Evergreen Journal by Tugboat Institute
Business & Finance
About
CAPITALISM AT ITS BEST™These are the stories of the Evergreen® movement.Evergreen leaders are seasoned entrepreneurs, CEOs and presidents with the vision, creativity, resourcefulness, patience and grit to build and scale a business that will stay private indefinitely. They measure success by how well they deliver on their mission and how well they embody the 7Ps: Purpose, Perseverance, People First, Profit, Private, Paced Growth, & Pragmatic Innovation.Tugboat Institute® is a membership organization that brings together Evergreen businesses across industry sectors to share best practices and unique insights, and to develop trusted bonds for their respective Evergreen paths.
Episodes
- Purpose at Highlights
Tugboat Institute® Member Kent Johnson is the CEO of Highlights for Children, a family-led legacy brand dedicated to building a more optimistic and empathetic world for children. After an early career in physics and medical diagnostics, Ke…
- Innovation Begins with Observation
Jim Gilmore is the co-founder of Strategic Horizons LLP and the co-author of The Experience Economy and Look: A Toolkit for Making Better Decisions. As a pioneer in the study of consumer experiences and observational methods, Jim has spent…
- The Winner's Mindset: Leadership, Legacy, and Learning in Uncertain Times
Larry Hofstetter is the first non-family president of the 187-year-old Schaeffer Manufacturing Company. As the steward of a business founded in 1839, Larry has mastered the delicate balance of honoring nearly two centuries of history while…
- Paddle for a Purpose
Tugboat Institute® member Joe Motz, founder of The Motz Corporation, has spent nearly five decades building a legacy of innovation and integrity at one of the world's most respected turf firms. But after transitioning the company to 100% e…
- Founder Meets Legacy: The Power of Two Perspectives
Ashley Russo is a visionary leader, award-winning journalist, and entrepreneur who bridges the gap between industrial legacy and modern storytelling. Through her dual roles as CEO of Magnaplate and President of ASR Media, Ashley has master…
- Creative Leadership
Rob Cordova is a thought leader, adjunct professor, and educator who transforms corporate learning into meaningful and inspiring experiences. Through his research on how our personal backgrounds shape our actions, Rob has developed a uniqu…
- Baseball During the Great Depression: Owners Cope with Adversity
David Surdam is a historical economist and professor at the University of Northern Iowa who studies how organizations adapt under extreme economic pressure. In this Tugboat Institute® Summit 2025 talk, he shares the story of Major League B…
- On P.E. Redux
Over the last several years, private equity has continued its rapid expansion, reshaping the landscape of business ownership and investment. What was once limited to a small circle of institutional investors now reaches into 401k portfolio…
- From Vader to Evergreen: A CEO's Journey to Enlightened Ownership
Mark Steele is the president and owner of Craftsmen Industries and a former turnaround specialist for private equity firms. Early in his career, he stepped into struggling businesses and made the tough calls others avoided. In this Tugboat…
- Profit with Purpose: Pricing Tactics for an Evergreen Business
Adam Echter is a partner at Simon-Kucher and a global expert in pricing strategy. A thought-leader and consultant, Adam brings decades of experience helping companies shape strategies that drive both profit and purpose. In this Tugboat Ins…
- Bridging Generations: Documenting a Family Founder's Vision
Tugboat Institute® member Ashli Desai is President of Larry Walker Associates, an environmental engineering firm focused on water quality management. After founder Larry Walker's departure, the company remained family-owned but was led by…
- The Only Constant in Life - and in Business - is Change
In business as in life, longevity often invites assumptions. When we hear about a company that has thrived for over a century, it's easy to picture a large, slow-moving, and rigid organization. But surviving, and thriving, across generatio…
- On Rules of Thumb
Business leaders often rely on rules of thumb, simple tools designed to guide decisions in complex environments. But when followed too rigidly, even the most trusted rules can create blind spots. In this Tugboat Institute® talk, Dave Whort…
- Both/And Thinking: Harnessing the Positive Potential of Tensions
In business as in life, there are trade-offs. This is an accepted part of the business world as well, and is usually accepted as an unavoidable truth. This includes pairs like Profit and Purpose, or Profit and Paced Growth, which can somet…
- Why Employees Quit and How to Use Evergreen® Principles to Keep Them
The last five years have seen an ever-tightening talent pool and, therefore, increased competition for great employees. It seemed that it was a pandemic-related phenomenon at first, but demographics tell us that in fact, this is here to st…
- The Making of Another Way
On May 6, 2025, Another Way: Building Companies That Last...and Last...and Last, by Dave Whorton with Bo Burlingham was released to the public. Their book tells the story of Dave's journey from Venture Capital's epicenter in Silicon Valley…
- Building From Crumbs
Tugboat Institute® member Ford Mennel is the fifth generation leader of his family company, The Mennel Milling Company. In their 139 years, the company has been through many phases, some marked by prosperity and expansion, and some by stag…
- Fireside Chat with Dave Thrasher, Dan Thrasher, and Dave Whorton
Dave and Dan Thrasher grew up in the house that served as the first HQ for their parents' basement waterproofing company, which they had started and grown slowly over decades. By the time the two brothers stepped into the business, their p…
- The Science of Happiness and Social Connection
Sonja Lyubomirsky is an experimental social psychologist at University of California, Riverside. She has been studying the science of happiness for decades and her work has included consulting on projects like the film Mission: Joy, featur…
- Collaborative Landscapes: Shaping Successful Partnerships with Design
How do creativity and productivity thrive simultaneously in a business? The creative and the business mindsets are often very different in their approach to problem solving and innovation, yet in most professions, success in each area is n…
- The Return on Philanthropy
Tugboat Institute®'s Gary Kunkle spent many years advising companies around sustained growth and then completing a PhD thesis on the true drivers of sustained growth. Through this work, he has built up an impressive store of data and insig…
- Looking for Work/Life Harmony
Most company leaders can attest to the fact that finding a way to be a present spouse, parent, and even friend while building a business can be extremely challenging. But it is critical for creating a life and lifestyle that are good and s…
- The Making of a 100-Year Company: My Journey to Employee Ownership
Brad Herrmann learned about building and running a business from his father, who had done just that. But then his father sold the company, and the company and the team Brad had grown to love disappeared. He partnered with a friend and foun…
- Transitions Either Happen to You…or Because of You
Change is uncomfortable, especially when we did not seek it and when it sets us on paths we would never have chosen. How we choose to deal with the inevitable surprises life has in store for us is where we really find out who we are and wh…
- The Secret Sauce: A Culture of Connection = A Thriving Organization
Tugboat Institute® member Kirk Aubry leads Savage Services, a transportation company based in Utah that moves and manages critical materials. In the years he has led the company, they have seen impressive growth. Rather than simply sit bac…
- Culture is not Enough: Evergreens Need Strategy to Survive and Thrive
Jeff Patterson is the CEO and founder of Gaggle, an EdTech software company that exists to protect students in schools. As a company founder, he has fought hard to create and build Gaggle, and along with it an entire industry, and he has r…
- Hidden Champions: Success Lessons of the Most Secretive Global Market Leaders
When he was still researching and teaching at university in Germany, Professor Hermann Simon undertook to study the landscape of market leaders in exports around the world and in different industries, with the goal of identifying the chara…
- Business Health Checkup
When he was young, Jeff Chungath was torn between a career in medicine and one in engineering. So he compromised and became a biomedical engineer! With deep, combined clinical and technical expertise, Telligen, the company he leads, helps…
- 24 Hours in the Life of a Healthy Kid
If you are a parent or if you ever watch the news, you are aware that, for years now, the conversation around kids and their mental health has become louder and more urgent. The effects of social media and our internet culture, paired with…
- Your Next Hire Could be a Felon
Jeffrey Korzenik is an economist by profession. Outside of work, his passion is furthering the cause of Second Chance Hiring. Those two endeavors are not as disparate as they might seem. Author of Untapped Talent, Jeff has spent many years…
- Navigating the Challenges of a Dramatically Shifting Energy Landscape
Scott White, CEO of IGS Energy, has had a front row seat to the complexity of the energy industry and to what happens when shortages occur his whole life; he grew up with a parent who ran a natural gas company. Scott believes that the chan…
- Persevering One Step at a Time
When Steve Doerfler and his partner bought out their boss at Metalcraft in 2006, they knew that they would have to work hard and overcome obstacles to help their new company grow and thrive. Many of them, however, both professional and per…
- The Inevitable Bridge: Giving Away Your CEO Role
For CEOs, and even more so for company founders, the prospect of stepping out of leadership, handing the reins over to your successor, and letting go of the company you have poured your heart into for years can be a challenge. Especially f…
- On Purpose, 2022
In 2022, at Tugboat Institute® Gathering of Teams, Tugboat CEO Dave Whorton shared a talk entitled On Purpose. At the time, we were approaching our ten-year anniversary and our Evergreen® community had grown and matured a great deal. Every…
- The Predictive Power of Culture Analytics
Evergreen® companies, who value their teams and put People First, believe deeply in the importance of a strong culture. However, the critical value of a strong culture is not simply a matter of faith. In this Tugboat Institute® talk, Olive…
- FUNomenal Innovation at Radio Flyer
It is rare and challenging for businesses to last beyond the first generation of ownership and leadership, and rarer still for them to last into the third generation and beyond. There are many reasons for this, but a common one is that a c…
- From Facts to Impact: The Strategic Art of Storytelling
Humans understand and remember best through stories. The power of a good story to make a message memorable, meaningful, and impactful cannot be overstated. In your business, therefore, telling the story of your company effectively and well…
- The Friction Project
Within any business, although we typically aim for efficiency and ease, we often end up with systems, processes, and norms that create friction. Friction can slow us down and negatively impact both progress and morale. Dr. Robert I. Sutton…
- A Peek Past the End of the World
Has the age of globalization come to an end? Given current demographic, political, and economic realities, what will the coming decades look like? And importantly, as business leaders, how can we best position ourselves to not only survive…
- From Squirrels to Burpees: Our Journey of Change at TCI
Change that is intentional and carefully managed over time is essential for the long term survival of a business. Katie Hopkins is the third generation President & CEO of her family's business, Truck Centers, Inc. (TCI), and she has experi…
- Approaching Your Aging Parents About Care
At some point, most of us will face the difficult challenge of talking to our parents about their care as they age. The conversation is almost always challenging because it entails the complete reversal of the dynamic of a life-long relati…
- Flickr Foundation: Planning for 100 Years
Ben and Don MacAskill are the founders and CEO & President of Awesome, the company that owns SmugMug and Flickr, among other brands. They specialize in online tools and platforms for photography and have changed the way photographers store…
- The Time Strategist
Dr. Peter Boumgarden is a professor at the WashU Olin School of Business. His research focuses on the role of structure- both formally and informally- in shaping the innovation of groups, organizations, and broader network systems. In addi…
- How to ENERGIZE Your Life
Dr. Allan Mishra is a leading orthopedic surgeon, an expert in stem-cell research, and a highly respected member of the team at Stanford University Medical Center. He is also the Founder of VyVerse, LLC, through which his program, Vitality…
- Building an Evergreen® Company in the Heart of Silicon Valley
Silicon Valley is known as the heartland of innovation in business, specifically venture capital and the 'get big fast' model of building a company toward a quick and lucrative exit. With its focus on growth over profit and its short-term…
- Trust & Inspire: How Truly Great Leaders Unleash Greatness in Others
Stephen M.R. Covey has been a student of leadership his whole life; his father, Stephen R. Covey, was the author of the enormously popular book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Through his own work, which includes the NYT bestsell…
- Great Leaps of Faith
Oscar Gonzalez is the youngest of 13 siblings. When he was very young, His father and a few of his brothers took the first step toward moving the entire family from Mexico to the United States. Through extraordinary perseverance, patience,…
- Risking More for an Audacious Purpose
John Montgomery, Founder & CEO of Bridgeway Capital Management, manages risk for his clients for a living. However, he noticed long ago that even the most audacious business leaders tend to take much smaller risks outside of business. Give…
- Closing the Gap: Taking Action in Our Spheres of Influence
At Tugboat Institute® Summit 2023, Tugboat members John Gavan and John Garrett joined Mel Gravely on the stage to share the learnings and actions they have taken themselves in the two years since Mel's first Tugboat Institute talk, What We…
- Two Jims
Howard Behar joined Starbucks as President of North America in the very early days of the company. He learned quickly that as a leader, CEO Howard Schultz truly cared for the company's people, from its employees to its customers. In this T…