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Jason Hauer co-founded the Garage Group in Cincinnati, OH a dozen years ago – to teach executives in big companies to hustle, innovate, and grow like small start-ups. I founded (re)ALIGN to work with midsized companies to grow into new categories, new channels, or grow faster with a cross-functional go-to-market approach. That is to say, Jason and I talked about similar challenges from different perspectives.   3:26 – on the challenge with innovation in bigco’s “they’re focused on mastering the existing business model… whereas innovation, to push into new places, you have to explore, test, and learn. You have to shed that fixed, tight division of labor mindset for a search mentality.”   7:09 – on frameworks for innovation (Design Thinking, Lean Startup, JTBD/Jobs To Be Done, etc.): “It goes back to empathy and problem definition, who you’re trying to solve for?”   8:27 – “We’re big in solution development and big believers of bringing analogous inspiration to get leaders thinking differently.”   10:50 – … “I love reading all the books and learn the theories, but sometimes people fall in love with a framework and then make the mistake that it’s a paint by numbers thing, which it really is not.”   11:58 – “True mastery of innovation and value creation means you understand methods and tools for what they are…that you leverage different approaches and different tools.”   15:57 – “Digital Transformation – both front room (customer-facing) and backroom (operations-facing) – requires a mindset shift from everybody.”   19:13 – “If you have more of that search mentality and recognize that relevancy is fleeting, your team will embrace that… curiosity pulls you in to what’s next.”   21:32 – “If you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room.”   23:50 – … “In some industries growth is stagnating… you can’t drive efficiency and continue to grow; you have to fundamentally think differently how to drive growth.”

Edgar Blazona is the real deal: he grew and learned as a punk-ass kid designer and furniture rebel, went to college in corporate America, continued as a serial entrepreneur and founded several successful companies, including Benchmade Modern, the folks who make and sell Rebellious Luxury by the inch. We talked about Edgar’s journey, changes in 21st century manufacturing and branding, and the importance of finding your own way. 3:31 – “I kept pushing buttons and finding my way into the room… and kept growing.” 5:04 – on the game vs. the work “it’s more important to play the game than do the work… while the work is very important… if no one likes you, no one’s going to want to work with you.”   6:57 – on changes manufacturers should or must address: “Dropship. How do we change our business model to handle that? From credit card swipe to the machine?”   9:00 – “The industrial revolution or Henry Ford’s assembly line is about the process from raw material to finished good, as efficiently as possible – vs. today, starting from the customer and go backwards into the factory: which parts of the process are superfluous, from the customer perspective?”   9:50 – “The DTC/direct-to-consumer dropship model is going to take over, and retailers are pushing that more.”   12:35 – “As a manufacturer, do we have our own brand? Do we build a brand? Or do I sell it thru a wholesaler… you’re seeing manufacturers creating brands and going direct, that is going to change the landscape… that’s disruption.”   16:01 – we started digging deeper on branding. Two definitions emerged: “Compelling promise, delivered. Also: What do you see, and what do you feel?   19:30 – “No one wants to be a used car salesman… how do we pitch our brands in an authentic way? If you can’t connect to the authentic side, I don’t think you can connect to the feeling side.”   20:54 – “I’m gonna dig it, I’m gonna have fun… if you’re not having fun, you shouldn’t do it.”   26:01 – on aspects of growing a business: “your secret sauce is not just sitting in a dark room designing (or making) stuff…your flywheel is the curiosity and the love for branding that allows you to think of ways to make your ideas come alive.”

Four consumer executives shared their thoughts on how volatile consumer spending  (from lockdowns to supply chain chaos, increased demand and now 9% inflation) that affected 2020/21 is shaping up to affect the second half of 2022 and going into 2023.   Real insights from real-world leaders: Allison Barrows (VP at Ganz, a designer/distributor of gift, décor, and apparel), John Toler (CEO at Evergreen Enterprises, a distributor/manufacturer of outdoor living and home products), Joe Harris (Chief Revenue Officer at Whereoware, a digital agency) and Doug Cofiell (CEO at Ivystone, a national sales agency)   2:45 – the smartest retailers were “the ones who figured out exactly how to manage their inventory.”   4:47 – most common retailer product request at Summer 2022 markets (at Ganz): “lower price point items… ‘pick me up, feel good’ items”   6:24 – on digital infrastructure spending: “digital continues to be an important part of the go-to-market strategy, and those who are investing, are seeing the returns.”   8:08 – Online consumers will “continue to grow.”   9:31 – “The shifting in merchandise mix has gone from making my home look pretty, to making me feel better… from the home to me.”   10:00 – “Higher end (design side of the business) doesn’t have much slow down.”   14:13 – I asked each guest to describe consumer spending on a scale of 1 to 10, across three time periods. The average of all four replies (with significant differences between product categories): 2019/pre-Covid – consumer spending was an “8” (of 10) 2020/2021 – consumer spending was a “10 (or 12) out of 10” (off the charts) Going into 2023 – 8.5 or 9+, better than pre-Covid   18:52 – “We sold Garden 2023 for the last 45 days… and purchasing is down vs. 2021… but above 2019.”   20:36 – “We chased demand and built capacity (the last two years)… so the cost side and inventory needs to be looked at… for retailers, vendors, and sales agencies.”   22:00 – “There’s been so much volatility… as we start to settle back down, to understand… the appropriate costs.”   23:26 – Next year will be all about “Data. It’s all about making the data actionable.”   25:02 – “The second big thing is the customer (digital) experience, it’s not just about ‘look’ but it’s all about being seamless, easy to use (multi-channel integration).”   27:56 – The best retailers “recognize the consumer is changing… and are combining the digital and the physical really well.”   31:20 – what’s on our minds as we think about growth in 2023? “Aggressive” – “Customer Experience” – “Daring and Risk-taking.”

Atul Vir is a study in opposites: an innovator and a CPA, an entrepreneur from a military school and family, an immigrant who came to the USA and built a global business. I found Atul’s insights on innovation, product development, risk assessment, and building a business to be thought provoking.   2:27 – talking about Steve Jobs’ influence on innovation and product development “instead of developing a product, now let me see how I can sell it… he focused it the other way around: what do my customers want? He knew what customers wanted… even before the customer knew.”   3:51 – “Keep your eyes open and your ears to the ground… Steve Jobs imagined what the customer might want, by listening, by looking, by spending extraordinary amounts of time in stores.”   9:45 – “First day I opened my business, I was all alone in the office… now what…? Now you have to make it happen, find a product or a widget, that you believe somebody is going to want to buy, then you work backwards from there… then you risk everything…”   11:40 – about a shift in consumer expectations “baby boomers want an on/off button and a detailed manual, millennials are the opposite, they don’t mind complexity in the product… but they don’t want the manual.”   21:45 – “What keeps you focused and well-balanced, navigating through these opposites is the philosophy of being customer-centric.”

What if developing people and teams in high pressure situations came down to being in the trenches with them, and food? OK, also about strategy, constantly evaluating yourself more than others, investing in them so they invest in you, and about food? Adding a dose of reality to what’s been said and written about leadership, growth, people, and winning talent wars – is my guest Craig McIntosh, a hard-charging sales executive, a long-time friend and senior leader with a family-owned business that grew to around $1 billion in sales by acquiring and being acquired several times.   2:12 – about how Craig changed the way he manages pressure: “In the beginning I was all about the numbers…but you spend more time with your team than your own family… you gotta enjoy what you’re doing… and walk around the pond (before you type that emotional response).”   6:03 – talking about pressure and growing… and food and socializing: “you have to break bread with your team.”   7:47 – on hiring people you’re proud of: “It’s about people who can buy into the culture, and you buy into them… we invest in people, so they invest back in you… you have to do things as a group to help build that comradery.”   9:35 – on building the Sunshine Committee” “to build the team up… we would have a popsicle truck, or Taco Tuesday, or bowling, or cocktails… we signed up for a serve day (to help the homeless), helped prepare the meal. It put things into perspective.”   12:56 – I asked Craig about unlearning being “transactional” (all about the numbers, as he said at 2:12), and more open to relationship building: “as the company grew, I had to grow, as a leader. What worked at $60M revenue, is not going to work at $120M or $500M or $1B. You constantly have to evaluate yourself.”   17:57 – “Just be honest… at the end everyone messes up (sometimes), and a lot of it is in your honesty, if you’re transparent… we only have our reputation.”

I learned a great deal in this episode from Brian Beck,  a leading 23-year practitioner, expert, and operator in e-commerce: we talked about the why, what, and how of growing revenue streams through B2B e-commerce. Brian also wrote the book on the subject – Billion Dollar B2B Ecommerce – and our conversation touched on breaking down the complexity of e-commerce (into consumer-facing and operations-facing, pre-sale and post-sale), the importance of cross-functional translation and alignment, and demystifying this great opportunity for manufacturers and distributors. 2:42 – “There are so many parallels between what we experienced in consumer (e-commerce) and what businesses – manufacturers, distributors – who operate B2B ecom segments, experience.”  3:14 – …on why B2C ecom is so important to understanding and optimizing B2B ecom: “B2C ecom set the precedent for B2B ecom… that friction-less buying experience on the B2C side doesn’t yet fully exist on B2B, but it’s happening.” 5:25 – “The same dynamics are now occurring in B2B. The buyer has more choices and more power and more transparency than they ever had before.” 8:06 – … on the B2B buyer’s mindset and expectation “the next generation of B2B buyers that are here, are Amazon natives.” 9:25 – “Millennials are going to be 75% of the workforce in two years… you’ve got to make that buyer’s job easier thru the e-commerce experience… it has to be hyper efficient.” 12:51 – Talking about midsized ($10M to $20M revenue companies) who grew significantly thru B2B ecom: “management’s willingness to act is what holds companies back, more so than the tools and technology – they are here and available today.” 15:30 – “The brutal reality of the situation is that the customers’ expectations have changed. If you’re not willing to make the change, you may not be in business in 10 or 15 years.”

Scott Rollman is a deep thinker who listens, a strategist who is passionate about getting it done. In this episode, Scott shared his insights on e-selling (the intersection of digital marketing and personal selling), how digital marketing can best support sales efforts, and we also compared notes – from different cultural perspectives of Scott’s midwestern roots and my immigrant background – on the topic of embracing our superpowers and how to help others embrace theirs.   4:02 – “There has been a dramatic shift in the way we interact with our customers, the way we promote ourselves… had to change.”   5:15 – on marketing as a sales enablement tool in the digital arena, in one example attracting over 800 people to a virtual event that grew the prospect email list “virtual training played a big part and promoting those to the customers it mattered to… you always have to be relevant in the message you deliver, otherwise you become noise.”   8:09 – Digital marketing works better when you are “more intentional about providing value to current and prospective customers, in a virtual setting.”   11:03 – on Digital Transformation successes and challenges “having a strong digital presence that customers can interact with as they want is what makes it great… a challenge is engineered (customized, not stock) product… which can be supported by training videos and product information videos… that can help with the engineered product.”   16:26 – on superpowers “if you don’t know what your superpower is you can’t embrace it, if you don’t embrace it, you’re not going to use it.”   22:20 – “to be effective in the new marketplace, utilizing e-selling and embracing superpowers, just be open to new thoughts and ask a lot of questions, because some of the responses you’ll get back are going to be absolutely brilliant.”

It’s fun to learn from fellow travelers on the growth journey. Cliff Farrah and I share a passion (some might even say talent) for envisioning the right growth strategy and guiding the process from concept to successful execution. Cliff founded The Beacon Group in 2001, a growth advisory for Fortune 500 companies and their organic and inorganic growth strategies, and recently authored a wonderful book.   I read, enjoyed, and highly recommend Cliff’s book Growing the Topline. In this episode, he shares stories and the thinking behind his methodology. From the four pathways to growth and the ideal mix of talent on a growth team, to the importance of grounding strategy with forecasting and operational execution, to growth opportunities we uncovered in the 2020/21 (and ‘22!) Covid pandemic that unexpectedly made life better.   If you’re intrigued and would like to reach out to Cliff, you can find his contact information on www.beacongroupconsulting.com or www.GrowingTheTopline.com.

This episode is about how to bring the right people into the room, and how to facilitate the process to make better decisions. I learned not only about solutions to fundamental “people problems” in our democracy on this episode, I learned how Dani is approaching getting help from “everyday experts”: he took the business community’s “focus group” concept, improved on it, and applied it to public service, learning from bus riders, or hospital patients, or utility customers – by “building community at the neighborhood level and tying it to a larger mission.” 7:40 – “We do have to solve those big problems… but before… we have to raise the level of not only civic participation but civic empowerment, civic trust.” 10:42 – “the person responsible… is not an elected official… their work is… the source of disaffection… if we want to increase people’s sense of civic… engagement… we have to also go to this other source of decision-making and power, which are these (non-elected officials).” 12:08 – Cohear exists to help public officials “to get the right people to talk to…” 14:27 – “we believe living an issue every day makes you an expert… and learning from those experts leads to better outcomes.” 15:01 – “we are here to change the culture of how decisions are made… by embedding the principle of everyday experts.”  20:34 – “to do culture change… you have to have small, meaningful (person relationship building) interactions.”  24:42 – “It’s a way to feed two birds with one scone.” 25:09 – “If you don’t build the trust… you won’t get the level of creativity that you want.” 27:43 – “what you do with everyday experts is set up a time and a place to listen to them, let them talk, and have a decisionmaker in the room…not by filling out a Survey Monkey.”   If you want to learn more about Cohear’s approach to Everyday Experts, you can reach Dani at Dani@cohear.com. 

Understanding differences in people outside of our “tribe” – maybe outside of our comfort zone – can be, well, uncomfortable and difficult. Nicole Armstrong, founder/CEO of Queen City Certified shared her insights with me, how her team helps executives to guide them with DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) challenges, as the nation’s first data-informed employer certification program.   2:06 – “how do we create systems that make it possible for all people to succeed…to allow somebody to know if a company really embraced the values of equity…and how to get there…”   4:00 – “a lot of these challenges are system-level challenges…that need system-level solutions…we’re talking about policies, we’re talking about practices…the challenge with training is that it puts the onus on the individual… which is important, but… most of these are unconscious…”   5:43 – “… we can conduct all the trainings we want, but if we’re not measuring who are we interviewing, who are we hiring, who’s being promoted, do we have targets…we have to be intentional about creating a workplace that embraces these (DEI outcomes) and builds that into every system in the organization.”   7:55 – “So much of the conversation has become polarized…when we talk with our leaders…these conversations can feel uncomfortable, and they’re supposed to feel uncomfortable…when we frame it as ‘resources and restrictions’ (instead of as ‘privilege’) then we can begin to have this conversation that we all have resources and restrictions, every single one of us.”   17:01 – “…if you can’t acknowledge and learn from your past…you’re doomed to repeat it. The challenge we’re hearing is that if we point it out, it will create more division…create a tension we don’t want… the fact is, there is already some division, some tension, and people have been living with the pain…whether we choose to acknowledge it, doesn’t change the pain. It’s there regardless, and it hurts everybody.”   If you’d like to learn, talk, and listen more, you can reach out to Nicole via email: hello@queencitycertified.com.  

Jay Messner has built several businesses and helps clients improve theirs. Here we talk about inflection points, causes of failures and reasons for getting stuck, what skills can be taught or developed, vs. having to be recruited, and how to jump through inflections points by creating “trust, clarity, and alignment.”   5:04 – “organizations need to have some sense of stable foundation (operationally, culturally, financially) on which to build, especially in rapid growth… when you hit speed bumps and those foundations are not reasonably stable, lots of bad things can happen.”   9:00 – on feeling stuck and why it happens: “Fear, fear of change, fear of failure… what if we lose the client…”   11:17 – on inflection points in life and business: “a pattern of businesses of similar maturity or revenue size… encountering common pain at similar times… and an inflection point implies that you can choose many different directions… as you encounter pain, or you’re stuck… where you need to do something different, not just a little different but meaningfully different in order to break through.”   14:21 – “It’s never a fast easy fix, it’s a commitment to continuously making the right choice… being willing to mess up, having healthy dynamics in the decision-making team, it’s a pretty repeatable process.”   16:21 – “Different people accept help more (or less) easily… it’s best to give them a really accurate picture of what the experience (of creating change) is going to be like, and make sure they’re ready for it.”   28:25 – on trust, clarity, alignment as a framework for road-mapping and checking progress: “understanding those three buckets is mission critical for a high performing team…. Trust is both relationally, and ‘I can count on you professionally’… Clarity is about knowing where we’re going at a corporate level, but also at a human level, ‘what’s expected of me and everyone around me’… Alignment: are we all bought in to the things we agreed to?”   You are welcome to reach out to Jay by emailing him at jay@altaimpact.com.  

Many of you know Warren Shoulberg the journalist, writer, editor, consultant, and singular source of home furnishings industry insights via HFN, Forbes.com, and many others. Here, Warren shares his Magnificent Seven of Retail. Important for manufacturers, vendors, and buyers to hear his thoughts the Good, the Bad, or the Ugly of retail (we talk about a couple dozen retailers, like The Good: Target, RH, Amazon, TJX, Williams-Sonoma brands, Magnolia Home in Waco, TX, good independent specialty retailers, also The Bad: Lame Department Stores, Lame Zombie Brands, and The Ugly: BBB, JCP, and many others.   3:23 – about retail “it’s a business, but there’s a certain flair to it that other businesses don’t have… if you want to understand a (retail) business… just walk into their stores and you’ll get a really good idea about what they’re doing.”   5:03 – about one of the seven membership requirements “that define a good retail business… omni-everything… to reach the consumer however they want to be reached.”   10:20 – “the store as a destination: if you’re going to ask the shopper to go the a physical store, you better make it worth their while… best example is RH, with spectacular physical stores… also a big part of the IKEA story…”   14:17 – about hospitality “retailers are getting back into that… RH is a great example, putting restaurants in all of their stores now… doing as much as 20% of the volume… and hard to get into…”   20:53 – “Right now Target is the best (national) store in America, they’re doing so many things right… they put (a couple billion dollars) back into their stores, they put it into their digital business, same day delivery… and the good old fashioned independent specialty retailer… there are some great stores with clever merchandising.   24:36 – on great merchants vs. big data/AI: “good merchandising overcomes a lot of other bad decisions… but that by itself is not enough... you got to have both.”   You can find Warren’s writing at the Robin Report, Forbes.com, Business of Home, or you can email him at WShoulberg@gmail.com.    

Growing 10x from the ground up, instead of by edict from the top down, requires a magic combination of strategy, flexibility, authenticity, finding rock stars (and letting them be chess players, not chess pieces), and in Doug Cofiell’s example also well-integrated acquisitions.   6:39 – “you hire for talent, not necessarily for the exact position… as you build a flexible model, it builds off itself and then it gets cultural… they can set their own tone within these guardrails we establish.”   7:28 – “Having guardrails allows creativity”   9:50 – “If those two people (both best performers) were exact opposites… and did things totally opposite, how can I create a structure where they have to do the same things, and think they’ll do well… we can give them tools… but making them follow this pattern doesn’t work.”   17:49 – about squaring flexibility with complexity “flexibility adds cost… if your business is a certain size you need to build in flexibility (to adapt, to things like the 2021 global supply chain chaos).”   You can reach out to Doug at dcofiell@ivystone.com.

Amazon controls nearly 50% of online sales in the USA, with that comes being loved or hated, and often the latter. Jason Boyce has been an Amazon Seller for 17 years, a Top 200 seller (of millions), he shares successes worth emulating, and how to avoid certain failures and “speed bumps” selling on Amazon. He’s the co-author of Amazon Jungle, where he and Rick Cesari share stories of customer-driven innovation, click-through strategies, reaching page 1 on Amazon search results – with insights from product design to messaging to the nuts and bolts of actively selling on Amazon: build a foundation, drive the traffic, and iterate constantly.   5:20 – “what you do to succeed on Amazon will make you a better businessperson, will make your product better, will make your relationship with your customer stronger… Amazon now is giving to brand-registered brands demographic data… keywords that working well for your, and your competitor…. what products they (consumer) buy (or search) instead of yours.”   7:54 – “I learned the importance of identifying what the market is first, and Amazon is a great place to identify if there’s a market for your bright idea.”   18:30 – to sell on Amazon you must “lay the foundation, drive the traffic, then constantly and relentlessly iterate, on everything, repeatedly… features tell, benefits sell…”   25:00 – “If you’re not there (on Amazon) you’re making your competitor stronger off your good name… every buyer in America (buyer, not end-consumer) has a Prime App on their phone and if you’re trying to sell them… they’re doing their research and ask ‘are you selling on Amazon?’ “   You can reach out to Jason on LinkedIn (Jason R Boyce) or through www.Avenue7Media.com.    

Marvin Dejean removes a bit of mystery around the crucial topic of “digital transformation”, also personal or just “transformation”. We talk about his TIP-squared framework (technology and trends, innovation and insights, people and platforms), how to approach transformation, and avoid pitfalls.   3:36 – “learn to dominate your fear… if you don’t transform willingly… then the market, a competitor, the universe, something is going to force you to do it, or you’re going to be wiped out.”   6:34 – “people define digital transformation in different ways… the word is misused… take out the word “digital” it's about transformation.”   8:24 – “it’s effecting everything… how we market, how we do strategy… how we work, how we innovate… it is bringing more people into the fold in terms of decision-making.”   9:07 – about the Tip-squared framework of digital transformation for legacy companies “they’re going to be hit by this wave and won’t know what to do, how to transform or adapt naturally, whether you’re talking about BlockBuster, Kodak, BlackBerry, the wave hit, and they did not know how to pivot.”   10:58 – “legacy companies need a simple way to transform, to simplify digital transformation.”   16:30 – “Start with one project, or one team… get a result… get comfortable and get buy-in… then: what’s next?”   25:50 – framing your business (taxi vs. transportation) is key, “all products and services, because of digital transformation, are becoming commoditized… the point is: start somewhere… trying a new technology… reading up on digital transformation, talk to your customer to see how they’re shifting towards what’s easier and faster.”   You can find Marvin on LI, or email him at mdejean@gileadsanders.com .

Pop-up stores come in all types, and both retailers and manufacturers launch them for different reasons. Andy Bailen has deep experience and “spills the beans” with us in this episode.  2:21 – “All Things Retail (a weekly newsletter) came out of my interest in providing guidance and help and actionable content for retailers (of all sizes).”  This conversation about pop-up stores – which Andy has successfully conceptualized and rolled out with big box retailers, and smaller players – serves the same purpose: it provides guidance and helps with actionable content for retailers looking for additional growth avenues. You can reach Andy at abailen@3peconsulting.com – he enjoys meeting other business leaders and answering their questions.

If a bear roars in the woods and nobody hears him, did it really happen? Brian Burke the Mac Man shares his thoughts on personal branding, his entrepreneurial journey from a dorm room business to running a 20+ employee company that has purchased over $45,000,000 in used Apple equipment, and how he helps others with content strategy, creating a post with over 13,000 likes, SEO, and more.  1:12 – personal branding “helps others to help us, helps us to find clients… if you have the same title as everyone else, no one cares… you have to have a unique name/title.”  5:17 – on a social media post that created engagement with over 13,000 likes “LI is a social network… if you are trying to sell… people gravitate away… things that are uplifting tend to do well on LI, things around kindness and inspiration.”  13:12 – on personal brand “the combination of ‘be yourself’, find whatever ‘makes you, you’ and then own it… and be consistent!”  17:21 – “The #1 thing for SEO is having really good content… you want Google to send people right to that page (your content) and then have the call to action on there… to take people to the next stage in the process.”  20:04 – “creating valuable content is a very different skill set from amplifying that correctly through SEO and social media.” You can find Brian Burke the Mac Man on LI, and he loves connecting and helping.

Transportation is a fundamental building block of any economy – so dissecting the necessary ingredients for transforming transportation in the coming decades is key to creating a transportation system that works more efficiently and with less environmental impact. Evangelos Simoudis starts with Data and AI, and has written several books, one about Big Data in our Driverless Future, the other about Transportation Transformation. We talked about three phases of transformation, three constituents needed to make it happen, barriers that will slow down some and have the power to kill all transformation, as well as the importance of staying open to new information, to reconsider and rethink as we champion any growth or transformation challenge. I found the conversation thought provoking and inspiring – because Evangelos approaches huge tasks with logic and humility.  

Jay Steinfeld, founder of blinds.com (which he grew from $0 to revenues of hundreds of millions of dollars before selling it to Home Depot) shares heartfelt insights from his entrepreneurial journey and personal development in my conversation with him. If you haven’t read his book Lead from the Core, you’ll want to read it. Whether or not you have, you’ll want to listen to this episode in which Jay talks about “autonomous excellence”, the 4 E’s (evolve, experiment, express yourself, and enjoy the ride), a definition of success based on “getting better”, and the importance of embracing ambiguity.   8:10 – “I was observant, curious, anxious to learn… I was willing to take chances with myself and to be experimental in how I would be able to evolve.”  10:37 – about generosity and grace… “when it comes to people, you give them as much as you can… give them the opportunity to be themselves… providing an environment and resources to flourish… then you have a business that becomes autonomous excellence.”  13:50 – in talking about the 4 E’s Jay made this insightful comment: “paradox is an important part of leadership, to understand there is no reconciliation of things, all these things exist together… for instance maintaining your long-term vision yet making sure you do everything that has to be done today.”  18:08 – “if you can get better, or I can help somebody else get better, that’s success.”  27:16 – Advice for start-ups or high-growth managers “the key thing is to be able to deal with ambiguity better. I didn’t need to know the right answer from the beginning… people believe you can research and use a spreadsheet and determine with facts exactly the way the path is going to be, but that’s so untrue… you don’t really know…until you go out into the wild.”  You can learn more about Jay and the 4 E’s on www.JaySteinfeld.com, and you can find him and easily connect with him on LinkedIn.  

Sharon Rowe founded Ecobags, the original reusable bag company, three decades ago, long before sustainability was as cool and certainly as urgent as it is today. She talks about the sometimes-hard choices, sometimes mutually beneficial relationship between conscious capitalism and naked profitability. Sharon authored The Magic of Tiny Business, as a story of doing good and doing well, having your cake, and eating it too. Her company is a small and stable business, some might dismiss it as a “lifestyle business”, others will find key lessons for building a sustainable business that respects both the environment and employees, as well as family members.