Building a Workplace Where People Flourish (with Landon Hobson)

So, of course, I was in some way or other a consultant when you were going through an interesting moment in your business.

And, but you, you know, I was there for hours.

I was in your building meeting a number of your leaders for hours.

And I, of course, met some of your ordinary workers, including, you gave me this fascinating tour of the assembly line.

But there are a number of things it became clear that you do that definitely come from your faith.

For example, you're at the edge of the city of St. Louis.

You're at the edge of Exurbs.

It's not quite clear if you're at the end of Metro St. Louis or you're in the countryside of Missouri.

And you have an approach to wages and to benefits, to education.

i mean i could i could summarize i'll give you one example i mean you pay for pretty much any degree anybody who works at your place wants to study you don't pay for the whole thing but you support education you affirm good works like if somebody wants to take a mission trip to uh i don't know afghanistan you would support them you would they wouldn't take vacation time for that and you have a library in which you pay people to read books if they finish the books What is going on? Is this an expression of your theological and economic convictions? How does this work? Yeah, it's

a good question.

Yes, it definitely is.

Yeah.

So we do all of this.

We have a scholarship fund internally where anybody can apply to any aspect of furthering their education.

So, you know, we have paid for somebody, not totally to your point, but we've contributed payment to somebody to go get a nursing degree.

Well, how are they going to use that at your business? They're not, but they're going to get into the field of where they have interest to make a difference in the world.

And if Cosmos is a small little step to help them get to where they need to be or inside of their realm of gifting, then we're going to try to help them.

So we do that.

We take applications every six months and every semester we contribute to those funds, which is a great...

You know, benefit, I think, you know, and the library books, you know, one of our core values is be a creator.

And it's how do you be a creator? You learn more.

You have to be hungry.

You read.

So we'll pay you to read books and to get better.