying your plan monthly. You might want to consider archiving for further reflection — although I choose not to do this, as I’d rather push forward and not dwell on the past.
This document is and should be very private. I have some outlandish goals, so I need to minimize the naysayers. While I have shared it with a few close friends for feedback, I don’t recommend wide sharing. Only give it to people who know you really well; otherwise you’re going to end up having a lot of unproductive conversations. And never share this with your employees — some of your personal goals will counter their wishes. My goal is to build a huge company, but I don’t want to work 60 hours a week. That’s a good practice, but an employee might misinterpret it as, “Jessica just wants to fly airplanes and start other companies, and she must be distracted from the business in her fun, great life!” Don’t share.
Also, I make bigger leaps and bounds when I work on this in a two-day retreat environment. Take your friends, go somewhere warm and fun, and engage over your goals and visions for life. Get serious about making some changes and doing something big. I’ve organized several of these retreats for other women running businesses.
Since I’ve started this personal operating system, it has given me grit and endurance and helped me commit to the Evergreen philosophy. Having a long-term horizon keeps me focused on the business and forces me to grapple with my beliefs and constraints in hitting my goals. I’ve grown so much personally in these two years — and I will soon be tripling my business.
I’m convinced that if more people did longer-term life planning, looking out 50-plus years, we’d see more Evergreen businesses. The act of diving into your personal goals and desires on a more macro level lends itself to the Evergreen lifestyle. I challenge you to articulate what you really want—doing so just might help you achieve your goals in businesses and in life.
Jessica Mah is Founder and CEO of inDinero.
Unpacking Tugboat Institute Summit
When I joined the Tugboat Institute team in May of this year and sat in on my first team Huddle, planning for Tugboat Institute Summit 2018 was reaching its peak. That first week and throughout the days that followed, leading up to the event’s start on June 26, all things Tugboat Institute Summit were front and center. The commitment of the Tugboat team to ensuring that each attendee had an extraordinary and inspiring experience was clear, as was the joy and gratitude for the opportunity to gather this group of Evergreen leaders to learn and inspire one another in our stunning mountain town.
What I couldn’t know in those weeks was what the event would actually feel like. Because you do “feel” the Tugboat Institute Summit experience. The generosity and wisdom that come together in this week are tangible, as emotions and knowledge are shared openly among members.
From my first introductions to new members at our inaugural First Year Orientation, I saw how quickly the armor of professional personas was relinquished, giving way to warm, personal interactions. As new members met one another and learned what they could look forward to in the days ahead, members who had experienced the event shared insight into how to make the most of the gathering and answered questions to ensure those attending for the first time felt at home and well-informed.
Moving from that First Year Orientation through the first evening’s events reaffirmed the spirit of connection and curiosity that would continue to fuel the week’s activities. As we gathered for dinner, the greetings and conversation among members—old and new—spoke to the friendships and professional respect that bind this group. The laughter and strategizing that followed as the group worked in teams to build fantastical structures in the first icebreaker activity reflected what everyone was already feeling: this was going to be an amazing week.
As they do each year, the TED-style talks that began on day two displayed the defining characteristics of our Tugboat Institute Summit attendees: deep wisdom paired with deep understanding. Greg Twardowski brought the principles of People First and Purpose to life in his presentation, as he described the loyalty and commitment of his employees and the emotional connections that have been fundamental in the growth of his Evergreen security business. Greg set the tone for the candid, heartfelt talks that would follow throughout the week.
Alongside the deeply personal stories of Purpose present in this year’s talks was a parallel thread of practical application and strategy, offering the CEOs, Presidents, and Founders gathered tactical steps and insight to bring home to their businesses. A panel discussion led by Dave Whorton, with Spencer Burke, of the St. Louis Trust Company, Kim Sheehy, of Fidelity Family Office Services, and Loren Feldman, Senior Editor at Forbes, offered welcome insight and ideas for founders and CEOs of multi-generational family businesses.
Thursday’s talks provided further lessons, both practical and profound. Among the day's presentations, Tom Rosztoczy shared the story of Stotz Equipment’s growth through acquisitions; Bobby Jenkins spoke to the foundation of family (and Texas A&M) that guides ABC Home and Commercial Services, and Jay Wilkinson described the deeply rooted culture present at Firespring.
There could have been no better conclusion to this year’s presentations than Joe Motz’s deeply moving talk, “Finding the Joy in Unpacking.” Initially hesitant to speak at Tugboat Institute Summit, Joe delivered a talk that connected all the pieces of personal growth and professional success for many members. In offering his own journey of letting go of that which did not serve him to more fully embrace positive attitudes and practices—in business and in life—Joe’s talk ignited the better spirit of Tugboat Institute members.
Whether a member’s ah-ha Evergreen moment this year came though one of the presentations, in the group art project with Heather Hansen, on the hiking trail, or in a one-on-one-conversation with another member, our hope is that all who attended returned home inspired and recommitted to building lasting, purpose-driven, and private companies. As a team, we are so grateful to have shared another Tugboat Institute Summit with our members and guests, and we hope that everyone who attended will carry the momentum of the experience forward in life and in work.
Diana Price is the content manager at Tugboat Institute.
Brewing an Evergreen Company
I was bitten by the beer bug years ago while traveling in the U.K. I picked up an odd job looking after the beer barrels in the cellar of a pub. It was fun, but it also made me realize I loved beer much more than as just an after-hours drink — I wanted to make beer my life. So when I moved back home to Australia, I found a job working for a big brewer, and eventually relaunched a craft brewery for Foster’s. While the work was rousing, I wasn’t a big fan of the corporate life, so in 2008, I started my own brewery, Stone & Wood, with three partners.
Right away we wanted to build a sustainable Evergreen business that wasn’t just about the founders living their dream. It had to be more than that. We wanted to grow a team of people who would help us create value for all stakeholders, and with whom we would share the upside.
It took a few years for us to get to the point where we could make that happen, but in 2013 we launched our employee share program. It’s a customized program where we make an annual offer to all employees who have been with us more than a year. They receive a number of shares, which are issued through an interest-free loan (paid down by dividends). Through annual valuations, these shares have grown fivefold since our first offer four years ago.
This is the cornerstone to putting our People First. By making our employees our partners, we set the stage for growth that will benefit all of us. Which is why every year, we take a group of employees who have hit their five-year-anniversary mark on a trip to Germany.
This trip isn’t just about drinking beer and having a good time — although of course there is plenty of that. The real goal is for them to see the Mittelstand — small- to midsize German multigenerational family businesses — which tend to take more of a custodial approach to their operations. One of our favorite breweries in Tettnang is run by a man named Fritz Tauscher. Fritz’s father, Fritz, inherited the brewery from his father, Fritz. This small business is very much part of the community, and it will most likely be a sustainable brewery for many more Fritzes to come. They imbue their employees with a real responsibility to make sure the business is in as good a shape as possible to pass it on. They leave it healthier than it was.
This mindset spreads to the community. In a highly fragmented market, most pubs in German towns sell only one brand of local beer as an expression of intense loyalty to these local companies. This creates a sense of pride in both the community and the owners who don’t want to sell their breweries that have been in the family for generations. We understand that pride and want our employees to feel it too.
I’ve worked at big corporations where we were driven to grow at all costs. Multigenerational businesses don’t have that pressure. They are making decisions for the long term and not for growth’s sake. On the annual trip, we like to see our employees meet with our eighth-generation malt suppliers so that they can feel this energy, this satisfaction in long-term sustainability. This, in turn, helps them take a longer view of our business, which changes how they adapt to trends and how they view the relevance of our brand. After their tour in Germany, our employees come home with a lot of stories and experiences that provide a greater understanding of what we are trying to build here.
We have grown rapidly to become the second-largest private brewer in Australia, and therefore there is a significant legacy to sustain. The four families who own most of Stone & Wood are currently working through a succession-planning process so that we can pass the torch to the younger generations.
But by putting our People First and taking a long-term view of capital investment, I think we’re going to be in good shape. And I hope that Australia views us as a family business that has long established its Evergreen roots and is a source of pride for everyone who works here and who enjoys our beer.
Jamie Cook is Co-Founder and Executive Chairman of Stone & Wood Brewing Company.
Safety in Numbers
Ever since I was a junior in high school and took my first accounting class, I’ve loved working with numbers. And just as numbers line up for me with predictable ease, I knew from a young age that I needed a clearly articulated career path. I received my accounting degree from the University of Mississippi in 1989, and I immediately sought out jobs that helped me grow my career as a professional. According to plan, I worked in public and industry accounting for a number of years and eventually for a series of companies cleaning up accounting messes.
By 2001, I teamed up with a partner and we struck out on our own with Venturity Financial Partners, doing outsourced accounting in Dallas-Fort Worth. We identified a need in the marketplace and tackled it by mapping out a plan. We would do accounting for small businesses, and our company would follow the typical accounting hierarchy with teams of accountants working in siloed spaces on their own accounts. I also wanted it to be a compelling place for people to work by investing in training and structuring a clearly articulated career path that was so beneficial to my early career.
We started off with just the two of us working out of our homes (and later trading beer for office space, but that’s another story), but quickly grew over the next few years, adding several teams. I loved the idea of investing in our staff long term and helping them shape their careers. I really thought I was facilitating lifelong learning, one of our core values, just by hiring them and providing a safe and steady work environment.
Yet something wasn’t working. About five years ago, we were having trouble attracting and retaining team members, and we struggled with profitability. We realized we weren’t going to win by just paying a lot because the services we offer aren’t a high-margin business. We needed to offer something more than just a competitive salary. But we didn’t know what to do.
Then I attended a conference at which Bo Burlingham spoke about his book “Small Giants: Companies That Choose to Be Great Instead of Big.” At that same conference, I saw one of Jack Stack’s lieutenants speaking about the Great Game of Business (which promotes transparent management and collaborative problem-solving through “open book” sharing of financial information). In particular, GGOB planted a seed in me to consider treating my team members like owners rather than employees. However, I felt like I could never share my financials with my people; it just felt too private, and frankly I was worried what they’d think when they saw our marginal financial performance.
So instead we tried on our own for three years to incentivize the team by sharing limited information with them about their own team’s financial performance. We offered bonuses to each team if they hit a certain gross margin target. The end result of three years of effort: nothing. Gross margin and profitability were right where we started. In fact, we were worse off than before because a few teams hit the gross margin target and were getting bonuses, but the majority were just giving up. We were now paying out bonuses to a limited number of team members, but with no improvement in profitability or morale.
So I turned back to GGOB. I finally sat down and read the book and I thought, “This really could be the answer.” As Jack says, “People believe in what they help create,” and everything we had been doing up to that point was top-down, what we told them they “should” do. In early 2017, we opened up our companywide financials to the whole team, brought in a GGOB coach and put together an internal team to implement GGOB. The change was almost immediate.
With GGOB, everyone owns a line item on the profit and loss statement. When they do things to improve profitability and gross margin, they can see the overall health of the organization improve — and suddenly they care about the finances in a way they didn’t before. And they have a true “stake in the outcome” (part of the Great Game) through bonuses that they all earn together through the improved performance of Venturity, not just the profitability of their individual team. Now we are not only winning, we are winning together.
We have weekly huddles to report out our budget versus actuals. Each department has to report on revenue and expenses. We go over all our numbers together. That’s been awesome: If there’s been a change in an estimate or a difference from the previous week, we discuss it. It’s the story behind the numbers that’s powerful. This has built an incredible understanding of the drivers of business. We’ve gone from 37 percent gross margin every year for the last five years before GGOB to 43 percent gross margin our first year playing the game. And in the first quarter of this year, we hit 46 percent. This has improved profitability, allowing us to reinvest in our team and our culture. And we haven’t lost a single team member in the last year to another company.
Venturity now has a team of 45 stateside team members, a support team of 25 in India and 130 clients generating revenue of $5 million a year. And we plan to implement the first phase of our ESOP (employee stock ownership plan) in January 2019. In addition to a short-term stake in the outcome through our GGOB bonuses, our team members will also have a long-term stake in the outcome through their ownership in Venturity. This will give them the opportunity to grow their long-term wealth, over and above short-term bonuses, helping them secure their own financial futures.
Not that it’s all roses. In January we were getting a little burned out because so much new work was coming in and our hiring fell behind. We were financially successful, but at the expense of our emotional success. So since February, we’ve been having conversations about how to maximize both financial and emotional success. What’s a good metric for emotional success? How do we maximize both? Whatever the answers are, we’ll find them together and take a big step toward being a well-rounded, truly sustainable, successful Evergreen company.
Prior to GGOB, it felt like I was pushing a boulder uphill 365 days a year. But by implementing the Great Game, now there are 45 of us pushing it, and we’re unstoppable together. We have a term, "career stewardship", that refers to the fact that we want to be good stewards of people’s careers and their lives during their time with us, and GGOB and employee ownership are the crown jewels of that. It’s our new and certain path to an Evergreen future.
Chris McKee is the Managing Partner of Venturity Financial Partners
