By Brian Taussig-Lux, March 2024

Hal Taussig was a failure. At least he liked to boast that he was. With a twinkle in his eye, Hal enjoyed telling the story of how he and his brother (my father) started a cattle ranch together. They invested most of their money into a prize winning, pedigreed bull to start their herd. The bull, however, turned out to be sterile. This was the end of Hal’s ranching career. He went on to college and didn’t stop until he had his PhD in American Studies from the University of Pennsylvania. He got a teaching job in the 1960s with a conservative Catholic college in Kentucky. His radical politics on everything from curriculum reform to the ongoing Vietnam war did not endear him to the administration. His contract was not renewed.

During his short career as a popular history professor, Dr. Taussig had managed to take a sabbatical to Europe. He traveled with his wife, Norma, and their teenage daughter. In addition to the academic work he was doing, he learned how to travel independently in Europe on a budget. In 1975, Hal leveraged this knowledge into a new business that later came to be known as UnTours. 

The uniqueness of Hal’s story and his approach to travel caught the attention of the editors of several travel editors, especially the editor of the Los Angeles Times travel section. The phone in Hal and Norma’s Pennsylvania apartment was soon ringing off the hook with Californians wanting to spend three weeks in an apartment in rural Switzerland. Hal hired a secretary, then his daughter and son-in-law to help grow the business. Soon, he was generating more profits than he had ever expected. For Hal, though, this presented a problem. Any earnings that exceeded his and Norma’s modest living expenses violated his values. During his period of unemployment, Hal had taken what he called a “vow of poverty.” He wanted to continue living in a simple, frugal way as an expression of his Christian faith.

His first attempt at a solution to the “excessive profits” problem was to write a letter to his clients at the end of a successful season apologizing for overcharging them and enclosing a refund check. His UnTourists were shocked to receive the money. Some called him crazy and said they’d never travel with him again. Others were delighted to work with someone with such a commitment to low prices. Hal’s small staff, though, was not pleased. They pleaded with him to share the profits with them next time. That is exactly what he did for the next ten years or so. Profits were divided equally between all employees. Hal and Norma each took the same share of profits as the employees. The radical equality of this approach appealed to Hal’s sense of fairness. During this period he also began experimenting with what he called “democratic decision making.” He did his best to use his powers of persuasion to reach a consensus on all important business decisions, but sometimes a majority vote was necessary. On very rare occasions, Hal was outvoted. Again, he was attempting to run his small, but growing company in accordance with his values of eschewing wealth and power. I first joined the company in 1983 during this exciting period.

As UnTours continued to grow, Hal’s countercultural business approach began to show signs of stress. Meetings became more acrimonious, long-time employees resented sharing the egalitarian salary and bonus structure with newcomers. By the early 1990s, Hal had enough. He changed pay rates to reflect market salaries. Bonuses were reduced. He hired a general manager to run the operation, ending his foray into democratic management. He still had to solve the wealth problem, though. His new solution was to set up the UnTours Foundation which would address the problem of poverty with small low-interest loans targeted at entrepreneurs in low-income communities. All profits from UnTours would flow to the Foundation other than what was needed to maintain a healthy capital reserve. Hal and Norma would not take salaries, but would live on their Social Security income alone. This was to become the most durable and impactful way for Hal to change the world of business.

After leaving for a few years to pursue an MBA, I returned to Untours in 1996 to take over leadership after some serious financial struggles under Hal’s first general manager. With a combination of restructuring, cost-cutting, and margin increases, we were able to turn the company around. Within a few years we were generating the largest profits UnTours had ever seen. Money was flowing to the UnTours Foundation and people were starting to notice. 

In the early 2000s, Hal began attending meetings of Philadelphia area entrepreneurs who were interested in incorporating social and environmental goals into their business models. The organization was known as the Sustainable Business Network. Hal had finally found a community of like-minded business people. At one of those meetings, in 2004, he met Jay Coen Gilbert. Jay was a founder of a successful basketball shoe company, AND1. Jay was inspired by Hal’s deep personal commitment to the values he espoused. Here’s how Jay described Hal in 2009:

Hal is that rarest of people: one who lives his faith. Not sometimes, not mostly, but always. Not in a monastery, but in the marketplace. Not distant from, but engaged in the business of the day to day. Not in a life of service apart from the business world, but a life of service in the business world.

In 2004, Jay was thinking of his next project after exiting AND1. Over the next couple of years, he met with Hal and me to brainstorm about creating a network of values-driven businesses. There was talk of an alliance with Paul Newman, known for his charitable Newman’s Own food company. The hope was to bring together other companies that donated 100% of their profits. In 2005, I met Bart Houlahan, one of Jay’s partners at AND1. Bart also exited the footwear company in 2005 and offered to help UnTours with a complex accounting project on a consulting basis. Bart shared Jay’s interest in the world of social entrepreneurship and, in addition to helping us solve some difficult financial problems, he and I had stimulating conversations about the theory behind the social and environmental practices at UnTours. I was increasingly intrigued to find out what Jay and Bart would come up with.

By 2007, the B Corporation model was clear. The organization would offer a certification process to businesses that wanted third-party verification that they met best practice standards. There were a few other voluntary social certifications at the time, but none as broad and comprehensive as what B Lab was offering. In one of our last meetings before Untours was certified, Jay asked Hal and me if we would like UnTours to be the first B Corporation. We had no idea how significant this would become, but we said, “Sure, why not?” To my recollection, those of us “founding” B Corporations that were certified in 2007 did not have to take an assessment of any kind. Jay and Bart had done plenty of due diligence on us by that point and felt confident that we would meet any assessment they would put into place. 

A year or two later, though, B Lab asked us to go through the certification process. It was quite a bit more difficult than I had expected. Our score was enough to get us in, but we were far from being the highest scoring company. We had to create some explicit new policies and procedures that forced us to think about issues that had never even crossed our minds. After this first certification, recertification was required every few years thereafter. I wish I could say that I looked forward to the process, but it forced difficult decisions and conversations every time. We recognized that this was exactly the kind of accountability we needed, but that didn’t make it easy. The last recertification I led was in 2021, even before the effects of the pandemic on the travel industry were behind us. I had serious doubts that we’d be able to clear the B Corp bar. Somehow, we did it. Hal would have been proud.

I retired from UnTours in 2023, handing off leadership to a new generation. The company continues to build on the strong foundation of values left by Hal, me, and the UnTours team. I’ve been pleased to see the pride with which the company has embraced its legacy as the first B Corporation. I look forward to watching UnTours and the B movement continue to shape this vital new segment of the world’s economy.