The Strategic Pivot: How Arbill's CEO Julie Copeland Revolutionized Workplace Safety

Julie Copeland’s journey to becoming CEO of Arbill is one of transformation, resilience, and strategic reinvention. Founded in 1945 by her grandfather as a laundry business for industrial gloves, Arbill evolved into a leader in workplace safety solutions.

Julie grew up witnessing both the challenges and opportunities of entrepreneurship, with her father navigating a difficult path and her mother charting her own creative course. After forging her own path in data warehousing, Julie joined Arbill in 1997, eventually taking the reins in 2005.

Faced with a transactional business model and stiff competition, she pivoted Arbill toward a bold new vision: helping companies build world-class safety environments through innovative products, education, and consulting. She transformed a traditional low margin business into a high margin solutions company with deep, loyal client relationships. Today, Arbill partners with organizations to not only meet but exceed their safety goals, ensuring that every worker goes home safe.

In this episode, Julie shares her insights on leadership, innovation, and how focusing on mission and purpose can drive both impact and growth.

We’ll cover:

• The pivotal strategic shift that transformed Arbill’s business model 
• How Arbill developed a structured rhythm for strategy execution 
• Why aligning to a higher purpose is consistent with achieving higher profits
• Ultimately, Julie’s transformational strategy points to the power of combining three important strategic concepts: picking the right Total Addressable Market, appealing to a higher value Job to be Done, and serving customers with higher customer lifetime value. In other words, find the right number of valuable, underserved customers

Let’s dive in with Julie Copeland.

Thanks for listening! This episode is brought to you by Kaihan Krippendorff of Outthinker Networks, Verne Harnish of Scaling Up, and the team at Growth Institute.