I had the opportunity to volunteer at the Small Giants Summit back in May, and I wanted to share more about the organization and experience. I helped with registration, guiding guests, and event support and in exchange I was able to listen to the many speakers and lessons. I heard from multiple Detroit business owners including Terra Castro of Detroit Body Garage, The James sisters of Draught juice (and also got free samples – yum!) and Kristen Ussery of Detroit Vegan Soul. There were also speakers with national recognition like Corey Blake who led a session on vulnerability. At various points throughout the two days, audience members had a chance to come up on stage and talk through current problems they might be facing at their companies and the audience would help come up with solutions.

Corey Blake leads session “Vulnerability is Sexy”

Gordon Hawkins, Kristen Ussery, and Terra Castro share about their businesses in Detroit

The Small Giants Community is an “organization committed to the development of values-driven business leaders around the world. We take entrepreneurs on a journey, supporting them each step of the way with the resources, events, mentorship and connections needed to take their business to the next level and bring their vision to reality.” The Small Giants concept comes from the book by Bo Burlingham that spotlights companies that choose to be great instead of big. The values driven approach was incredibly similar to Challenge Detroit, and many organizations I’ve connected with throughout the city. There are multiple ways to get involved with Small Giants, including the summit, which you can read about here.

Here are 5 ideas/concepts mentioned at the summit that really resonated with me:
1. Boldly go
2. Be a gap finder
3. Write down the 5 words to define what you stand for
4. Ensure the things that you see as intuitive end up in the business
5. The answers are there, you just have to ask the right questions

What are some examples of companies that you know of who value greatness over size?