When the lights dimmed inside the O’Reilly Family Event Center on the campus of Drury University in Springfield, Missouri, the iconic rock band Foreigner took the stage—and the crowd numbering more than three thousand people roared with excitement. 

Even after decades of live performances, Foreigner can still bring down the house.

What made the concert special on that evening of Saturday, July 15, 2023, was that as everyone in the audience rocked out to Foreigner and the two bands that opened for them—38 Special and the Ozark Mountain Daredevils—they were also celebrating the 40th anniversary of SRC Holdings. 

And what a celebration it was.

“If you want to go to heaven you have to raise a little hell,” Jack Stack, the president and CEO of SRC, told the audience. “That should have been the theme song for SRC these past 40 years.”

BRINGING THE BAND BACK TOGETHER

Foreigner’s performance capped an epic day of festivities to commemorate SRC’s 40-year journey with the theme of “Rockin’ Reman.”

The celebration kicked off with a private event for about 100 or so folks who have retired from SRC over the years. Many of the attendees played key roles in helping the original company, Springfield Remanufacturing Corp., survive its first year after the company was spun out from its parent, International Harvester, in 1983, with a debt-to-equity ratio of 89-to-1.

Stack gave a short speech welcoming and thanking his former colleagues as the “founders” of the business. 

“We are now on the third generation of associates in our company and you guys were the first,” Stack said to the group of retirees. “The biggest thing you taught us was to never surrender, which is now the defining characteristic of this company. It’s because of what you have done that we have such a strong company today.”

What Stack and his fellow founders realized early on after they became the owners of their company was that, because of the enormous stakes involved, they couldn’t afford to run the business in a traditional, top-down fashion. 

While many aspects of SRC’s business have changed over the years, the core of the business has remained the same: embrace practices like financial transparency, business literacy education, scorekeeping, contingency planning, forecasting the future, and sharing wealth. This is the foundation of The Great Game of Business, the communication and leadership system that SRC pioneered back in 1983 to teach every one of its associates how to think and act like an owner of their business.

Since every SRC associate can become an owner of the business through its Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP), SRC’s goal has always been to get everyone in the business to recognize that the company was their product.

The SRC family has since grown to some 2,200 associates and spun out more than 60 different businesses over the past 40 years. 

As a direct result of its continued growth and expansion, SRC’s stock price has increased by 1,079,900% since its start in 1983—which helped many of the retirees attending the big anniversary party to retire comfortably and fulfill their version of the American Dream.

A COMPANY WITH HEART

While the 40th-anniversary celebration was an opportunity for SRC to honor its past, it was also the chance to stoke some excitement about the future—since just 31% of SRC’s associates have been with the company for more than five years, while 69% joined less than five years ago.

The relative youth of SRC’s employee-owner workforce was on full display in the arena and the surrounding venues, where SRC’s associates and their guests, some of whom made the trip from Illinois and Kentucky, enjoyed copious amounts of food, snacks, and adult beverages—as well as refreshing pineapple whips to help beat the heat.

What’s exciting about the SRC story is that the company has only gotten stronger and more diversified over time—and it has never laid off a single employee in its history. 

Today, multiple divisions, which include several joint ventures, make up the SRC Holdings family of businesses as it continues to grow and evolve from its humble beginning as a garage shop.

When several of the retirees toured the original factory, called SRC Heavy Duty, a day before the party, they couldn’t believe how it, too, had changed and modernized in ways that make it an attractive place to work for members of the younger generations interested in pursuing a job that pays them well to work with their hands.

Just as importantly, SRC from its very start has prioritized giving back to the communities it does business in, especially in its home base of Springfield. 

SRC and its associates have given more than $3.6 million since 2006 to many causes across the Ozarks while also serving on many non-profit boards to help make the future of Springfield even more prosperous than it is today. 

As part of the 40th-anniversary celebration, the company also announced it was making a $40,000 donation to Care to Learn, a charity that partners with schools to eliminate the barriers that stand between a child and their ability to learn.

At SRC, there is a deep sense of caring for every associate inside the business as well as the members of the community. There is truly a heart and a greater purpose at the core of this business. 

GOTTA KEEP ON ROCKIN’

To cap off the 40th-anniversary celebration, 20 lucky SRC associates joined Foreigner on stage at the end of the concert to help them sing one of their most popular songs, “I Want To Know What Love Is.” 

They nailed it, and the crowd went wild.

But maybe a better choice could have been if those associates chimed in on the song “Juke Box Hero,” because, as the lyrics say, SRC’s gotta keep on rocking—and it’s never gonna stop.