Dr. Tom Epperson serves as President of InnerWill Leadership Institute, which works with companies to navigate challenge and achieve success through values-based leadership. In this presentation from Tugboat Institute Summit 2020, Tom shares the origin story of InnerWill, offering insight into the transformation of the family-owned Luck Companies, and describes the process and impact of integrating and operationalizing values-based leadership.

Tugboat Institute Founder & CEO Dave Whorton continues his conversation with Dr. Gary Kunkle, a leading academic researcher in the area of sustained company growth over time.

Bill Roark, CEO and Co-Founder of Torch Technologies, has built a remarkable Evergreen® company in Huntsville, Alabama, with a deep commitment to service. From very humble origins, Bill has been driven to create opportunity and give back, inspiring his team to do the same. In this presentation from Tugboat Institute Summit 2020, Bill shares the path that took him from a tar-paper shack to become Co-Founder and CEO of a now $400 million defense contracting company.

Dr. Gary Kunkle is a leading academic researcher in the area of sustained company growth over time. In this interview with Dave Whorton, Founder and CEO of Tugboat Institute, Gary offers insight into several of the key variables that set sustained growth companies apart and perspective on the role these businesses play in the economy and in communities.

Alissa Leinonen is the award-winning Founder & CEO of Seattle’s largest and longest running woman-owned catering and boxed-lunch company, Gourmondo Co. What began as a small, four-table lunch spot in Pike Place Market over 20 years ago is now a leader in the Pacific Northwest catering industry. There is much about Alissa and her success that is remarkable, but perhaps most inspiring is her commitment to People First—to her family, her employees, and her community. In this presentation from Tugboat Institute Summit 2020, Alissa describes how that commitment to People First has guided her throughout her journey as an entrepreneur and through the challenges of the COVID period, when over 24-hours in the early days of the pandemic she saw 80 percent of her business disappear. Alissa’s remarkable pivot to serve her community and save her business is an inspiring Evergreen success story.

Navigating the wake of the COVID pandemic will continue to present challenges and uncertainty for Evergreen businesses. In this period, it can be helpful to look to leaders who have persevered through difficulty and maintained a focus on their purpose and their people. In this welcome presentation from Tugboat Institute Summit 2020, Dave Whorton, Founder and CEO of Tugboat Institute, offers insight into George Washington’s exemplary life and career and shares inspiration from this early Evergreen leader.

Jeff Patterson, CEO of Gaggle, has unique insight into the experience of students’ online lives in today’s remote learning landscape. Gaggle serves school districts around the country through the development and management of a digital student safety net and trained safety experts that schools use to monitor activity on devices and apps, alerting schools to the possibility of students harming themselves or others. In this presentation from Tugboat Institute Summit 2020, Jeff encourages parents and employers of parents to be particularly attentive to the mental health and well-being of children in the academic year ahead. As students face the loss of school and all-important social connections, he offers valuable perspective to help families and employers navigate this period and understand what’s at stake in this unprecedented time.

How would you finance an acquisition? Deplete your cash flow? Take out a bank loan? Ignore the opportunity to avoid risk? In this 5-minute presentation from Tugboat Institute Summit 2019, Ami Kassar, founder and CEO of MultiFunding LLC, and author of The Growth Dilemma, presents another—less well-known—option for funding growth.

With the privilege of owning and operating a multi-generational family business comes tremendous responsibility to educate children in the family about the business and wealth management. This panel discussion from the Tugboat Institute Summit 2018, moderated by Dave Whorton, highlights “what not to do” and draws on the expertise of leading family office and multi-generational business experts Spencer Burke, Executive Vice President, St. Louis Trust Company; Kim Sheehy, Vice President, Fidelity Family Office Services; and Loren Feldman, Senior Editor, Forbes.