place i'm going to the university of minnesota and i'm going to be doing several studies and international business the pool like we had twelve applications and these do your three are really worthy of it but i had a real it was a tough vote this year the candidates were unbelievable in terms of their academic their athletic you know we get all these applications for these kids and it's just amazing their accomplishments and you really feel quite in adequate when you read their their stuff they are amazing ok so  to put this event together we received dozens and nominations and the awards committee had their work cut out for them with the amount in the quality of the nominations i also want to give a huge thank to luke morse luke is the guy that between his college studies he shot the film edited and put together the upcoming videos this is the first year we've done a video presentation and luke was instrumental in its production individual business person who shows exemplified business savvy who directly helped in a businesses growth showed ingenuity in an intrapreneur by name is sam leone and i'm the chief operating officer of a mexican restaurant myself and my brothers and sisters operate this company my family and i got started in the business in the early ninety's i had a brother who worked at taco bell through his a young life very young career and  decided to come along with them and so all mine brothers and sisters eventually joined in and come down to one of the restaurants i would say my proudest moment is just taking a step back and watching my and she became one of our shops and then we have our other nephew michael who will be going to america here shortly and so just watching him take the reins and have an interest in the business i would say that's my proudest moment i have a strong affiliation with the united way of washington county i served on the workforce nine years i'm currently sitting on the board of the minnesota restaurant association and i have been so for seven years programs are super important to us because we have one point even outreach programs and so it is part of our core values it is important for us and that we give back and to also be responsible i mean you know hav the next award is we move on to his business of the year in this celebrates the individual business that contributed to our local economy in an outstanding manner showing and exemplified business savvy the winner of this award has closing all the way i don't know very much done with it i still have a little shop down the middle but yes i bought it in ninety nine and his things evolved trying to fix the building i worked on the bottom business the word goes to a local company that has been in business operation for three years or last in has demonstrated one or more of the following exceptional performance in growth outstanding employment practices the community is supporting us and we try to pay it forward and help out with fundraisers for different events through the chamber or any other local  and pliable business so this year we have a new award category highlighting business recycling the award honors a business that has successfully implemented waste management programs by incorporating reduction reuse recycling and buying recycled materials executing an integrated waste management program an ongoing employee education programme for waste reduction efforts hello i'm michael meyer from a watch at white bear we understand that we are receiving an  consultant that was retained by the company was made available to us to help us start the process and we investigated a lot of different options before we settled on the program that we haven't place today and the money savings was tremendous what our initial bill after the tax increase was running right around twenty four to twenty five hundred dollars a month after dark earned over eight now it was about nine hundred seventy dollars a month and we're working even now to fine tune little bit and we see some additional savings coming from the recycling program we set up was not difficult at all we had a lot of help from a lady by the name of jody tate who was a consultant on retainer with the colony through the b recycling program and she was there every step of the way to help us decide which of the many different options orders would work best for us and that once we got it in place it just everything one really well from there we applied for a county grant and we got containers about seven thousand dollars worth of containers that was very easy to buy for and i mean the their customer base so in recognition of the great strides the great strides taken for workplace waste reduction and recycling i present this award to the lodge at white deer congratulations wendy a person who the volunteer of the year is a person who shows outstanding commitment to the chamber's mission and growth with involvement in various committees events and activities with the chamber this individual maintains a true integrity of the chamber by sharing their chamber experience encouraging others to get involved as you can see from the video when he is a very special lady and is someone who holds a special place in many of our hearts we coll magic because things just get done is if magic when wendy is involved if you've been on any committees with wendy you know what i mean just ask the guys on the golf committee when he has served as a chamber board of director and chair the chamber golf committee for several years she's been a wonderful knowledgeable and hardworking friend to the chamber if when he says she'll do something she'll never you'll never have to worry about whether she'll follow through she gives it her hundred percent wendy's energy is contagious and exhausting at the same time we have to wonder when she sleeps as you can see from the video her business deals with changing eyes  attitudes of people that deserve it she is a kind compassionate caring driven in created a wonderful business model helping others to have a sense of belonging and she meant thank you wendy for your dedication and commitment w the last award the legacy of excellence this is for an individual who has a history of demonstrating amazing commitment to our communities through serving others and giving of themselves contributing to community oriented projects and enhanced meant with service towards charities mentoring scholarships hundred eighty and second generation my mom and dad started the business and i started working here when i was fifteen which is a long time ago and i'm down now i've got a third generation sort of working here with taylor the funeral home owners exactly what baby boomers didn't like about funerals and funeral homes and funeral directors so it was filled with a lot of stuff that down us funeral directors don't want to hear and so most my colleagues you it which is also more reason why we try to we try to take all the advice that was in the scene and study and incorporate it not only unsure of who believe here but to incorporate it into the training and the staff to go oh i think i think that's a moving target my proudest moment because there are a lot of things that happened here then there can reform and that proudest moment all the time because we're making impact you might not know this but scott how's the chamber office for two years in a small back office of his funeral home and what was supposed to be a temporary three month use of the facility while we waited for new space to become available became two years and not only did he donate the space but he assumed almost all the costs involved electricity heat more he would not open his way to make us comfortable making modifications to fit the needs of the chamber all of his personal expense he very patient put up with tom and maureen taking advantage of his accommodations while they made while they made me were morial their chamber home his humble graciousness provided a great benefit to the chamber that time scott was the driving force behind the creation of the save the lake campaign he serves as the vice chair on the board of the healthiest foundation and was the chair of the chamber and even served as the prime minister of the winter carnival scott seems to be everywhere and he's involved in a multitude of organizations he was even serving fish one of the local churches in the spring he's also an award winning best selling author i want to know before you go an insider's answers to the most commonly asked questions about death grief and funerals and i do highly recommend the book if you're lucky enough to know scott you know he's a kind generous caring person with a sense of humor that will leave you holding your side from laughter he really missed his calling as a comedian this is short and he really deserves more time but we've got other things to get to so it really is my complete praise your pleasure to present scott mueller with a legacy of excellen to all of our award winners and i would like to ask maureen wants to to ask you to all stay for a few minutes afterwards so she can get photographs please now on to our guest speaker mr george zimmer he's the chairman c e o and founder of generation talks and online rental platform for tuxedoes in suits and z taylor's an on demand taylor network he's also the founder and former c e o and chairman of the men's wearhouse the largest retail retailer of men's tailored suits and dress casual closing clothing in the united states and canada and has been included in fortunes the hundred best companies to work for list in one nine hundred ninety nine he is the father of four children and self described in his linked in profile as a business warrior monk who roots for the underdog he serves on the board of directors for the institute of you know when it sciences and the oakland zoo i have a theory that the bigger the person the nicer they are and he confirms that theory and i think you are really going to enjoy his presentation i warranty it no tough crowd george they're all your well thank you for inviting me here to celebrate your business awards launch and hobby you know people are probably wondering why i am here at white bear lake and it reminds me of a story which is one hundred percent true and took place when i first moved to california about thirty five years ago i read in the paper that the state of california was considering allowing the hunting of bearers black bears with radio collared dawgs now i'm a new resident of california at the time and i noticed that the flag of the state of california has a big bear on it and so i wrote the governor a letter and remember now this is about thirty five years ago and i simply said hey i'm not against hunting but i think that it ought to be more of a sport and the idea that we're treating bears with radio collared dogs just doesn't seem to be fitting a state with the flag with a bear on our flag well i never heard on the governor but i did hear now remember this is thirty five years ago from the n r a and they wrote me and said mr zimmer if you continue with your because i know that you're probably hunters here in minnesota i am not against hunting but i think that we should try to make the our odds of a little more fair for the animals and we should also probably be aware that the n r a is actually controlling the political dialogue in the in the united states on this issue or right having started with something so so great as that let me make it a little lighter so you heard in the introduction i have a new business generation talks we facing some serious issues on i should also point out because i know some people are probably not sure i am not the  but if you ask my my children or my employees they would tell you i am still the most interesting man yahoo so why did i knowing that i'm hearing in minnesota where most of you have a weapon at home while why did i feel the need to tell you that personal story about the n r a well i did because it really is speaks to my entire life whether i'm a businessman or just a a private citizen i try not to do things out of habit i try to use my consciousness to make things better  and i've been asked to comment on this a little bit the same afternoon a subject that i've written some blogs on and then i'm increasingly feeling strongly about which is a subject i call conscious capitalism what it let me start out by saying that i love capitalism i'm proud to be a capitalist and capitalism is the greatest economic engine the world has ever known but if you've ever read the wealth of nations by adam smith the idea that businesses have as their primary mission maximizing short term show shareholder value is is just not in the original documents about capitalism it's something that was introduced in the twentieth century to the united states and in my opinion it has not necessarily served our country as as it should what do i mean well instead of thinking about shareholder capitalism what would happen if we thought about stakeholder capitalism if we said that there are five stakeholder groups in most companies there's the employees the workforce there are the customers who make it all possible but then there are also the vendors to the company which are a do not get the appropriate credit and then there are the communities in which we do business whether where manufacturers or where other business is we all have a carbon footprint an environmental footprint that affects our communities and i think that companies should pay attention to that and then the fifth stakeholder group are the shareholders and i'm not trying to denigrate shareholders i'm just trying to put them in their proper place i believe the job of a c e o and this is by the way not what wall street things which is one of the reasons there are no longer at men's wearhouse is as that  job of a c e o should be to balance the needs of all five stakeholder groups the employees the customers the communities the vendors and ultimately the shareholders why should employees be denied a a living wage or a a modest increase i just so the shareholders current capacity i think that all of us have jobs and all of us would be whop ear if the boss for whom we worked gave a damn about not just how the company's profits were but about how our lives were about whether or not we were able to make ends meet whether or not we were in fact enjoying our jobs why should customers be treated like interchangeable parts churn and burn out about offering customers a good  deal and expecting them to spread your story through word of mouth i really believe that capitalism is in need of modification we don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater but i do believe that if america is going to fulfill its destiny then we should take a serious look at the way we put pressure on our c e o s and it's not just c e o s everybody in this room with the exception of the young scholarship winners probably has a retirement account and most of us probably expect our retirement account manager to maximize the percent return that he generates for us and i'm wondering if any of us have ever thought about the implication of if we say to a a a money manager gee you made eight percent this year the standard poor's was nine percent and your competition across the street got me ten percent i'm going to move my money away from you into somebody that generated a higher return well that sounds good to provisionally but then when you dig down you realize that the way people make a higher return is by exploiting or taking advantage of the other stakeholders who do not have the ability to to challenge what is what is being done so i'd like to just as a a serious note suggest that capitalism is the american system but conscious capitalism is really where we need to move and i think in minnesota more than in most states you understand that  i would like to save i don't know what the time is so i'm not really sure how much time there is ok so i would like to answer your  yes the wedding oh i'm sorry ok so a new year's eve aargh in my new company generation talks as a promotional vehicle i was in times square new york city and i married america's first couple on stage in front of not only the television audience but the million two hundred thousand people that were standing outside in thirty eight degree weather which for you is not that chilly but her fellow horny and it was pretty cold particularly since i wasn't able to wear a coat on stage i had brought two couples to the ceremony and allowed america to vote on their cellphones i had a nice lad supreme court decision would be excited as was i to recognize a gay couple as america's first couple and to my dismay they did not win and so we married the lad teano couple in front of everybody but at midnight at back in our base camp which was the hard rock cafe at forty fourth street and broadway out on top of their sign we took that gay couple out there and had an incredible ceremony i had my high school children with me and they were the only ones comfortable when the husband kissed the husband i think the rest of us are a little uncomfortable with that ok so that was the story from new year's eve i grew up in new york i never went to times square new year's eve other than last year and i will never go again and i don't remember really recommend anybody here go unless you've brought  and plan for how you're going to go to the bathroom when you're locked into a confined area for six or eight hours it's not i didn't have that problem i was had a headquarters but i was wondering what a million people were doing that work eight hours drinking and with no bathrooms ok so now we're down to ten minutes are there any questions yes or graduations thank you very much what art is probably well liked like most everybody here was probably just the desire to get rich  you know before the company went public i knew the company was viable and a public possibility and i knew that at some level i already had wealth but there is nothing like going public and actually getting the money and i should point out that the proceeds from my i p o in ninety two were thirteen million dollars so you don't get rich necessarily on the i p o but you know if your mom ever told you that money doesn't grow on trees that's true and last year the founder of a public company in which case you can have that you have a chance to get to amass wealth because the stock is going up if you're doing your job well so i would do it again in a heartbeat even knowing that  surprising as as it might appear because it is always your best friends who when they work with somebody and you need to be on guard for this i think they can do your job better than you and since o of macy's and we were at a conference and he was asked the question about amazon how concerned he was about amazon and he made an answer that was i didn't think particularly insightful and he talked about how much of his business was done in bricks and mortar in the stores relative to is  online business which is still quite significant there the six largest website in the country but he did not understand that amazon was gunning for him and  it probably really is about ten years and i would say macy's will become just a real estate shell because they've got a lot of valuable real estate and most of us will be shopping with more frequency and amazon if we're not already that the company has virtually unraveled in the three years since that happened but god it was just a bad decision i actually have thought about it and instead of blaming them which is what i was doing for a while i now blame myself and i blame myself because of the hubris that i had i  o and the television spokesperson so the idea that they were going to fire me was impossible what were they going to do for the brand and in fact when they did fire me that's what i said what are you going to do about the brand they were lawyers so they had really thought about it but but but really as opposed to merchants but really it was my own hubris in assuming that because these were hand picked friends and i had worked with them for decades that guy could do anything and they would the board meeting before i was fired the compensation chairman made his report and i had not been briefed on any of it and it was like are when does the compensation chairman make a report without discussing it with the chairman before hand and he was awarding enormous raises to everybody and and then he looked at me and he said in george we haven't forgot about you either and they gave me a large raise and i said out loud and as soon as the words left my voice i knew my career was over and i said i thought you guys knew me you well enough to know i can't be bribed and as soon as i said that i knew that it was just a matter of time and you know i have not had any contact with any of the directors or executives that fired me including people like deep much oprah with whom i was pretty close friends and  you know i just one day i'll get to say to him something that i've been meaning to say for a long time which is karmas a bitch guarantee it but as i said i think last night that would be poking the bear when it there's a start up company doing two million dollars and there's another company doing three and a half billion dollars he better be careful about poking the bear right so the non trademarked line and i'm  considering right now is generation talks we've got you covered so that's that's where i'm at on that and not obviously not quite as good is really not about the creativity it's about the repetition and consistency so a billion dollars behind i guarantee it is a lot more powerful than that one mention of so i went home on and i have two high school age kids and we sat down at dinner my wife and my kids nobody said a word for five minutes and i could  everybody was very uncomfortable now have they had what does this mean a lot of people say well how could they fire you i mean it was your company and you know that's it's a public company it's a long story but here's what i said that night to my children i said look you know doesn't matter who you are even your dad you're going to get knocked down from time to time in life and that doesn't mean that you failed that just means that you have to get back up and reinvent yourself and i said i don't know what i'm going to do right now but i'm not just going to retire and you know drive you guys to school tomorrow i'm going to figure out something else to do and for about well for a month i sat in my backyard and wondered what to do then i tried to buy a division of men's wearhouse which they were reluctant to sell me for i guess obvious reasons and then i stumbled onto this idea of online tuxedo rental and and nine hundred ninety nine when i was at men's and no we were being bombarded by business casual and the resulting  decline in tailored suits sales we started renting tuxedoes in our stores in the first year nine hundred ninety nine we rented one million dollars of  twenty thirteen when i was fired we rented over four hundred million dollars of tuxedoes which constituted three and a half million individual tuxedoes so when the idea presented itself of doing the same exact thing only on larn i had to look up to the heavens and think our i cannot believe my good fortune that i got to do this once before and it was extreme it probably generated half the profit man's where i was by the time they fired me and so now i'm doing it again on line only interestingly enough forty two percent of the when eames now they want to wear suits the suit up wearing is our garment by the way and  i mean what could be more more fortunate then to get to roll up an industry twice once in bricks and mortar and then once online so i have absolutely no complaints about anything and i have said repeatedly that getting fired never been luckiest thing that ever happened to me because when you're the founder there is no graceful exit you can't just say hey fellows i'm outta here you do it i'm in the clothing business tuxedo business i'm a raider fan and you know i prefer blue jeans and sweats to when i'm wearing right now so  well the mate i was twenty four years old i had seven thousand dollars and i had to add a couple of jobs and didn't find them very satisfying and i i was a student a college student in the sixty's than a hippie and and i didn't want to be a businessman because i didn't think the values of business man were consistent with my own and but i didn't like working for other people either and so i finally decided that i would have to try to follow my own dream and the only thing that i had a contact in was clothing my father had worked for robert hall clothes i think they were here in minneapolis and so i had some connections there but you know i know i never went into the business because i love clothing and in fact i went into the business to be that just because i didn't want to have a boss and came to find out that what i love about business are the people that make a business  real and the whole idea of being authentic and creating motive motivated employees is still exciting to me and that's exactly what i'm doing in my second act well you know i you know this is sort of tongue in cheek but not completely right i think that if i were fifty i was like sixty five when i got fired so but i would find somebody who is like twenty and i would ask them what they think about what business opportunities there are because i tell high school and college kids when i speak there that when i went to college i think it was important to go to college but today if you've got a good idea for an app then you should actually to online and it's not going to last forever it's kind of like industrial revolution two point zero and so you know i don't have a technology background  but if if and most people who are baby boomers don't so my recommendation would be to find a young person and provide the money and let them up provide the energy an idea i'm talking bridge and mortar in terms of stores not in terms of offices but i do think it's it's obvious humorous in my new business which i've been in copley years  almost everybody in the office was told not by me of course but was told that they could take a day a week and work from home so i've been battling this for over a year and i've been saying well i understand you can do your work at home but what about the collaboration that comes when we're all together obviously that wasn't meant much for the but i am happy to report that in my new business which has a two hundred fifty thousand square foot distribution center in louisville and a ten thousand square foot office in oakland i am giving everybody their dream and i've sublet it the office in oakland and said you can work from home every day and they're not sure what that means we're saving a half a million dollars by letting people work for mom i know you have to get back to work so anybody that has to run just run at you ok to no no you're just you are wrapping up and then you can though you want to go to a movie dictator and i've entered politics is a different animal because it's it's hard to get people to reach consensus on things whereas in business it's a lot easier what i'd like to see is i'd like us to throw out the public education system that we now use and build a completely new public education system because i'm very worried that income inequality is also reflected in private schools charter schools versus public schools and the reason i bring this up in your manufacturing question is because not everybody should go to college not everybody wants to read and write and learn that way a lot of people learn going to make a lot more money but provide for their family that way so i'd like to see that will it happen not with the political leaders that we have today i don't think you george we really enjoyed it and i want to thank all of our award winners student scholarship winners and to you for attending today i also want to acknowledge tom now here he is the chamber's executive director he's done an amazing job for our chamber we're very thankful for his leadership and direction he wants to say two words i don't limit you i'm going to give you the hook right i want to make sure that everybody knows about the incredible gall program that we've got coming up by a golf tournament and you should check on that it's going to be on the