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28 Days to Save the World

Crafting Your Culture to Be Ready for Anything

Published by Matt Holt Books
Distributed by Simon & Schuster

About The Book

In 2020, engineering firm Velentium faced an unprecedented ask: partner with a small medical device company and a very large vehicle manufacturer to increase emergency ventilator production from hundreds per month to thousands per week—in just 28 days.

Serving on the frontlines of pandemic response is enough pressure to cause any size business to buckle, but the small firm thrived and even doubled in size to complete their manufacturing scale-up known as Project V: seven months of work in six weeks.



Velentium’s cofounder Dan Purvis attributes their extraordinary success to their decade-in-the-making company culture, which buoyed them in the face of an unforeseeable crisis. In 28 Days to Save the World, he lays out how to harness the power of organizational culture to prepare your small business to weather any challenges ahead.



Every quarter, more than 30 million small-business entrepreneurs face innumerable familiar crises—of management, strategic direction, cashflow and credit, staff, and customers—that can spell their doom.

Drawing from his twenty-five years of experience as a small-business leader, and with gripping stories from Project V, Purvis reveals crisis-tested methods for turning challenges into opportunities.



He shows how a well-crafted culture:

  • Reveals the right path in a crisis

  • Taps into team members’ inner motivation

  • Unites leaders and followers

  • Compels action in “made for you” moments

  • Enables you to step up to global challenges

  • Catalyzes deep connections between people inside and outside your organization



    When a defining moment arrives for your organization, will your team be ready? 28 Days to Save the World is an essential resource for ensuring that you are.
  • About The Author

    A serial entrepreneur and the founder of six companies, Dan Purvis has deep experience with small business. An engineering graduate of Texas A&M with an MBA from Rice University, Dan brings 25 years of practical know-how in creating corporate environments that people want to work in and clients want to engage. Dan realized that if you seek revenue first, relegate “culture” to a poster slogan, and shoehorn in customer care, you’ll reap dysfunction. But if you make promises you keep, put client success ahead of your own, protect your people and keep operations human—then loyalty, referrals, growth, and profit will follow. And the way you do that is through culture. Velentium, Dan’s current firm, began as a two-person operation in 2012. It now ranks #32 on the Inc. 5000 list of fastest-growing engineering companies nationwide, and has averaged 50% annual growth for nearly a decade. Dan’s purpose in writing 28 Days to Save the World is to share his insights, mistakes, and experience in building successful cultures with other leaders, so that together, we can make the world a better place to be human.

    Product Details

    • Publisher: Matt Holt Books (December 6, 2022)
    • Length: 288 pages
    • ISBN13: 9781637741917

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    Raves and Reviews

    """The ventilator project was a game changer from a culture perspective.""
    —Mary Barra, CEO, General Motors

    ""28 Days to Save the World is both a fascinating story of achievement under remarkable circumstances, as well as a practical guide for building company culture. From the incredible story of building ventilators in the first days of the pandemic, to practical guidance for building and leading a company based on culture and values, this book is a valuable read for founders and leaders at companies of all sizes.""
    —Eric Starkloff, CEO, National Instruments

    ""Dan Purvis delivers one of the most insightful business culture books in these changing times. Set against a backdrop of the life-threatening global pandemic, he graciously reveals how he developed a business culture of honor, customer value and employee well-being to deliver unprecedented results and save lives in America and around the globe. His step-by-step guidance will get you on the path to creating and benefiting from a superior culture in your own business.""
    —Dave Wilson, VP Marketing (Ret), NI

    ""If you are a technical entrepreneur who wants to build a business that hires highly skilled knowledge workers to push the frontiers of science to build new products, 28 Days to Save the World is a must-read. Dan Purvis lays out the blueprint for building a culture that can produce outstanding results even in chaotic, rapidly-evolving, crisis situations.""
    —Larry Bickle, Director, SM Energy

    ""Whether you own your own business or manage a group of employees or even if you are an entry level employee reporting to a manager, everyone should read this book to help gain perspective on the thoughts that are at the heart of every tough decision.""
    —Ronnie Beason, PhD, Senior Partner, The Colex Group

    ""I've already thought of 5 companies that would love to read this book!""
    —Patty DeDominic, Founder, DeDominic & Associates

    ""I wish 25 years ago I had read this book, it would have accelerated my self-awareness of so much of what just felt right to a younger, more naïve version of me . . . Particularly poignant for me was the discussion on principles versus rules and their relationship to high performance.""
    —David Lashbrook, President, Alicat Scientific

    ""From the very start, 28 Days to Save the World draws you in with a compelling story told in a clear voice . . . The authors' passions exude from every aspect of the book and they define culture, explain how to identify the culture you want, and then how to implement it within your organization.""
    —Katie & Michael Ringer, Co-Founders, Foster Village Houston

    ""This book shows how those unwilling to accept 'inevitability' can make almost anything happen regardless of the resources available.""
    —Andrew Hovis, VP Real Estate, Cross Development, Franchise Co-Owner, Children's Lighthouse of Nottingham

    ""An inspiring story of how building intentional organizational groundwork creates space to respond in a crisis! Dan gives us a window into growing your vision-driven leadership and collaboration muscles to do world-changing work.""
    —Kate Denson, Associate National Director for Justice Programs, InterVarsity/USA

    ""Inspiring. Great real-life story about how this highly effective team was built and managed. Demonstrates how a strong team that is grounded with vision and principles can seize opportunities.""
    —James Burrows, CEO, Paradromics

    ""Companies with a strong culture can weather any storm. Your storm might not look like the global pandemic that Velentium had to contend with, but by building a human centered company, inspired by the example in this book, your organization will be prepared to not only endure, but thrive.""
    —Zak Schmoll, Founder & Chair, An Unexpected Journal"

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