Dealing With the Tough Stuff: Practical Wisdom for Running a Values-Driven Business (Social Venture Network) (AGENCY/DISTRIBUTED) - Softcover

Margot Fraser; Lisa Lorimer

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1576756653 ISBN 13: 9781576756652

Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2009

Synopsis

This is what you won't read about in business school. Through decades of running businesses, Lisa, Margot and the case-study interviewees included here have learned about dealing with 'the tough-stuff'. The narrators and contributors provide guidance and counsel and relate true, sometimes shocking, stories about their companies that exemplify the hardships other entrepreneurs will encounter. Because the contributors are diverse leaders from various sectors and industries the book is useful to new, existing and shifting entrepreneurs. It follows the trajectories of successful business leaders throughout the nation who have faced a host of problems and survived. Here is a book that readers can look to for affirmation, hope and tools. The authors and case-study participants supply tried-and-true methods for addressing these struggles. Dealing With the Tough Stuff is honest help told through entrepreneurs' engaging stories of failure and triumph.

About this title

About the Author:

Margot Fraser is the founder and former CEO, president, and majority shareholder of Birkenstock USA. She retired from active leadership in 2002. The company is the sole importer of Birkenstock footwear in the United States and sells to more than 3,005 retailers, including 200 licensed, privately owned stores. When she started the business out of her home in 1967, ergonomic, functional footwear was unknown in the United States and was met with resistance and ridicule. Her belief in the product, and her undying conviction that others would recognize its value once they could get them on their feet, helped her persevere and slowly educate the public about the importance of foot health. This helped to establish a new category of footwear--Casual Comfort-- an accomplishment that led to her induction into the National Shoe Retailers Hall of Fame. In the same year she was named the Ernst & Young Northern California Entrepreneur of the Year. She accomplished all that without any prior formal business education. She had only to follow her vision and common sense. However, continued learning was important to her. She finally attended the Executive Program for Smaller Companies at the Graduate School of Business, Stanford University, and returned for an intensive marketing course the following year. She established an ESOP at her company as a way to share the profits with her employees. She also used it as an exit strategy.
Five years later, the ESOP acquired all the remaining shares and sold the business to the German manufacturer two years after that, dissolving the ESOP. Margot currently serves on the boards of the Presidio College of Management in San Francisco and the Family Service Agency of Marin in San Rafael. She speaks at conferences, women's groups, and business incubators to encourage new entrepreneurs to take the leap into an independent future.
Lisa Lorimer is the former CEO, president, and majority owner of Vermont Bread Company in Brattleboro, Vermont. She sold a majority stake in her company to the private equity firm Charterhouse Group and partnered with it to create the largest natural and certified organic baked- goods company in the United States. The company has been renamed Charter Baking Company and services supermarkets and natural product stores under the brands of Vermont Bread, Baldwin Hill, The Baker, Rudi's Organic, and Matthew's All Natural, as well as private labels for various grocery store chains and other well-known national bakeries. During her twenty-three-year tenure at the company, Vermont Bread Company was the largest majority woman- owned business in the state and was listed as one of the top ten fastest growing companies in Vermont. Lisa is a graduate of the Owner/President Management Program at Harvard Business School and has served on the boards of Charter Baking Company, Vermont Businesses for Social Responsibility, Union Institute & University/Vermont College, Vermont Community Foundation, the Women's Crisis Center, and Chittenden Bank. She speaks at conferences, seminars, leadership institutes, colleges, and business schools about lessons learned from growing her company.

About this edition

• Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 1576756653
• ISBN 13: 9781576756652
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 160