Mitzi Perdue
What can a family do to develop and strengthen a culture that will support their deepest goals and values?
Topic Categories:
- Expert – small/family owned businesses and Agriculture
- Her father was co-founder of Sheraton Hotel chain
- Her late husband was Frank Perdue from Perdue Farms (Perdue Farms is the parent company of Perdue Foods and Perdue AgriBusiness, based in Salisbury, Maryland. Perdue Foods is a major chicken, turkey, and pork processing company in the United States.)
*Fee ranges are presented as a guideline only. Speaker fees are subject to change without notice. For an exact quote, please contact your Speaker Exchange Agency representative.
Mitzi Perdue knows that every family business has a culture. The question is, does this culture come about by design or by default? The ones that come about by default rarely support keeping the family business in the family across the generations.
So, what can a family do to develop and strengthen a culture that will support their deepest goals and values?
Mitzi Perdue draws on the experience of her family of origin, the Henderson Estate Company which dates back to 1890 and was the forerunner of the Sheraton Hotels (her father was co-founder of the chain). She also looks to her marital family (she’s the widow of Frank Perdue from Perdue Farms) that began in 1920.
In both cases, family members in each generation put enormous effort into creating and maintaining strong, values-based cultures. Her talks stem from her lifelong observations not only of how her two families have kept together over a combined total of 224 years, but she’s also closely observed how other high net worth families, often ones she’s known since childhood, created and continuously strengthen positive cultures. She’s also observed almost countless cases where families that lacked a supportive culture failed spectacularly.
Mitzi’s talks contain practical tips for embedding a positive culture. She’s been a part of carrying out all of them, and in some cases, creating them. These are tips that work, they’re practical, and they can make a spectacular difference in whether the family continues across the generations, or becomes one of the 70% that fails to pass on their legacy to the next generation.
Mitzi is a businesswoman, author, and a master story teller. She holds degrees from Harvard University and George Washington University, is a past president of the 35,000 member American Agri-Women and was one of the U.S. Delegates to the United Nations Conference on Women in Nairobi. She currently writes for the Academy of Women’s Health, and GEN, Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News.
Most recently, she’s authored Tough Man, Tender Chicken: Business and Life Lessons from Frank Perdue. The book made #5 on Amazon’s Business Biographies, out of a field of 20,000. She’s also the author of, I Didn’t Bargain for This, her story of growing up as a hotel heiress.
A woman of many talents, she also programmed a computer app, B Healthy U, designed to help people track the interactions of lifestyle factors that influence their energy, sleep, hunger, mood, and ability to handle stress. In addition to being a programmer and software developer, Mitzi is also an artist and designer of EveningEggs™ handbags.
In addition, Mitzi the author of more than 1600 newspaper and magazine articles on family businesses, food, agriculture, the environment, philanthropy, biotechnology, genetic engineering, and women’s health.
She was a syndicated columnist for 22 years, and her weekly environmental columns were distributed first by California’s Capitol News and later, by Scripps Howard News Service, to roughly 420 newspapers. For two years she was a Commissioner on the National Commission on Libraries and Information Science.
Mitzi also produced and hosted more than 400 half hour interview shows, Mitzi’s Country Magazine on KXTV, the CBS affiliate in Sacramento, California. In addition, she hosted and produced more than 300 editions of Mitzi’s Country Comments, which was syndicated to 76 stations. Her radio series, Tips from the Farmer to You, was broadcast weekly for two years on the Coast to Coast Radio Network.
What are some of the tips that can enable small companies to grow big? What are the strategies for success that work at every level in an organization and at every size company? Mitzi Perdue’s unique background means she can share success tips and techniques that can change lives and can take members of your audience farther along the road to success. She watched how her father grew the Sheraton hotel chain from one hotel to thousands, and how her late husband, Frank Perdue, grew his poultry company, Perdue Farms, from a father-and-son operation to one that employed 19,000 at the time of his death. At every step of the way, Mitzi observed that both men followed principles in dealing with people that made the men and women they employed willing to go the extra mile. Both men also put extraordinary effort into getting information and,they not only had very little tolerance for yes men, they actively encouraged dissent. And both men were brilliant at thinking what their target was and then figuring out how to get from here to there. Often it meant going way outside their comfort zones and learning new skills, but the pay-off was huge. Mitzi Perdue likes nothing better than sharing the insider secrets for what made these two men a success. She also shares her own experiences as the founder of one of the larger wine grape businesses in California. Mitzi’s insider tips can change lives. Her father used to say that “One good idea can change your life,” and Mitzi’s talk will prove it!
This program is perfect for:
- Entrepreneurs who wants to grow their businesses
- Aspiring leaders who would like to know the charisma techniques that can make people eager to follow them
- Individuals at any point in their careers, who are feeling stuck
The audience will leave with:
- The ability to redefine failure as a springboard to future success
- A surprisingly effective tip for getting more done each day
- Unusual approaches to human relations that really pay off
- Why it’s good to be an informavore. (This is a made-up word, but one that, once they know it, will have a big influence on members of your audience.)
- Why it’s REALLY good to be a ranavore. (Another made up word with a big impact!)
Only 30% of family businesses make it to the 2nd generation, 12% to the 3rd generation, and 3% of all family businesses remain in the family by the 4th generation. The family’s culture is a determining factor in whether a family business continues in the family.
In this very personal talk, Mitzi reveals some of the attitudes and approaches that Frank Perdue used to foster a strong family culture. Interestingly, he felt that creating a culture of values is as important as anything a family business does, and he always made it a priority. “When a family business has a strong culture,” he used to say, “family members are willing to work hard for something higher and more important than just ego or money: the family.”
- Instill the values that make a continuing business possible
- Consciously role-model to strengthen the family culture so the family business remains intact.
- Prepare the next generation for their business and philanthropic responsibilities
The Wall Street Journal reports that 85% of employee turnover comes from a lack of connectedness. One of the secrets of both Mitzi’s father’s and her husband’s success is: they both created a culture of astonishing loyalty where over and over again, people who started their careers with them stayed with them for life. People told her that they didn’t just work for these men, they loved them. Many told her that they cried when each of these men died, and that even many years later, they still miss them. This is important because the cost of losing a $50,000 employee can be $150,000 when you take into account recruiting costs for the replacement and the time it takes to get the new person up to speed.
How did Frank Perdue and Ernest Henderson inspire the kind of loyalty that meant people stayed with them and were willing to go above and beyond in helping the company grow?
In this talk, Mitzi shares some of the factors that made this happen. She got to watch not just what they said, but what they actually did, and although both men were tough-as-nails businessmen, they put extreme effort into personal relations. For them, loyalty was a two-way street, and she has many stories about how both men:
- Used the “personal touch” for developing loyalty.
- Used original and innovative techniques for developing a culture in which people take pride in their work.
- Talked tough, but at heart were over-the-top caring, resulting in unusually high retention.
This program is perfect for:
- Senior management wanting to increase employee engagement
- All managers wanting to improve retention
- Family business looking for ways of leveraging family involvement
The audience will leave with:
- Specific techniques used by Frank Perdue that enabled him to grow his company from a father and son operation to one that today employs 19,000.
- Techniques for inspiring employees to go the extra mile
- Original and innovative techniques for inspiring life-long loyalty
In 1993 something seriously unpleasant happened to Mitzi, and yet today she feels it was an incredible stroke of good luck. During a car accident, she badly ruptured a disc and ended up housebound, unable to walk for almost a year. Surgery completely cured the problem, but during the time of being housebound and in pain, she was looking for something that could take her mind off her back.
The answer was decorating eggs. It’s not an accident she chose this hobby; both Frank and Mitzi enjoyed the humor of the “Chicken Man” being married to “the Egg Lady.”
Back in 1993, Mitzi considered herself the most inartistic person she knew, but a year’s “time out” led to the discovery of an artistic side. With the help of the Art Instruction School’s Correspondence Course, to her intense surprise, she morphed into an artist who typically gets paid $2500 for each of her EveningEggs™
Her spouse program talk is on:
Turning bad luck into good fortune Exploring a really fun art form Showing examples and telling stories about the EggScapes™
Participants in the program will get to handle and even model the different mini-works of art.
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