Archive - April 2020 | Mike Mallaro

The Bright Light of Optimism

Posted On: April 25, 2020 by Mike Mallaro in: Social commentary, VGM

The pandemic has cast a dark cloud of doom over much of the world. We’re largely locked down in our dwelling places, using Zoom or Ring Central by day and Netflix or Hulu by night – washing hands (again), avoiding people, being skeptical and generally existing in a dark place. Which is why today I’m writing about a bright light. One of the habits I’ve developed as CEO of VGM Group is that I send a congratulatory card and children’s book each time a VGM employee-owner...

A Message to VGM Employee Owners: Create Your Future

Posted On: April 23, 2020 by Mike Mallaro in: Employee Ownership, VGM, Work Culture

A stressed case manager in Springfield is looking to send out a referral on a complicated injured worker case. We can help. A guy in the New York suburbs is waiting on the CPAP cleaner he ordered. We’ll get it there. A practice in Montgomery is looking to secure insurance coverage to protect their business. We have a solution. A DME in Minneapolis has put out respiratory equipment and is hoping it gets collected today and paid to them tomorrow. We’re on it. A firm in Dubuque...

The Power of One: Provide Meaningful, Memorable Service

Posted On: April 22, 2020 by Mike Mallaro in: Employee Ownership, VGM, Work Culture

Customers demand compelling solutions to solve their challenges and relieve their burdens, provided at a fair price. It’s easy in business to get hung up on the transaction part of the equation, and forget what makes your offering compelling. If the best reason that we give people to do business with us is that we offer the best price, then the relationship that we have with them is merely transactional. Here at VGM, we strive to create a community for our customers to belong to, where we...

The Power of One: Find Fun in Your Day

Posted On: April 21, 2020 by Mike Mallaro in: VGM, Work Culture

Van Miller, the founder of our company, always made a point of telling us the same thing before any big event or important meeting with customers: “Have fun!” Van liked to have a good time around the office, so it could be easy to miss the greater point of his “have fun” instruction. He definitely wanted each of us to have some fun every day, but his real desire was that each of our customers would have the kind of impactful, positive, and compelling experience that they would...

Tags: fun, work, community, family, vgm

The Power of One: Cheer Each Other On

Posted On: April 20, 2020 by Mike Mallaro in: VGM, Work Culture

VGM is in the service and solutions business, and that means that what we do is all about people. VGM has always been a place where extraordinary people give their all every day to provide extraordinary service to our community of customers, clients, patients, caregivers, and vendor partners. We encourage the extraordinary. There are a lot of companies out there that work very hard to maintain sameness within their workforce. We take a different approach. VGM strives to be a workplace that recognizes,...

The Power of One: Protect Our Company

Posted On: April 19, 2020 by Mike Mallaro in: Employee Ownership, VGM, Work Culture

Being a business owner isn’t easy. If it were, I suppose everyone would do it. There’s a lot of risk that comes with owning a business instead of just working for one, and a lot of hard work and sleepless nights that go into protecting what you’ve worked so hard to build. If you want to continue serving your customers and offering them solutions, then you need to be vigilant against the things that might stop you from doing that. In our business, the most obvious threat is cybercrime....

The Power of One: Own Your Ownership

Posted On: April 18, 2020 by Mike Mallaro in: Employee Ownership, VGM, Work Culture

Van G. Miller, Jim Walsh, and John Deery, Jr. are the founding fathers of VGM. They started this company back in 1986, and they nurtured it with determination, passion, and courage. In 2008, they made the monumental decision to sell their company to its employees, and this choice has resulted in over a decade of boundless opportunity, prosperity, and meaning for everyone fortunate enough to be a part of the VGM family. Ownership is more than shares and dollars. It’s a mindset, a point-of-view,...

Tags: esop, ownership, vgm, ownit

Values: The Power of One

Posted On: April 16, 2020 by Mike Mallaro in: Employee Ownership, VGM, Work Culture

Our companies are the sum of the people who work for them and the customers that they serve. Further, people have wants and needs that go beyond getting and spending. They aren’t just looking for a paycheck every week or a non-descript service to buy. Today, more than ever, they’re looking for a community that they can belong to full of people that share their values. Values are a powerful part of our identity, both individually and corporately. If they’re taken out of the equation,...

Thank You

Posted On: April 15, 2020 by Mike Mallaro in: Healthcare, Opinions

I’d like to interrupt my Power of One blog posts series this week for some well-deserved thank yous. In the midst of everything that’s going on right now, it can be easy to be so focused on protecting ourselves and our families that we forget about the brave people risking their own health every day to help us do it. So, in no particular order: · Thank you to the hospitals for going above and beyond, for working long hours, and for bravely facing the worst that this epidemic...