Inc. magazine - July/Aug 2018

plane into the mountain and killed 150 people? I was paralyzed except for my right hand, so I scribbled, “Yeah, possibly—but I’m not going to take 150 people with me.”

The middle finger is our uno;cial signature at Burton.

(A snowboarder did it in one of our catalogs and it stuck.) When my wife, Donna, told the company how sick I was, everyone gathered for a portrait with middle fingers up. That photo hung in my hospital room. It was my guiding light.

After seven weeks in the hospital, I was transferred to rehab.

I still had a tracheotomy, and couldn’t walk. When I was finally sent home six weeks later, I was

135 pounds, down from 175. I had a speech therapist, an occupational therapist, an acupuncturist, and a trainer—all to start talking and walking again.

Donna became CEO in 2016. I’m still a product manager. I love it.

I’m back to snowboarding 100 days a year. We get riders together and go somewhere to test every product in the line. That keeps me in touch.

Donna’s taught me to think di;erently, for sure. When I first heard about paternity leave, I almost fell o; my chair. I didn’t even get it. I’ve become much more open-minded. I’m better at communicating. And my tolerance for bullshit is at an all-time low. I can see through it. Like, “Buddy, I’ve stared down death.

I’ve seen worse than your shit.”

The company has a sense of irreverence, but we’ve always been fiscally responsible. Being privately held has been such an incredible edge. Donna and I own

100 percent of the company. We don’t have some analyst looking over our shoulder. If we did, I’d be fired, for sure. Gone. And I shouldn’t be gone. I should be right where I am.

Jessica Honegger had been trying to adopt a Rwandan child. But when the Great Recession hit, she and her husband suddenly found they couldn’t a;ord the fees. An idea to raise funds turned into Noonday Collection, a 2015 Inc. 500 winner that designs jewelry crafted by artisans in Asia, Africa, and South America and sells it at trunk shows throughout the U.S. —AS TOLD TO CAMERON ALBERT-DEI TCH

I met my husband while working for an NGO and training to live in Guatemala. We came back to Texas, got married, had two kids, and then we took a trip to Africa. There, I held a newly orphaned baby whose parents had died of AIDS. “The most basic human right is being able to have a parent,” I thought.

We started the adoption process. We paid some of the initial fees. We’d been flipping houses. Then the market crashed in 2008 and nobody was buying homes. International adoption costs $25,000. We had it. We totally had it. But eventually, we were living o; that money. I thought, “I need to do something.”

Some friends had moved to Uganda to help the people there with entrepreneurship. They’d asked this talented young couple to make some jewelry. But they hadn’t thought about how to sell it, so it sat in storage. “Why don’t you open your home and sell this stu;?” my friends asked me. “You can use the money for your adoption.”

So one night, at home, I sold those goods, along with my clothes, my grandmother’s dishes—anything salable. Around 60 women showed up. They loved the African jewelry. They were emailing me: “Can you get more of those necklaces?”

We made about $4,000 that night. If I could do more at other women’s homes, I’d be well on my way to $25,000. I began a relationship with the artisans, and was able to get product from them really quickly. Then, I began to ask other women to open up their homes. For the next several months, I drove all over Texas. I slept on couches. If you wanted to open your home, I’d be there.

We made the money we needed. And I realized: This started as a fundraiser, but this was now a business.

In 2011, we traveled to Rwanda to meet our new 2-year-old son, Jack. The dirt road leading to the orphanage’s big, blue metal gate was filled with potholes—our car barely made it. A nun greeted us. Then, we saw him. Another nun was holding his hand, walking up a long stairway to meet us.

I’m crying just thinking about it. You hope, and you’re so determined, and the adoption process is insane. It was a long, hard year of not being sure. But he’s our little miracle. Definitely a world-changer. If it weren’t for him, I wouldn’t be running Noonday Collection.