Company Employees

About Progressive Business Publications

For over two decades, Progressive Business Publications has quietly achieved unparalleled success in the field of specialized information and education services. We have successfully launched 11 new businesses in the last eight years alone and our record of new product launches and successful expansion into high-growth business areas is unmatched in our industry.

Along the way, we've attracted and retained an extraordinary staff of talented professionals who are committed to building the company's future. PBP's unique culture stresses long-term thinking with respect to our customers, our employees and our financial goals.

Customers:
We're committed to providing high-quality products that continually improve and meet the changing needs of the marketplace. We instill in our people the notion that all wisdom comes from the marketplace, that our customers are our best teachers. We actively seek and listen very carefully to our customers' feedback.

People:
When it comes to our employees, we're long-term investors. People count at PBP. We believe there is no such thing as good companies, only good people. If you change the people, you change the company. We're committed to providing an exciting yet stable working environment where employees can be empowered to achieve their long-term career goals. That commitment has resulted in a high level of employee commitment and longevity, ingredients we see as essential to the long-term success of the company.

Financial goals:
As a well-capitalized, privately-held company, we're not driven by the need to meet short-term financial goals. We have the freedom to think long term and reinvest in our business and our people. Our long-term goal is to achieve market leadership in our many industries by serving customer and employee needs better than our competition.

Our Founder:

Ed Satell founded Progressive Business Publications (PBP) in the late 1980s. He played a direct, hands-on role in our early successes, overseeing editorial, marketing and operations. At the same time, Ed wrote much of our first publication, The Selling Advantage, himself. As PBP grew, Ed passed the day-to-day operations over to his management team and shifted his focus to finding new growth opportunities.

For the next two decades, Ed's leadership and vision propelled PBP to unparalleled success across many industries. Our track-record of growth is unmatched.

Along the way, Ed remained deeply committed to the community surrounding his businesses. His quiet but extensive corporate citizenship/philanthropic efforts focus on five major areas:

Although he maintains a very low profile, Ed provides targeted philanthropies with continuous funding, personal involvement and experienced guidance. He has established two charitable foundations; the Satell Family Foundation Trust and the Progressive Business Publications Charitable Trust Fund.

Ed currently supports 34 projects with 22 institutions, providing real impact for the community. These include:

In 2007, Ed established an innovative program at Franklin & Marshall College called the Satell Scholars Life After College Success Program. He also created an internship program focused on social entrepreneurship in Guatemala through his alma mater, the University of Connecticut (UCONN). Last year, this entrepreneurial program expanded to Franklin & Marshall College (F&M), with a focus on Ecuador. At F&M and UCONN he is also key Hillel House supporter.

Ed also funds research, including several stem cell research programs, a cancer research lab, a Doctoral Fellows Program, and most recently, the Satell Nitrogen Hydrogen Alternative Energy Lab at the Technion Institute in Israel, and a stem cell initiative at the Keck Institute at Rutgers University.

Ed has also authored The Principals of Sales Excellence, a book on best practices in commercial sales, and contributed to several other books, including The American National Tree a book given to newly naturalized US citizens at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia PA.

Ed has been honored for his leadership and vision by numerous organizations including:

Ed Satell named 2009's Humanitarian of the Year

Ed has also received an honorary Doctorate from Gratz College.

He was recently honored by his executive team on his 50th anniversary as a successful CEO.


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Our History

Ed Satell founded American Future Systems (AFS), the parent company of Progressive Business Publications, in 1959. AFS was a distribution and finance company specializing in the sale of high-end cookware and china.

Throughout the 1960s, AFS trained thousands of people to sell its products and services. Because of the company's emphasis on high standards, personal development and accountability for results, many young recruits went on to become prominent in a variety of endeavors. These include Franklin Thomas, who went on to law school and later became president of the Ford Foundation, and Rosabeth Moss Kanter, former editor of the Harvard Business Review.

In the late 1980s, Ed was encouraged to launch a newsletter for sales executives called The Selling Advantage. He formed Progressive Business Publications (PBP) and wrote portions of the newsletter himself. The publication took off. In less than two years it had 40,000 readers and was a blockbuster success.

"Although the first year was a real learning experience for us," Ed recalls, "we came to understand there was a significant business need that was inadequately filled. We learned that executives need to get information quickly, and that fast-read was going to be the key to our success. We also understood that information in itself has no value. It has to be actionable to really make a business difference. And finally, it became clear that practitioners demand the voice of an expert rather than a jack-of-all-trades journalist, which meant that to earn credibility in the marketplace, our writers had to gain deep knowledge of their fields."

Accordingly, two of PBP's tenets for launching subsequent newsletters were: 1) Find an expert in the field, teach that person PBP's unique editorial values, and build the publication around that editor's expertise; 2) Support the launch with extraordinary marketing.

Growth was exponential. Over the next decade PBP launched up to three new newsletters a year, gathering hundreds of thousands of readers: from small corner stores to every company in the Fortune 500 ™. PBP's average annual subscription and revenue growth rate far exceeded the industry average, making PBP the dominant industry leader.

Over the next decade, the company built on its success and leveraged its strong infrastructure to become a preeminent diversified information services provider to businesses across the country. PBP launched 11 new businesses in the last eight years alone, including those providing audio conferences, online executive reports, CLEs lawyers, business gifts and incentives, HR compliance products, targeted information websites and more.

PBP has developed into a premier online education provider and now provides professional development courses for teachers and principals, business certifications, CLEs for lawyers, Executive Mini-MBAs and more — with even more coming.


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Our Core Beliefs

Progressive Business Publications attributes its superior sales growth and financial performance to a strong philosophy and values system. Our "core beliefs" help us attract and keep outstanding people. These are the core values that drive PBP:

  1. Product quality
    Product quality really counts at Progressive Business Publications. We strive for an unrelenting pursuit of excellence as determined by our readers. Our goal is to go beyond customer satisfaction to achieve customer enthusiasm.
  2. Direction
    We constantly concentrate on what we want to accomplish. We specialize and build on what we know.
  3. Leadership
    Our future success depends on our key people working for continuous improvement with a sense of urgency, desire to learn, openness to change and willingness to take risks that are consistent with our core beliefs — and core competencies.
  4. High-performance environment
    Our management system is built on quantitative measurements and accountability so pragmatism, knowledge and fairness will dominate. We carefully avoid company politics and bureaucracy. People should support decisions they help create.
  5. Employee relations
    We work hard at treating all our employees fairly and with dignity — offering opportunities for growth based on performance. We reward performance, longevity and measurable contributions to growth.
  6. Technology
    Progressive Business Publications incorporates technology into operations whenever practical and productive.
  7. Teamwork and commitment
    In addition to individual accountability, teamwork and commitment are highly valued in recognition of our ultimate interdependence and the collegiality we value. We view conflict over ideas as healthy and encourage it within reasonable limits.
  8. Decision making
    We keep the decision-making process short in matters relating to our core business.
  9. Growth
    We seek growth that's consistent with our capacity and core beliefs. We believe healthy companies primarily grow internally but are open to acquisitions.

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Our Company Philosophy

The company's two key operating philosophies are:

1) Specialization spells success.
Companies can't be all things to all people at all times. Nor can they be good at everything. Great companies become leading edge in one area, then build on that specialized expertise. PBP has built its leadership position in the publishing industry by specializing in newsletters targeted to positions within companies (CFOs, salespeople, HR execs, etc.). Few others in the industry have pursued this niche, and none has taken it nearly as far as PBP. We believe our disciplined focus on function-specific newsletters has been key to our extraordinary financial success. Our newer businesses have built on our large customer list, drawn on this specialized expertise, and operate with the same disciplined focus.

This belief in specialization extends to personnel matters. In all areas of the company, from editorial to marketing to operations, PBP demands excellence from its people. So we seek out individuals who are willing to "go deep" in their given areas, who recognize that the only way to achieve excellence is to specialize, to learn more and more about a targeted focused area.

2) There is no such thing as good companies — there are only good people. Change the people and you change the company.
Management at PBP recognizes that attracting and keeping good people is the surest way to guarantee success. That's why we're so deeply committed to employee development at all levels.

The concept of "continuous learning" is central to PBP's approach to employee development. Our world is changing fast, as are the skills our employees need to succeed. To keep our products competitive, we're committed to keeping our employees the best in the field. And we recognize that achieving quality on all levels requires a life-long commitment to continuous self-improvement.

All employees participate in ongoing learning programs. Some of these are developed and led by outside experts from top learning institutions such as the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, Harvard, Stanford and Northwestern. Other programs are developed and led by employees themselves. Managers regularly attend off-site seminars to learn the latest trends in the industries they cover, and to hone their management skills.

Our view of continuous learning extends beyond the workplace. Many PBP employees are extensively involved with area schools and organizations, helping to bring their experiences and knowledge to others who want to learn. For example, several employees teach classes for Junior Achievement, which PBP sponsors. Others teach at nearby schools and universities. Approximately 30 of our employees serve as mentors for our adopted school, where they meet with the students every 2 weeks. And others are involved in a host of volunteer efforts to improve the communities we live in.


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