Mining For Astronauts: The Art of Optimizing Human Capital
Early in his career, Tom Bilyeu helped build a successful technology company, Awareness Technologies. Despite its impressive growth—in 2010 Deloitte named it the 42nd fastest-growing company in North America—after eight years, he and his partners realized they were miserable. The reason? They were building wealth for wealth's sake. So they turned their attention to something they were all passionate about: health and nutrition.
Once they started down a purpose- and passion-driven path, they discovered that happiness and wealth aren't mutually exclusive. In his talk, the Quest Nutrition co-founder explains his rubric for hiring and the ways in which Evergreen entrepreneurs can cultivate a growth mindset for all of their employees. He also claims the ghetto is the greatest source of untapped human potential.
Beyond Net Promoter
Great products are no longer enough. The company that delights with superior service is the company that wins, says Brad Cleveland, an author and senior adviser with the professional services firm ICMI. He contends that no matter how big or experienced your competitors are, quality customer care is an Evergreen business’ most powerful differentiator — and it has to emanate from the top.
Excellent service is expensive when viewed in isolation, Cleveland acknowledges, but leaders who invest in it will see measurable returns in efficiency, low customer churn and strategic value. Cleveland breaks down what matters most in customer care.
Raising an Evergreen Family
Madeline Levine is passionate about teaching parents how to raise resilient, healthy and motivated children. Dr. Levine, a psychologist, author and co-founder of Stanford University's Challenge Success program, finds that many of the principles of good business leadership also apply to parenting. Levine teaches entrepreneurs how to make sense of their many roles as managers, parents, spouses, children, mentors, etc. By defining a common point of view for each role, they can build success in each arena.
Levine cautions against the pitfalls of over-parenting and to urges Evergreen entrepreneurs take the long view with their children, just as they do their companies.
What Extreme Athletes and Evergreen CEOs Have In Common
Rebecca Rusch calls herself the most decorated athlete you've never heard of. The endurance competitor says she does her best work in the most stressful and challenging conditions. She's ridden camels in Morocco. She swam the Grand Canyon on a boogie board. She's ridden the entire 2,000 miles of the Ho Chi Minh trail on her bicycle. She could have made a lot more money with her business degree. "But I'm rich in experience," she says.
Despite her rugged outdoor career, she says she's not so different from Evergreen entrepreneurs — leaders who know what they want and work hard to attain it, even if other people think they're crazy.
Doing the Impossible
Rather than watch his colleagues lose their manufacturing jobs at International Harvester during the bleakest days of the 1980s, Stack came up with a crazy idea: Why not lead a worker buyout of his division of the company? Stack vowed that if given the chance, he'd create a transparent workplace where the financials were not only open to inspection, but a mandatory part of employee training.
It took years for the new company, SRC Holdings, to get on its feet but by creating a strong culture around his model of Open-Book Management, Stack was able to create a sustainable business. His employees understand, and are invested in, helping make the company as profitable as possible. His technique is one that many Evergreen business leaders will want to embrace.
