Intentional Growth #206: How SRC Holdings Grew 2x in Value After the Last 5 Recessions & Saved $100M Preparing for the Next One
Jack shares how he increased the value of the business by 360,000% since he took a $100k loan in '83 and turned SRC Holdings into a company that now has 1600 employees and $600M in revenue by using open book management (now called the Great Game of Business).
What You Will Learn in Today’s Podcast Interview:
- What is different about the current economic climate compared to past recessions
- How the company’s financials can be used as a game to drive value and company culture
- How the “Report Card” of a business works
- Vanity metrics to watch out for and how to identify KPIs that drive future value
- How a long-term growth mindset can set both you and your employees up for success
- How the open book management approach can accelerate a company’s value growth
- The value of identifying the employee associated with each line on an income statement
- Why you should educate your employees on the financials of your organization
- The financial and personal value of an ESOP
- The “Four Legs of the Stool” small business owners need that they often do not prioritize
- The opportunities that exist if you have cash on the balance sheet in anticipation of economic downturns
- The eight places cash can go to within a company
Podcast Summary:
Jack shares how educating his employees on financial principles and integrating them into the company’s processes allowed them to grow the value of the business into an extraordinary place.
Jack is the author of The Great Game of Business and A Stake in the Outcome. He is also the Founder, President and CEO of SRC Holdings Corporation, a 100% employee-owned remanufacturing firm, where he developed the “open book management” business model (now called the Great Game of Business), which promotes financial transparency with the company’s employees
Under Jack’s leadership and with the “open book management” model, SRC Holdings has owned over 60 businesses, increased its stock value 360,000%, does $600,000,000 in revenue and saved an unbelievable $100 million dollars between the 2009 recession and now in anticipation of the next downturn.
They also doubled the size of the business in the five years after each recession they went through.
I’m excited to share this conversation with you today because the insights into sustainable and long-term growth from The Great Game of Business are invaluable for our current economic moment.
Jack and SRC Holdings empower their employees to understand and participate in the company, creating the opportunity to find new ways to grow the value of the business on top of just growing the net income while creating wealth for everyone involved.
Take The 2-Minute Multiple Choice Assessment To Get Your Intentional Growth Score™ And 1-Page Vision Board.
- Are you company's current initiatives intentionally designed to increase the value of the business?
- Do you know what you want from your business long term and why?
- Do you know what your company is worth?
- Do you know the differences between Management, Family Transitions, PE Firms, ESOPs and Strategic Buyers?
- Does the business have a written strategic plan on how to achieve the desired normalized EBITDA and valuation?
About the Jack Stack:
Jack Stack is the President, Founder, and CEO of a remanufacturing company based out of Springfield, Missouri called SRC Holdings. It is a 100% employee-owned corporation with over 1,200 people employed under their name. He is also the pioneer of a leadership technique known as “open book management”, and is the author of two books: A Stake in the Outcome and its predecessor, The Great Game of Business. Both books are about his unique and eye-opening vision for leadership, which some business owners had deemed “unconventional”.
He has been a contributor for The New York Times and Inc Magazine. He has also served as the world judge for the Ernest and Young Entrepreneur of the Year awards and designed the initial United Way Entrepreneurial Fund for the non-profit community. Fortune Magazine has called him one of the “top 10 minds in small business.” He’s also managed to balance his busy professional life with his family life, being the father of five children and the grandfather of six grandkids.
Jack operates over 30 business units, some of which include joint ventures with Navistar, John Deere, and Case New Holland. Under Jack Stack, SRC Holdings Corporation has received international recognition. It was deemed one of the “Top 100 Companies to Work for in America.” It has also won the Business Enterprise Trust Award and the National Business Ethics Award.
Podcast Interview Quotes:
15:17 – “We do not want leadership to stymie our growth. So in order to teach a leader, why not develop a program where you want everyone to be a leader.” – Jack Stack
28:30 – “What we’ve done, when we’ve transformed our business, when we support a charity (and we do support a lot of them), we give them an income generating idea that they can build on and they can grow on and that they can scale on.” – Jack Stack
35:00 – “If you can convert [a loan] into equity, that is the most incredible return that you could ever, ever imagine. And if you can get people to buy into it, we call it, ‘Get ‘em to the point of getting it.’.” – Jack Stack
49:00 – “If you’re running a six percent and your competition is running a two percent, you know, you’ve got a significant problem that you have to have the courage to be able to fix. And if you fix it, not only does it build the value of the company but it puts more on the net income line and the net income line can be distributed back to the instant gratification, wages, things of that nature.” – Jack Stack
Links and Resources:
Jack Stack and “The Great Game of Business”
Mastering Your Cash Flow Digital Course
Reach out to me if you have questions about the boot camp!
You can also reach out to me via email at rtansom@arkona.io, on my LinkedIn.