The Entrepreneur's Ethic

In this podcast, I try a new format, a solo riff on mentoring. Last week’s podcast on talent; how to attract it and how to keep it, resonated. So, I’ll do a deeper dive into mentoring through the lens of three decisions I’ve made, one practical, one principled, and one whimsical or weird. www.kevinkimle.com

Matt Pozel is an Associate at the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation in Kansas City, Missouri, which provides access to opportunities that help people achieve financial stability, upward mobility, and economic prosperity. He is deeply knowledgeable about Ewing Kauffman’s story and legacy, and I enjoyed insight that Kauffman offers us on attracting and developing talent and translating business succe...

One of the Entrepreneurs featured in my upcoming book, The Entrepreneur’s Ethic , is Ewing Kauffman. Kauffman founded Marion Laboratories, a pharmaceutical business, in Kansas City in 1950. By the 1980s, Marion was a billion-dollar business. But a non-pharmaceutical piece of Kauffman’s legacy is in professional baseball, and this case study will dive into one of the most interesting experiments in...

Agricultural entrepreneur Zack Smith is bringing ancient agricultural ideas into the present time at his startup, Stockcropper . Combining livestock and crop farming is ancient. A robotic barn with multiple species and a creative strip cropping method? That's new. We discussed three decisions, one practical, one principled and one weird. There’s Rock ‘n’ Roll, whiskey and Twitter stories you d...

Agricultural entrepreneur Harry Stine has worked over his decades on another core agricultural technology, the seed, at Stine Seed Company . He started breeding soybeans before there was intellectual property protection for open-pollinated crops like soybeans. Today, his business is the largest independent seed company in the U.S. This is the fourth installment of my exploration of Ethic 6: Enjoy...

Serial entrepreneur Colin Hurd has worked on much more modern tools for agriculture and beyond. His most recent business, MACH , develops technology for solutions in perception, navigation, route planning, monitoring, and connectivity. If it’s off-road and autonomous, Colin is probably working on it. This is the third installment in my exploration of historic entrepreneur John Deere and the way he...

In this week’s podcast, I interview Deere historian and archivist Neil Dahlstrom about John Deere and his legacy. Neil describes John Deere as a frontier entrepreneur archetype. You’ll enjoy learning about what he means by this and how a frontier mindset might be useful for you today. This is the second installment in my exploration of Ethic 6: Enjoy the Edge, as exemplified by historic entreprene...

One of the Entrepreneurs featured in my upcoming book, The Entrepreneur’s Ethic, is John Deere, the historic agricultural entrepreneur. Deere’s fame and fortune resulted from his work innovating the plow over decades, that most ancient of agricultural tools. There are seven parts of The Entrepreneur’s Ethic. Deere’s work exemplifies Ethic 6: Enjoy the Edge. This is the truth-seeking-orientation of...

This week’s episode is a great conversation with Jon Housholder . Jon is co-founder, co-owner, director, editor and producer with Unrivaled Films . Unrivaled Films has produced critically acclaimed documentaries for major streaming services, network television docuseries, viral music videos, and nationally televised commercial branding ventures all around the world. He is a three-time Emmy Award w...

 This week’s episode is a great conversation with ⁠Derral Eves⁠ . Derral is one of the world’s top YouTube and online video marketing experts. As an example, he’s coached and worked with ⁠MrBeast⁠ , whose ⁠YouTube channel⁠ is considered to be the most-subscribed channels whose owner is an individual. There are seven parts of The Entrepreneur’s Ethic, as discussed in my upcoming book. This episode...

This week, I explore the entrepreneurial legacy of Walt Disney with David Bossert. David is an award-winning artist, filmmaker, and author. He is a veteran of The Walt Disney Company, and a Disney historian, and an authority on Disney art and animation history. We discuss Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, as a book David wrote about it was the primary source for last week’s historic case study, what it was...

This is the story of Walt Disney's first breakout animated character. But this character is not a mouse. Disney would eventually envision the business model that guides the business he founded to this day, but this case study explores how early mistakes and business betrayals helped shape his later decisions. And seventy years after these events, Disney (the company) would enter a sports trade...

Kevin explores today’s distilling industry with Rob Taylor, co-founder of Revelton Distillery , a business located in south central Iowa. More alcohol is distilled in Iowa than any other state – by a significant distance actually – but most of it goes into cars as ethanol-blended gasoline. Rob is distilling for a different purpose. They discuss the origin story of the business, Rob’s grain to glas...

Fashion and textiles account for a significant portion of plastic pollution. Kevin and Dr. Luke Haverhals, founder and CEO of Natural Fiber Welding, discuss NFW's plant-based engineered textiles, which are already being used by some of the world's most recognizable brands. This episode is part of Kevin's ongoing examination of historic entrepreneur Francis Cabot Lowell.

Virginia Postrel (vpostrel.com), author of The Fabric of Civilization: How Textiles Shaped the World, joins Kevin in discussion of the importance of textiles in the history of humanity. This episode is part of his ongoing examination of historic entrepreneur Francis Cabot Lowell. www.kevinkimle.com

Francis Cabot Lowell (b. 1775, d. 1817) is one of America's most forgotten entrepreneurs, but is among our most important. Before he established a new way to manufacture textiles — thus influencing the Industrial Revolution — he cut his teeth first as a tradesman, then as a rum distiller. In this episode, Kevin imagines the scenes that shaped his talent for innovation. This is Episode One of a...