Are You Ahead of the Curve or Behind It?
As the adage goes, there is nothing more constant than change. As business leaders, we aim to drive change as we implement our vision and long-term strategies. If we plan thoughtfully and with intention, our purpose can give us more control over the ways we change, the pace of change, and the extent to which the changes create a competitive advantage for our companies. But sometimes, change is forced upon us by forces beyond our control, and we have to change in ways we would not necessarily have chosen. Insofar as we can see these forces coming, it is better to get out in front of them and chart your own path forward, rather than wait until you are pushed to change and have less control over the process.
So, let me ask you this: What are you doing about environmental sustainability?
At Greenfield Global, our vision and purpose are simple: “<350”. It’s on our t-shirts, it’s on our hardhats, it’s on posters throughout our offices, and it’s at the top of our minds when we make even the smallest decision. It represents our goal and our purpose – to do everything we can to help the earth return to CO2 levels below 350 parts per million in the atmosphere – the level required to return to equilibrium and sustain life on our planet for thousands of years to come. Therefore, our purpose is in tight alignment with the drive toward more sustainable life on earth with the products we make (biofuels, beverage and industrial alcohols, and solvents) and how we make them. But even companies whose direct purpose, enterprise, and identity are not directly tied to this initiative will soon be forced to think about the sustainability of their activities. Many already are.
Why? Because governments will tax carbon emissions, customers will demand lower carbon-intensive products, carbon-borders will be formed, our businesses will be impacted by the environmental consequences of climate change (floods, fires, droughts), and our children, grandchildren, and future generations will depend on it.
There is still time to ask the question, can we get out in front of this movement and drive our path forward, or will we be pushed in certain directions because of it? At Greenfield, we have been able to retain control by getting out in front of it and we have been able to create significant competitive advantages as a result.
Greenfield is the largest privately held ethanol producer in North America. We are one of the only companies that makes ethanol for the full range of products that contain it or require it for production, from fuel, to pharmaceuticals, to adhesives, to fragrances, to inks, to flavors, to hard seltzers and more. There are already regulations and mandates around reducing the carbon intensity score of fuel-grade ethanol, and of course we are doing that, but as of today, there are zero requirements in place to reduce the carbon intensity score of ethanol produced for other purposes. Because of our vision and our purpose, however, and because we expect it’s coming in the future, we are doing it anyway.
We have a plant in Chatham, Ontario, Canada where about 80% of the ethanol we make is high purity alcohol that goes into hard seltzers, vodkas, gins, flavors, pharmaceuticals and so on. Not one of the companies that buys our ethanol from this distillery has ever asked about our carbon intensity score. We saw an opportunity to lower it, however, and because it is right in line with our <350 mandate, we jumped on it.
When you produce ethanol, you separate corn into its three parts – protein, starch, and CO2. The starch is fermented with yeast to make ethanol, the protein is dried and made into meal for animal feed, and the CO2 is, typically, vented into the atmosphere. Because we hold all our initiatives and processes up to our <350 standard, we wondered if we might be able to find a better outlet for this excess carbon dioxide. Across the street from our plant, there is a large, 85-acre greenhouse for growing tomatoes. We all learned about photosynthesis in school; plants need CO2 to photosynthesize and release oxygen. Why not send our CO2 over there? In cooperation with the Canadian government and the greenhouse owners, we embarked on a project to design and build a system that would capture and send not only our CO2, but also the excess heat generated by our plant, across the street to the greenhouse.
Despite our partnerships and several grants we received, this initiative was expensive and a lot of work. It certainly would have been cheaper and easier to continue to vent the CO2, like other ethanol plants continue to do. We were not under any pressure at all to make this change, but we believe it was the right thing to do, and now we have the further advantage of having created something that can serve as a model for future projects. Since we built the system, the greenhouse has been able to secure grants to expand its operation and soon we will be able to send them even more of our CO2! It’s a win for us, a win for them, and a win for the planet.
Outside of ethanol, we have also turned our attention to green hydrogen, green methanol, and renewable natural gas. Very few companies are producing these critical products currently, and there isn’t even a market price for these sustainable commodities. But we know there will be, and we will, again, be ahead of the curve.
It has not always been an easy decision to strike out in these new directions. The engineering is very challenging, getting customers, investors and government on board is time-consuming, and even convincing some board members can be difficult. But when we remind them that we have a set of core competencies that are transferrable and that allow us to be pioneers in this work, the rest becomes execution. This important work is in line with our mission and our vision, and it will set us up to be leaders in the new low carbon markets that are certain to arrive in the near future.
The bottom line here is twofold. First, decarbonization is not a fad. It is going to shape businesses, across all industries, in the coming years and decades. As Evergreen® leaders, we lead multi-generational, private companies. Whether your purpose includes environmental sustainability or not, we have an opportunity to take the lead in decarbonization and, for now, report to ourselves on those achievements. We don’t have to report to public shareholders who prioritize short-term profits over long-term success or compare us to competitors that yield larger dividends or share buybacks. With this flexibility, we are well-positioned to lead the charge and take our places as industry leaders in sustainability when the mandates come and when customers demand it. And second, if we are truly thinking about being multi-generational, if we are looking at our families benefitting from these great companies we have built, we have to be ahead of the curve and not behind it. We know what happens to companies that fall behind the curve.
All businesses are going to be challenged by climate change and the need to decarbonize across industries–supply chains, feedstocks, commodity prices, reporting requirements, customer demand, regulatory burdens, raw material availability, etc. No matter our industry or the orientation of our purpose, it’s time to get plans in place and execute.
The Challenge and Promise of the Rising Generation
In family businesses, as new generations mature and prepare to step into leadership of the company, conflict and challenge are common. However, it doesn’t have to be that way. The differences that distinguish the new generation from their predecessors do not have to be impediments to a smooth transition; they can, instead, constitute an advantage. The key to it all is open communication.
In this Tugboat Institute® talk, Dr. Dennis Jaffe, Senior Research Fellow with BanyanGlobal Family Business Advisors, shares his wisdom about effective ways to approach the younger generation and ensure a more productive, conflict-free process. Dr. Jaffe has deep experience in this field; he is widely considered to have been one of the leading architects of the field of family enterprise consulting.
Watch and learn strategies to help create the kind of relationship and communication with the younger generation that will make this work easier and more productive.
Modern Leader
This article draws heavily on JeVon McCormick’s recent book, Modern Leader, published in July 2022.
Can you be a leader if you are following a well-worn playbook? Doesn’t that make you a follower? Further, what if that playbook is broken? For too long, in education, in business, and in society, we have been following a playbook that is indeed broken. The good news for leaders of companies is, stepping outside of it is not only the best way to right the wrongs it perpetuates, but also a fantastic way to reap the benefits of a larger and better pool of applicants for your company. It is the only way to lead us into the future.
Before we continue, I want to clarify that I think any discussion of blame must be laid aside. The question of fault gets us nowhere. But we must agree that although it may not be our fault that the system is broken, it is certainly our responsibility to fix it.
The essential problem with the playbook we have been following, specifically as leaders of businesses, is that it leaves no space for an enormous portion of our population. As Evergreen® leaders, I think we are better poised than anyone to agree that good people are the key to a successful business, so why wouldn't we want the deepest pool possible of good people?
There was a time when it was “business first,” but it’s become obvious that it must be People First; you need great people in your business to build great processes, and therefore drive Profit. And Profit, while always a partner to Purpose and the other 7Ps principles for Evergreen leaders, is a wonderful thing! It allows our companies to grow and thrive, it allows us to support our employees, and it allows us to do good in the world in the best way we can. So how do we move toward a place where we preserve, or even increase profit, all while stepping outside of the broken playbook? I propose three first steps.
Open Your Eyes
First, look around and acknowledge that we live in a society characterized by extreme inequality. It’s easy enough to talk about merit, about the value of hard work, and about the very few, visible, and wonderful examples of people who have managed to transcend the life they were born into. But it’s not as simple as equal effort = equal opportunity. And it starts early. A child born into poverty, as I was, or even just born poor will be exposed to 2,000 words by the time they are two years old. This becomes their base as they develop their linguistic functions, their brains, and their ability to learn. A middle-class child, in contrast, will be exposed to 30,000 words in the same time frame. Imagine the advantage these children have already, at age two. They are still years away from school.
In order to begin to make change, we must first accept that change is necessary. Open your eyes.
Open Your Doors
When the two children described above–let’s call them ReVonté and Blake–grow up and one day send you their resumes for an open position in your company, the old playbook and the habits formed around it kick in. Both candidates have undergraduate degrees, but they are far from being on equal footing.
ReVonté managed to complete four years of college, spending the first two in a community college and the last in a four-year state school. All throughout, he had to work to pay his way, which meant it took him more than four years to get his degree. Further, in the summers, he had to make as much money as possible, which put him out of the running for an unpaid internship in your industry. And finally, his name is ReVonté, which clearly identifies the world he comes from.
Blake went straight from high school to a four-year college and finished in four years. He did not work during the school year and was therefore able to focus exclusively on school and earn top marks. During the summer, his dad’s friend helped him get an internship at a great company, and though it was unpaid, he was able to live at home. He has, as a result, real work experience.
It’s easy to see which candidate is most likely to get an interview, and for reasons that, under the old playbook, seem reasonable and fair. But let me ask you to consider this: Which young man had to demonstrate more perseverance, more grit, and more resourcefulness to get where he is? You won’t know for sure until you invite them both in for an interview. Open your doors.
Open a Backpack
The old playbook, as we saw in the example above, rests upon the logic that education is the key to preparing people for jobs. Yet the inequality that began when ReVonté and Blake were two years old just got worse as they moved into school. It’s reasonable to expect that students make an effort, work hard in school, and strive to learn. But what if they don’t have the most basic supplies to complete their assignments? What if they don’t have a computer? Or what if the school gives them one, but they don’t have internet at home? The list of reasons that school is not the great equalizer we assume it to be is extremely long. If we want to continue to point to education as the key, we must make sure good education is possible. For everyone.
At Scribe Media, we saw this problem and decided to literally Open a Backpack. We found the school in our area with the highest number of kids getting free lunch and we decided to provide a backpack filled with ALL the supplies on the school’s list for all 500 kids in the school. We all came together and filled the backpacks ourselves in what became an outstanding company-wide event. It cost us $18,000. And it was a write off.
If you are going to continue to preach and believe that education is the key, then help make education equal. Open a backpack.
As you begin the work of opening your eyes, your doors, and a backpack, there are concrete steps you can take to move away from the old playbook. For example, as you prepare to write a job description for a new opening you are about to post, ask yourself, is a college degree really necessary for this job? What are the skills, rather than the degrees, that will make a person successful in this role?
As you prepare to head into an interview, instead of creating a list of questions focused on education and work experiences, step back and think about the characteristics you hope your new hire will have. Are you looking for curiosity? Are you looking for someone who is a self-starter? You might have more success discerning whether a candidate possesses these characteristics if you broaden your scope and ask about life experiences in general. The keys to perceiving the true strength of a candidate’s character might not be far under the surface, but your questions need to leave room for them to rise to the top.
The modern leader will be the leader who looks to others to help understand the big picture, and who designs a playbook that makes space for both ReVonté and Blake. The modern leader will not simply tolerate or accept, because both of these terms still imply insiders and outsiders. The modern leader will push past his or her comfort zone, invite ReVonté and Blake in for an interview, get to know them both, hear both of their stories, and then decide who has the skills necessary to do the job.
Economic Development Deals: Why Evergreen Companies Can Be Ideal Candidates
Economic development groups exist in virtually every city, town, and community. Their aim is to improve, in any way they can, the quality of life and the opportunities for the local population. Attracting businesses that will bring positive change to their communities is one significant way they do this, yet businesses often overlook the opportunities this might open for them.
In this short Tugboat Institute® talk, John shares some of the ways he has seen economic development teams work with businesses, including his own, Community Impact Newspapers. As Evergreen® businesses, Tugboat Institute members’ companies are especially strong candidates for the advantages available, because of their Purpose-driven, People-First focus; they consistently bring good into the communities they serve.
Watch and be inspired to look for opportunities in your own community, or in a community you are considering entering.
Carving Out a Space to Give Back to Science
A typical Contract Research Organization, or CRO, will contract with companies in the pharma or biotech industry to help them design, manage, and analyze various aspects of clinical trials that are conducted to study the safety and efficacy of new drugs. Most small to medium-size CROs will typically grow until a point when owners or investors will look at selling to either private equity firms or a larger CRO. It’s a lucrative path, but it’s not the path of my Evergreen® company, Innovaderm.
I began my career as an academic researcher. Twenty-two years ago, I started Innovaderm, and five years later I left academia to devote my entire time to my company. We are a CRO that specializes in dermatology, and though our headquarters is located in Canada, we also have employees in the U.S., Spain, India, and Poland. Like most CRO’s, we contract with pharma and biotech companies on studies, in our case involving treatment for diseases of the skin. A client may come to us with a drug they think may improve a certain disease like psoriasis. We might help them design the study, write the research protocol, obtain the proper approvals, manage the project, coordinate and monitor the sites conducting the study around the world, and have our biostatisticians and data managers analyze the data.
There are 3 phases of clinical research: phases 1, 2 and 3. Phase 1 is usually the first study in human beings and focuses on drug safety and tolerance. Phase 2 is the first study in a patient population having the disease for which the drug is developed. Phase 3 is a larger study, or often two identical larger studies, that are needed before a drug can be marketed, to characterize the safety and efficacy of the drug.
Most of our time is spent managing phase 2 and 3 studies, which is typical CRO work. However, between 5-10% of research projects that we manage are where we are unique and different from our industry peers. This is where our Evergreen philosophy sets us apart.
Often, we have ideas for studies that may not interest our clients, but whose results would be important for advancing science and treating people more effectively. In what we call Internal Studies, we fund and conduct these studies on our own. Here’s an example.
A significant number of people suffer from eczema on their hands. It can be very painful and can prevent people from working or functioning normally. Studies to better understand the cause of hand eczema have been limited because patients often refuse to have a biopsy from their hand, which is a very painful procedure. We recently initiated an internal study on hand eczema to better understand this condition, using non-invasive imaging techniques and techniques to study gene expression and bacteria on the skin. If we can advance understanding and treatment of this condition, we would be able to help a great many people. This study is entirely internal; we have no sponsors, no partners, and no one company will profit from our work, including ours. We simply hope to advance science’s understanding of this disease. It’s a People First initiative in the broadest sense of the term.
A few years ago, I wanted to find new ways to be able to fund and protect the future of non-industry-sponsored drug studies so we created the Montreal Dermatology Research Institute (MDRI), a non-profit through which some of this work can be done. Innovaderm makes donations to MDRI which can fund studies related to skin diseases that are conducted in an academic environment. An exciting MDRI initiative that was announced in 2021 is a multi-year grant for research in skin-related, neglected tropical diseases. A disease is typically categorized as ‘neglected’ when it exists in a country or region where it is difficult to adequately fund research, in other words, lower-income countries and regions.
Every week, I receive emails from people that want to buy our company. I say, “No. That’s not what I want to do.” Because I know what will happen. If we sell the company, the 90-95% business that we do that is making money will become the focus of the company. The 5-10% that is for the advancement of science will not be interesting to them because it is more of an expense. It will disappear. In addition, the buying company would not donate money to a non-profit such as MDRI, would restructure Innovaderm, and a large number of people would lose their jobs.
I don’t want Innovaderm to be like the other CROs. My philosophy is aligned with the Evergreen 7Ps® principles. With the non-funded internal studies we conduct and the donations we make to the MDRI, we are deeply committed to giving back to science. Because of this, we are unique in our industry. Most CROs are driven to make as much profit as fast as possible and do not embark on projects that don’t generate profit. That’s what makes us different. And that’s the reason I am a member of Tugboat Institute®.
100 Years of Innovation
White Castle is a century old company that is growing and thriving. Lisa Ingram, the fourth generation CEO of the company her great-grandfather founded, is proud of the moves they have made in recent years to innovate and stay relevant for future generations of Cravers. Lisa’s predecessors were innovative in their own ways, but product innovation has been a relatively recent trend at White Castle. Like everything at White Castle since the very beginning, it’s been driven by a mindset that is decidedly People First.
In this Tugboat Institute® talk, Lisa shares the history of innovation at White Castle and brings us up to the present day. Above all else, this Evergreen® company gets its best ideas by talking and listening to its devoted employees and customers.
Watch and be reminded that when they are cared for and honored, your employees and customers can be your best advocates and your best source of new, powerful ideas.
The Key to Building a Global Business
Before becoming the seventh generation President & CEO of Hollingsworth & Vose, an almost 300-year-old global leader in filtration and energy storage solutions, I spent seven years living and working in China. The experience changed the way I think about business and the world and taught me one fundamental lesson that drives my work today. It’s not your revenue, your number of employees, or even the addresses of your offices that make you a global company. If you want to truly be global, you have to be global in your thinking, in your mindset, and in your infrastructure.
My journey to this realization started in 2007 when I was working for General Electric and signed on for two years abroad. The initial plan was to go to Belgium, but about six weeks before we were slated to depart, my wife and I found out that plans had changed and we were off to Shanghai, China instead. We had both been eager to spend time abroad, so we adjusted to the new plan and set off with our children, who were four and five at the time.
The original assignment was for two years. We wanted to make the most of the experience, so we made a few choices right off the bat that were not typical for expats. We enrolled our kids in a local international school, rather than the American school, and despite the fact that most of our Irish, English, and Australian friends lived in heavily expat neighborhoods, we chose to move to a very local neighborhood instead. We did do most of the other, usual expat things: language lessons, classes on how to assimilate, and classes on the culture of China. In the early months, I would have told you I really understood China and was becoming an expert. But as we neared the end of our two years, I found that the more I learned, the less I understood. I was not ready to leave.
Around that time, I had the good fortune to meet Val Hollingsworth, President and CEO of Hollingsworth & Vose, which today serves the global market with 13 R&D facilities strategically located in the Americas, Europe and Asia. At the time, Val was looking for a new managing director for H&V’s expanding operations in Asia. Drawn by H&V’s reputation for innovation and its commitment to creating a cleaner, healthier, more sustainable world, I left GE in 2009 and joined H&V. Over the five years I spent in the role of Vice President and Managing Director for H&V’s Asia operations, my learning and understanding of what it means to be a truly global company shifted dramatically.
My years at GE were a great start to my career in China; GE was extremely well-established in China, and I learned a lot from being part of their large team. When I got to H&V, which had a smaller presence in China at the time, I started to really learn the complexity that is China.
For one thing, GE was firmly a western company operating in a foreign country. I learned a lot about managing a business, but I was managing a western business with a western mindset. The members that were not from the west were expected to adopt the culture and practices in place. At H&V, we were, as we always have been, heavily innovative and interested in creating something new. Initially, our strategy was to serve our western customers in a western market, but we were struggling. As we looked for ways to innovate and improve, we started listening to the local markets as well. We saw great opportunity there and started moving to become more global – or to become global in a different way. Doing so would make us a valuable partner and a true worldwide leader.
In terms of the specific skills and lessons that I learned as I moved through this experience, the biggest ones are related to communication. Of course, learning the language of a country affords an important window into understanding a culture. But it’s not all about language. Probably because I didn’t have a perfect understanding of the language, I found that I started to develop other ways to try to understand what people were saying to me. I paid close attention to tone, to body language, and to other non-verbal cues.
In China in particular, people will always be unfailingly polite and will tell you things in a way that sounds pleasant and positive. But there is usually a subtext. In the west, for example, once you have a contract, you have a deal. But in China, it’s all about relationships. A contract is just the start. I learned to pay attention to people’s behavior and take the time to develop that relationship, to ensure a good outcome for our endeavors.
Within the company, I started to see that we had been hiring the wrong people, too. It is typical for a foreign office of a U.S. company to look for the people who speak the best English and to assume that they will fit in the best and therefore be the most valuable. But I learned that intellectual curiosity and a willingness to dig in are by far the most important characteristics in a new employee. And if they come from a different cultural and linguistic background, that is actually a bonus, not a hindrance. I understood that if we wanted to succeed in Asia, we needed people who could understand the local markets and think in an eastern way.
Now that I am back in the States, I see that that the value of a diverse team with a diverse mindset is important no matter where you are if you intend to be successful on a global scale. Yes, it takes a willingness to make an effort and a willingness to get past the discomfort of not understanding everyone’s perspective right off the bat. You have to pay attention to things such as not over-using colloquialisms in meetings and being sensitive to the fact that a meeting you schedule for late morning will fall late at night for teammates in Asia. But the rewards of working with a diverse team outweigh the challenges many times over.
This goes for gender equity on your team too, by the way. They are great at this in China; having had a diverse and gender-mixed team, I never want to go back. If you are not actively recruiting female candidates, you are missing out on 50% of the great people out there.
Since I’ve returned home, I have also realized how diverse this country is. I hadn’t seen it before, but we can be very regional and factional, which also adds strength and diversity to a team.
At H&V, we have been moving toward a more open and diverse mindset and building a workplace where all are welcomed and heard for some time. It’s a process. I am excited to bring my international perspective to the table to strengthen the work that was already underway and to help us become even better. Study after study has shown that diversity strengthens a team, but now that I have lived it, I don’t need to read the studies. It’s happening right in front of me.
Why Love and Leadership are Key to a Thriving Evergreen Company
Jeet Kumar had cause, throughout his childhood, to consider the keys to making it possible for a person to thrive. Above all else, people need to be shown love. As he built his successful Evergreen® company, In Time Tec, Jeet has become an impactful leader, largely through keeping love at the center of his leadership style.
In this Tugboat Institute® talk, Jeet shares the beginning of his life’s journey, how he came to put love at the center of his thinking, and the different ways love can show up in a business. Although we are not accustomed to talking about love when we talk about business, Jeet argues that it is critical to effective and meaningful leadership.
Watch and be inspired to infuse your leadership style with love.
Purpose Plus Learning Can Make the Impossible Possible
“People who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those who are doing it.”
- George Bernard Shaw
I am Chairman & President of Shasa, a fashion brand with more than 100 stores in the best shopping malls in 31 of the 32 states in Mexico. My brother Carlo is CEO and together, we founded the company in 1990. We started from scratch. Today, we are a strong and proud Evergreen® company, but I can’t say that the purpose that drives Shasa in 2022 is the same one that has driven us from the beginning. It has been a journey characterized by challenging odds, daunting obstacles, and, above all else, constant learning.
My early childhood was spent in a town on the Gulf of Mexico, and I remember life there as very happy. When I was still young, however, my mother got sick and needed a transplant, so the family moved to Mexico City. Suddenly, life was hard and unhappy, and even more so when my mother passed away. I was nine and Carlo was six. A couple of years later, our father re-married and this brought even more challenges. Everything had changed drastically within a few short years, inspiring Carlo and me to set our first life goal: somehow earn enough money to run away and become independent. Thus began our journey.
The most obvious way to make money seemed to be by selling something, so we started selling. In the beginning, we bought handmade fashion jewelry and sold it. I was about 11. After a few years, our dad, who is a chemical engineer, taught us how to make a Pine-Sol-type cleaner, so we made that and sold it. We sold it to friends, neighbors, anyone who would buy it. Although we didn’t get rich and we made a lot of mistakes, we learned a lot about how to collect money, about the struggles maintaining consistent quality in our product, and about balancing the cost of materials with price. At that time, I was 14.
Although things were tough at home, my brother and I did have the opportunity to go to college. Nevertheless, we remained fixated on building a business. When I was a sophomore in college and Carlo was still in high school, we started selling clothes. Miami Vice was wildly popular at the time, so we had the idea to manufacture clothes inspired by the ones they wore in the show. Remember the short, square pants and the neon t-shirts? We started making those and it turned out that we had hit on a good item. We bought the fabric, found a manufacturer, and created our own brand.
Our vision really locked into place with this venture. Carlo and I had discovered our Passion for Fashion; it’s driven us and been part of the organizational culture of our company ever since.
We sold the clothes to students at the high school and the college, and we were very successful. Soon we started selling wholesale to retail stores. As a result of this success, we finally made enough money to leave home, so we did. It had taken a long time, but we had earned our independence.
Moving through this process, we learned the hard way, by doing and failing–sometimes dramatically–but we never quit; we kept learning and trying again, figuring out over time how to minimize risk and maximize the upside.
In those days, because we were bringing our product to our customers, we needed a place to display our clothes. We had a yellow Volkswagen Beetle, so we filled the trunk with the clothes, drove around to the schools, and sold out of the car in the parking lot. That was, I suppose you could say, our first store.
That Beetle took us to many fun places, always combining business and pleasure. We loved going to Acapulco for the weekends, parking the car, and selling our clothes. Only after we had sold all of our merchandise and hit our goal did we head to town to have fun; it was our reward. Then, Sunday night, we drove back with all the cash we’d made.
Soon, we started traveling farther, to Canada and the US, always with the same plan: travel, do business, make money, and learn along the way. As we traveled, we would bring materials from wherever we had been and sell them. We learned about tariffs and the ins and outs of importing and exporting products. By the time I was 22, in 1990, we created our first corporation and, one year later, we opened our first real wholesale store. We started sourcing internationally – from India, Spain, the US.
Crisis equals opportunity. In the mid-nineties there was a huge economic crisis in Mexico, and everything collapsed. Although it was a hard time for our country, the market had cracked open, and we saw an opportunity for the business. Within less than two months, we turned all our storage facilities into manufacturing facilities, and we were finally poised to start building the company we dreamed of, turning Shasa into a private brand, exclusive to our stores, and controlling the whole supply chain.
On the day we opened our first Shasa retail store inside a mall, in the midst of the crisis, we announced to the friends and family we had invited that we were going to open 100 stores. Our dad was dubious; maybe one store each, he predicted. That was in 1995. Today we have 108 stores and over 500,000 sqare feet of retail space.
As we grew the business and grew up ourselves, we experienced our fair share of growing pains. To move past them, we did not rely on confidence and determination alone; we also sought more formal opportunities to learn. In 2000, for example, our company was growing fast, and we decided we needed to educate ourselves more about running a business, so we enrolled in IPADE Business School, in Mexico. We completed their management program, one year apart from each other.
In 2012 we again felt we had more to learn, so we applied and went to Harvard Business School, me starting in 2012 and Carlo in 2013. We have come to firmly believe that we can’t stop learning – there is no end to learning in this story.
Since the beginning we dreamed big; we visualized ourselves as very successful entrepreneurs. Despite the many obstacles we faced, we always believed we would make it happen.
Over time, our purpose settled into what it is today: to inspire and empower people to unleash their potential and accomplish stretch goals. We ourselves have managed to accomplish something no one thought we could. We hope to inspire others with our contagious passion because we have learned that, when united around a shared purpose, the potential for impact grows exponentially.
Fireside Chat with Penny Pennington and Dave Whorton
Penny Pennington is the sixth Managing Partner of Edward Jones, a financial services firm with over 15,000 branch offices across the US and Canada. With their focus on community and relationships, along with their 100 year history, Edward Jones is an exemplary Evergreen® company across all of the 7Ps.
In this Fireside chat with Dave Whorton, Penny shares her journey, beginning with her upbringing in Nashville, to becoming the leader of Edward Jones. She considers the impact each of the other five Managing Partners have had, and shares how the Evergreen 7Ps® principles show up at Edward Jones.
Watch and learn about the journey of this impressive leader and the impressive, Evergreen company she leads.