2023 Men of the Year: Patrick Carpenter

Patrick Carpenter is not just following in his mother’s footsteps; he’s keeping her legacy alive.

As the president of GRITT Business Coaching LLC, he helps businesses scale through coaching on areas from business strategy to employee engagement. That includes practices on open-book management, a concept his mother, Jill Carpenter, helped pioneer with Jack Stack, John Case and John Schuster.

Carpenter says he’s dedicated his work and life to “honoring the legacy of Jill and the thousands of employees who are just crazy enough to believe that all employees should be treated with unconditional positive regard and taught to understand the financials, reaping the rewards they helped create.”

Carpenter says he’s also rewriting his mother’s books she co-authored, “The Power of Open-Book Management” and “The Field Book of Open-Book Management,” due out by 2025.

With a majority ownership stake by PFSbrands, GRITT employs coaches around the country and is currently training 6,000 employees across small and large companies, Carpenter says. GRITT stands for goal-setting, responsibility, involved, teamwork and tolerance of failure.

“With the challenges of our culture being what they are, four diverse generations at work and the societal mental health issues affecting nearly every part of our world of work, more than ever we need leadership that is trained to be able to handle these issues,” Carpenter says. “We have developed and lead such an approach, customizing what we do for the situations.”

Carpenter knows a thing or two about business success. His career spanning three decades includes a senior manager position with Fortune 100 company McKesson Corp. and projects with Johnson & Johnson, Novartis and Johns Hopkins University. He co-owned Medical Outfitters from 2003-07, where he grew the medical business to $12 million in annual revenue from $1 million. Over the course of his career, Carpenter estimates he’s developed over $300 million in new business.

Before starting GRITT, Carpenter spent a decade with SRC Holdings Corp., leading marketing and sales efforts and eight years as vice president of The Great Game of Business Inc. SRC and its Great Game subsidiary, Carpenter notes, was the birthplace of open-book management.

He’s also donated his business coaching skills to nonprofits. Carpenter says Discovery Center of Springfield Inc. Executive Director Rob Blevins asked him to join the board of directors in 2018, when gross revenue was less than $800,000. Last year, Carpenter notes, revenue reached $2.6 million.

“In 2020, I spent a significant amount working with Rob as the president-elect and then board president at the Discovery Center as they hired 25 people in 24 hours to scale up to provide arguably the most innovative pandemic programming in the world by offering over 250,000 hours of free child care and formal education to the children of health care workers and first responders,” he says. “The Discovery Center became known across the world.”

Carpenter has coached the teams at Big Brothers Big Sisters of the Ozarks Inc. and Drew Lewis Foundation Inc., and he’s involved with Down Syndrome Group of the Ozarks.

“I love that my work is truly a heart-level passion with fuel driven by my commitment to carry on my mother’s legacy,” he says.