Welcome To The Evergreen Journal

Why does the world need an Evergreen Journal? We have met countless entrepreneurs and executives who have too long toiled in obscurity as they build and grow great Evergreen businesses. They have no place — physical or virtual — to congregate, share ideas, and learn from each other.

For the most part, these leaders do not seek the limelight, they are intrinsically motivated. But they do hunger to get to know other executives building companies with similar mindsets and for the opportunity to learn and help influence best practices for building great, enduring businesses. The Evergreen Journal is for them. The Evergreen story needs to be told.

So what is “Evergreen”? We put it this way:

Evergreen entrepreneurs are purpose-driven leaders with the grit and resourcefulness to build and scale private, profitable, enduring, and market-leading businesses that make a dent in the universe. They measure success by how well they deliver on their mission and they embody the 7Ps: purpose, perseverance, people, profit, private, paced growth, & pragmatic innovation. [For more, please read our post on The Evergreen Movement.]

Evergreen entrepreneurs combine the passion and talent of great Silicon Valley entrepreneurs but are wary of any path that compels them to a pre-determined exit or a growth-at-all-costs approach. They are building companies to last, not to flip. Evergreen companies range from long-standing, closely-held businesses like Mars and SAS Institute, to great lifestyle brands like Peet’s Coffee, to newer growth companies such as Quest and Zoho. What they have in common is their passion to build purpose-driven, private, profitable, enduring, and market-leading businesses.

There is no standard bearer exclusively focused on this type of company — until now.

That’s why we created the Evergreen Journal, a new publication of record for the Evergreen movement — covering the people, companies, and ideas driving the Evergreen approach to company building. Our purpose with the Evergreen Journal is to tell stories about and share insights from Evergreen exemplars (sometimes in their words, sometimes in ours) to help the community learn from each other and grow. We also believe that a broader general awareness of the Evergreen idea will help nurture a growing base of talent, customers, partners, and service providers who want to work for, buy from, partner with, or provide services to Evergreen businesses.

Today, there are plenty of publications that cover the venture backed startup world, and one could spend every day of the year at different tech/startup event if one had a penchant for stale coffee, big pitches, and small talk. But very little is written about and for the Evergreen mindset. A major difference between these publications and Evergreen Journal is, of course, that EJ isn’t much interested in who is funding what company at what valuation but we will cover the business and personal side of Evergreen.

The Evergreen Journal will be written by, for, and of the Evergreen community and will be a platform for Evergreen leaders to share their thoughts, views, and insights with the community. We already have almost two dozen guest writers lined up and we encourage any Evergreen leader with something of value to bring to the community to get in touch and make an editorial contribution.

While we, by definition, narrow our focus on the types of companies we write for and about, we are broadening subject matter. In addition to our two initial articles from Tom Bliyeu of Quest (Inc. 500’s second fastest growing private company) and Roger Thornton (serial entrepreneur who is “Green with Envy”), we will publish in our next edition a moving article from NYT best-selling author and child psychologist Madeline Levine and next month you’ll find tips on how thrive in the quest for genius, by Dr. James Rouse. It’s time we stop pretending that there is a hard line between business and life, and explore how to thrive in both — and understand how each supports and shapes the other.

So, we publish this in service of you — the reader — in the hopes that it will provide knowledge, insight, and ideas that will help you professionally and personally and that it will encourage the evergreen community to come together and continue to blossom.

This is the first step in an uncertain and winding journey and we invite anyone with an interest in the Evergreen movement and something valuable to contribute to get in touch, give us your feedback and guidance, point us in the directions of great evergreen people, companies, and ideas, write letters to the editor, and throw your hat in to be a contributor.

Co-create this with us!