This Is the Good Stuff
In A Sea of Bad News, Here Are 8 Things to Brighten Your Day
It’s no mystery that Quest President Tom Bilyeu has loftier goals than creating America’s favorite protein bar. His overarching goal is to end metabolic disease across the world. Goals on such a grand scale can’t succeed overnight – the sentiment has to start somewhere small. After all, there’s a reason why the famous Sun Tzu quote “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step” still exists 2500 years after it was uttered. While there’s still much work to be done in order to achieve that goal, the world is filled with businesses who are thinking of something loftier than profits – they’re remembering that adding value to life trumps all else. After all, capitalism only exists if there are customers and if there are no customers, there are no businesses. Here are some companies, large and small, that are doing it right.
Rosa’s Fresh Pizza:
This establishment began a program which allows customers to come in and pay for a slice of pizza. Nothing special there, what is special, however, is that the owner is a former Wall Street stock researcher who quit his job to open a pizza joint with the goal of feeding the homeless. Customers can buy a slice for $1 and put their name up on the wall. Homeless and under-employed people can come in, take a post-it off the wall and redeem it for a hot meal. When asked why he left his well-paid job, Wartman stated, “If you find you have reached a plateau, I encourage you to quit. Start something new for yourself. Focus and persist. You’ll be glad you did.” This is the next evolution of the tip jar.
Jeep-Chrysler-Dodge City of Mckinney Texas:
When the owner of the Jeep-Chrysler-Dodge City of Mckinney dealership, Gus Rodriguez noticed his salesmen, Mike Bell, was looking under the weather, he urged his employee to go home. Bell hesitated, but ultimately listened to his boss. It was the best decision he could have made as he collapsed on the way to the hospital. Hospital officials stated that if he wasn’t already on his way there’s a good chance he wouldn’t have survived. To top everything off, Gus helped Mike Bell pay for his 14 day hospital stay and recovery period. This guy is best boss ever material.
Endeavor Air:
When a family missed their connecting flight en route to say their final farewell to a family member, the Captain of their flight, Adam Cohen did something extraordinary. He noticed a commotion in the terminal as he was taking off and asked why the family was so distraught. Upon hearing their story he said to hell with protocol and turned the flight around so they could board and make it to the funeral. Did he get in trouble for his brazen move? Thankfully, no – instead he received praise for his excellent customer service. It’s nice to see that schedules, operating costs and procedure don’t take precedence over basic human decency.
Gravity Payments:
There’s a lot of talk about wealth disparity these days and almost every worker has wondered what their CEO makes compared to them. If you found out the difference, you’d probably quit on principal. Instead of allowing his employees to resent him, CEO of Gravity Payments, Dan Price, slashed his $1.1 million dollar a year salary to just $70,000 and raised the rest of his staff’s salary to the same amount. Price made headlines with his ballsy move and the super wealthy predicted his downfall for such a foolish maneuver. Well, it seems they were wrong. Instead of crashing and burning, Dan’s customer retention rate jumped from 91% to 95%, a whopping 37 points better than the national average. He’s also created 10 new positions in the company and continues to be assaulted with resumes. Price says that higher productivity from better paid employees will translate to major profits in the long run. Hey world, more of this, please!
Netflix:
CEO and billionaire Reed Hastings urges each of his workers to take AT LEAST 6 weeks of PAID vacation every year. Technically, the employees of the streaming juggernaut have an open vacation policy, but Hastings, like a true baws, leads by example. The outspoken CEO says that six weeks of vacation is helpful to humans and he wishes more of his employees would follow his lead. If that’s not enough, Netflix offers UNLIMITED parental leave during an employee’s first year of parenthood. This may seem shocking to American readers, but almost every country in the world has some form of paid maternity leave except Papua New Guinea and…the United States. Oops.
Imprimis Pharmaceuticals:
Imprimis CEO Mark Baum was so offended by “pharma bro” and terrible human being Martin Shkreli’s price gouging of the AIDS treatment drug Daraprim, that he offered his alternative for only a dollar. Shkreli’s Turing Pharmaceuticals created a PR and social media megastorm when they bought the rights to the life-saving drug and upped the price from $13 a pill to $750 a pill. You know, just because. Thankfully Mark Baum isn’t just out to turn a profit and understands the true essence of a pharmaceutical company, “recent generic drug price increases have made us concerned and caused us to take positive action to address an opportunity to help a needy patient population.” Shkreli, on the other hand, was recently arrested on fraud charges and will most likely end up squandering his fortune defending himself in the court of law.
Betlyn Heating and Cooling:
wner of the small Heating and Cooling service, Paul Betlyn, made a house call to repair the heat in customer Bridget Stevens’ home. She had two small kids and mentioned her husband wasn’t home because he’s serving in the military overseas. Upon hearing this Paul made the repairs, got the heat up and running again and handed the bill to Mrs. Stevens. When she looked at it, she thought he made a mistake. The bill was only $1 – Betlyn agreed he made a mistake and said it was a joke, the repairs were free. He thanked her for her husband’s service and left without payment. (grabs tissue, calls mom)
TwinMed LLC and Brius Healthcare Services:
The owner of the largest chain of nursing homes in California, Schlomo Rechnitz bought a hot meal for 400 service men and women munching on field rations in the Shannon airport in Ireland. He told them they could spend up to $50 per person at the most expensive restaurant in the airport. The bill? A cool $20,000. When asked why he did it, Rechnitz replied, “You guys risk your lives to protect me and my family. I just wanted to say thank you from the bottom of my heart.” It’s good to see that some people don’t forget that humans are at the heart of everything.
