The only real answer to a bad day is a question: now what?
In this episode of The Business & Faith Podcast, John Staub talks with Derek Volk, president and CEO of Volk Packaging in Biddeford, Maine, the corrugated box company his grandfather founded 59 years ago. Derek explains why he tells his team that the customer pays them, not him, and what happened when his company spent its first Volk Cares Day serving the community: of 106 employees, two did not show. He describes running a business like a baseball season, where a lost customer and a major new account can land in the same week. He talks openly about the faith behind his calm, the debt he took on for two large machines just as the economy slowed, and the question he asks at work and at home: now what? It is a practical case for calculated risk from the author of Go for Third.
Chapters:
00:00 The Customer Pays Your Paycheck
00:26 Meet Derek Volk
01:11 The People Make the Company
03:37 Known for Loving Your Neighbors
04:40 The First Volk Cares Day
11:00 Hiring for Attitude
12:36 The Resource You Cannot Make More Of
17:01 Running a Business Like a Baseball Season
20:24 Faith in a Bigger Picture
23:11 Upset Is Not the Same as Freaking Out
25:10 After the Boom: The Mouse in the Milk
27:30 When Life Gets Hard: Now What?
30:02 Go for Third: Taking Calculated Risks
34:08 Closing Thoughts
Links:
Derek Volk: / derekvolk
John Staub: / john-staub
Travis Hall: / travis-m-hall
Dataliction: https://dataliction.com
Go for Third by Derek Volk: https://goforthird.com
Volk Packaging: https://volkboxes.com
Honor a veteran on the Volk Packaging Heroes Wall: https://volkboxes.com/heroes-wall
The Business & Faith Podcast—learning from leaders whose experience and faith shape how they grow their organizations on purpose. New episodes weekly. Brought to you by Dataliction. Follow us and keep the conversation going. Enjoy this episode? Leave a review and share it with someone who needs to hear it!