At the Value Creators, we favor a much different business model than the one that’s traditionally taught in business school. Our model focuses on value, understanding that value is experienced by customers, and that it’s entirely subjective. You can’t put numbers on it, you can’t capture it in a plan, it’s not something that can be distributed to shareholders. It’s not a thing of any kind.

We build the Value Creators system on the firm foundation of economics. In this episode, we’re going to explore the basis of sound economic theory and a sound understanding of value. A key word is subjectivism, which may sound very wonky, but it’s the gateway to understanding value.

To talk about value and subjectivism, our guest today is Professor Mark Packard. He’s the Research Director at the Madden Center for Value Creation, part of the College Of Business Management at Florida Atlantic University. He’s the author  He’s the author of Entrepreneurial Valuation, An Entrepreneur’s Guide To Getting Into The Minds Of Customers.

What is capital? Capital is value.

And since all value is subjective, capital can be understood as the value subjectively attributed to any resources available to a business for production. That means it includes capital goods like machines and offices, intangibles like brands and lines of code, and people and their skills and knowledge, both tacit and explicit, accumulated and
evolving.

In this episode, Peter Lewin, Professor of Economics in the Naveen Jindal School of Management at the University of Texas at Dallas, talks about capital, defining it, understanding it, optimizing it, identifying its role in business, and how it becomes valuable.

0:00 | Introduction to capital value

0:45 | Introducing guest: Peter Lewin

2:46 | Capital and Flow of value

10:52 | Inbound & outbound flow thru time

14:28 | Net Present Value

15:52 | Free cash flow vs. EVA.

22:51 | Value drivers

25:43 | Advertising campaigns

27:20 | Interest elasticity of present value

31:24 | About business advice

33:16 | Connecting EVA. with value drivers

38:15 | Sports analogy

The vast majority of businesses – the very backbone of the economic system – are derogatorily defined as small and medium enterprises by government statisticians. A better mental model is that they are the champions of value creation. 

Hermann Simon is a renowned management thinker and author, chairman of the consulting firm Simon-Kucher and the founder and leader of the research project he calls Hidden Champions. Hidden Champions uncovered the data demonstrating that – compared to the larger and more publicized companies of the major stock indexes like the S&P 500 - small and medium businesses are typically more profitable, more efficient (higher revenue per employee), faster growing, better at investing in and producing innovation, and better at making a return on that innovation, i.e. creating new value.

For full show notes visit, thevaluecreators.com

Continuous change is a feature of the adaptive entrepreneurial model of value creation. Digital marketing is a perfect illustration. By definition, it’s a field characterized by feedback loops and the only way to stay ahead is fast response and a willingness to learn and change.

Kevin Roy, CEO of the digital marketing agency Green Banana has been a pioneer in this field and stayed ahead as a leader. 

For full show notes visit, thevaluecreators.com

Is there such a thing as leadership in business? Or is it a manufactured concept to sell books and executive education courses from big-name business schools?

To shed some light, we talked to Adam Bryant, who has made leadership into his own field of expert knowledge and professional practice. He did so by interviewing over 1000 business leaders, both CEO’s and other senior executives, in multiple industries and stages of business growth and at every scale. He’s published his findings on LinkedIn and in the “Corner Office” column he created for The New York Times.  His latest book on the subject is The Leap To Leader: How Ambitious Managers Make The Jump To Leadership. He is the senior managing director and a partner at the Exco Group, an executive leadership development firm.

For full show notes visit, thevaluecreators.com

Successful innovation is a combination of deep customer knowledge and deep technical knowledge. Both are critical, and it is the unique combination of them that becomes a marketplace advantage by serving customers by solving an important problem for them with a differentiated, preferred, and technically superior approach.

Reza Farahani, the founder of WFHomie, is a data scientist who, working at top global companies in tech and consulting, developed great insights into the way data can reveal human motivations and patterns in customer behavior.

Equipped with deep technical knowledge in data science and analytics as well as deep customer knowledge, he speaks on how we can apply this to startups to solve new problems for our customers, create healthy and productive teams, and create real innovation.

For full show notes, visit: https://thevaluecreators.com

You need two types of knowledge to succeed in the business world: specialized technical knowledge and deep customer knowledge. This will allow you to create uniquely valued experiences tailored to your customers and thus build a thriving business.

Jason LaBaw, as the founder and CEO of Bonsai Media Group and a pioneer in web development, AdWords, Google Analytics, and Umbraco development, has accumulated over 18 years of industry experience, client service, and strategic leadership in the digital world and has become an expert in combining technical and customer knowledge to scale.

In this episode, Jason touches on how he believes the future will look and what principles he is certain will be invaluable to thrive in a futuristic economy, such as empathy, planning, and budgeting.

For full show notes, visit: https://thevaluecreators.com

In a complex world full of uncertainty, all businesspeople and entrepreneurs can draw guidance from shared mental models that help us make better choices. John M. Jennings took this advice to heart and developed a latticework of mental models for financial investing and any other business discipline, which he explained and expanded on in his book The Uncertainty Solution: How To Invest With Confidence In The Face Of The Unknown.

John is a premier thought leader in the wealth management industry and President and Chief Strategist of St. Louis Trust and Family Office, a $15 billion national investment firm. He is also an adjunct professor at Washington University's Olin School of Business in its Wealth and Asset Management Graduate Program.

In this episode, he not only teaches why we always look for certainty and how we can be aware of certain pitfalls we fall into while dealing with uncertainty but also how to navigate uncertainty to not only come out unscratched but profit from it.

For full show notes, visit: https://thevaluecreators.com

Curt Carlson is both the leading theorist and the leading practitioner of the economic science of value creation – the practice and discipline firms follow for the profitable generation of new, more valued experiences for customers. He teaches value creation in his work for Universities such as WPI, provides hands-on training workshops for companies through his Practice Of Innovation consultancy, and built a track record of marketplace success as CEO of SRI.  

He joined The Value Creators podcast to explain value creation as a business model. He recently explained the theory and practice of value creation in a LinkedIn post titled The Customer Centric Enterprise, which we repeat here. 

For full show notes, visit thevaluecreators.com/business-podcasts/tvc-1/

Welcome to the Value Creators podcast, the ultimate destination for business enthusiasts seeking to unlock the secrets of success through the lens of Austrian economics. Join Hunter Hastings and a variety of insightful guests as they delve into engaging conversations with business owners and esteemed practitioners from leading business schools.

In each episode, the Value Creators podcast goes beyond the surface-level discussions of traditional business strategies and explores the profound impact of Austrian economics on the world of entrepreneurship. Drawing upon the rich principles and theories of this school of thought, our host uncovers hidden gems and actionable insights to help listeners improve their businesses.

Join us every week for a new exploration into value creation!