CHAPTER 1
TYRANNY OF THE PENNIES: FROM CORPORATE AMERICA TO A NEW CALLING
The seminal moment of my professional career arrived on a cold and wet Christmas Eve in 2008 while my wife and I were visiting her family in Philadelphia. The nation was amid one of its worst financial crises in history, and the Great Recession was looming. Families were losing their homes, and people stood helpless as they watched their financial portfolios take a nosedive. (We now know that the loss to consumers would eventually equate to trillions of dollars.) Meanwhile, Wall Street and private investors were doing all they could to preserve their financial interests and, by all accounts, still managing to make a killing. At the time, I was the executive vice president of Aramark and president of Aramark Uniform and Career Apparel Group, then a thirteen-billion-dollar corporation with more than 250,000 employees worldwide. We were profitable, with tremendous cash flow, yet beholden to the “opinions from the street.” In the previous year, Aramark had completed a merger with an investor group, creating a private equity structure in which I and 250 other senior Aramark managers were also investors. As it was our first year under private equity, we needed to make sure we hit our financial forecast. All business leaders at that time were trying to get a handle on how the recession would affect business, and it was no different for me at Aramark. As unemployment began to spike from 5 to 10 percent during this period,1 our sales and services were dramatically reduced because we provided uniforms to people who worked at companies. The fewer people working, the fewer uniforms were needed. Our 1
