How Butler University Is Building Confident and Creative Entrepreneurs

I'm actually glad that higher ed is nervous. It's forcing innovation, like that's how innovation happens. Yeah. Like innovation doesn't happen when things are easy. When you're young, you're really worried about that. Other people won't like you, and then you're worried about what do people think about you, and then you realize they didn't think about you the way that you think about you.

It's the pressure is so much higher. Like as I got better at the job, I felt worse at it. It's not the right time to go and take a risk and do the whole thing. How did you build the confidence to take a risk? From South Bend to Evansville and everywhere in between. This is Get IN, the show focused on the Hoosier State and the incredible stories happening here today.

I'm Nate Spangle, founder of Get Indiana, and I will be your host for today's conversation. Today's episode of Get IN is brought to you by Cowpokes Work & Western, an Indiana small business known for high quality boots, hats, and apparel designed for real work and real life. The start of the year is the prime time to gear up with rugged American-made workwear, heavy-duty jackets and comfortable layers.

Built to take on the cold Cowpokes is known for making the process simple and approachable. Their team knows how to help you pick the right fit. Whether you're shopping for dependable work gear, upgrading your outerwear, or grabbing a new hoodie, you'll live in all winter for durable essentials that work as hard as you do.

Cowpokes is always our go-to. My guest today is Nick Smarrelli, and he is the director of Butler Entrepreneurship and a full-time professor at Butler University's Lacy School of Business. He's helping redefine what entrepreneurship looks like in Indiana. Before higher education, Nick spent over 20 years building companies.

He served as CEO of GadellNet, a purpose-driven B Corporation that earned multiple, Inc. 5000 fastest-growing company recognitions, a 40 under 40 recipient and was named Mira Award winner for Exceptional Workplace. Nick also co-founded Ryvit, a software company that was successfully acquired by Trimble in 2023 outside the classroom and boardroom.

Nick is a parent, spouse, ultramarathon runner, investor, performance coach, and business advisor. He was named 2025 MBA Professor of the Year and 2025 Experiential Professor of the Year showing his deep commitment to building the next generation of entrepreneurs. I'm so excited. Nick is a dear friend.

We've done a lot of running. He's mentored me through my first ultramarathon, and I'm excited to talk today. all things entrepreneurship in the state of Indiana. Nick, welcome to the show. Thank you. I'm so happy to be here. And I have to put a clarification, it wasn't exceptional, it was experiential. Exceptional, I think just sets a tone that I don't think I could live up to.

But yeah, actually it does say upper mediocre is a better word. Experiential. Experiential. Experiential. And I just read it as exceptional. 'cause you're exceptional, but that, that's flattering. Yeah, it's experiential. But you know, sometimes it'd be like that. I think you're exceptional. Thank you sir. Alright, so the name of the game today, we're talking entrepreneurship.

Yes. Uh, before we talk about all the ways that you are helping instill the entrepreneurship bone in the next generation, we need to talk about where you got a drive for entrepreneurship. So take me to where you learned the moment that you knew that you were gonna be an entrepreneur. Okay. Well, it's funny because if you asked me in the cohort of people that I, I generally teach, which is 18 to 22 year olds, and then kind of MBAs, but I would say 70% of my time is really spent with undergraduate students.

In that demographic, if somebody would ever come up to me and say, would you ever become an entrepreneur? I think my answer would've been a very firm, heck no. With maybe some profanity thrown in there. Like I would, if somebody like statistically is like Nick is on track to become an entrepreneur. I would say there was a 5% chance or less during college.

It just was, I never grew up. Where was undergrad at? Uh, Saint Louis University. SLU, baby. SLU. Oh yeah. Were you born and raised in St. Louis? No, no. Uh, Virginia and Chicago. Oh, Virginia. Chicago. Then to St. Louis, Virginia, Chicago, St. Louis. Yeah. Okay. So, yeah, so St. Louis and then I actually started ironically after just saying that, which sounds like a, an opposite is I actually started the entrepreneurship club at Saint Louis University. Really? Why not? Wanting to become an entrepreneur. It was just the only club that hadn't gotten started yet. And I was like, oh, I need to do something. Like, I need to do something that like is of note. Uh, and so that was the only club that was the option. So I actually, ironically started the entrepreneurship club, uh, which.

Still lives on to this day, which is kind of neat. So you started the entrepreneurship club because you needed your a resume booster, that's all it was. Yeah. Yeah. So like, I'm not proud of it. Okay. So then like as you were getting this club off the ground, did you learn more about like, like where was the moment where you thought, ah, you know, I think that I actually might want to be an entrepreneur?

Yeah. So fast forward six, six or seven years later. Okay. Um, so in that became, did you like a normal job right outta college? Normal job. Yeah. So actually got my first job as an intern sophomore year. Um, totally lucky. I was just standing in line, someone was complaining about not finding good people. I turned around and introduced myself, got an internship, I'm not kidding.

Uh, and that became the beginning and then worked for a company called Ingersoll Rand. Um, selling commercial, refrigeration, air conditioning, and power tools. Um, so I was telling my students like never really sold cool products ever. Um, but in that went from St. Louis to New York City, to Shanghai, to Charlotte, to Atlanta, to Indy.

How big is this a big company? Yeah. Fortune 500. Oh, okay. Okay. Bigger thing. And their, and their thesis was like, Hey Nick, they kind of had these like CEO tracks and like, they're like, Nick could be a CEO of this organization at some point because of that, we want em to move and experience like different parts of things.

And so I got a chance to kind of experience life. How did they identify you as a potential like future leader? I have no idea. They, they start off with, they have like a leadership rotational program thing that they start with. Uh, that actually now reflecting back on like, kind of my entrepreneurial thinking, like I quit early 'cause I thought I could within the confine, like I stayed within the, the business, but I left the program early and took a bigger job faster than I was supposed to.

Uh, so I think I've always been somebody that said. I think there's a different way to do things instead of like this standard way to do things. That has always been, I would say, kind of a part of who I am. I just never had the confidence to do it. And I think for me, coming from high school, I would say never had the confidence in college.

Picked up the confidence, got a little bit more confidence in the, the actual job. And then I remember the exact second. Um, so I was sitting on an airplane, I was flying back, I had just gotten married and it was on my like second or third flight of the week I was sitting in first class because I traveled all the time.

So of course you were upgraded. I know. Nice is little flex there. Uh, and I looked around and I, I like, nobody was in shape. Everyone looked unhappy. Everyone had their little like roller bags. And I just like, I started like writing the stories of all the people around me and I'm like, this is, this is like.

This, we're recording this around Christmas. Like this is the ghost of Christmas future. Like, like this is my life. I'm never gonna see my wife. I'm never gonna see my kids. I'm gonna have maybe a great run at a company, but that's not who I want to be. And so literally sitting in that chair had my, pulled out, my BlackBerry, another sweet flex there, maze and, uh, BlackBerry.

In first class you had a maze, dude. I know It had the little side rolling ball thing, which was, which was kind of really neat at the time. The full keyboard. Yep. Oh, full keyboard. I could sit and have a full conversation with you and text on the side, like, that's how much I loved my, my BlackBerry. And so you pull it out.

So I pull it out and I do both fingers at this time. Uh, and I sent a note to guys that I knew that were getting a business off the ground, and I said, Hey, this isn't for me. I'm like, what, what is it gonna take to get me to be a part of this organization? So that is, that was the email that changed everything.

It was, you sent an email to two guys that you knew that were starting a business. Yeah. So that's two guys from college. Yeah. Yeah. That I knew. So it's been seven years, right? Like it, it's, we had. Somewhat deviated, but sent a note to to those two guys and that was the beginning. And they said like, Hey, we can't pay you very much.

And I'm like, I don't care. Um, at the time, again, my wife had a decent job, we had health insurance and I think I was just kinda low-key, naive and stupid too, like right. Like I don't think I knew what I was signing myself for up for. And I don't, again, I always try to say like, if I knew what I knew now back then, would I do it again?

And I would say, yes, likely, but maybe with a bit more trepidation. Really? Yeah. But I feel like it's, you don't know, like you have, entrepreneurship is amazing, right? Like it, and it yields, it's just obviously changed my entire trajectory of my life. And now I'm in the business of changing the trajectory of other people's lives.

Whether they go into entrepreneurship or just think more entrepreneurially or get more confidence. Um, that's where I'm really kind of focused on. So I don't really care what the outcomes are, but at the time, like I don't think I knew how hard it was gonna be and what sacrifices I would have to make and this type of things that I'd be running across.

And the parts of me. Like the darkest parts of myself that would have to be on display, right? Like as a CEO there's no, you're, you're at the edge of the cliff. There's nobody behind you and you're on, you're on stage at all times. Every mood, every comment, every word is scrutinized and reviewed. And it is used to either inspire or you know, disenchant at any time.

And so I don't think I knew what I was signing on for, but at the time it was like, this is gonna be cool and bet on yourself. Right? And so that's really what kind of started it all. Yeah. It's interesting that you went from like, okay, I'll be traveling and I'll never see my family and stuff from like the job that you were in and you're like, you know what?

Entrepreneurship and joining a startup, that's gonna be what'll give me more time for family life. Ironically, I was living in Indy and our headquarters, so both of those businesses have headquarters in St. Louis. So not only was I now starting an entrepreneurship life, I was starting an entrepreneurship life with a business that's four hours away.

So like my first year I commuted 48 outta the 52 weeks to St. Louis. Uh, so. Didn't do the best job of kind of creating that space. Yeah. But we didn't have kids. Right. Like it could, it could all blow up in my face and we would be fine. We were, we, my wife and I were sharing a place like there was, our risk tolerance was incredibly high.

Yeah. And it, it needs to be noted. I mentioned my wife like three or four times. And I'm not just saying that she rarely ever listens to the podcast, but if I, if she was like, I think so much is told about the untold story about the people behind the person, right? Like, I get to be on the podcast, but my wife is the one that like, she provided the health insurance, she provided the consistency, she provided the motivation when it didn't make any sense.

Like she was the one who. I remember at first, uh, the other partners like, Hey, the buy-in for this company is $30,000 to get 20% stake in the business. And I went home and I said, this is a stupid thing. Like, I don't want ownership. Like what's ownership worth? Uh, I did not do a very good job of listening to the entrepreneurship club, uh, and I just didn't understand the value of what that 30 grand was gonna be.

I'm like, I want the cash. Uh, and I'm very thankful, obviously 12 years later, 13. Well, who talked you into it? My wife. Uh, she was just like, no, no, this is important. Like this is good. But we were never taught equity. Like one of my like rules governing rules of entrepreneurship is equity is awesome. Which is like the best phrasing I could do is like, it's better to own than to rent.

Uh, I didn't understand that truly. Like I understood, I lived a life that we didn't have a ton of excess money. The idea of having excess money in the bank that felt safe owning equity did not feel safe. So like none of this was, and it's not necessarily safe. Like this thing could go belly up at any second and you could lose your 30 grand and immediately.

Right. And that's kind of what was running through my head, but I think, how old were you? 20, late twenties, eight maybe. Yeah. And it's like, I don't know, 30 grand when you're 28. It's like a lot. It is a lot of money, but it's not like a, oh my, I will never financially recover from this. No. Yes. Yeah. There was, there was an opportunity, but I didn't understand that.

And so again, going back to like, I asked, one of the questions I asked when I start class is like, what is, what's your level of risk tolerance? And people are like, I'm a five. I probably won't be a good entrepreneur. I'm like. I'm, I was a five. Like I'm, I'm a, I'm a higher now because I have, I've had reps and I've had proof that I think I kind of sort of know what I'm doing, but I was never, I was never a 10 outta 10 at all times.

Like there was, yeah, I've, I've almost quit a few times. I almost quit a few times to go get a normal human job, and I'm thankful. I never did. Like I said, I didn't, I was afraid I was, I was willing to invest in myself from, uh, growing the business, but I was afraid to, to use that money for equity, like, yeah.

Well, you're talking about confidence, correct. That seems to be a piece that is important to you, like building confidence, you know, what did you do that gave you the confidence to take the leap? Because I think a lot of people listen to these stories and are, oh, I wanna be an entrepreneur, but they have that nice job at Lilly.

Yeah. Maybe they're on the MBA track. Maybe they're just getting back and they're like. Uh, you know what, uh, it's not the right time. It's not the right time to go and take a risk and do the whole thing. How did you build the confidence to take a risk? Yeah, I mean, I would say the, the confidence came from I think, proven reps, right?

Like to me, I looked back and said, I put myself into entrepreneurial-ish situations. In the past, we, again, starting new programs, we, I remember we started this like whole new like magazine campaign, uh, within the confines of the business, and I kind of helped lead that. We had a, a new product that I helped launch, uh, that was kind of, that actually pulled me into when I lived in China, was helping support that new product growth.

So I had these like little micro reps in the past that I could go back to and be like, you know what? Like, yes, it wasn't traditional entrepreneurship, but it was, it demonstrated that I had experience and capabilities in doing it. And I like building, yes. Like building is the, the trait I feel like. Yes.

And, and I, like I said, like I think. I think so many times people wait for confidence to hit them. And I think it's, I think we've got it the other way. And again, I, I come back to this idea of like bias to action all the time, but this idea that like confidence comes from doing small little things and then getting reinforced for them and then building on, building on those each other.

Like, I don't think you can just sit there and wait to become more confident. Like, oh, I've gotta, I gotta wait until I get these three new skill sets. Like what? Yeah. And it's like once you hit some big home run, then you'll have the confidence and it's like, no, you gotta hit a lot of singles. Correct. And then you get like the confidence to swing for a double and then all of a sudden you're like ripping for the fences.

And I would argue the home run is probably the worst thing that could happen to you because I think once you're a home run hitter, then every hit needs to be a home run. But if you're a base hit hitter, then the stakes are a lot lower and you can just, just hit base hits is like, 'cause the likelihood of hitting a base hit is far more than hitting the home run.

I wanna be a Moneyball entrepreneur, you know? Just like he gets on base, hit the dates. Yeah, he hits on base. Just consistent. That's it. All you need. Okay. So you take the leap. Yep. You're just married. Yep. You're commuting. 48 outta 52 weeks to St. Louis helps get this business off the ground with two other co-founders.

Correct. Okay. And you're the COO at the time? I'm COO. Is that kind of like the Yeah, it was, it was really arrogant title for Yeah. A you know, at the time we had an intern too, so it's like a four person company. Yeah. And I was chief operating officer. I was a little arrogant. Yeah. See I have like always gone the opposite way.

Like I think it might be my first like entrepreneurial idea. I was like, yeah, I'm the CEO and I was like, I'm the CEO of nothing. You're ceo. Yeah. Like nothing is So now I'm like, I just go with the founder title, like founder. You can't like, I think there wasn't vocabulary in the same way. Like again, not to sound like it was like the 18 hundreds here, but I don't think the vocabulary, maybe I just didn't know it 'cause it wasn't the ecosystem I lived in.

But I don't think the vocabulary was there. Like this idea of like founder, co-founder, all those things like that wasn't there. Like it was just person that owned the business or person that run the business. So you end up working at GadellNet and work like building GadellNet for like 15 years. Yeah. How long after getting it off the ground did you become the CEO.

Uh, five years. Five years. In five years. Yeah. So that coincided with us starting our second business, basically. And so Tom, what was the, what was the original business? The original business, uh, again, what GadellNet did was we were outsourced IT consulting. So it was a very, it was bootstrapped, service-based business at a customer, ad employee at a customer.

A an employee was essentially the, the business model. Um, like hardware, like they need laptops. Yes. But, but most of our revenue, so hardware was about 20% of our revenue, 80% of the revenue was service-based stuff. So we, if you did not have an IT department in your business, we served as your entire IT department.

Oh, okay. I got you. So it was, it was services, services heavy, which was great. Actually, I kind of, when I left, I was like, I'll never go back into services again because it's, it's never ending, right? Like it's. You know, it's Christmas Eve and people still need things to work for their business. It's Christmas.

Someone lock themselves outta their, like someone's trying to get some work done. It doesn't matter where it is. And it's always at 11:00 PM and they're always angry, you know, like it's, it is a very customer service driven business. Less so. It isn't a technical business, but it's like, I feel like service businesses are easier to get going.

I, which now that I've gone through, like yeah. The stages of grief, of leaving and kind of processing everything. I, I think services businesses are great, right? Yeah. Like your risk profiles, you lose a customer, this sounds awful, but like worst case scenario, you have to, you know, find a new place for somebody.

Um, versus you're not spending $5 million on a manufacturing line hoping that you've created the perfect product that now needs to pivot. And you've actually built a port, like the asset requirements are so slower. Well, it's, it's definitely more, uh, I mean, you have to be a people person, like you managing it, like building a team Yeah.

And running a team of people. That's all. It's, it's like you can't serve, well, you can't serve a hundred thousand customers without a large amount of employees. Correct. And that's, I mean, that's. It only scales by people's time. What you are selling are people's expertise, experience and time. Yeah. Like that is your, that is your factory.

So you, you guys are running that doing, you know, outsourced it. Yep. Five years in. Yep. And then you start the next business rivet. Yeah. So Ryvit, what was Ryvit and Ryvit actually spawned out of GadellNet, so opportunistic, um, where we had a small part of GadellNet did software development and we built a product for a customer of ours.

And that customer kind of off the cuff said, well, we really like what you built. I bet other people that are similar to us in the general contracting construction space may want to use that. And so our first like seed funding came from kinda the personal accounts of my, the co-founders of, of GadellNet as well as this customer kind of served as this, like, let's see if we can put a little bit of money into this and see if we can make this something on its own.

So like that Friends and Family Round was truly a customer in us. Putting in a little bit of funding to say, could this be something we could build? And we incubated that within the walls of GadellNet for a while, and then in 2016, broke it off officially created to, uh, you know, its its own entity because we had a, needed to raise money to continue to propel the growth of the other business.

Yeah. And it was also distracting to the main core of what we were trying to do as, as a GadellNet. So we needed to create two entities. And, uh, frankly speaking, I was itching to become CEO like I was, you know, I was, I was, I was probably irritating to the, to the current CEO. Uh, we're still friends, so we've, we've made it through all that.

And so he took over the other business as CEO and I took the GadellNet role. Entrepreneurship. You guys are growing GadellNet, yep. You said 20% was hardware, 80% was services, but you were also doing some development. You have rivet growing. Like, talk to me about staying focused and keeping the main thing, the main thing, but also chasing some shiny cars and how entrepreneurs can, should, should balance that.

How much should they spend? How much time should they spend on research and development versus their core principles and product? Yeah, so, so what was really, really nice about what we were building is it used existing talent and existing resources that we already had. The partner base that we used to build Ryvit were partners for the GadellNet business.

So what was really nice about the secondary business is it wasn't sure, maybe there's a bit of like shiny objects in the sense of like, wow, this is interesting. But we built it under the confines of the core business model of GadellNet, and then we saw an opportunity to grow it using partners and resources that GadellNet had built over the course of those, those years.

And so, yes, it was a secondary product. But it was using expertise, the network and the, I would say the subject matter expertise that we had built from GadellNet in order to spawn that out. It wasn't, you know, we weren't opening a dry cleaner or opening up something insane on the side. They really fed each other.

And so it became this like symbiotic business. And I think, again, going back to your question, which is how much time do you spend on the R&D side versus your existing product base? What we did and what we proved out is we built something that the market had come to us and ask for. And so it was, it was, it was both responsive and opportunistic.

And I think that's qualities of saying, yeah, this is potentially something to pursue. And we also did that building on the back of a cashflow positive business, right? Like I and I, I, my students will say all the time, like one of the words I use all the time is focus, focus, focus, focus, focus, right? Like.

Don't go anything bigger, stay with this until you get this right and then scale the hell out of it. Like we had done that already. We had already figured out what our business model is. We had beautiful product-market fit. We had figured out a way to scale the Goodell in that business, which allowed us some of that flexibility to take some chances.

But it was only until that point that we could do that where IIC founders having issues outside of the college space. But like where I see founders having issues is the business itself is floundering. And so now they're just chasing other things instead of really going back to the basics of what problem am I trying to solve and what are the customers saying versus like, what other problems can I start to solve?

Because it feels like they're making progress. And the reality is they're just distracting themselves to make themselves feel better. And I think there's a difference between going back to the basics. Like to me it's like go back to like whenever you're feeling disjointed, like go back to the fundamentals of who am I serving and why am I serving them?

Problem client versus what else can I do going? But skipping to step three, which is like, what's the solution? And I feel like that's your. That's your issue when you start chasing R&D. So for us, we had a problem to be solved and customers, and we had a proven like set of sales channels that could allow us to grow that business.

It was an, it was an obvious extension, even though from on paper you're like two very different businesses and they really were. Yeah. But if you see some of like the oppor, the opportunities, it was it, like our biggest, uh, partner was our biggest partner at GadellNet, like, that it just, it worked out really, really well.

Yeah. So they were in the same space, even though they looked like two completely different entities. Okay. So five years in, you're itching to become the CEO? Yep. Why? Because it kind of fulfilled what I was looking for, which is this like truly betting on myself, uh, and kind of testing the capacity of what I was capable of.

And I think having that, I mean, again, like I said, being somebody who, I don't say I hate rules, but it's bordering on general hatred of rules. Like I do not like. Structure and rules. And so, you know, if somebody's telling me to do something and they say, Hey Nick, I need you to turn left. My initial like, gut reaction with no emotional intelligence to help govern this is f you, I'm gonna go right.

Uh, even if right is off a cliff left is, you know, you know something safe, right? Like, I'm gonna go right just to prove a point. Which is really hard to manage. Um, actually it was funny 'cause I actually got to see the notes. I was 22 and I got to see the notes in my interview for Ingersoll Rand. And on there was a circle saying, recommend do not hire will be difficult to manage.

Uh, and I'm thankful for my boss who actually ended up hiring me, um, who said I wasn't that difficult to manage, but I'm difficult to manage. You can even ask people at Butler recommended, do not hire, recommend, do not hire. And like literally I saw the paper and I'm like, he's like, I ignore that and I. And he was very prideful because, uh, it did end up working out pretty well for Ingersoll Rand the time that I was there.

But yeah, I don't, I don't like that. And so I needed, I liked having the opportunity to flex ideas. I don't do well again, I don't do well under rules and I also don't do well with, uh, okay, well now I've gotta go convince these 76 different entities to do the thing that I wanna do. So having the CEO job gave me a little bit of yeah.

Leverage there. And so take us through how, where the business was when you took over and where you guys ended up taking it. Yeah, so again, I, you know, if I, if I could remember what it was in 2015, let's say it was a $5 million business at the time. I mean, when I left we were 33 million, 34, something like that around there.

So from a top line Yeah. Growth perspective. So you spent how long? 10 years. Yeah, some, somewhere around there. Yeah. Yeah. What are the struggles? You go from 5 million to 33 million. What were the things that were pestering you? About growing a business and being the CEO? Yeah, like again, if, if I can like break up the business into kinda like a few key areas, like the first like zero to one, I call it like, kinda delightful optimistic ignorance.

Like it was just, it was fun. We were going to meetings being, I would say somewhat silly. We were trying to kinda figure out what life was. Stakes didn't feel big, you know, we had a team of generally single people that were working for us. Like it didn't feel like I was supporting families. It didn't feel like I was like, again, my wife had a great job.

Like, if this works, great, if it doesn't, what a fun little exercise this has been. Um, and then we started growing and then I, again, I remember probably the most prideful day is the day that we could offer health insurance. And then we started getting different types of people that are working for us.

'cause then we had dads and moms that were supporting their family on the choices that I was making as a, as a leader. And then we became bigger and then we became bigger than that is all of a sudden we started getting notoriety or in the field that we're in, which is it? We were. Running people's like their livelihood.

And I understood the implications of if we screwed up, they don't make money. They don't make money. They've had to fire people and those people lose jobs and their ability to feed their families and a bunch of other stuff. So all of a sudden it went from like, ha, this is playing the game of business to like, oh my gosh, this is real.

And then we started winning awards, which is actually probably the worst for me mentally the most. It goes back to that like home run base hit comment. Like all of a sudden we became a great place to work. We became fastest growing company in Missouri and Indiana. And it became this like incessant pressure to live up to home run hitter versus base hit hitter.

'cause we were just like, we were like the unexpected guys that like, aw, it's adorable that they're trying to run a company at the beginning. And then it became like, these are the people that people are going after. And then people, because you're on stage, people started like. The pressure is so much higher and started being like, well, that's, you know, they, they just won best company.

But look, I've, I know somebody who works there and didn't like working there. You know, all these kind of just doubts that kind of hit you as a leader. So it's just kind of an interesting curve of like, as I got better at the job, I felt worse at it. Um, which I thought was kind of just ironic. Um, as just we continued to scale and then the problems continued to change.

Like zero through 50 people is, I, I had a blast with. I thought that was super fun. It was, I knew everybody. I could get to know everyone's families. I knew who they were dating, I knew their kids' names, I knew their dogs. And it was just, we were, I actually, my son and I drove past our old office. Our old office.

Like I, there was one space, there was six of us in a single room, like all working on our little desks, and I loved it. And then we got a fancy office and then we did, and then I like had the, I had an office with a door on it and we were a hundred and some people and I didn't know everyone's names anymore.

I'd walk into an office and I'd have to like pretend and do kind of a head nod of like, I don't actually know who you are and what you do and what makes you tick and. That's what I really kind of just felt like this isn't what I wanted anymore. And so you just, you've done the thing, right? Like you're doing all the things that on paper looks so successful, but the, the meaning for me specifically, by the end, it just wasn't as, as high because you're growing so fast.

Um, so it changes. And then we have three offices. We can be acquired a company in Denver to grow our Denver practice. We bought a business in St. Louis. We bought a few companies in de like we were just growing in the way that you're told is what success looks like. Yeah. Um, and so it's just very different.

And so there's just the, the CEO job of, again, it's, it's, it's, it's emotional and it's, it's people centric, especially when you're in a service business. Like all parts of our supply chain involve people. And so at any time there's people involved, which means that there's emotions and there's feelings and there's other, their motivations and they just, a lot of those things just compound.

And your job as CEO is to manage all that. So take me through the decision to. Walk away. I think I knew a year and a half before I actually made the verbal choice to share with other people. Uh, actually started going through like some writing practices and journal practicing, and I went back to those.

I'm like, geez. It was, it was obvious this wasn't a fit. So again, I think for me, what I realized was I, again, it was, it was the middle of COVID. I remember kind of the, the, the hardest part, it was in Omicron. So like, if you remember Omicron, you know, two or three months before then everyone had gone back to work.

Finally, people were finally feeling like life is normal again. And then we had this new variant of COVID that forced everybody to go back home, which as an IT provider means you're essentially, you have a, a workspace at work, and now you also have a workplace at home. So now these parents and these individuals who are we are supporting, are now trying to scramble to go take care of their kids again, work from home again.

They've lost all sense of like community that you Get IN an office space. So they're disgruntled. All of my team is now having to be sick and dealing with sick families. My dad at the time, uh, was in the hospital because he was sick with COVID. I, I was already hitting a point of like, I loved what we built, but what I loved was the people.

And I loved sharing and I loved inspiring and I loved like casting a huge vision and getting people to say like, wow, this is. We're gonna grow 10 x faster than everybody else and we're gonna do these like really cool things together. And it's gonna be in the confines of a really neat team and we're gonna come a B Corp because we really wanna be like, tied to serving the community.

Like we're gonna do all these really, really big things. Um, and for me, like I loved that beginning part and then I realized like the scaling and the growing, like, you know, having to restructure every six months 'cause we were growing, like that just wasn't as fun for me. And it was technology, which has never been my core passion.

Like it was, you know, every time a new cybersecurity alert came out, everyone got really excited and I was just like, hmm. You know, like, or Microsoft's enhancing something, I was like me. And so we'd built this incredible team that was highly capable of, for me running the business. I thought better than I could.

And so it was just this like kind of beautiful intersection of realizing that this isn't working for me. Um, and I think mentally speaking it was, and. It became obvious. Okay. Like it was, it's my sleep was affected, my ability to be a dad was affected. My ability to be a husband was affected. I mean, it was, it was a pretty low time for me in this just realization that this wasn't serving me in the way that it used to be.

Yeah. What was the hardest conversation you had to have during the time of transitioning outta CEO? Gosh. Um, I mean, the, the one where I had to tell the team, I think was probably the hardest one. Telling the executive team was hard, but they had seen it. And so I think they were surprised, but they weren't like completely caught off guard.

I think it's telling the team, um, because we had a whole cast of characters that I built this vision of like, this is what we're going towards. We're gonna do it together. I'm here with you. And then I'm like, just kidding. Bye. Um, and when did you start running, like seriously running like Ultras? Ultras? Uh, my first big a hundred miler was like two years before I left, maybe three years before I left.

So I just. Just kind of gotten into this sport. Yeah, I was just thinking through of like in terms of the whole shtick of ultra as like, go do hard things for a really long time. Endure, suffer. Yeah. Get to the end. And then it's like also along this time you're like, oh, I've been doing this for a decade.

How long of not feeling totally fulfilled do I last? Like, do I just like put my head down and keep toughing it out for the team? Or what does that look like? Like that has to be a lot of complex emotions that you're processing. Oh, no question. And I, and like I said, like I've, I've taken pride in my ability, which to put my head down, get work done.

And it's hard. Great. That's that's what you're going for. Right? And I think, so it felt going back to like complex emotions, it felt, it felt like a betrayal to the team. It felt like a betrayal to my own personal values of like, am I quitting on something? Um, and so it became a force function of saying, alright, how do I make this less?

I am leaving something rather than saying, what did I love about what I did? To the extent that I can now flip it to say my purpose has just changed. Yeah. I'm, again, my capacity and my interest at a 40, at 40 years old is very different than my capacity. Interest when I was just like 28 years old and like, this gonna be great.

Right. Um, my, my life circumstance, I had three kids at the time, like my, I still have three kids. Uh, and so just so much had changed and so for me it became, alright, how do I shift this feeling that I've betrayed both others and myself to. What have I learned and what have I gathered, and how do I use that as a opportunity to say, what can I do with those skills and do something else and shift my purpose from guy growing a business to insert new purpose here.

Yeah. Looking for a new place to call home. JC Hart Company has been helping Hoosiers find their perfect fit for 50 years from Hamilton County to downtown Indy to Bloomington, and everywhere in between, they've got over 30 communities. Plus seven brand new luxury spots. So there's something for every lifestyle.

Every community is designed to make life easier and more enjoyable, and the friendly property management teams are ready to help you find the home that's just right for you. Or are you thinking about a career in property management? JC Hart is not just a great place to live. It's also one of Indiana's best places to work.

Check out the open positions on their website. At homeisjchart.com to see how you can join the team. Want to peek into life as a resident or team member? Follow them on Instagram. At home is JC Hart or head to homeisjchart.com to explore locations, careers, and more. JC Hart Company where your next home suite home is waiting.

I think a lot of people, over the last five years or so, a lot of entrepreneurs, people that I know have, you know, stepped away from their businesses. They've shut them down, they've moved on, they didn't work out. They've, you know, gone and pursued something different. What advice or, or what resources did you use as you were finding this new identity?

I mean, you've been doing the same, you'd been the GadellNet CEO for a decade. Yeah. 10 years. Yeah. That's hands up. That's longer than I've been in the workforce. Yeah. Well, thanks for making me feel old, just so you know that we're going, we're gonna go live, live some tough emotions and you're old. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

I'm appreciate you, but I'm just saying like you, you'd had a, an identity there. Yeah. How did you go out and find a new identity and, and kind of put the old one to rest? Yeah. And so you, you, I kinda asked two questions here and I wanna make sure I don't forget the first one, which is one of the things I didn't do and I didn't do really well and I'm now, I'm like a, just a obnoxious advocate for it, was I didn't lean on other people.

Like, it felt like, because I'd built this like, almost like semi masochistic personality that's like I can, I can get through anything by myself and I don't, I dunno if it's tied to being a male or tied to being an entrepreneur or tied to being a CEO, I dunno which part of the identity really caused that.

Or maybe just a amalgamation of all of those things that said like. No real people just handled this by themselves. And that's what I did and which is kind of what caused me to explode, I think. And, and one of the things that really changed for me was having conversations with other people, uh, which is why like on balance, like you'd mentioned a bunch of other CEOs leaving their jobs.

Like I became the defacto like, uh, experiential therapist for like a ton of people for the, since then, really. Right? Yeah. Probably say the first two or three years of just like, okay, what allowed you to make that decision? How are you feeling now? How are you handling not having power? How are you not handling some of those things that you kind of got used to?

So I have a lot of the, those conversations there. Uh, and that has been really, really helpful. There's a second part of your question that I've now forgotten. Uh, what was that? Finding your new identity. So the good thing, there's a lot of like parts of this story that I could tell and I could make it sound like I had at my entire act together.

And I'm gonna tell that story really quick and then I'll continue to interweave the actual story. Yeah. Which is in 2019, I started to get my masters. Um, because I knew I wanted to teach at some point, and I knew, again, I've always, I've always liked chess as a good example of like what business is, is I knew if in 2025 or 2030 I wanted to teach, you gotta start making those moves today.

And so 2019 became the journey of I need to get a master's in order to teach at the university level. My father's was a professor at a university, so it's always somewhat been in my brain. And so I started the process of getting and finishing or starting my master's in 2019. Yeah. Like the average person goes, gets their master like night school through like, uh, you know, whoever like Indiana University downtown.

Yeah. So you decided to do that, right? No, I Where where'd you get your master's from? Uh, Harvard. Yeah. Um, nice. Which were, which was a huge lift until COVID. So COVID was the source of my demise, uh, mentally at the business, but it was also a really big perk because classes for about a year were all remote, which is kind of nice.

So I didn't have to commute. And do You were commuting to Harvard? Yeah. For the first year. You had to. How often? Every few weeks. Dang. They, they made it, they make a, they have, there's a program that like allows you to do it successfully from an executive education perspective. But then, then COVID hit. I'm like, huh, yay.

Uh, and so that was one perk. Yeah. Is a lot of the classes were remote, which is, so you end up getting your master's from Harvard, uh, in 2023. It took me four years to, to get through that. Yeah. You know, sometimes for various reasons. Um, so yeah, so I had that. Um, we had an incredibly talented person, um, that was moved up the ranks at the time, was president of the company that moved very successfully, currently still the CEO of the business.

I had an executive team that was just brilliant and talented that are, that with the exception of one is still there. Four years later after me leaving, um, we had a great set of middle managers. We had a great set of like early talent, like people like from the outside looking in. The transition for me leaving was, was fine, right?

Like, it was just like, okay, this was inevitable. You built the, you built the ingredients. Now let them run it. I don't need to be the one on stage anymore. Let these other people. Get on stage, great. Move that along. Uh, and so, so that was really kind of the, the storyline that really again, tells really well the, the reality is, like I said, there was, it was peppered with a lot of, a lot of luck, uh, in the sense that I had that that master's degree already started already.

The decision to leave was quicker than I'd ever imagined. Um, in terms of, it wasn't the intention at the time, but it became very acute to me, both in the way that my physiology and my mindset work that like, I will not be serving again. To me, clients were important, don't get me wrong, but the most important constituency that I served was our employees that chose to follow my lead in this whole crazy endeavor of, of building the business.

And I just wasn't myself. Yeah. Like, I just, I was, I was, it, it was, I was very reactive. I was very, uh, I would say emotional. Like it just wasn't who I was not serving. The community that I promised I'd be a great leader for. And so that really was what, what said that, and to me, it goes back to this part of your identity of like knowing what I'm, what, who am I serving?

And in that capacity, serving those people was not as a CEO anymore. Yeah. Serving was actually leaving and didn't feel like that. And I felt like, again, like I said, a betrayal, but the reality was it came back to this kind of core part of who I was, which was this idea of being a servant to others around me.

And the best way that I could serve is not being there anymore. Yeah. And so that was, that was, that was a tough one. Yeah. Like knowing that the best thing for your team that you care about is to not be there. Yep. And it's proven out itself for the most part, pretty darn well. Like again, I still talk to most, to, to a lot of the key folks, uh, within the business.

And again, no businesses without its flaws, but it's going well. Did that, does that hurt a little bit? Well, so you're like, oh, like they, they can be better without me. Oh God, that's so funny. You asked that question. So I remember the day that I. It's my said, like my major goodbye. And I got, I had like three different scenarios in my head.

Uh, and thankfully the good one happens, but it was scenario number one, which was everyone revolts saying, you are this company. And everybody quits and said like, this is awful. And people are like running around am muck and like this, like Nick is the greatest and we're gonna lose this whole thing. That was option A.

Option B is, I would do it and nobody would care. Like literally everyone would be like, okay, bye. We've, we've actually never loved you anyway. Like, we didn't, we didn't like your leadership. This is actually kind of great. It, fortunately it kind of went right in the middle, which was, I think some people were like, okay, cool.

Uh, some people were devastated, but on balance, like it was the amount of support that I received for, you're pursuing a totally different passion and we love and support that choice. Was, was, was monumental. But I definitely went through like both iterations of like, this could go either direction. Well, and it's kind of like the.

I don't know. There's like a, there's like a quote or a meme or something where it's like, when you're young, you're really worried about that other people won't like you, and then you're worried about what other people think about you. And then you realize they weren't really thinking about you yet. They direct you at all anyway.

Yeah. Like, like they didn't think about you the way that you think about you. Correct. The, even when I was doing the talk, it's, the talk was definitely under the intention of what's in it for them. Right? Like, yes, maybe there's gonna be a fleeting moment of like, some empathy for my choice. Yeah. But the reality is how does it affect them?

How does it affect them with the choices that we made, uh, with our structure. Yeah. And the new CEO and some of the new changes that we had to make for the business. Like what's in it for them? And to me, I left very confident that every choice that I was making was beneficial to them. Yeah. And that was, that's made it a little bit easier.

I think that's a, a hard emotion to process, but is signs of the best leaders. So both ways. One, you are leaving and you. You genuinely, you know, want things to be better without, like, you hope that without you it will be, be better. Yeah. 96% of me felt four P was totally petty and I kind of wanted to implode, just be like, man was so important.

Yeah. But like having 96% is pretty good. I there, and the other piece is when you're on the other side of that conversation and when an employee is leaving, the best leaders genuinely, truthfully, want them to go out and succeed Yes. And be the best versions and make them feel good about that versus like the, the bad type of leader, I would say is like, oh, you'll be back.

Yeah. Like, you'll, you'll be back. We made you who you are or whatever it is. You know? To me I, yeah. I think, I think it's just so as a leader and thinking about where I was, whether at Butler or someplace else, is that you are a small part, a small part of somebody's like career arc. Yeah. And to be a part of that is such a gift and such an honor.

Yeah. That. With any luck, they stay with your business and contribute meaningfully. But if not like you were, you helped them get the next thing, like that's exciting. Like you have done something really neat. Either you've taught them what they don't like, which may be your company. Cool, great. I mean, not I not ideal, but that could be it.

Or you've given the skill sets to pursue something even bigger. How cool is that too? Yeah, but it's hard because it, it is. I think we're naturally a, I mean, we're wired to be social creatures, right? And we don't wanna be rejected from the herd. And that's, there's rejection about that. Yeah. And we don't live in the pension era anymore.

People aren't staying at a company's 30 years. No. That would, like you gotta know they're gonna leave at some point. That'd be nice. I just wanna like, I can, everyone kind was like those family-ish and so I guess like, like, oh, can we just like all go to Butler? Like could we all go do something different?

Taylor? Yeah, that would be fun. Okay, so, so how do you end up getting the opportunity at Butler? Ooh, that was, again, going back to like a little bit of luck, uh, a little bit of perseverance. Um, so I had known a few people at Butler. Yeah. Um, and so I'd ask a few questions and they were like, you know, it's really, really hard to get some of these gigs.

Um, especially in, it was in the middle of the summer and I was trying to get a gig for the fall and they said, you know, we plan out, you know, six months in advance. Um, so. You, you may not have an opportunity. And so they're like, but we're gonna connect you with some people and do some of these things. And got really lucky.

A friend of mine knew somebody else in the, the organization who knew secretly that the person that was teaching adjunct for an MBA class was actually gonna be, uh, letting Butler know that they wouldn't be able to teach it anymore. And it was entrepreneurial finance, which is essentially, how do you raise money?

How do you run your business and how do you sell your business? And they basically said like, Hey, would you wanna teach that? If so, I can kind of squeeze you in. So as an adjunct professor role. Uh, okay. And in a world where it seems as though high ed, higher ed is struggling, why, why run headfirst into higher education?

Oh, okay. So a butler's actually had like its biggest recruiting year this year. So I wanna make sure we like, put in like an asterisk. Like things are not as doom and gloom as people make it. And actually, I was listening on the way here, there's a podcast and someone was like, college is silly. And I, and like.

Of course it was a college educated person saying that college was silly, which is like my like least favorite thing in the world of someone who's became successful forgets that college, created the connections and the resources and the intelligence and the experiences that got them there. And then they blame college.

It's not the piece of paper. Oh my God. But it's arguably probably not even the classes either. No, I, I'll Get IN trouble for saying that, but yeah. Classes have some value, but classes have, again, that's where I met my two co-founders. Yeah. That's where I picked up some skills. That's why I saw like, Ooh, I like this.

I don't this, I'm not say classes necessarily, but it's like I don't, I can't think of a time again, I was a communication major. Yeah. Um, and I learned like the, yeah, right. I learned about speaking, but I didn't learn about hosting a podcast. Like I didn't learn, I didn't learn like the intricacies of what I was gonna be doing, but I got put by a bunch, uh, surrounded by a bunch of winners.

Yeah. Just like people that wanted to become more educated, that wanted to go out and do stuff, whether it be in business or in non-profit sector or whatever it might be. People just wanted to win. There's, I would pay unlimited money to spend four more years around people who. We're great people that wanted to have fun, that wanted to be winners.

I, I think there's no better way to articulate that. And I think now add, I would say an onus on higher education to provide really, really interesting experiences. So now you hanging out with winners, hanging out with a community of people that have been successful. So like now you're getting outside of the bubble of the, the university itself doing some really, really neat things.

And again, like Butler, like we have a Butler podcast and we have, but like we have, you know, photo and video editing like, uh, startups that we've got on campus that like, instead of just learning about photo and video editing and creating these like silly little work assignments, like you can actually do things for real customers.

Like how can we get more and more people doing real stuff in a university setting? But yeah, like, and again, at the time, higher ed wasn't quite as under fire. It is as it is now. Yeah. But I think it's great. Right? Like I'm, I'm actually glad that higher ed is nervous, right? Like, because it's forcing innovation.

Like that's how innovation happens. Yeah. Like innovation doesn't happen. When things are easy, when you're sitting on your laurels and hanging out, it's been so much fun seeing us have to look at everything and say, how can we do it just a little bit better now? Yeah. And I think it's the best thing that's ever happened.

Were you an adjunct for one year? I was an adjunct for a year. Yeah, for a year. And then a full-time getting, being full-time professor. When did you become the director of entrepreneurship? So, so yeah, so adjunct for the first year, teaching entrepreneur finance, and then my master's degree is not an MBA, it's, it's in organizational psych.

So I had a chance to teach one section of org, org psych. And then halfway through the year, I got a really cool job opportunity, um, to become president of a, like a, a manufacturing company. Like really, really neat stuff that I would've been actually really excited about. And I went back to Butler. I'm like, Hey.

I can't be adjunct. I'm not gonna tell you what I make as an adjunct, but assume it's significantly less than you could ever imagine. That's what you make as adjunct. I'm like, I need something, right? Like I need, I need to have some stability in my life. And they were like, Hey, we don't have any open roles.

And like literally a week later a role opened up, which was great. So that was like a huge pivot point. And like in March, yeah. Afterwards it's like all of a sudden the job I, it's, it was amazing. So I very crazy how that happens. Yeah. Uh, yeah. But I, I appreciate Butler for being nimble and saying like, Hey, these are rules, but let's, let's see what we can do about making something like this happen.

So that's really what I moved to full-time, like as a full-time professor. So that lasted another year. And then I became director of Butler Entrepreneurship this year In January. Yeah. So it's only been 11. Was there an once entrepreneurship program beforehand? We did, yeah. We had a, and one of the things that Butler has been very progressive on in the sense that it had an entrepreneurship major and a minor already.

Um, so that was already kind of built in, which is actually like the hardest part about university life is starting a major, so like the hard thing has already been done. Yeah. And we had some like really neat. Courses that like really just kind of had students dabbling in entrepreneurship already. The RBE (Real Business Experience) is cool.

Yeah. The RBE. Yeah. Right. So like, again, that's kind of like our flagship I'm, I am jealous of that. I thought that's kind, that is one of the coolest programs. Yeah. It's really, and and again, it's, I think students really like it. Um, I think it just gives you a very micro taste of what entrepreneurship is like, but also what like micro tastes of like, whoa, these are the people I can start a business with.

These are the people that do not make good co-founders. Like I think the team element of it is, is fun. I think just the, the chance to do something slightly different. Yeah. And I think to stretch your legs of like, this isn't a normal class. You're not just learning. Yeah. And coming to a lecture and doing a thing.

So like there's like that first like rep of getting, alright, I kinda got addicted to, yeah, this is more fun because I got to do something. How can I find more classes at Butler to go do something in? I've always been apprehensive of the entrepreneurship major. Ooh. Yeah. A lot of people graduate with an entrepreneurship major, but I have never.

Started anything correct or like done entrepreneurship, but they're like a major or like, and again, not you, you're different. A lot of people who teach entrepreneurship have never been entrepreneurs. Yep. Talk to me about what, what you're doing that's a little bit different. And sell me on the entrepreneurship major at Butler.

Okay. Like why should I, like if I was going out there to, I dunno, find places to invest in. Why, why or should people be buying stock in Butler entrepreneurs. Okay. You asked like 46 questions. Yeah, I know. I put a lot into that man. I 60, that last question was a hard hitting one that I will hopefully not forget about, but let's, let's make sure parking lot that one.

'cause that's a huge question and I wanna make sure I give some time to that one. Yes. Alright, so entrepreneurship major to start. One. Entrepreneurship I think, can exist in different forms. It does not always have to exist in a zero to one startup. It does not have to exist in a zero to one startup in like a venture backable way.

It doesn't have to exist necessarily in a main street type business. I think entrepreneurship can live at Eli Lilly. I think entrepreneurship can live in any business. I think it could live as a pharmacist. I think it could live as a biologist. I think the spirit of this idea around how do you define a problem, how do you understand how to solve for that problem and see a problem, not as a problem, but rather as an opportunity.

How do you get that solution to the masses? And then also understand the impact to the business around that, whether it's in the form of revenue or profit or the rather form of changes or whatever that looks like that, like that storytelling, I think applies everywhere. So first and foremost, I think we need to just redefine that entrepreneurship isn't necessarily.

Founding a business and to me, no part of the success in my like job is creating X number of founders or unicorn founders. Like that's not necessarily where I wanna be, especially as a 22-year-old. Like that's, there's an exceptional student that does that really well. What I want to do, and what I see as the most important part is if you look at the stats, right?

If you start your first entrepreneurial venture versus your second, it's like a three x difference in terms of success rate. And so if I can get that practice in a safe, incubated, like loving environment that challenges you a like, and you can get that rep in first, and maybe it takes off great, maybe you're lucky in it, it works out really well.

But you can't deny that somebody who started a business, whether it's succeeded or failure, is not better than the person that starts it the second time. What allows us to do so? I think entrepreneurship can be learned. Long story short, it's like there's things that you've learned. That's the definition of learning is you tried something, you failed or didn't win, and you did it again, and you did it better.

So if everyone can agree on that, you can agree that there's learning to be a better entrepreneur. Okay. So there is a gap of like where you are at versus where you can be to become better. So my job is to figure out as many ways to create that quote learning that allows an entrepreneur who tried it for the first time and then tried it for the second time and is more successful the second time.

How can I give those experiences, those lessons, those workshops, those speakers, those engagements with other people to allow that first time entrepreneur to be like a second time entrepreneur where they have that experience. Like that is the job of the department and learning in classes. So to me it's how do we create more of those moments to allow students to be in that place, and whether they apply it when they're 22 or 30, like to me, really where I want students to, not all students, but most students, is.

Go get a normal job for a little bit. I'm cool with that. Like, great. But I want that fire to be stuck behind you. That doesn't go away. And that like, just, we talked about confidence at the beginning of this podcast that like, just to live there. So five years from now, you're sitting on that plane and you realize life isn't where you thought it was going.

And you take that leap and you're like, man, I, I did this. Like I've, I've ran through the, the, uh, the process of having a pitch deck, which means I have to, I've done a business strategy and I've tried to tell somebody else about my business strategy in a thoughtful way. Okay, I've done this, I've done market research.

I've had the uncomfortable moments of asking people what their emotional challenges are to understand what the problem is and to quantify the problem. And I like, I've done these little things. I could do, I could do that again. And so that's what I want. So it's, I feel like so much of my job and then other professors in our space's, job is to plant a seed.

And then in that five years or 10 years or whatever, that they're working for somebody else, they're challenging assumptions, they're finding new ways to solve for things. They're not status quo people. And I think those are the entrepreneurship and innovation majors, less so than always being founders is the people that are just challenging the status quo.

And that's the type of people I want to become an entrepreneurship major, which is why I think everyone should become one, is I don't care if you're a marketing person or a finance person, like think of different ways of doing things better, because that's truly like, versus ai, like AI's gonna be smarter than us, 99 times out of a hundred.

But where it's not gonna be smarter than us is the skills that I think are reinforced and addressed in a program like an entrepreneurship program. Like what are your. Core values or principles of entrepreneurship? Like what do entrepreneurs, if, if, if you could wave a magic wand and every student who is an entrepreneurship major from Butler could walk out the door with X, y, or Z traits, what would they be?

Ooh. Okay. So I'll start with, I'll start with like an underlying one and then I'll go to my like. The ones that I really kind of propagate and share a lot. So the, the underlying one is just a general sense of like, grit and perseverance. I think that just, it's dealing, again, it's, it's always fun for me to deal with my class.

'cause I kind of feel like I can kind of grate, I can graph it like first few like weeks of a startup. Everything's exciting. I've got this really, really cool idea. I'm talking to my friends, everybody, because we're in the Midwest specifically. Everyone's like, this is the best idea ever. And your mom's excited about it.

Your friends are excited about it. Like you're solving some things and all of a sudden you have to like talk to clients and you gotta do some real work about it. And you just see like, like you see like the energy levels plummet. 'cause like this is, wait, this is actually some work now. Uh, and then it pops back up again.

'cause you start to get a little bit of validation on the idea and a new guy, customer, and you're like, yeah, yeah. Like, good thing, right? And then it goes back down. And it goes back. So like the ability with which to go up and go down and go up and go down and go up and like that's, there's no, I wish it was linear, right?

Like you're just like, all right, I'm learning, I'm growing, I'm learning. Like it never happens like that. It's like, I hate this, I love this, I hate this, I love this, I hate this, I love this. And that's okay. So how do you persevere through that? So grit and like perseverance, I would say is just an underlying characteristic.

And so I have to find that perfect balance of like love and support and care and lessons, but then also like, go do your thing and screw it up. And then sometimes that means you're probably not gonna be successful and that's kind of okay too. Um, so that's a little bit of that. And I would say at the top end of that, one of the things that we talk about is, um, kind of three I, I call my three Cs just 'cause it helps organize my thoughts.

But one is the, i I I think the most like fundamental part, which is this idea of value creation. Entrepreneurship is all about value creation. Value measured by ability to solve a problem or value created by ability to create because you've now solved the problem, that gap between what people are willing to pay for it versus what it costs, some sort of profit or cash flow.

And that's value creation is ultimately the basics of what entrepreneurship is doing. And like I said, that can be in a lab or in a startup or in buying a business or working for Eli Lilly. Like all those things can live as value creation. Second skill is creativity, right? Like, how do we get outta the box of this is the way that we've always done it.

Which again goes back to my like hatred of rules, right? Like rules are essentially just a, you know, a chronicling of the way things always have been. And I'm like, oh, screw that. Like let's do something different. So using creativity to, to solve for challenges in a different way. And the last one is this idea of connection and I would say this ability with which to connect things that you learned in the classroom to something that can solve a real problem, or I think that is crucial.

Huge. You know, a lot of people are like, good in the classroom scenario, they learn this thing, but can't figure out how to apply it to the real world. Correct. And that's my big thing is a, the challenge for all of us as professors is, are we teaching things that can be connected into something in the real world, or is it irrelevant?

But the student, the onus and accountability has to be on the student for like, okay, what have I learned and how can I put this into practice? So many times, again, we learn even just silly things like let's say the most like basic business 1 0 1 thing, like a SWOT analysis. And everyone's like, well, I don't know how to think about what's next in my business.

Have you done a SWOT analysis? No, I actually didn't apply that. Or some of like the doing like market research that you practice in class or any of these like fundamental things. Like your job is to take those and instead of just waving them off as stupid stuff they have to learn in class so they can get the A.

It's, how can I take that? And I actually like connect and apply that. And so I think the onus is on the professors to provide some of that material. But our job is to teach you like a thousand things and hope that you use six of them. And so we gotta pick the right a thousand. But your job as a student is to be really good at curating all this inbound material.

Like again, AI is producing so much stuff. As a student, your job is to to curate and connect. What is the stuff that's relevant, what is real, what is fake, what is applicable, what is not applicable, what is useful, what is not useful? Like that skillset is the skillset of the future. Mm-hmm. And so how do you take things that are out there because there's so much stuff.

For us, we just didn't have that much information. Like again, I was right at the beginning of the internet era, like we didn't have as much information. Hey, you dated yourself there, buddy. I know. That was, that was embarrassing. Um, and like there wasn't just as much stuff, but now, like students have like exponentially more resources now your job is how do you connect the right things?

Is I have a problem or a need or thing that I have to do is where in all the things, resources that I have, AI being one of them, what's the best tool to solve for this? Wow. So if I sold you on entrepreneurship at all as a major with you? Yes. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. And I just think, um, getting kids, students to take it from the chalkboard to real life.

Yep. And he's like, you have some sort of, you're doing this 'cause it's gonna lead you down the path somewhere. But you have sold me also on. Uh, entrepreneurship doesn't have to just mean like going out and starting a business from square one. Yeah. And like bringing it, you can bring an entrepreneurial mindset and you can bring entrepreneurship into your corporate gig, which I think is, I think, the best thing.

And it's, it's the most expansive way to think about it. Yeah. Like as a leader of any company and like, Hey, I can Get IN a, a student that's gonna come in, see problems as opportunities. If they're gonna be really good at making sure that problems is a real problem that's worth solving and they're gonna be able to tell me the impact it's gonna have on the business by changing or solving for that problem.

Like are you telling me that leaders aren't looking for that? Are you insane? Like that's exactly what people are looking at. This episode of Get IN is sponsored by AccountedFor a team of Indiana CPAs who believe accounting should work for business owners, not against them, instead of hourly bills and slow responses AccountedFor gives you everything, tax, bookkeeping, consulting, and virtual CFO services under one fixed monthly fee.

It's all cloud-based, transparent and designed to keep your business moving without interruptions. You'll have direct access to a real CPA who knows your numbers and your goals 'cause they think like business owners too. Learn more@accountedforcpa.com and tell them the Get in team sent you. Do you have stories of your current students and like things that they have done that's put your learnings into practice.

I mean, at the end of, we've got right now, again, going back to the founder, right? We've got nearly 50 founders that have like started businesses, like real businesses. Yeah. Yeah. I mean from what to what? Like, gimme the gambit of like craziest thing that's like wild to like a normal business. Yeah. I mean we've got, we've got students that are, again, we've got student that is, you know, raising millions of dollars for like startup funding.

What we've got a student that I started working with two and a half years ago that built like an influencer software that kinda manages like micro influencers. And he sold, I'm not gonna tell you how much he sold it for, but he did really, really well. Um, and he sold that a few months ago and he's 23, 24 right now.

So he's a graduate. How's that dude? Um, we've got some students that are solving, like, again, we have a lot of like bootstrap service business startups, which I think are obviously fantastic. Like, again, the, the sexy venture-backed type businesses are always fun to talk about, but like, I love that we have like very simple service-based businesses that are out there kind of doing kind.

Doing their thing. We've got students out there selling vitamins. We've got students out there that are selling, uh, again, looking to sell some, like more like food products. We've got students that are out there just doing a ton of really, really interesting pro like looking at different problem sets and saying like, how can we do this creatively?

But it's, it's a great mix of venture backable and then kind of main street type businesses, but most of them in some capacity are creating some sort of revenue. Um, which is, which is also really nice. I think that's getting, getting college entrepreneurs to transact. Yeah. That is a crucial part. Like getting, it's a dopamine hit.

Yeah. Getting someone to pay you money for something that isn't just like an hour of your time. Yeah. Think that instead of that exchange of renting your eight hours a day, like Yeah, exactly. Like I. Oh my gosh. I started 1000 things during college, but it weren't even like, my favorite part about it. They, they weren't even entrepreneur.

Like, I didn't call it like entrepreneurship business. I was just like making money. Yeah. You know, like all the way from, oh my gosh, we flipped, uh, stuff on eBay. Like we were buying stuff from, I have a student I work with that made a quarter million dollars flipping stuff on eBay last year. And I'm like, are you kidding me?

Like that's amazing. Yeah. That's not that there's, that, there's a real business of, of you find the right things, resell it to different thing. Yeah. Like it's just, but getting to the point where it's like, oh wow, my, my hour isn't worth $12. It isn't worth $25. It's worth whatever I can get for that hour.

Yeah. No question. And sometimes it's worth negative 50, right? Yeah. Like you have to understand entrepreneurs a lot. A lot of times it's worth negative 50. Correct. And it's kind of nice to have 12 hours 'cause like at least it's predictable, but Yeah. But, but the upside, some days you're like, oh man, a little stability.

$12 an hour would've been nice right now. I know. Yeah. Um, okay. What do you hope to grow this Butler Entrepreneurship program into? Yeah. So again, like the good thing is I work with incredible people who are also on board with this idea of like, how do we use this as a vehicle for growth? And, and part of actually entrepreneurship is part of the Butler, bigger Butler strategy that's gonna be rolling out.

So we've got like a lot more resources that are like tied to it. So it's me. So my hope is Butler becomes on the map. I hope I can use both what we're doing in terms of like actual, uh, tangible. Um, outcomes on behalf of students and the community as proof positive that to your point around higher education is useless.

Like I can't, I can't handle that anymore. Like it is, I am, I'm bordering on being explosive of how much that absolutely drives me. Absolutely nuts. In terms of the amount of growth, and again, it's not for everyone, don't get me wrong, but like the amount of growth that happens between 18 and 22, like higher ed may be flawed in some capacity.

Yeah. But it, it has done and proven out year after year after year and it continues to do so, and I'm seeing it right now, especially for somebody AUCs norms and rules, like I'm the first one to say this thing that's a norm is not right. Yeah. It continues to churn out, uh, I would say higher caliber individuals because of the stuff that you get to experience in that four year.

So what I wanna do is continue to provide proof points that say Butler specifically. Is is a place to go if you've got an idea, if you've already started to work through things, you wanna just be influential, you wanna have a great career. You're afraid of the impact of AI on your entry level jobs that are like imploding on itself right now.

Yeah. And saying, you're saying this is the place to go to protect myself from being affected by all the, in, uh, the, the very obvious implications that AI and all these changes in the world are happening on the job market. Yeah. I mean, it's getting towards halfway through school year, you know, middle of the school year.

How are jobs for the seniors that you're talking to looking like it, it's, I mean, the good thing is instead of, what I'm seeing is like, instead of multiple job offers, it's a single job offer, right? Like, they've got one and they're like, okay, good. I'm gonna take, I'm gonna take this one. So it's, it's not imploding yet, but statistically, like you look at the job, I mean, it's, I think entry level jobs are only like 30 or 40%.

Like that is. Huge. And so part of what Butler Entrepreneurship is also tasked with doing is we're creating and starting student run businesses on campus. So like Butler will own the business, but a founder can come and say, Hey, I wanna start up a, like again, we had a SA Bowl restaurant that got started on campus, uh, by this incredibly talented person.

Butler owns it, and we had to put in significant startup capital. We didn't make money for the first eight months, uh, but what we did is now created a CEO job, a CFO job, a CMO job, and 20 student workers out of nowhere, right? And so now part of what Butler's gonna be doing is creating a few of these every year in order to create these like student run businesses so that we're not beholden to the, like the internship market for students to get some real experience.

So I think we're kinda just taking matters that's very smart into our own hands. I know it's, it's really, really neat and we're taking matters into our own hands and not being beholden to the, the economy. And now our students are gonna leave and be like, I actually ran again, you talk about like commercializing a business.

Like I actually ran a real thing. Um, and it wasn't just a. I'm selling, you know, some Butler swag, which I think is super great learning. It's like you're running a real business that can get shut down at any time if you screw things up, help code violations, which we, we have gotten right? Like, and it's such a great learning, like to watch it all happen, you're like, I can, I can prevent this.

No one's getting sick. You know, it's, it's just shuts down the business for a day. But nonetheless, like, it's great learning for those students that set them apart. Um, and so part of, again, what do I see with Butler Entrepreneurship is finding out more ways to either, again, if, if jobs, if those jobs from zero to three years of experience are just dissolving, how do I get a students to get, quote, three years of experience in four years at, at college so that somebody can hire a 22-year-old from Butler University with what I would argue is three years of experience.

So they're now, they're learning in the classroom, doing all the, I think very, very important stuff that you learn in a classroom with research based learning. But how do you get, uh, somebody to say, I have three years of experience, one year of experience running a business, one year of experience through some sort of internships through things, and I got another year of experience doing something else.

Right. And now that person has three years of experience, and so now Butler students compared to everybody else are leaving. It's like AP credit, like it's like AP credit for your career as you get the accredit earlier so that you have the maturity and the experience of a 25-year-old at 22. Like that for me is what I'm trying to build.

I mean, that checks out. Yeah. I'm pretty good about that. That makes, that makes a lot of sense. Again, I, I feel like an incredible amount of responsibility for that. Well, I mean, and clearly other people think it's been working. You know, you were up for was in Mira Award. Yeah. For community impact. Yeah.

Which is really, really neat. How did that process go down? Like how did you, you get up getting nominated for the Community Impact award, you guys win. Yeah, so we were asked to say, Hey, like, Hey, I really like what you're trying to build. We see some changes we see that's different trying to build versus like, is this, does this go back to the gal at times where you're like, you're hitting home runs, you're hitting winners?

Oh, well, yeah. I feel like, I feel like I'm hitting a lot of base hits in a row, which, okay. Again, going back to like, I think I fear again, don't get me wrong, we'll go back, we'll, we're on this, like, we're rousing to this like entrepreneurship thing, but I'm gonna go back and be nerdy and emotional really quick.

Yeah. Which is, I've got a massive amount of anxiety of getting this potential mirror award. We've actually, there's a accredited institution called USASBE, which is an association, which is like, I actually don't know what USASBE stands for, which is embarrassing. Uh, but either way, we're up for this gigantic award about kind of a reemerging entrepreneurship program.

Um, and it's the, it's, it's really the, the governing body and association that represents entrepreneurship and university settings. We're up for this other award. Again, I think some of, some of that, like I would say that home run pressure is on me again, in a way that I was like, oh gosh, I forgot, I forgot what it was like again, it was fun being the obnoxious, enthusiastic professor and now I have to like live up to this standard.

And so if I could be totally honest, like what wakes me up at two in the morning? Is that right? Like, I'm like, oh, shoot. Like we're, I'm, I'm committed to some really, really big things and I'm, how did I put myself in this situation again? Uh, but here I am, but I think I've armed with more resources and tools than I was four years ago.

But United States Association for Small Business and Entrepreneurship, SB you. SAS B. Yeah. So things are headed in the right direction. Correct. What's the next big domino that has to fall and what does the future of Butler Entrepreneurship look like? So, I mean, obviously right now we are in the fun part of entrepreneurship, the, I would say the unscalable, but wildly.

Fun part of building the business where you're just throwing things out. We're doing this workshop, we're gonna get this speaker, we're gonna do this thing, we're gonna try this program. I'm gonna teach it this way. Like it is all, throw stuff into the market, see how the market reacts. Come back and be like, okay, that didn't work.

Or, yeah, that really, really works. Let's double down on this. Um, and to me it's a function of maybe another semester of controlled, I'll call it controlled chaos, but that's not really appropriate 'cause it's thoughtful and it's going towards a direction, but it's testing a lot of things out. And then the future really is, okay, we now how do we systematize and standardize so that we say, okay, we're gonna do this pitch competition at this time serving this demographic.

And we're gonna partner with like, we're starting a pitch competition with multiple universities. 'cause one of my biggest pet peeves is like, we don't need to work in silos. Like how do you bring Indiana entrepreneurs together? Because truly all ships rise. So like, okay, so in in February we're gonna bring all universities together to do this pitch competition.

Okay? So now every February we have this pitch competition, and in April we're gonna do this sprint event. And in we're gonna do these programs at these times. We've got great partners that help incubate and source potential opportunities through students. Right now, it's heavily reliant on a few key players, myself specifically, but others who have had a step up, right?

And so now it's standardized and grow, which I think is part of the entrepreneurship like journey, right? Like you're starting a business, you're trying some things out, you're trying to find part at market fit. And as soon as you get that, it's standardized and scale. But to me now I have to standardize before I can really scale.

Yeah. So now we need processes and like systems in place, which we're working on through this year, um, to build some of those. And then it's. Sky's the limit in scale. So that's really where I see. But like, again, we're, we're hosting this Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition conference at the end of January.

And so going back to like, what is Butler entrepreneurs doing? I want to, I want Butler Entrepreneurship to be known as the, the learning and skillset development entity that saves hundreds of businesses in Indiana where that business was gonna sell. 'cause they didn't, they, they were 65, they didn't have a person to succeed that business.

And so they have people that were trained because of some of the Butler Entrepreneurship, Butler ecosystem to buy that business. Well, yeah. So like again, what's the future for us is we've got future student leaders that were like impacting the market. I want the market to know that, again, these highly talented, skilled people who have done real things are coming out as a 22-year-old, acting like a 25-year-old.

I want to save businesses in the space. I wanna create some really, really cool on campus businesses so that when you walk around campus, you're like, geez, there are so many student run businesses on campus. This is. This is unreal. Like this is not normal. And so I think I just said that not normal, like that's kind of a theme for me in general is like, I don't wanna be normal.

And so like how do you kind of create something that when everyone says like, oh, entrepreneurship, but we're like, oh, that's not normal. Like they're just doing some innovative different things. Yeah. And so I think we have to be entrepreneurial, um, because if we're not entrepreneurial and we teach entrepreneurship, that feels like a disconnect.

Yeah. I in a very public way in front of students who see me come up with great ideas that are awesome and then come up with ideas that are totally bombs. Like they see me do it too. And I think there's a safe space too, of just watching me be entrepreneurial in front of all of them and just being like, this is not perfect.

Yeah. And I know it, and that's okay too. One final question. In the higher ed space, brilliant. I feel as though this generation of college kids gets labeled as the lazy AI generation. Ooh, getting to spend time with current college students. Are they lazy? Everything that I have seen has pointed to that being just the very cliche, the generation ahead complains about the generation behind.

Yeah. I have been wildly impressed with this cohort of students. Are there exceptions? Yes. There are ones that on the margins that are unbelievably exceptional, and there's ones on the margin that I'm just like, how did you make it into this institution? Right? Like, but what I have found, if I have to make a completely generic stereotype.

Is, I would say that they are more thoughtful than generations in the past. They care and they ask more questions and their, their ability with which to be empathetic, which is a huge part of the entrepreneurship like process is, is, is, is exceptional. I would say. They are really advocating for in-person and live things like they want to engage with each other, which I think is, I'm thankful for that We haven't lost that completely.

That they're not just stuck behind phones. In fact, like again, this generation is bucking trends. Like they're, they're going back to like old school cameras and they're, they're, they're talking about going to bed on time or they're, they're talking about like getting rid of their phone, having space away from their phone.

Like I think they're challenging, like, Hey, this was, I think we maybe over-indexed on this like internet thing and maybe we need to step back. And I think they're challenging assumptions there. And as far as lazy goes, again, note that especially entrepreneurship, everyone kind of opts in. So I deal with, I would say that.

I was like a higher degree of self-motivated self-agency individuals. Yeah. But unbalanced, I have not seen that, uh, at all. And if I compare that to myself at that age, I would say they show up better than I did. And that was a, that was a disaster in college, right? Like I, they were, they're they're showing up consistently and well in a way that I think, you know, my generation 25 years ago wasn't so I, I have been more than impressed.

Um, and I think I wasn't expecting to be, oh. So I think I was, I think I was expecting that. Right. You like it when they exceed expectations. Right. Um, and it's not because I set expectations so phenomenally low. Like it's, it's, it's great. Like I am building and I don't know what that thing is. And I dunno if I'll ever actually execute on it.

But I'm building this like arsenal of like, the most like incredibly talented, thoughtful people that one day maybe I'll start a company and I'll just hire like 30 of them and they're all gonna come in and just. Crush the world. And there you go again. I ca I came in, everyone's like, why did you pick Butler?

I'm like, well, 'cause it was the closest one like that. I, I wish I had a great like, storyline that said like, you know, I went to Butler, or I have no people from Butler. Saw some, saw some opportunity. Yeah, right. No, I didn't. In Butler, Talkington. No. Like, I was just literally like, well that's the closest one.

I don't wanna drive to IU or Purdue, so I'm gonna choose Butler. And once the, again, usually it's like, don't meet your heroes or don't, like, once you kind of go into the ecosystem, you realize it's, it's more, it's worse than you thought. And I would say I have been more than surprised. And I think what really I think sets Butler apart, which I really, really like going back to your rrb is again, getting a degree from Harvard was really cool 'cause it impresses like my mom and my father-in-law.

And that's, that's it, right? But everybody there is smart and it's really easy to work with only smart people. I think the skillset of the future too is also like, how do you work with people that aren't naturally motivated in the same way that you are? And I think what's great about Butler is there's a mix.

And I think that they're learning also skill sets of like how to deal with. A players, B players and C players all in the same group. And getting people to like rise to the occasion. 'cause I think that's an unbelievably important skillset. Yeah. So I like the fact that it's a good mix of people, but I would say if I have to make a general stio stereotype about the, the generation, I think we're just fine.

Yeah. I think we're all, we're dramatic old people. It's got Nick's statement approval. That was it. Yeah. Uh, how can the community support you can, how can the community support Butler Entrepreneurship? Well, I mean, a continuing to tell our story and telling it to other people like that for me is just such a huge part of it is, um, again, how do we raise awareness that we're trying to be not normal?

Um, one of the most key things of success, again, I watch what, like, makes certain students more successful and it's those individuals that have had opportunities to interact with other founders or people in the space or innovators even at the big Fortune 500s to say. It's humanizes the experience.

It's less scary once you've seen other people that are doing the thing. So like getting more involved as a mentor or just showing up or engaging with students, like, I just feel like it's just a huge part of. Of what we're doing. I would say the third part is continuing to be support coming into the RBE, uh, marketplaces, coming and supporting student run businesses on campus, supporting, uh, some students that are, you know, have a marketing agency and using kind of marketing agency re resources on, uh, for our students.

Right. Like we are from, we are a, we are a happy customer of a Butler student entrepreneurship business. Yeah, you are. Yeah. Which is great. Right? Shout out to Smily for making the connection. Shout out to Jenna. Yeah, she rocks. Jenna Burd, Yalla Solutions Yalla Solutions. Yeah, so, I mean, has, which started as like a social media, like, like marketing agency and then it's been cool to see the development and the progression of the student run business.

Right. And get to be, I dunno, one of the. OG customers, and what a neat representation. So Jenna's story, you know, she, she started her business a few years ago and then over the course of the last few years, built her business. And going back to my thesis around like, how do you create 25 year olds in a 22-year-old body like that, Jenna represents that, right?

Like she's had two or three years of experiences that are full-time, real experiences before she even graduates. And like that for me is monumental and she's doing it all on her own and she's talented so that, that helps money. But, um, so again, community supporting those, those individuals too. If you, if you like our thumbnails, shout out Yalla Solutions.

She makes all the thumbnails. Come on. Um, alright, it's time in the show. We're gonna talk all things Indiana. Okay, great. Are you prepared? I, I, I, I love Indiana. This question is brought to you by friends of JC Hart. They're a leader in creating enjoyable living experiences at apartment communities all across Indiana and beyond.

Check them out at homeisjchart.com. My question for you, Nick, why do you call Indiana home? All right, well, as usual, I have to tell it in a long form story Absolutely. Instead of a quick answer. So my long form story that I'll keep reasonably short is my wife and I moved here in 2009. We had lived a ton of really, really neat places.

Uh, and we came here for my wife's job and I came here kicking and screaming like I was not happy about it. Like, I was just like, how, how have I fallen so hard that I moved to Indiana? And I'm gonna be honest about it. And it fast forward to now where the number of times that I tell students to stay in Indiana.

'cause this is the most incredible place to raise a family, to start a business, to grow a career, to grow a network. Um. Has changed funda. Like, it just, it's so amazing to see what 16 years has, has done and how wrong I was about living here and I think it's represented. So this morning I had a meeting at, uh, again, Cafe Patachou on 49th and Penn, which is, that's where business happens.

That is real. Business happens and I can walk into that place and I will know 50% of the people there. Not because I'm well connected or anything different is because Indiana people, like there is, it is, you are one step away from almost anybody. Yeah. And what I have found, I'm gonna give an example. We did a founder's day at, uh, a founder's evening with Butler Entrepreneurship this year.

And I sent a note to 80 different, like CEO founders. Literally just a single email like that. Like again, everyone was BCC'd simple email and saying like, Hey, I'm trying to do something big. Instead of having one speaker, two speakers, I want 40, um, I'm gonna go big. Can anybody come in three weeks or two and a half weeks because I procrastinated and I didn't send it out.

Can anybody give up two hours of their evening from five to seven and come to this thing? And I got 42 people that said a yes immediately, like, who owe nothing to me? Uh, but did it because it is for the betterment of the future of the people here in Indiana. And I don't think that is normal. And again, I know that a bit because I have office, I had other offices in different states.

I watched what's happening. I have a lot of cohort, uh, individual or peers in similar jobs as me in different states. And Indiana is different for that. So I have found it to be an incredible place to be. We do not have Silicon Valley numbers from a venture capital perspective. We do not have as many Fortune 500 companies.

Like we don't have the thing, right. And to me, we don't have mountain. But we've got a great airport that gets us to those mountains very easily. Um, but more than that, we have the things that really, really matter, which I think is community and support, which I think is the number one factor in what potentially makes business successful.

And then as a parents, it's a great and easy place to raise a family. Um, and that I complain about taking 25 minute commutes, which gets me to anywhere in the city. Uh, it's, it's easy to get around, but as a parents, my kids go to incredible schools as a, uh, as a person. It's been an, an incredible place to be.

So it's, it's been an easy decision for us. And I just laugh about how naive I was in 2009. A lot of people, I love those stories where they're like, ah, no. How have I, how have I fallen so far that I live in Indiana? Yeah. And then you're like, Ugh. It's, it's, it's good. Now I'm like, I wanna advocate for it. I wanna advocate for the younger top population.

'cause I want them to stay, I want them to raise kids here. I want 'em to do good big things. But then also like, don't want everyone to move here. Like, this is, this is great. Right. Like, don't, don't ruin it. Like we got, especially you're keeping Indiana. Yeah. Okay. We have a couple rapid fire questions here.

Oh gosh. Butler or Pacers basketball. Oh, Butler. Wow. I'm from Indiana. Like Oh, that's fair. Okay. Yeah, it's hard. Number one rule of entrepreneurship. Don't forget about your customer. Ooh. Okay. Alright. Like, every decision made has to be customer oriented. Yeah. Favorite Indiana Long distance running event. the Tecumseh 50K.

Oh yeah. the Tecumseh 50K. Yeah. That's Why do you love that one? Uh, just 'cause it's, again, you can kinda go down a day, you can see you run through, uh, Morgan-Monroe State Forest and Yellowwood State Forest. Yeah. Uh, like again, I think you used to see like a really, really good glimpse mm-hmm. Of kinda how beautiful Indiana is in a surprising way.

What is the easiest business that a college entrepreneur could start at all? Buying and reselling stuff is the easiest. Yeah. Right. Like you buy it, you can, you can figure out a sales channel that is unique and different and get it to somebody that, that needs it. Yeah. Like print a t-shirt that says not licensed logos, but like.

Something kind of butlery. Yeah, right. Like again, the kinda the RBE style is, is definitely like the easiest, easiest one. I don't use a logo. So you don't have to deal with licensing, make a t-shirt, put it on VistaPrint, and then start making some funny reels. Sell a few t-shirts. Boom. I think, I think there could be so much done.

I mean like TikTok Shop and much other stuff really just kind of opens up like avenue for Yeah. Like, yeah. Flip some stuff on Facebook Marketplace. Yeah, there's, there's a lot of different ways, but I say like, buy, buy, resell. My son, my 13-year-old son, this is not a great college job, but my 13-year-old son three months ago started his knife sharpening business.

So he sharpens, he's got like, he bought a knife sharpener and uh, sharpens knife and it's crushing it like that is, he started his five bucks a knife. It is like the easiest thing in the world. He wraps it up in a little like butcher paper thing. When it's done. It's adorable. Um, but. Knife sharpening, but like niche little, like these like niche, little like side hustley type things are, are a lot of fun.

So is there something that you could do that's annoying to somebody else mm-hmm. That can scale? What is a startup mistake that first time founders make a lot? I say rush the process again, which is ironic 'cause I always love moving fast. But I would say rush the process of understanding what problem they're truly trying to solve.

Uh, and then I would say the second one is just forgetting about the sheer importance of every decision that you make is related to cashflow. Yeah. Is the way you set up your contracts, the way that you do your ordering, the way that you pay bills, the way you promise things, the way you spend your money, what you spend your money on is literally every choice that you're thinking about is cashflow.

Uh, especially when you've got employees and especially when you've got other, like, especially when you want to reinvest and grow. Cash flow is everything. Like again, you can have the greatest set, you can have the greatest month and then go bankrupt the next day, uh, or next month solely because you made poor choices around cashflow, which, who's an Indiana founder that you wanna shout out?

I'm gonna go, I'm gonna go. Casey Crouse, founding New Shoe Day. Yes. Starting his thing for real right now. Uh, and again, proving that you can found a business, uh, that doesn't necessarily have to be a for-profit business, but you found a problem worth solving and you're out there putting thing, putting yourself out there to, uh, to solve for that.

So yeah, people will be learning more about New Shoe Day in Casey very, very soon. I hope so. Alright, final three questions that we ask every guest that comes on the show. You've lived lots of different places, traveled different places, worked for big Fortune 500 companies, but if you could shout it from the rooftops, what's one thing the world needs to know about Indiana?

This is a community of people that uplifts and support each other. Like no place I've ever been. Snap. There it is. That's good. Yeah, there it is. All right. This is your chance to shed some light on a part of the state that more people need to know about. It could be a restaurant, it could be a park, it could be your favorite place to sit and think.

What is a hidden gem in Indiana? Ooh. My favorite little place, it's not that little, but it Cool Creek Park, uh, which is in when like Westfield/Carmel area. It is my favorite place for a one-mile loop. So it's a great for like a training run. It's got trails that kind of crisscross on the inside of it.

It is the easiest place for your kids to go creek stomping in. I think it is a absolute gem and I love it like it is. Cool Creek Park. It is, it is a perfect little haven that you can Get IN and out in 45 minutes and have what I would say is a world class outdoor experience. There we go. Cool Creek Park.

Okay. You, this is a similar question we just asked, uh, but it's another chance to share the love. This is where we find new guest recommendations or learn about other people that have ties to Indiana that are doing inspiring things. Who's the Hoosier? We need to keep on our radar. Someone who's doing big things.

I'm gonna go give a shout out to a guy that has been highly instrumental in building out this Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition thing. Pat East. Yeah. Uh, from Bloomington. Yeah. Uh, just because he's the most interesting person in the world. He's done venture capital. He's started multiple businesses.

And he's buying businesses. He's, and like generously in the spirit of Indiana, has given up hundreds of hours of time to make this Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition thing work by setting up workshops all around the state, uh, virtual and live. So you have a big one coming up, right? We do, yeah. January 26th.

What is it? It's for the community. It's, it's primarily actually targeting the community, um, for student support. So people, because I do think there are a lot of people that are so interested in buying a business from the silver tsunami. Yep. But I don't hear about many people doing transactions. A lot of, lot of chatter, not a lot of transactions.

Yeah. Ask, ask any, uh, like agents, uh, or or resource for that. They'll tell you the same, same thing. So that, that's, that's what we're trying to do is how do you, again, to me going back to like our definition of confidence, which is like. You know, a while back ago is how do you get those reps in? And so I think just having the opportunity to practice for eight hours, we've got 40 speakers, we're gonna hear from other people that have done it in the past.

We've got opportunities to kind of practice doing due diligence and negotiation and a bunch of other items at that conference and kinda hear more about those things. So it feels less intimidating. Yeah. To allow that person to go from this is interesting to Yes. I actually wanna pull the trigger. How, how can people sign up for that?

Uh, if you go to etaindy.com uh oh, you have your own URL? We do. But don't go to www.etaindy.com for some reason that doesn't work. But it's etaindy.com that will get you to a link to Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition conference. Oh yeah. 40 speakers one day. Own your next chapter. I wish you were like our voiceover guy.

Like every time you signed on, you just hear Nate Spangle voice connect with buyers, sellers, and industry experts at the Midwest Premier Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition event. Monday, January 26th, 9:00 AM to 6:00 PM Register now. Like I wanna register again. Come on, because of your, let's go.

The way that you just described that, that's sick. Monday, January 26th, full day conference. Full day. It's starting at nine. For anyone curious. Yeah, primarily for people. So we're, we're looking for individuals all across the state. Come on in, come to Indianapolis. Uh, come hang out in the beautiful campus of Butler.

Come see it. We have the, the governor's popping in. He's talking at noon. We've got, uh, we've got a special speaker on tap from, there's a book called, uh, Buy Then Build, which is like the premier book on it. We've got a speaker for that. We've got some good people coming. Uh, heck yeah. So we haven't announced some of those things yet, but it's, uh, it's coming.

So Well, I mean, everyone's talking about buying, buying businesses. Yeah. The silver tsunami, the whole nine yards. So it'll be nice to see people start getting to some transactions. Correct. And again, there's, there's also gonna be resources there, like again, banks and CPAs and like, we're gonna have a few of those folks there.

We don't have like, overwhelm people with like salespeople. The intention is a lot of the learning things, but if you don't have somebody for the thing, you don't have like a guy or girl for that. You need a person for that. Yeah. I got you. You got that. You got that there. I love it. Nick, this has been a pleasure.

This is fun. It's been great to learn even more about your journey through. One, graduating and, you know, getting into entrepreneurship and again, kind of going, kicking and screaming to Indiana and, and, uh, how you've been able to become a huge part of the, not just the entrepreneurship, not just the Butler community, but just the Indiana community in general.

You know, you talked about, uh, other founders looking to you and coming for advice and guidance after they were, you know, moving into their next chapters as well. I always appreciate your intentionality and your thoughtfulness and the way that, uh, that the brain works. I think that I'm really excited for a couple.

We're gonna have to have another episode where we talk about another big thing that's happening in 2026, what you're doing, if you wanna tease that a little bit and talk about. Oh, what's happening? The book. The book. We got a book too. You got a book coming out late, middle later, 2026. Yeah. I would say Q, late Q2, Q3.

That's all about what? Uh, bias to action. Bias to Action. I look back at everything that has been structurally and fundamentally different in my life, and I look at like my ease of sliding into action versus overthinking as the cause for why it actually worked out that way. Yeah. The book is a kind of a nerdy sciencey book, but written in the spirit of like an Adam Grant where it's like still fun, but yet you're still accidentally learning.

Yeah. Uh, around like why the brain, uh, prevents us from making decisions or has us kind of dealing with the status quo, either individually or like you think like your executive team. That's like every, every time you have a weekly meeting you're talking about the same darn problems all over again. And then kind of how do you break that?

Yeah. So if you're looking for a book from a Harvard graduate that's an exited CEO investor that also pours back into the children and helps them children start businesses, this is your guy. I mean, put that on a resume. Like for the children, the Harvard, the For the children. Yeah. Come on. I mean, what doesn't this guy do?

I love it. It's always fun to hang out with you. Thank you for everything that you're doing. I'm really excited to see how the Butler Entrepreneurship program continues to evolve. Excited to read the book and always just excited to share the microphone with you, my friend. This is great. Thanks for stopping by.

Yeah. Thanks for having me, man. Appreciate it. This show is made possible by our friends up at Sweetwater. Whether you're looking to start a podcast or take your content to the next level, click the link in the description to see all my gear recommendations at Sweetwater. If you want a behind-the-scenes look at everything we're doing across the state.

Make sure you follow me on Instagram and TikTok at Nate Spangle. Thank you so much for listening and being a part of what makes the Hoosier State great. We'll see you next time here on Get IN.