On Principle

On a mid-May afternoon in 2020, Lauren Kriegler sat in her home office and scribbled a warning to her young kids—who were in the thick of remote learning—on a Post-It Note and stuck it to her office door: “Important call. Do not come in!”For five years at Alaska Airlines, Kriegler had led a massive project to overhaul the uniforms provided to its 20,000+ frontline employees—five years building a program from raw materials to design and development, inventory planning and distribution, and ultimately the culmination of a rollout during the early stages of the pandemic. This included multiple visits to China to get closer to the supply chain, as well as the integration of industry-leading textile safety standards, leading Alaska to be the first North American carrier to integrate Oeko-Tex into a custom supply chain. Along the way, Kriegler led additional teams, including retail operations, freight and logistics, and print programs. As the uniform program launched and was moving to steady state, she was starting to think about her next challenge.Now, as the Teams window on her computer flashed open to her weekly tie-in with her boss, she was confronting what might come next: leading the fuel program for the airline as director of fuel—an area of the business where she had no experience. It was a role fraught with challenge and opportunity that started with the consolidation of two departments, the lack of a hand-off from her predecessors in the role and a massive learning curve.Once she assumed the role that July of 2020, she would see planes get fueled for the first time, spend time on the ramp learning the operation and become quickly immersed in the complexities of the oil and refining markets and supply chains. She openly acknowledged with internal and external partners that at many times she had more questions than answers.She worked diligently to overcome her learning curve in order to prepare the fuel program to support the airline’s emergence from the pandemic, both operationally and financially. Through all of these learnings, she also started to wrap her arms around an initially small but critical component of the fuel program: Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF)—something that as the months went by would become a much more significant focus of her day-to-day role. By the end of her first year and what Kriegler called a “brutal summer,” she had confronted all that and more, including a Mother’s Day 2021 alert to the Colonial Pipeline shutdown, wildfires, labor shortages, extreme weather and other external events that buffeted fuel supply chain operations.“I’ve only known volatility,” Kriegler said. “During that first summer, I remember thinking (that) how I navigated that summer’s seemingly never-ending challenges would shape my future at Alaska as an operational leader. I was determined not just to get through it, but to establish an industry-leading program that was resilient and intentional. And to be honest, I had many moments of self-doubt given my lack of experience—and I know others did as well.”Related LinksLauren shares supply chain learnings with students at the University of Washington.Alaska Airlines’ news release on the launch of its uniform redesignMore about WashU Olin’s Sergio ChayetLauren’s LinkedIn pageCreditsThis podcast is a production of Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis. Contributors include:Katie Wools, Cathy Myrick, Judy Milanovits and Lesley Liesman, creative assistanceJill Young Miller, fact-checking and creative assistanceAustin Alred and Olin’s Center for Digital Education, sound engineeringHayden Molinarolo, original music and sound designMike Martin Media, editingSophia Passantino, social mediaLexie O'Brien and Erik Buschardt, website support

In the heating-and-cooling industry, they’re calling it “The Great Consolidation” as the pace of company acquisitions has risen from about 20 in 2011 to 120 a year by 2019. Meanwhile, The Great Consolidation is slamming head-first into the pandemic-born Great Resignation, as firms battle for a share of the scarce pool of talent on the market.That’s the environment Chris Hoffmann has faced since 2016, after taking over the St. Louis-based, family-owned business his father began 28 years earlier with four employees and a simple business model. Today, while he watches competitors grow through acquisition and consolidation, Hoffmann sees an alternative path: scaling up geographically and serving existing customers more deeply.That’s why he’s expanded into Nashville. That’s why he’s exploring adding pest control to his suite of commercial and residential services. But there’s still that other nagging problem. "The companies that are going to be able to grow are the ones that can solve the talent issue,” Hoffmann said on a recent industry podcast. “Everyone knows that. Everyone's talking about that."In this episode of On Principle, we talk to Chris Hoffmann about how he came to realize Hoffmann Brothers would have to make some big investments to thrive in a heavily fragmented but consolidating industry. What drove his decision to grow by expanding his service area and his services? Why did he decide against buying his way into new markets by acquiring existing residential and commercial services firms?And what does it take to move from simply recruiting talent on the open market to growing your own in a newly built, 15,000-square-foot training facility?Related LinksThe Hoffmann Brothers websiteThe family office site Chris and his family created to manage investmentsMore about Peter BoumgardenThe Koch Family Center for Family EnterpriseA piece Chris Hoffmann wrote for the Tugboat Institute on employee engagementThe St. Louis Business Journal reports on Hoffmann Brothers’ expansionThe Olin Brookings Commission project referenced in this episodeCreditsThis podcast is a production of Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis. Contributors include:Katie Wools, Cathy Myrick, Judy Milanovits and Lesley Liesman, creative assistanceJill Young Miller, fact-checking and creative assistanceAustin Alred and Olin’s Center for Digital Education, sound engineeringHayden Molinarolo, original music and sound designMike Martin Media, editingSophia Passantino, social mediaLexie O'Brien and Erik Buschardt, website support

Since 1999, the digital agency that Brian Williams and his brother cofounded has weathered—often just barely—some tough blows to the economy. There was the bursting of the dot-com bubble. Then there was 9/11. Then, the global financial crisis of 2008.In fact, that last shock compelled Williams to create a formal business development function at Viget—a team that would market the firm, demonstrate its expertise, drive in-bound business leads and keep the phones ringing. Viget hummed into its 15-year anniversary in 2015 with an energizing employee retreat near Boulder, Colorado, where the firm opened a new branch office.But when the year drew to a close with dismal results, Williams was worried. Yes, Viget had built a business development function. But it hadn’t created a way to forecast and project revenue, anticipate when existing projects would end, maintain a pipeline of “back-up” projects for slow times and rigorously manage existing projects.There was no external economic shock, yet business had collapsed. “This was a crisis of our own making,” Williams said. “My mistakes led to us being in this precarious position.”With potential layoffs looming ahead, Williams issued an off-the-cuff rallying cry that came to be known as “Best 6 Ever”—an audacious goal to exceed Viget’s previous best six-month period. And the team rallied. Extra hours. Aggressive marketing. Sharing the #Best6Ever hashtag internally. Meanwhile, Williams and his team worked to create version 2.0 of Viget’s business development team—complete with all the accountability measures that hadn’t existed before.Today, Viget’s biz dev function is more sophisticated. The business is more profitable. The firm’s leadership is better equipped to accurately forecast revenue trends. And Williams sleeps better at night.Related LinksViget’s websiteBrian Williams’ bio page on the Viget websiteMore about Jackson Nickerson from the WashU Olin websiteJackson’s Wikipedia pageCreditsThis podcast is a production of Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis. Contributors include:Katie Wools, Cathy Myrick, Judy Milanovits and Lesley Liesman, creative assistanceJill Young Miller, fact-checking and creative assistanceAustin Alred and Olin’s Center for Digital Education, sound engineeringHayden Molinarolo, original music and sound designMike Martin Media, editingSophia Passantino, social mediaLexie O'Brien and Erik Buschardt, website supportPaula Crews, creative vision and strategic support

This story is not really about the first pivotal moment Camryn Okere navigated. That’s the moment when the pandemic upended plans for a college internship and shuttered a business she had grown to love. In that moment, she decided to gather some mentors and some fellow students across a few universities to create a boutique consulting firm serving small community businesses—and providing experience to budding business leaders.No, this story is about another big “oh, shoot!” moment, after that volunteer, student-driven firm—Rem and Company—took off across 20 college campuses, recruited more than 650 student consultants and served more than 300 small businesses around the country.It’s about the moment Okere’s partners in the early days of Rem and Company started charting another career path, found appealing full-time jobs and left Okere to figure out how to make her baby a sustainable enterprise. She didn’t want her work—providing professional experiences for students and services for local businesses—to die.“My moment was truly understanding that something has to change,” said Okere, BSBA 2020. You want it to become something, but that means the systems have to be built to make it sustainable.”What was Okere’s story and how did it lead to that moment? How much of herself had she invested in Rem and Company—and why? What compelled her to think the enterprise was something worth sustaining in the first place? How did she realize that the model as it was created wouldn’t be sustainable? What steps did she take to traverse that “oh, shoot!” moment for Rem? What can we learn from her experience? And in what ways was her experience transferable to larger enterprises?Related LinksThe Rem and Company websiteRem’s Instagram and LinkedIn pagesAn Olin Business magazine story featuring Camryn OkereOlin Blog story about Rem and Company soon after its launchMore about Staci ThomasCamryn, as a WashU sophomore, was featured for winning “best room” in a residential life competition.Camryn and Rem featured in her hometown newspaperCreditsThis podcast is a production of Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis. Contributors include:Katie Wools, Cathy Myrick, Judy Milanovits and Lesley Liesman, creative assistanceJill Young Miller, fact-checking and creative assistanceAustin Alred and Olin’s Center for Digital Education, sound engineeringHayden Molinarolo, original music and sound designMike Martin Media, editingSophia Passantino, social mediaLexie O'Brien and Erik Buschardt, website supportPaula Crews, creative vision and strategic support

In the wake of the global pandemic, some of the loudest voices in corporate America proclaimed the end of work as we know it. Lockdown, it seemed, had proven workers could be productive from home. Work-from-home came into vogue. We’d never have to commute to the office again, some suggested.But as pandemic-era restrictions eased in mid-2021, Steve Degnan, then chief human resources officer for Nestlé Purina PetCare, joined other senior leaders and prepared to bring its workforce back. All of them. In-person.“It was not without controversy,” Degnan, EMBA 2008, recalled. “It was our belief that better work happens when people are together. But we did lose people.” Indeed, about 30% of Purina’s workforce declared its dissatisfaction with the return-to-work policy, which launched in 2022. The company, for years a leader in worker satisfaction ratings on jobseekers website Glassdoor, saw its scores plummet in the wake of the decision.Beyond their basic belief that employees work better together, Purina leaders had also just gone through a process to combat “big company diseases” such as lumbering decision-making and single-stream work processes. They’d fostered greater agility in their work teams, empowered team members to make decisions, coached effective collaboration.“That work was being blown up,” he said. Degnan, now retired, recalled how senior leadership knew it would have to spend some of its cultural capital to implement a decision that many rank-and-file employees would support—but that a small and vocal group would not, including a large share of Generation Z and Millennial team members.Why did Purina buck what seemed to be a trend in its approach to the workplace? How did it manage the communication of that requirement? What were leaders willing to sacrifice to make that decision—and what were they not willing to sacrifice?RELATED LINKSMore about Steve DegnanMore about Andrew KnightBloomberg: “People Working in the Office Spend 25% More Time on Career Development” (paywall)A version of the same story that’s not behind a paywallNestlé Purina PetCareMcKinsey & Company: “Americans are embracing flexible work—and they want more of it”Business Insider: “Here's a list of major companies requiring employees to return to the office”Nina Leigh Krueger: Her On Principle episode, “Out of the Box”CREDITSThis podcast is a production of Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis. Contributors include:Katie Wools, Cathy Myrick, Judy Milanovits and Lesley Liesman, creative assistanceJill Young Miller, fact checking and creative assistanceAustin Alred and Olin’s Center for Digital Education, sound engineeringHayden Molinarolo, original music and sound designMike Martin Media, editingSophia Passantino, social mediaLexie O'Brien and Erik Buschardt, website supportPaula Crews, creative vision and strategic support

In early March 2022, the skies over Irpin, Ukraine, sizzled with Russian missiles and thundered with mortar shells. Under those skies in the first days of Russia’s aggression, the lead software developer for a Chicago-based startup huddled in his parent’s basement when the air raid sirens sounded.For a substantial investment of thousands of dollars, the leadership at that startup—Phenix Real Time Solutions—could hire an extraction team to relocate their Ukrainian-based developer and his parents to relative safety in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv."It didn't take any convincing for our CEO or our founder,” said Kyle Bank, BSBA 2014, and the COO at Phenix. “It was, 'What's it going to take? How do we do it?' Same thing with our board of directors. Not one word of hesitation.”It was a situation Bank never anticipated when he joined the video streaming company in 2016. Bank joined soon after Phenix found a Ukrainian software engineer through an outsourcing company and built an in-country development team around him.That programmer's harrowing ordeal with his parents, who are in their 70s, started with a walk through a Russian checkpoint and across a makeshift bridge to replace the bombed-out span. They had to hurry to the Ukrainian-occupied part of Irpin, where they could catch a ride with volunteers to neighboring Kyiv. A day later, the extraction team—actually, a single driver employed by an organization that arranges such things—would collect the threesome and their belongings.“The experience of getting out of Irpin to Kyiv was probably the most dangerous part of the story,” the programmer said as he described the ordeal, which included a 13-hour drive to Lviv through more checkpoints and around battle-damaged roads. Said Bank: "I was absolutely glued to the computer screen all day trying to find out if he'd made it. It was a nerve-wracking day."The programmer was the focus of this particular episode. But it wasn’t the only thing Phenix did for its Ukraine-based team of developers in the early days following Russia’s aggression.RELATED LINKSWebsite for Phenix Real-Time SolutionsKyle Bank on LinkedInStory on WashU Olin’s website about Bank’s story about the programmerVice News report from Irpin by Ben Solomon mentioning the Irpin BridgeMore about Kurt Dirks"Leadership in Dangerous Situations," a book referenced by Dirks, to which he contributedCREDITSThis podcast is a production of Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis. Contributors include:Katie Wools, Cathy Myrick, Judy Milanovits and Lesley Liesman, creative assistanceJill Young Miller, fact checking and creative assistanceAustin Alred and Olin’s Center for Digital Education, sound engineeringHayden Molinarolo, original music and sound designMike Martin Media, editingSophia Passantino, social mediaLexie O'Brien and Erik Buschardt, website supportPaula Crews, creative vision and strategic support

Christine Chang recalls the moment in the back seat of a cab, heading across Manhattan to her next appointment. She and her cofounder, Sarah Lee, finally had to have a tough conversation about the future of their beauty business Glow Recipe.The pair had originally built a successful business focused on curating Korean beauty products produced by other manufacturers. A business that had generated a significant customer following and an engaged fan base through savvy use of social media. A business that generated the majority of Glow Recipe's revenue, which was reported to be $1 million in their first year of business and growing triple digits year over year.But the other 10% of their revenue was calling to them. That was the revenue that began to grow in 2017 after Glow Recipe started its own in-house brand of beauty products. And there Chang and Lee sat, in the back of a cab in early 2019.“As a growing but small team, we were being pulled in multiple directions by having to manage a rapidly growing in-house brand and another business vertical together," Chang, BSBA 2004, recalled. “We talked seriously about whether this was sustainable. Five years from now, what will we wish we'd done? By the end of that cab ride, we had aligned.”The curation business had to go. Glow Recipe would be all-in with its in-house brand of products. People would have to be let go. Inventory had to be shed. Their online community of fans and customers—invested in one version of Glow Recipe—would have to be invited along for a difficult transition.Skincare brands are typically known to position their brands as either serious and clinically efficacious or whimsical and fun. Glow Recipe's mission was to combine both worlds into a line of products that delivered results but were also sensorial, joyful and approachable.“It was a massive pivot to shut down the curated business,” Chang said. “As the brand grew, we realized we couldn't do both.” Two years later, the pivot paid off as Chang and Lee’s company continued an explosive growth trend.RELATED LINKSThe Glow Recipe websiteElanor Williams’ page on the WashU Olin Business School siteChristine Chang’s Instagram pageGlow Recipe on InstagramCNBC reports on the Glow Recipe storyA report by Katie Couric Media on Glow RecipeCREDITSThis podcast is a production of Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis. Contributors include:Katie Wools, Cathy Myrick, Judy Milanovits and Lesley Liesman, creative assistanceJill Young Miller, fact checking and creative assistanceHayden Molinarolo, original music and sound designMike Martin Media, editingSophia Passantino, social mediaLexie O'Brien and Erik Buschardt, website supportPaula Crews, creative vision and strategic supportSpecial thanks to Ray Irving and his team at WashU Olin’s Center for Digital Education, including our audio engineer, Austin Alred.

Akeem Shannon was stressed. In three weeks, his Shark Tank episode would air, the episode where he’d pitch Flipstik—a novel cellphone attachment that doubles as a kickstand and a sticky wall mount.He knew one thing with absolute certainty: Whether or not the “sharks” on the popular ABC-TV show offered him a deal, he was going to sell some Flipstiks. Probably a lot of them. And he didn’t have any. Or any money.At the time, in mid-October 2020, Shannon’s startup was so young he sometimes sold only one Flipstik a day. One bright spot: He’d recently landed a commitment of $50,000 from Arch Grants, a St. Louis nonprofit that provides capital to startups willing to plant roots in the community.With the Shark Tank air date weeks away, he contacted his manufacturer in China. “I need product. Lots of it. Right now,” he said. He mobilized his team to build a makeshift distribution warehouse. He upgraded his website’s software to handle the crush of transactions he expected. He maxed out his credit cards.It wasn’t enough. Ultimately, he had to pick up the phone to Arch Grants, which was supposed to pay out its commitment in quarterly installments. “Is there any way I can get some cash up-front—right away?” Shannon pleaded. “I don’t have two weeks to wait.”The cash arrived. The episode aired—with one more hitch. Ninety seconds into his segment, ABC broke in with news from the 2020 election. “I just cried when it happened,” Shannon said. But it didn’t matter. He’d set the hook. He reeled in Shark Tank fans, with orders totaling more than $100,000 in just a few days. When the episode repeated on January 1, 2021, sales spiked once again. Ultimately, Shannon got an offer from one of the sharks—a deal that later fell apart off-air. Yet for Shannon, the episode was a turning point. The last-minute race to prepare, the 11th-hour request for cash, maxed out cards—it had paid off.RELATED LINKSThe Flipstik websiteAkeem Shannon’s segment on Shark Tank (including his rap)Akeem on InstagramMichael Wall’s faculty page at WashU Olin Business SchoolThe St. Louis Business Journal on the Inc. rankingsCREDITSThis podcast is a production of Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis. Contributors include:Katie Wools, Cathy Myrick, Judy Milanovits and Lesley Liesman, creative assistanceJill Young Miller, fact checking and creative assistanceHayden Molinarolo, original music and sound designMike Martin Media, editingSophia Passantino, social mediaLexie O'Brien and Erik Buschardt, website supportPaula Crews, creative vision and strategic supportSpecial thanks to Ray Irving and his team at WashU Olin’s Center for Digital Education, including our audio engineer, Austin Alred.

At the start of the day, Lisa Baron and her board of trustees gathered for the fifth strategic planning cycle in the 20-year history of Memory Care Home Solutions, the nonprofit Baron founded to serve families with Alzheimer’s patients. How would they expand? How would they diversify their revenue sources? How would they create sustainable long-term earnings?But after dinner, at the end of the day, the planning facilitator put a question to Baron and her board, a question she wasn’t expecting at all. “You can grow incrementally,” the facilitator said, “or you can change the world. What do you want to do?”The question sent a bolt of lightning through Baron and her board. It changed the focus of their strategic planning entirely. The game was no longer just about contract reimbursements, revenue streams and federal grants. It wasn’t only about seeking inclusion in employer assistance programs or third-party healthcare contracts.It was about advocacy for families. It was about forming coalitions to influence policy around memory care issues. “It was huge,” Baron said. “It opened us up to the power of more people helping us achieve more than we could by ourselves.”Within weeks, work had begun to expand the agency’s vision into the advocacy space, using the experience of hospice workers—who moved the palliative care practice from the fringes of healthcare into the mainstream—as an example.What steps in its history brought Baron and Memory Care Home Solutions to this moment? How are they building the groundwork to “change the world”? And what can business leaders learn from Baron’s experience?UPDATE SINCE THIS EPISODELisa Baron announced her retirement from MCHS in December 2022 and officially stepped down May 31, 2023. According to Jill Cigliana, the organization’s new executive director, “Lisa continues to inspire and guide MCHS in her new role as founder and director emeritus. She remains involved in advocacy and policy work on behalf of people living with dementia and family care partners.”Since the approval of the fifth strategic plan, Cigliana said the organization has focused on building out its dementia navigation service line based on the Care Ecosystem model of care developed at the University of California-San Francisco. “This work connects us with a national team of researchers and collaborators to advance best practices in dementia care and is aligned with our strategic goals. Additionally, we have been meeting with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid services to inform a payment model for dementia care services.”On July 31, MCHS was invited to Washington, DC, to attend the advisory council meeting of the National Alzheimer's Project Act. At that meeting, the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services announced a test program to roll out a dementia care model which will be covered through Medicare benefits. “This means that for the first time in this country, there will be a covered benefit for Medicare beneficiaries who are living with dementia, including education, training and paid respite for their family caregivers. MCHS will continue to be involved in the testing for this model of care.”Said Lisa Baron, “It's thrilling that we are being included in the national conversation. This is exactly what we were aiming for.”RELATED LINKSMemory Care Home Solutions websiteFrom Small Business Monthly: “Time With The Boss - Lisa Baron, Memory Care Home Solutions”Nick Argyres’ page on the WashU Olin websiteLisa Baron testified in 2016 about Alzheimer’s services to the Special Senate Committee on AgingCREDITSThis podcast is a production of Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis. Contributors include:Katie Wools, Cathy Myrick, Judy Milanovits and Lesley Liesman, creative assistanceJill Young Miller, fact checking and creative assistanceHayden Molinarolo, original music and sound designMike Martin Media, editingSophia Passantino, social mediaLexie O'Brien and Erik Buschardt, website supportPaula Crews, creative vision and strategic supportSpecial thanks to Ray Irving and his team at WashU Olin’s Center for Digital Education, including our audio engineer, Austin Alred.

The voices in today's bonus episode may be familiar to On Principle listeners. They're voices from previous guests, sharing stories about some major “Oh, shoot!” moments they confronted in their businesses. They came together for a special "On Principle Live!" event at WashU Olin Business School on September 1, 2022, called "Now What?" The event was the first of our Leadership Perspectives events for the academic year.Featured GuestsAlaina Macía. An Olin MBA alum and president and CEO of MTM, a nationwide non-emergency medical transportation service provider.Angel Likens, third-generation president of Bogey Hills Country Club, a St. Charles, Missouri, institution since 1962.Jason Wilson, an Olin Executive MBA alum, coffee entrepreneur and owner of Northwest Coffee Roasting Company.Gerard Craft, St. Louis chef and restaurateur and owner of Niche Food Group, with eight restaurants in St. Louis and one in Nashville.CreditsThis podcast is a production of Washington University in St. Louis’ Olin Business School. Contributors include:Katie Wools, Cathy Myrick, Lesley Liesman and Judy Milanovits, creative assistanceJill Young Miller, fact-checking and creative assistanceHayden Molinarolo, original music and sound designMike Martin Media, editingSophia Passantino, social mediaLexie O'Brien and Erik Buschardt, website supportPaula Crews, creative vision and strategic supportSpecial thanks to Ray Irving and his team at WashU Olin’s Center for Digital Education, including our audio engineer, Austin Alred.

When this month's guest and I originally talked, she remembered the toilet paper woes in the early days of the pandemic as a turning point for consumers, a time when supply chains entered the common lexicon. We decided to take a deeper dive into the topic by going further into that original interview from May 2022.CreditsThis podcast is a production of Washington University in St. Louis’ Olin Business School. Contributors include:Katie Wools, Cathy Myrick, Lesley Liesman and Judy Milanovits, creative assistanceJill Young Miller, fact-checking and creative assistanceHayden Molinarolo, original music and sound designMike Martin Media, editingSophia Passantino, social mediaLexie O'Brien and Erik Buschardt, website supportMark P. Taylor, strategic supportPaula Crews, creative vision and strategic supportSpecial thanks to Ray Irving and his team at WashU Olin’s Center for Digital Education, including our audio engineer, Austin Alred.

Our first season three bonus episode looks back at my conversation with Erik Dane, an associate professor of organizational behavior at WashU Olin Business School. We originally spoke for our episode called “Warrior Heart, No Stigma" featuring Gen. Mike Minihan. Today, we're revisiting Erik's comments about how mindfulness and its perceived opposite, mind-wandering, are valuable tools in the workplace by driving efficiency, creativity and well-being.CreditsThis podcast is a production of Washington University in St. Louis’ Olin Business School. Contributors include:Katie Wools, Cathy Myrick, Lesley Liesman and Judy Milanovits, creative assistanceJill Young Miller, fact checking and creative assistanceHayden Molinarolo, original music and sound designMike Martin Media, editingSophia Passantino, social mediaLexie O'Brien and Erik Buschardt, website supportMark P. Taylor, strategic supportPaula Crews, creative vision and strategic supportSpecial thanks to Ray Irving and his team at WashU Olin’s Center for Digital Education, including our audio engineer, Austin Alred.

Arguably, the four consultants in our story have already weathered their share of pivotal moments. They’ve navigated a full-time MBA program, coursework across three continents in six weeks and a global pandemic halfway through their studies.Indeed, all that may have prepared them for the professional path they’ve taken. All four work full-time as consultants. They’re also co-founders of Oystar, a student-driven platform to improve and expand university recruiting. “We're better at being comfortable with the inconsistency of what we're working on,” said Lungile Tshuma, a consultant at World Wide Technology. “We've learned how to be more comfortable with adjusting.”But that convergence of ambition might be tossing the most meaningful moments across their paths in a series of small, pivotal moments as they skip back and forth between managing their startup and managing their day jobs. “Something we learn in our real jobs we can quickly apply to our startup,” Tshuma said. “And it goes both ways.”The foursome—all 2021 Olin MBA grads—includes Tshuma, Kevin Ko, Tim Brandt and Abhinav Gabbeta. As professional consultants, they’ve quickly learned how to refine a presentation deck for their big clients—and adapted that skill to showcase their startup.They’ve run across challenging leadership personalities—learning what kind of leader they want to be … and don’t want to be. They’ve watched how their big clients depend on Agile development practices—and adopted them at Oystar. They’ve mastered multitasking across four time zones. They’ve learned to trust each other—so they don’t all have to attend every meeting with advisors, potential funders and their intern team.In this edition of On Principle, our roundtable conversation with Tshuma, Gabbeta, Ko and Brandt examine the small pivotal moments in the life of a business leader—and the high impact those moments ultimately yield.RELATED LINKSOystar’s LinkedIn company pageOystar wins startup funding at the Skandalaris Center’s Entrepreneurship AwardsThe company is featured in Washington Magazine, the university’s alumni magazineThe company gets a shout-out in Poets & Quants after the WashU Olin MBA entrepreneurship program takes a fourth consecutive No. 1 ranking.Abhinav Gabbeta mentioned his appreciation for Asha for EducationCREDITSThis podcast is a production of Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis. Contributors include:Katie Wools, Cathy Myrick, Judy Milanovits and Lesley Liesman, creative assistanceJill Young Miller, fact checking and creative assistanceHayden Molinarolo, original music and sound designMike Martin Media, editingSophia Passantino, social mediaLexie O'Brien and Erik Buschardt, website supportPaula Crews, creative vision and strategic supportSpecial thanks to Ray Irving and his team at WashU Olin’s Center for Digital Education, including our audio engineer, Austin Alred.

Kendra Kelly wryly refers to it as “her old friend.”She’s an accomplished junior executive with years of marketing experience. She served as a field organizer for the Obama presidential campaign. She led WashU Olin’s graduate student body as its president and was elected its graduation speaker.Yet a year after joining L'Oréal, where she serves as chief of staff for the president of the luxury division, she’s only just beginning to understand how to deal with her old friend—an unwelcome visitor otherwise known as “imposter syndrome.”In a recent piece in the Harvard Business Review, authors Ruchika Tulshyan and Jodi-Ann Burey write of the phenomenon as “a workplace-induced trauma” induced by the repeated confrontation of systemic racism and bias. They argue that addressing imposter syndrome should be less about “fixing women at work” and more about fixing the places where women work.And yet, a year after earning her MBA, in the wake of her mother’s passing, in the shadow of the isolation of learning and working remotely during the pandemic, the challenges posed by her “old friend” persist. She found herself occasionally gripped by self-doubt in her company’s fast-paced work culture—while she must step back, slow down and meticulously break down business problems.“Your brain is not your friend,” Kelly said. “I was not myself. It was starting to weigh on me. And I realized this was not OK.”How did Kelly come to realize her old friend was knocking on the door? How did it affect her at work? How did she come to confront it? And how is she learning to deal with it? And what, more broadly, should workplaces do to banish this “old friend” from their hallways, offices and conference rooms?Kelly’s story is emblematic of the oft-stated importance of bringing one’s whole self into the workplace—knowing what it means and knowing how that principle can contribute to the organization and support the individual. In Kelly’s case, for example, she came to learn her meticulous approach to work was a valued skill—different, but necessary. “I have found it to be a skill,” she said, “to take the thing we've all been swirling around and name it.”More than that, she’s learning how to cope with her old friend. “This is not something I need to get over,” she said, “but learn to live with and thrive with.”RELATED LINKSWorkplace-induced trauma. Read how the Harvard Business Reviewdiscusses the concept of imposter syndrome.Kendra Kelly on LinkedIn. See her profile.Best and Brightest. While Kendra Kelly was an MBA student, Poets & Quantsnamed her among the “best and brightest” MBA students that year.Hannah Birnbaum. See her website.CREDITSThis podcast is a production of Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis. Contributors include:Katie Wools, Cathy Myrick, Judy Milanovits and Lesley Liesman, creative assistanceJill Young Miller, fact checking and creative assistanceHayden Molinarolo, original music and sound designMike Martin Media, editingSophia Passantino, social mediaLexie O'Brien and Erik Buschardt, website supportPaula Crews, creative vision and strategic supportSpecial thanks to Ray Irving and his team at WashU Olin’s Center for Digital Education, including our audio engineer, Austin Alred.

Eighteen whiskey producers comprise the famed Kentucky Bourbon Trail, something of a mecca for bourbon aficionados. They come to wander the trail and sample each distillery’s golden recipe—a guarded combination of grain types and grinds, cooking times and temperatures, yeast blends and finishing processes borne from generations of tradition and training.Among the trail’s newest stops: Bardstown Bourbon. Founded in 2014, the distillery has decidedly less than a generation of tradition under its belt. But it has shaken the industry with a new approach: a “collaborative distilling program” serving brand owners and non-distilling producers eager to market their own unique whiskies.Along the way, it’s learned a thing or two about rocking tradition—and serving customers.For co-founder and WashU alum David Mandell, AB 1996, a lawyer and former chief of staff for several high-profile federal agencies, Bardstown Bourbon exploited an opportunity revealed when the US bourbon market began to boom. Indeed, its model was so successful, Bardstown sold out its own planned capacity before it finished building its facility. The company quickly attracted big-name brands, including a well-known global manufacturer that had committed tens of millions of dollars to a contract with Bardstown. That’s where a chink in the model first appeared.Turns out producing custom whiskey for multiple companies isn’t easy. Everyone wasn’t always satisfied—including that high-profile customer. And when Bardstown’s master distiller balked at being questioned about his ability to deliver a product that satisfied their strict requirements, Mandell had to navigate the intersection of tradition and customer service—and quickly.“Nobody was used to giving customer service like we were promising in this industry,” Mandell said. “And that customer was roughly 50% of our business at the time.” How did Bardstown Bourbon solve the problem? What did they learn from the experience? And how did one of Mandell’s earlier industry failures inform the creation of Bardstown? RELATED LINKSThe Bourbon Trail homepageWashU profiles David Mandell in Washington MagazineStoli Group announces hiring David Mandell at Kentucky Owl Real Estate to lead construction of a new distilleryRaphael Thomadsen’s WashU Olin homepageRecent Thomadsen research: “Forecasting the spread of COVID-19 under different reopening strategies”CREDITSThis podcast is a production of Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis. Contributors include:Katie Wools, Cathy Myrick, Judy Milanovits and Lesley Liesman, creative assistanceJill Young Miller, fact checking and creative assistanceHayden Molinarolo, original music and sound designMike Martin Media, editingSophia Passantino, social mediaLexie O'Brien and Erik Buschardt, website supportPaula Crews, creative vision and strategic supportSpecial thanks to Ray Irving and his team at WashU Olin’s Center for Digital Education, including our audio engineer, Austin Alred.

If you read the website for Jimmy Sansone’s company, he doesn’t beat around the bush: He hated working in finance—a career he pursued for five years after earning his business degree from WashU. But then, there was that shirt …Yes, Sansone made a shirt. A shirt he loved. A shirt he thought everyone would love. He called it the Normal Shirt. And in 2015 he quit his finance job, moved into his parents’ basement and started making shirts. Full time. And people loved them. His brothers joined him right away and now they run it together.People might have loved them too much. Because that’s when Sansone, BSBA 2010, realized they didn't have the supply chain expertise they needed. How do you source fabric, thread, buttons? How do you define cut, color and wash? How do you ship products from Asia to your distribution markets?"We had a middle-man that was handling a lot of this,” Sansone said. “Then we didn't have one in the middle of the season.” That was 2016.They’d never talked directly to a factory owner. They’d never directly managed shipping from a different country. “We had no visibility into the process. We weren't in control of that. We needed to learn quickly and have people on the team who could handle it,” he said.“We had to source the backup plan very quickly,” he said. “Had we not been able to do that, we probably wouldn't have the company.”How did he do it? How did he go from zero to 100 mph in the supply chain world on the turn of a dime? What did he learn in the process? And what would he counsel others to do in the same situation?RELATED LINKSThe Normal Brand. Find men’s and women’s apparelJimmy Sansone, BSBA 2010, was named one of Olin’s emerging leaders in 2022An early story about The Normal Brand from the Olin Blog.Faculty page for Lingxiu Dong, Olin’s Frahm Family Chair of Supply Chain, Operations, and TechnologyCREDITSThis podcast is a production of Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis. Contributors include:Katie Wools, Cathy Myrick, Judy Milanovits and Lesley Liesman, creative assistanceJill Young Miller, fact checking and creative assistanceHayden Molinarolo, original music and sound designMike Martin Media, editingSophia Passantino, social mediaLexie O'Brien and Erik Buschardt, website supportPaula Crews, creative vision and strategic supportSpecial thanks to Ray Irving and his team at WashU Olin’s Center for Digital Education, including our audio engineer, Austin Alred.

Gen. Mike Minihan will be the first to tell you: The United States loses a staggering number of veterans or servicemembers to suicide every month. Indeed, a 2021 report pegged the number at 30,177 suicides among military personnel and veterans since 9/11. That’s about 127 a month. And it’s more than have died in military operations in that time—by a lot.As Minihan put it, traditional approaches tend not to “crack the code” on the problem. One day at a leadership workshop, a retired chief master sergeant approached Minihan, commander of the US Air Force’s Air Mobility Command, issued a challenge to the general. If you want to make a difference, make a mental health appointment. Put it on your calendar.Minihan was in the Pentagon on 9/11. He served in Iraq and Afghanistan. He’s ridden in military Humvees carrying human remains, watched body bags being loaded into planes, comforted grieving servicemen and women, and commanded airmen in combat zones.But when he made that appointment, when he put it on his calendar, when he shared a picture of that calendar entry on Twitter, “It started the most terrifying three days for me.” How would it be received? Would it make a difference? “I’d rather fly into Baghdad.”“Warrior heart,” the tweet read. “No stigma.”In this episode, we look at the place well-being, mindfulness and mental health play in the workplace and what one leader did in one of the most traditionally hard-boiled institutions in the country, the US military. Minihan has no illusions that his statement will revolutionize attitudes, only that it’s a step toward normalizing attitudes about mental health.RELATED LINKSSuicide Prevention Lifeline. In the United States, simply call 988. More information. Visit here for international resources.CHADS Coalition. Communities Healing Adolescent Depression and SuicideMilitary Crisis Line. Free, confidential resource for service members and veterans.Gen. Minihan's tweet. "Warrior heart, no stigma"USO story. "Military Suicide Rates Are at an All-Time High; Here’s How We’re Trying to Help"Military suicide research. Paper by scholars from Brown University and Boston UniversityTask & Purpose coverage. Publication covering military issues tells Minihan's storyMinihan bio. On the US Air Force websiteErik Dane. His background and access to his CVCREDITSThis podcast is a production of Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis. Contributors include:Katie Wools, Cathy Myrick, Judy Milanovits and Lesley Liesman, creative assistanceJill Young Miller, fact checking and creative assistanceHayden Molinarolo, original music and sound designMike Martin Media, editingSophia Passantino, social mediaLexie O'Brien and Erik Buschardt, website supportPaula Crews, creative vision and strategic supportSpecial thanks to Ray Irving and his team at WashU Olin’s Center for Digital Education, including our audio engineer, Austin Alred.

Fake it till you make it. Talk the talk before you can walk the walk. We hear it all the time, and that’s where Russ Flicker was in 2009. Russ left the Blackstone Group to join Ian Schrager Company as its chief investment officer but “irreconcilable differences” compelled him to leave only months after joining to strike out on his own—in the midst of the worst global economic crisis in decades—with two children under 5 years old and his wife.In fact, he wasn’t really even trying to start a business. In his words, he was “unemployable,” thanks to a devastated economy where everyone in his line of work—real estate equity, private equity and development—was hanging onto their jobs for dear life. “I was just trying to make some money and stay relevant,” Flicker said.That process started when he identified the Sheraton Safari hotel in Orlando, a property in need of a massive upgrade. A property he thought could use his talents, giving him a toehold to start his own business. And, as it turned out, his former associates at Blackstone owned the property. Flicker and his partner Jon Rosenfeld (who also previously worked at Blackstone) put months of work into networking, connecting with potential investors, assembling financing—all with the belief that Blackstone might be willing to sell. Along the way, at least two dozen potential investors told him he was nuts. No way was that property worth what Flicker thought it was worth.Still, with one key investor, Flicker was able to pull together the purchase. But when the time came to seal the deal, the answer was no. Flicker was devastated—in fact, he struggled to keep that “fake it till you make it” attitude. But he was undeterred, following up with former colleagues higher in Blackstone’s ecosystem. “You’ve got to believe in your idea even when everyone else is telling you not to,” Flicker said.And that was the crux of his case to the Blackstone higher-ups. His presentation basically said this: Nobody thinks this hotel is worth what I’m willing to give you for it—so maybe this is a deal you ought to consider. The argument won the day. Flicker bought the hotel, revived it and used that deal to leverage others.Today, Flicker’s company, AWH Partners LLC, owns and manages about 8,000 hotel rooms across 25 states with private equity, hedge fund and insurance company partners like Apollo Global Management, The Baupost Group and Starr Companies. As a vertically integrated hospitality firm, AWH owns a management company (Spire Hospitality) that manages its hotels as well as a development company that manages renovations and ground up construction in-house.RELATED LINKSAWH PartnersAcquisition example: AWH Partners and Funds Managed by Apollo Global Management Acquire DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel AnaheimJohn Barrios, assistant professor of accounting, WashU OlinCREDITSThis podcast is a production of Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis. Contributors include:Katie Wools, Cathy Myrick, Judy Milanovits and Lesley Liesman, creative assistanceJill Young Miller, fact checking and creative assistanceHayden Molinarolo, original music and sound designMike Martin Media, editingSophia Passantino, social mediaLexie O'Brien and Erik Buschardt, website supportPaula Crews, creative vision and strategic supportSpecial thanks to Ray Irving and his team at WashU Olin’s Center for Digital Education, including our audio engineer, Austin Alred.

In March 2013, the Normandy School District’s board hired Ty McNichols as its superintendent. By January 2015, McNichols was gone, resigned from the post after gaining what had been a career ambition—to lead a school district.In the course of those 22 months, McNichol ran into a buzzsaw of state and local politics, financial crisis, plummeting morale, personal attacks and lightly veiled racism as he navigated the sudden loss of accreditation for the district. Oh, and by the way, McNichols and his team had to educate 4,000 students from pre-kindergarten through 12th grade.The drama began to unfold within weeks of McNichols taking on the role offered by the elected school board for the north St. Louis County district. The chronically underperforming district needed a leader with ideas about improving student performance. The board thought McNichols might have the right ideas. By June, however, the state of Missouri had stripped Normandy of its accreditation, setting in motion a series of issues and unintended consequences.That included accommodating hundreds of students given authority to flee the district for a neighboring, fully accredited district. Those moves came on Normandy’s dime—indeed, a lot of dimes Normandy didn’t have. And it put the mostly Black and brown students of Normandy in the crosshairs of a somewhat hostile reception from the mostly white district identified to accept them.“What are the things I value? What was I willing to do and what not? Education is a political action for social justice,” McNichols said. “That's what drove me.”Our story is about how a leader confronts wildly competing priorities when the stakes are high—arguably no higher than the education of children. Can you strive for great? Must you settle for acceptable? Is this about making the best of a bad situation?RELATED LINKSTyrone McNichols named Normandy superintendent, St. Louis American, March 14, 2013McNichols resigns as Normandy superintendent, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, January 22, 2015Saint Rice on LinkedInWashington University’s Institute for School PartnershipCREDITSThis podcast is a production of Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis. Contributors include:Katie Wools, Cathy Myrick, Judy Milanovits and Lesley Liesman, creative assistanceJill Young Miller, fact checking and creative assistanceHayden Molinarolo, original music and sound designMike Martin Media, editingSophia Passantino, social mediaLexie O'Brien and Erik Buschardt, website supportPaula Crews, creative vision and strategic supportSpecial thanks to Ray Irving and his team at WashU Olin’s Center for Digital Education, including our audio engineer, Austin Alred.

Turns out, it’s hard to differentiate one cow from another—harder than you might have thought, in any case. And that idea was at the core of the company Mark Pydynowski formed, and the technology his firm was developing.Investors seemed excited about his cow-identifying technology. Government regulators seemed excited. Then, some of the reality started to set in. The tech was reliable in a lab, but not in the field. The cattle industry was decidedly not excited about it. Narrow margins in the food industry didn’t favor the cost of the technology.And suddenly, investors weren’t excited.Their venture capital investor pushed back its closing date for a funding round — and the layoffs began. Then, Pydynowski’s firm had to pivot: As it turns out, it’s harder to identify one mouse from another than you might think. A new business plan emerged with upsides exactly where the cow-identifying version of the technology had downsides.Mice are used in drug development where margins are bigger and budgets are huge. Mice have to be tracked properly to track the data, so the industry needed this tech. Working in cleanrooms and laboratory environments, the tech was more reliable. Plus, the tech was transferable—for tracking fish, artwork, inmates, for example.“Every day I'm saying if we're not dead, we're still alive,” said Pydynowski, BSBA ’04. And now he has to re-sell everyone involved in the mouse version of the technology. And while that work was underway, the firm had difficulties with manufacturing the mouse ID hardware, requiring a 100% recall. Revenue was delayed, again. Pydynowski was fired.  How do you decide how to move forward after you’re fired? Do you make it easy or hard? Do you help the company and move on? What did Pydynowski learn along this bumpy road? How has he used it going forward?RELATED LINKSVideo recording, panel discussion, “The other F word”More product management insights from Mark PydynowskiMore about Dedric Carter’s vice chancellor role at WashUCREDITSThis podcast is a production of Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis. Contributors include:Katie Wools, Cathy Myrick, Judy Milanovits and Lesley Liesman, creative assistanceJill Young Miller, fact checking and creative assistanceHayden Molinarolo, original music and sound designMike Martin Media, editingSophia Passantino, social mediaLexie O'Brien and Erik Buschardt, website supportPaula Crews, creative vision and strategic supportSpecial thanks to Ray Irving and his team at WashU Olin’s Center for Digital Education, including our audio engineer, Austin Alred.