Earlier this summer, it was announced that Robert Low wins Entrepreneur of the Year® 2012 in the Central Midwest, an honor given by Ernst & Young. Low and eight other regional winners were chosen by a panel of independent judges comprised of previous award winners, industry CEOs, private capital investors, and other business leaders in their respective regions. For the past 26 years, outstanding entrepreneurs like Robert Low, the founder and president of Prime, Inc., have been honored by Ernst & Young.
The program that allowed Robert Low to win Entrepreneur of the Year takes place on the regional level every summer, leading up the national awards ceremony that takes place November 17, 2012, in Palm Springs, Calif. The U.S. Entrepreneur of the Year winner then advances to the World Entrepreneur of the Year competition.
Winners of the award—regionally, nationally and internationally—must demonstrate excellence and extraordinary success in finances, innovative solutions and personal commitment to the success of their business and the community it impacts.
Robert Low is an entrepreneur who certainly possesses these characteristics. From the start, he wanted Prime to be a friendly, encouraging and positive place to work. His goals have come to fruition, but he realizes that it’s all thanks to individual contributors. After all, during the company’s financial struggles in the early 1980s, Prime filed for bankruptcy and it took five years for the company to get back on its feet.
Robert Low said he learned many lessons from his company’s bankruptcy, including the fact that independent contractors work much harder for themselves than they do as a company employee. Low puts it best: “When you think about the independent contractor as a driver—where he’s got fixed costs, and he understands that his profitability and his check at the end of the week are contingent on how productively he manages the equipment—it’s supremely efficient. We developed that during the bankruptcy and realized that [it would] be a good idea for everyone to design an incentive program that really involves employees in the profitability of the company.”
Since Prime’s recovery from bankruptcy, Robert Low has worked to put the company’s money where its mouth is: he built state-of-the-art facilities that drivers could escape to as a refuge, and also created a plan where the company adjusts its 401k account contributions based on that year’s profits.
Today, Prime has 15 nationwide facilities and employees 5,700 drivers, 3,000 of which are independent contractors. An additional 1,000 in-house associates are also employed by Prime. Robert Low won Entrepreneur of the Year in the Central Midwest because he continues to strive toward building the perfect place to work, where coworkers have reliable relationships, pay is great, and productivity is always high.
Learn more about Prime today and see if a job as an independent contractor is right for you.
