Jim Estill

When Jim Estill took control of Danby Appliances, he didn’t see a  70-year old business making washing machines, dishwashers, fridges, and air conditioners, instead, Jim saw an opportunity to innovate. By changing the way the company thought, he was able to completely revitalize the company in less than three years, leading to a spike in Canadian revenues. Jim created an environment where employees are encouraged to think differently and experiment with products and processes.

His ability to encourage this mindset has led to breakthrough ideas like Danby’s Parcel Guard — the first smart mailbox to hit the market — and his new company ShipperBee — a crowd-sourced way to ship packages. In this presentation, Jim shows audiences how they can apply his entrepreneurial mindset to disrupt their industry. 

Key Takeaways:
• How to evaluate risk and take action to eliminate unprofitable channels. 
• Strategically develop an ecosystem where value is created for all within it. 

Based on his TEDx talk of the same name, Estill shares lessons learned from his time running 2 multimillion dollar companies. Estill has codified his life into a set of his “success habits.” He believes in small changes that can make a big difference – like spend 20 minutes outside every day, no matter the weather, and have a “creative oasis” where you can do your best thinking. Others are broader, like ‘do the right thing’— which can be seen in his actions to sponsor Syrian refugees.

One of the reasons that time management is not enough is because time is not about quantity. Time is about quality.  Take a moment to think about your highly productive hours or days over the last year. You probably accomplished more in those short periods of time than over weeks or even months of less productive work. The key to time leadership is to maximize your number of quality hours. Leadership allows you to establish your priorities.  Estill shares his experience in learning to master not only efficiency skills, but also effectiveness skills.

The Business of Philanthropy
In this presentation, Estill shares insights as on how to bring a business mindset to the philanthropic world. He believes there are lessons learned that can be shared from business to social enterprises/volunteer organizations and vice versa: “My organization has 800 volunteers. If you can run a business with 800 employees, you can run an 800-person volunteer organization.”

In this presentation, Estill shares insights as on how to bring a business mindset to the philanthropic world. He believes there are lessons learned that can be shared from business to social enterprises/volunteer organizations and vice versa: “My organization has 800 volunteers. If you can run a business with 800 employees, you can run an 800-person volunteer organization.”