How to Build Momentum with Your Startup and Career with Christopher Day and Matt Hunckler

from the crossroads of America in the Hoosier State of Indiana this is get in the podcast focused on the unfolding stories and extraordinary Innovation happening right now in the Heartland I'm Nate spangle head of community at Powder Keg and I will be one of your hosts for today's conversation I'm joined in Studio by co-host birthday boy Christopher tof day CEO Elevate Ventures and Matt Hunter CEO at Powder Keg on the show today we are going to be covering a few topics that the community has asked for a deep dive on you forget thinking about what can go wrong it's like like I think you should always be well I don't know maybe you shouldn't but at least I I always think about what can go wrong and trying to think three steps ahead those include failure building relationships and community and how to capitalize on momentum gentlemen welcome to the show thank you Nate for having me they're wonderful great NPR voice I would just like to say thank you for the shout out on the birthday I turned 39 today 39 years young baby that's my number and I'm sticking to I love it absolutely I love it that's what I like to hear well gentlemen today we're going to do a deep dive into a couple topics I've got some feedback from the community that we've hit on a few of them but they want to dive deep they want to learn a little bit more inside the entrepreneurial minds of both of you so we're going to start with a super easy question like very light just get it rolling so Toph tell us the story of your biggest failure um will I have a lot of failures my biggest failure I'll tell you the first biggest failure that I experienced that I thought literally might be the end of my uh entrepreneurial career that at that point in time in that company was about two weeks um so we started a Broadband company and I really didn't know anything about Broadband I knew I could get contracts to install Broadband systems and we hired these people who were you know smarter than I was to to actually build these systems but I had misquoted our first three projects and out of the gate learned like within like 30 days that we were already 120 000 in the red because I had messed up the the estimates left some things out that kind of seems like the painting story you told us yeah yeah it went from 3 500 mistake to a 120 000 mistake in uh and immediately went to our investors and like I made a big mistake here and they're like well gotta work through it tell me about that conversation right because I feel like that's something that I mean people face and they have like that anxiety around oh my gosh I have to own up and talk about this mistake to investors to members on your team how did you navigate that conversation um grin and Barrett like like literally like the night when I realized it had happened and I knew I was gonna be talking to the next day that night I literally stood in front of a mirror and and rehearsed how I was going to deliver that bad news and uh uh you know I I noticed that I think throughout life there are a lot of people so let's let's say that word's called conflict um I don't view these things as conflict right it's just moments of honesty transparency just being real Being Human and and I I noticed over the years that there are a number of people that will kick things down the you know kick cams down the road or try to sweep things under the carpet you know those phrases it never gets better never and so like you just deal with it up front and you just be factual like that little phrase I've mentioned before like I was taught to manage my facts right out of college you manage by fact you just be forthright and this is what happened and this is what I'm gonna do about it and what do you want to talk about right I think that's a that's a great perspective and I do think there is that like time it's like oh I'll just give this some time to think about the perfect thing to say but the perfect thing I think that's a great framework though for delivering bad news yeah it'd just be upfront about it don't bury the lead don't beat around the bush here's what happened here's why it happened yeah here's what I'm gonna do about it here's how to make sure it's not going to happen and in fact in every board meeting I've had in every company I've always LED with the bad news yeah right here's what went wrong yeah you know in the last quarter the last month whenever we'd met previously I just between those two time periods eating had gone wrong or not to a plan yeah just leave with that okay let's get the bad stuff out of the way here's where we are here's what happened any questions on that and then we're going to talk about next steps you know what's interesting I do that in my investor updates I'm literally just like good bad plan right and like that's that's basically the update yeah but one thing I noticed is that in the Elevate investor updates that are like you know the quarterly like must do these yeah there's nothing there's no space for the bad news it's like tell me your three biggest accomplishments tell me you know and then tell me like the three biggest things you're going to accomplish so you might see something different soon all right cool okay that's okay it's my feature request you just gave me chills yeah it's so funny you say that I just got chills again um because we literally talked about this a few weeks ago right on on the the information that we should we should be asking for and the reason we want the bad news is not so we can go beat up on the founder of course so we can help like is there something we can do to help coaching for the founders yeah like hey you got to deliver the bad news that's right no that's that's great great segue into now you're on the opposite side Toph just hit your one year at Elevate yesterday was my one year anniversary July 18th this is a big week for you it's a huge week back to back right one year anniversary birthday let's roll what's right and we were guests on another podcast yesterday too so we got to celebrate what was that what was the show we got a Savage to Sage yeah with full stack we went deep yeah I love I cannot wait to listen that way check that one out but so telf you've been on the other side now for a year and so you've had experience you have to deliver the bad news you're the the CEO the founder giving that bad news as the investor on the other side when you're hearing bad news how do you digest that and what do you appreciate the way Founders frame it like what have you found the like people delivering bad news to you that you not enjoy necessarily but respect so um and I'll probably be on the other side for like 20 years right to show whether it's Angel Investing or I had to invest in a banking firm for a number of years um and and now here Elevate um so so by the way all humans aren't created equal all investors aren't created equal and so if you don't have investors that think this way then you probably don't want them as investors but but when I'm getting bad news I'm not thinking oh my gosh this this person may not be as good as I thought they were or that's not going through my mind what immediately goes through my mind is who do I know or what can I do or what can I share that will help right and and if they deliver it is this a succinct upfront manner like you just described Matt um man I'm right there let's go arm and arm what can we do to help fix this thing and and we're doing this a lot right now at Elevate the last six months we've been doing a lot of stuff with companies helping them work through things um and if the of the him and haul around or try to sugarcoat it then I start to get more skeptical then I ask more questions and I dive in even deeper right because then I'm like something's not am I getting all the bad news or just like the headline of the bad news right that's that's great Matt any uh any any advice in there of delivering that bad news deliver don't bury the lead you know don't bury the lead don't bury the lead get right to it here's what it's bad you also don't have to like go into great detail this didn't work those didn't work those didn't work that's a big part of startups right is like there's lots of stuff that doesn't work but like pick the two or three things that didn't go well put those right up front um and then talk about how you're going to address those or what you learned from them yeah that's a spot on like just think about any other situation in life if somebody in any part of your life is delivering bad news uh what do you what do you want to hear you want to hear what's the solution or what are we going to do next right and that's that's no different than that than that CEO to investor relationship right so now what now what are we gonna do now what I will say too this is something I screwed up big time when I was in my 20s like it was always what's awesome what's what's going great where are the the cool things that are happening and you know that can get you a long way just positivity is great like it's better than like ruminating you know this didn't work and this didn't work and this startup failed and that startup failed um but uh to build trust and credibility you have to share what's not working yeah um I remember when I was first pitching Powder Keg I had a very well-known serial entrepreneur here in town who was pitching too and uh I was I don't really know who the competitors are you know there's some kind of stupid response like that that I said and he was like Matt come on like be credible like it's not credible to say that like it's just been awesome awesome like tell me what's actually going on yeah and that that really stuck with me um and when you think about what a good story is we like stories of people who have faced challenges no one likes a movie where it's like this guy did something awesome and this gal did something awesome and then they did something awesome again and then it even got awesomer yeah like that is a boring story that people don't are not gonna get behind care about um and want to be a part of and we talked about this yesterday on the show building a company building a career You're Building anything does not happen alone and one of the best ways to make sure you're lonely and on an island is just saying I'm great everything's good I don't I don't need anything I think I'm good oh life is good yeah it's great living the dream classic okay so talking that's more of like how to address failure to you know we were talking to investors what about when you're you guys are see you've been CEOs you currently are CEOs talking about failure to your team right you don't want descent amongst the ranks you want to make sure positivity motivation but your team can easily read they know what's going on inside there how do you deliver bad news talk about failures within your company to your team uh so you want to go first you're gonna go first I'm happy to okay I'll go after a minute I I think first don't bury the lead get right to it here's what happened here's why I happen here's what we're gonna do about it um but not trying to uh skip the step of like helping your team emotionally process things um this happened here recently with the powder cake team we had our CTO move on uh in the moment felt like really bad news you know our CTO have been with us over two years um really just talented uh CTO co-founder uh helped us build a lot of our platform that was not great news um and we needed to slow down you know we said you know what this is big news and uh it's clear to me you know after several meetings of screwing it up and just being like and here's what we're gonna do and like just getting to the doing part it was clear to me we needed to slow down and really like process this um and something you know I phoned a phoned a friend literally like within minutes of this half Max Yoder well-known entrepreneur one of my best friends um hey this this feels like a huge deal and I don't really know how to process this and one of the best things um he shared with me which I shared with my team is just encourage people to talk to other people outside the company about it like hey I believe that this is going to be okay and here's why but like don't take my award for it like Max offered up because he's an investor and you know long time member of the powder kid Community um you know feel free to tell your team like if they want to talk to me about this like stuff like this happen all the time at lesson like everywhere everywhere so that was a really good um just tactical sort of like but don't take my word for it like go go do the research yourself you know we have these advisors we have these investors who said you know they're more than willing to talk to you about you know their experience with where a CTO moved on and how that actually opened up opportunity for something else to happen um so those would be my two things that in a very recent experience just like a slow down and and pay attention to your team and all allow them to emotionally process it and allow them to have negative thoughts and I don't even necessarily mean negative thoughts but like you know we get bad news our mind goes to a place where it's like oh gosh this is going to be really hard or you know that uh that oh moment yeah you're just like oh yeah huge yeah yeah yeah yeah and and then talk about it you know create the open space to talk about it but then also like encourage them to talk about it with other people too who have been through it and can provide that perspective that like this isn't just the CEO trying to stay positive and you know power through things um there's a lot of precedent for it's gonna be okay yeah um I definitely agree with that the uh you know like demand jump for example we had a thing called Freaky Fridays and uh and and so our belief was that a family that eats together stays together and uh so for every uh up until I well we actually turned it to Wacky Wednesdays about five years into it but for five alliteration for five years um we we ate together maybe four years we ate together every Friday and the team got too big and there was space wise and so then we turn it into wacky Wednesdays and more of a zoom environment um but uh uh but we shared what's going on with the whole team and so I think transparency is critical if if people are smart they know what's going on and so if you're not transparent and share the good news and the bad news um if you don't share the bad news they're going to make up their own bad news and that's even worse with the imagination right imagination so the imagination of bad news is 10x 100x worse than any bad news you're ever going to share um and then the rumor mill starts and then you know and that's just never good um and so uh so we voice in all companies we've always shared like here's our plan right we and I believe by the way also you should be able to run any company from one piece of paper and that one piece of paper is you know upper left is your B hag right your big hairy audacious or insert another word if you choose goal so b-hag so that's that's the craziness so like Toyota 1969 their B hag was world domination yes right um and then um you have a theme in the upper right hand corner so wherever the quarter is you have a theme and then and it's really awesome if you can be extra proactive and say if we meet these goals we're gonna everybody gets a prize whatever the little fun maybe it's a party maybe it's a whatever you know Wacky Wednesday Wacky Wednesday and then um and then you go down and you have your your high level for the next three years or maybe five years where those super high level kind of aspirational goals you want to get to and then it goes down to okay this year this upcoming year that started out and then it's quarterly goals by Department three things each department that are critical that lead into the one-year goals that lead into the three to five year goals that lead into the bhag I love that let's get a template linked up in the show notes on this absolutely and for those who are listening right now are watching um and it's it's super helpful for everybody for the CEO the entire team to be aligned right to just one piece of paper and uh and we always tell everybody like you're gonna get quizzed you know throughout the quarter like you're expected to know these certain things and people did right because they're all bought in now when we didn't hit numbers right we shared that right and the once a month of the Freaky Friday we would kind of go deeper into okay our our goal was X and we hit Y and this is why we didn't hit that goal we believe and this is what we're gonna do about it right and hey do we miss anything any ideas right it was very open format Joe um I just think it's that's critical especially in this day and age like you just have to be transparent um and and when the news gets really bad right like hey we might run out of cash you know in six months or three months or whatever or whatever you're going through with that in any stage a given company it's just a it's just life that some people can handle that and some can't and you know some people might leave you because of the instability I think most people join startups because of the learning opportunity the exhilaration the all those kinds of things and so they know that there's an inherent risk that cash is going to get tight from time to time right or we're gonna bomb some product release and or whatever we're going to lose a key player and you're right like when it happens it it opens up opportunities you never imagined and you may not you may not see that in one day or one week it may take six months who knows right yeah but it's a journey oh absolutely and I think that segues perfectly into kind of our next topic about momentum right so ups and downs our friend Jeff smullian talks about never ride a roller coaster upside down right it's a it's a roller coaster right and when you're at the bottom right you're talking about that failure you've just delivered that news what are some tips or some strategies to build that momentum back up right you just came out of the board meeting given tough news you're disseminating that to your team and it's like great tomorrow when I show up I want to start building momentum what do we got to do so I I personally think about things in threes and I think if if it's more complicated that it's not doable people the human brain uh I think there might even be studies out there about this but I think the human brain has trouble processing more than three things so it can't be here's the 25 things we're going to do to fix this yep well a lot of those things are kind of irrelevant it's like what are what what are the critical path items that that we got to keep everybody focused on um so that's that's at the uh just off the cuff it's so interesting you say this because literally uh our okrs are like three objectives yeah and three key results for how we measure we know that we accomplish that objective yeah so that thinking in threes thing I think is there's something magical real that yeah I love that yeah yeah okay so keeping it simple other other tips for you know building up momentum and getting the ball rolling you got to celebrate the wins yeah you've got to celebrate the wins and so I mean people forget I I I forget I've forgotten I still forget yeah to celebrate the wins me me too you know it is not natural to me I'm always like okay did that thing of course I did that thing because I've been visualizing that right this whole time so like why are we celebrating yeah um that's like the internal voice but I've got to remember it's it's about sharing in the winds like you can't just all be owning the negative things that happen and only doing those things one of the biggest things that I've biggest ways I've learned this strategy is in training a dog so we had a pandemic puppy that found its way to my sister's coffee shop and had behavioral issues because it was adopted during the pandemic and the best way to train a dog is the best way to train any animal including humans including myself which is positive reasons yeah I love it yeah so you see the dog doing the thing that you want to do maybe another dog walks by and your dog does not bark so maybe the behavior is just like it doesn't do the bad thing right you've got to reinforce that if yeah if you don't if people don't feel like you have their back then they're kind of always looking over their shoulder and which kind of equates to one foot out the door or half a foot out the door which means you're not at you're not at uh Full Tilt so for so for leaders right CEOs they want to have their employees back everyone's I we're a family I have your back what do you recommend some actionable items CEOs out there how they can show their employees that they have their back um so when people screw up um in their extra remorseful like just get in front of it like just take the take the fear and the anxiety of some unknown consequence I've seen this happen a lot we're like some of the best people like they just feel awful about something a mistake that was made and just immediately taking the heat off of like you're fine just get that on it just tell them up front don't don't make them you know uh oh what's the word I'm looking for don't don't make them Square squirm don't make them squirm like there's no that's not good right just just let them know just communicate like a human right Community ain't 99.

9 of the world's problems or lack of communication um it's a that sounds simple but again human nature is like to not think about the person first but to whatever the issue is to get focused on that we'll deal with The Human Side first I mean especially from like the younger pers the younger professional perspective it's like you make a big mistake and you walk into a meeting you're like oh am I about to get fired yeah like am I gonna lose my job and like just sort of hey it's okay like that can set the tone for the rest of that meeting the rest of that interaction of like oh okay the world is not ending like where the sun's still going to rise tomorrow it's all going to be okay I think that that's that's super powerful and about celebrating wins I think that something Matt and our team does pretty well is being invested in not only the work we do at Powder Keg but like our personal lives a little bit in a professional manner right so I remember last November I was running my first marathon and they like pulled together and they got me like a record player because I was gonna set a record and it was just like a really like impactful moment that maybe didn't mean much to the team but to me it was like oh they do have my back like not just here at work and what we're doing there but like in life you know like with all of my Endeavors anything that goes to what you're saying about just knowing the whole person yeah you know surprise gift cards if somebody went through a you know some crazy two or three month Sprint just like working around the clock like a dog trying to get something accomplished because it was critical and need to be finished those things are always great as well I gotta be honest I I um I forget some of that stuff sometimes I feel like you know that's one thing I could do better at it's just is being more even proactive because I don't think you can do it enough yeah I don't think there's a leader out there that's just like oh you you've possibly reinforced enough you can you can Coast it's like the way you build momentum is by like oh something could happen reward something could happen right and a reward doesn't have to be a gift card it can just be hey great job on that thing yeah be a shout out on email or whatever it might be the the you know the ahobs whoever people call them on a quarterly basis when the team gets together uh being also intentional when you have those things to get the team together do fun activities whether it's you know bowling or a a a a um oh what do you why am I forgetting words today escape room top escape room or what do you do when you run around trying to find Clues and stuff oh the oh geocache kind of thing yeah yeah scavengers once I found myself in a scavenger singing on stage at the rat scaler um that was not good that's amazing that's incredible um well I was embarrassing but anyways hey you know we won right so anything for the team when we do it in at night we're gonna need that full story after midnight episode yeah in full disclosure there was like a wedding party like uh rehearsal getting set up and people are sitting down and stuff and I went up there and started seeing on stage and got some interesting looks but anyway but hey it was all for the team but when you do those things uh also intentionally uh don't make people choose teams like choose them before but also intentionally mix up your team yeah you know of getting developers with sales people and whatnot because it's easy for everybody kind of it's like you ever notice in the meeting everybody sits in the same spot like in this podcast actually we sit in the same spot maybe we do it for strategic reasons but anyway but the short story is like if you walk in think about your teams when you walk into meetings everybody sits in the same seat every time mix it up sit sit next to somebody else oh there we go so everyone listening right next time you walk into a meeting I'm picking a difference I'm gonna mix it up and it's gonna confuse people you might have some people that actually get a little upset oh I would get I actually am like a creature of habit when it comes to that so Maps it's my seat I'm gonna pick oh I know what he's doing yeah well and I I want to bring up something that we heard on the podcast with um Heather and Doug from advisor and black ink I.

T which is uh one-on-ones are just an amazing foundation for that stuff like getting to know the whole person having those one-on-ones where you slow down and you're not in the weeds talking about the Tactical thing because it's really easy to be like this is okay all right we're going to talk about the objective we're going to talk about the key results why aren't we hitting this key result why are we way overshooting this other key result and we didn't estimate that one better um and it's really hard not to do that but having a a set sort of agenda with a one-on-one where you talk about the other stuff you know of the whole human I would be very curious to see in people's one-on-one agenda who has the talk about XYZ like life topics or is it just like let's get down to brass tacks you're underperforming you're over performing whatever you're doing like business business I think that's like powerful thing you could add to your agenda just like talking about the holistic person you know another fun thing that they uh this wasn't my idea somebody the main jump implemented on freaky Fridays um it was voluntary so if you didn't want to even have to do it but um tell your life story however you want to tell it and it was awesome yeah I just got chills I mean like we learned so much about people that you know you just didn't know yeah I mean just incredible backgrounds or experiences that people had or went through and did and um and it was always fun like the more creative people would have these like insane presentations and then yeah maybe someone else that's more analytical it's kind of like black and white like it was just awesome everybody spreadsheeted out right and everybody would celebrate and laugh at like you know just all the skill sets that would manifest themselves I love that well and you know on the roller coaster there are highs as well you go startups are ups and downs um let's say when you are at a high what is the biggest momentum killer that people need to watch out for right your startup is cruising you're you have good momentum things are going right what's gonna be the biggest thing to hurt throw the E-brake on you forget thinking about what can go wrong it's like like I think you should always be well I don't know maybe you shouldn't but at least I I always think about what can go wrong and kind of trying to think three steps ahead like what if if this happens then what you know what could go wrong how can the train get off the tracks um in um in in forgetting to keep looking outward right looking like keeping your eyes up on the horizon um getting getting comfortable that's not good okay I think too just getting distracted by the things that aren't going well like in any startup you're always gonna going to have things that are not going well and it there's a balance I think between like you don't want to put blinders on and be like oh there's no you know I've got a beautiful garden and there's no weed it's just it's a perfect like that that's dangerous but also going the other direction and being like oh I've got this Garden that's got all these weeds in it and I got to just focus on these weeds you then kind of like Miss like what's flourishing right now and then you don't uh and maybe beating the garden analogy to death but you don't Harvest you know you know you don't reap what you've sowed because you're so focused on the weeds and so there is that kind of balance of uh making sure that the overall sort of like energy of the team doesn't like go down the into the ditch yeah um and I think that's kind of what you're saying you know keep your eyes on the horizon don't go off the road just because you know something that made you swerve for a second are you ready to transform your brand with award-winning video content that captures your vision and connects with your audience check out Alchemy the experts at building your brand using video from story driven social media Snippets that leave a lasting impression to compelling full-length documentaries they have got the expertise to take your brand to the next level Alchemy is actually our video partner here on get in they do amazing work all the videos you see across social across YouTube all that is done by Alchemy and they're an amazing partner to work with reach out to me Nate at Powder Keg or check out alchemyfilmco.

com to get connected with Alden and his team they will take care of all of your video needs yeah another thing I see is um and this can happen at any stage it doesn't necessarily mean you're at the peak of momentum um in talking about the previous question on building momentum you know everybody reads A Lot presumably and so they read a lot of Articles around success how to build teams business models Etc and what happens a lot of times is entrepreneurs will start to bleed together different types of businesses different types of selling motions different type of types of go to market strategies and so they literally in one pitch will talk about you know we're going to go do plg and that's going to be freemium and then we're also going to be selling Enterprise and we're setting up these Channel partners and blah blah yep none of that's going to happen um and by the way I've suffered from some of the stuff over the years too it's like anything I ever talk about is probably because I've made the same mistake in um yeah and and then also like you see all this opportunity and so go after all of it yeah let's do it all why not that makes total sense let's do it all and and it just it um that will absolutely prevent momentum or kill momentum um lack of focus that was in my my notes was I think focus is a big thing for it's like yes you don't want to focus on all the negative and you don't want to put blinders on be like oh life is so good but I think that being intentional and being focused around what's work can really like keep the foot on the gas on what is working as you try to pile some more things onto the car versus you always hear about the startups to chase this car like the dog right it's like that way and then that way the next shiny thing and it's like keep your foot on the gas there like Damon John talks about that story I think I mentioned this before but Damon John talks about you know himself right when he started what is a FUBU or food and I think um Under Armor was was found in the same year and uh and so he talks about well we both started the same year and look who's bigger now now demon John's successful he's awesome right yeah but he's like look at Under Armor there are multiples of orders of magnitude bigger and he's like they were narrow and deep they focused on dry fit shirts or something like that yeah that's all they did the compression yeah it was a compression shirt yeah that was the only thing and that's all they focused on for a number of years went narrow and deep and really established that market um and then they started to add in you know other products yeah and I think that gives uh a lot of like for for any startup for any growing business it's like you're they're the expert in under armor like it was literally the tight compression shirts you wore into your football jersey or whatever your sporting thing was and it was they were the X even if their material was the exact same as Nike and all these other people it was you gotta have Under Armor because they are the experts in heat gear and cold gear and all that chat so I think about this a lot because it's it's very much true in marketing too um a lot of startups it's like you almost have to like play the field and throw a lot of spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks but like once you see what's sticking that's when you gotta like narrow in focus and go narrow and deep and then once you've like start to see diminishing returns on that that's when you start being like Oh remember the spaghetti back on the wall like yeah we wanted to go chase that thing let's let's test and see if that's working again same thing with like marketing strategies it's like we're not sure what's going to work you don't want to go narrow and deep on one thing if you have no data that shows that's the way that it's working 100 you want to like plant a bunch of seeds and then see what starts to sprout and then quickly like ignore the other stuff I don't know I'm on the garden analogy today yes but like go in water like the one that is really showing like true potential that you can scale in all of our business analogies right the shoot bullets and then shoot your Cannonball right yeah yeah exactly well yeah exactly we're just crushing the analogies today um well guys I want to do a little bit of a topic change all right and I want to talk you guys are both Master Community Builders right you have very robust networks of connections whether that's mentees mentors just business relationships and I want to dive in of how to cultivate good community and cultivate good relationships so Toph if you were dropped in a brand new city and you knew no one what is the first thing you would do to start building community um well I would probably ask my existing friends oh you don't know anybody no no outside of that City oh okay all right well presumably I have at least one free can I have one friend you know one friend one friend so I would call my one friend I would phone a friend and uh that would live in a different city and I would say hey do you know anybody in this city that's the first thing the front would be Matt and then you you'd say yeah call Matt and I'd say Matt do you know anybody in uh where L.

A right and Matt's gonna say yeah I know three people in LA and I'm gonna say hey would you mind just doing a warm intro or intro text and so that's that's the step one that I would do um step two that I would do is I would look at what groups or organizations exist in my ecosystem of whatever I live in um and um I would go to that group and see how I can get involved what if you're scared what if it's like that's uh that's really taxing to show up to an event or whatever that you don't know anyone then don't expect anybody boom there we go I think that's true it's true I mean it's you you get out what you put in and you you can never you can never extract value from anything if you have an added value and and I think that people should have the attitude of I'm going to add value first you can't win if you don't play yeah yeah exactly you can't win the game if you're not in the game so just get on the field and who knows if it's going to be a small victory a big victory or whatever it doesn't matter but all these little moments lead up to whatever greatness is for you in your life whatever that means but you got to get in the game I love that all right Matt you're dropping a new city you don't know anybody I mean I think toast's on the right right track there the same same thing find the groups that already exist like um one of the things um I've seen in a lot of growing communities is you know people showing up on the scene and and just being like I'm gonna start this group to do XYZ kind of thing and uh don't acknowledge that like there's lots of groups already that are in that community that they could go and be a part of so I think starting there like what groups are already meeting what events can I go to and then when you're in that environment remembering that you always have something to offer you have your network you have your experience you have uh your knowledge presumably if you've done literally anything in your career um and so going into that with the give first mentality we're talking about it a lot at Powder Keg I think it was Brad fell in the techstars community originally kind of coined that phrase give first um but coming into a community with I have something to offer and just always remembering everybody has something that they can offer and if you go into that event with like I'm gonna go and just see who I can connect with and I'm going to be listening not like what can I get out of this and who who's going to be my friend but more how can I help someone 100 and make that the game yeah if you like never think about what am I going to get out of this because if you do that you'll get nothing it's it's true in business relationships is true in co-worker relationships it's true in your number one primary relationship if you're always kind of like score keeping it is a like an ideal way to make sure that you just like slowly go bankrupt emotionally intellectually maybe financially um if you're just kind of like always trying to hold on to like what you've got and you feel like you've got to protect it because you don't have anything and that that definitely takes some mental work if if that's your natural default State um but having that abundance mindset presumably there's both extroverts and introverts listening to this podcast right and um and so one thing I always like to just just remind all of us is like um you know still today I go into situations where I'm not quite comfortable right it might be a new situation or a new group or whatever and uh so I think a lot of a lot in this yes back to this human uh you know in uh just the way humans are it's just natural to um feel uncomfortable to feel anxious to be a little bit of afraid or you see you walk into a crowd maybe you're kind of first in that environment oh my gosh everybody seems to know each other for me when you look at the macro level they all seem to know each other and when you just say okay here I go I'm gonna those two people I'm just gonna butt in the middle right not butt in buddy hey how you doing and a lot of times you'll find they don't actually know each other they just start talking 15 minutes ago or 10 minutes ago right so what and a lot of them are uncomfortable as well and so like it's sometimes it's hard and it feels awkward um but just just take the leap of faith and and if you see somebody walk in a room and you you because you can tell when somebody's in a room and they're alone and they're feeling uncomfortable just invite them into your conversation that's exactly what I was gonna say yeah is I I always try to like not go find like the biggest group that seems like they're having the most fun but like go find the person that's like got their arms crossed and it's like standing in the corner yeah or you know is is like they're on the outside of a circle but they're not really like in the circle you know go up and just stand next to like it can be helpful to just like stand next to someone and be like hey what you know what's up as opposed to like coming directly at somebody um and you know you gotta kind of like feel the feel the room a little bit on that one but um you know hey I'm Matt I I work at Powder Keg what's your name this is a good way to start a conversation that's right what is your this was Mike this is a great segue what is your number one tip for in-person networking events what Matt just said I mean like so find the people that that don't look like they have friends yet or they haven't like that also seem to be a little uncomfortable yeah I mean so if so so if you let's say Matt and I are we're hanging we know each other we're at an event and we're we're catching up whatever we see you walk in we don't know you and you're kind of staying on the periphery not sure you're trying to pick your entry point right if we notice that and by the way I don't always do this and sometimes I I'm deep in a conversation it's hard too because okay there's somebody over there and I'm gonna say hey in a moment but I want to finish this thought and then they've kind of mingled somewhere else yep um but just say hey come over here and join us right um or like you don't have to have some Grand elevator pitch right hey I'm Matt I'm with powder kicked like okay where are you from so I I think one of my biggest tips for in-person networking events or just meeting new people in general is I try to find Common Ground as soon as possible like where are you from yeah butt creek oh where's that at where's that oh I know what then you're too about and just try do you know so and so and like trying to find any piece of Common Ground just so it's like oh wow where they know this like so I know this is this is one of my my hidden secrets that I'm gonna divulge I know a ton of high school mascots so I just like no especially around Indiana like I know most especially the weird ones like maybe not necessarily all the big ones but it's like oh I'm from typical I'm from Akron Indiana I'm like oh Tippy Valley go Vikings and there's like oh my gosh how did you know that I'm like oh I just know what that you're doing about high school sports and they always feel like oh my gosh like works at bars works at networking events it is do you remember Harrison High School in Lafayette Oh Yes actually one of my buddies went there Harrison is it um I'm gonna say Mustangs starts with an r r Raiders is Lafayette Jeff are they what's lovely Jeff Broncos Mustangs Bronco so in the right Bowl but it's like I can then backtrack a little bit and make those connections but it's usually high school mascots and especially in the reaches of Indiana people are so many wow wow how did you know that I totally agree that typically in under three questions you can find some kind of common ground right through where you grew up or or um where you went to school what do you do are you in sales or marketing or what like something and I I think too with in this day and age you're going to an event you can usually either uh make an educated guess or there's probably a guest list that you can look at ahead of time yeah and just like go look at their LinkedIn profile or go find them on Instagram you know like do a little research like it doesn't have to be crazy you don't have to do like three hours of research before you go to a an event that you're gonna be at for 45 minutes but even just taking five ten minutes to like look down the page oh I know this person this person this person cool well I'll probably see them there but like who are some other people who are here that like I might want to talk to or like I might be able to help based on like where they're at in their career and so just like looking at that so when you're in a room you see faces and you can kind of be like oh I know that person and granted I have an advantage I'm 6'4 so I can literally see the entire room from like wherever I am usually I mean I I I just I I just wanna I just wanna acknowledge I have some privilege there that I am able to see you know the entire room tofu I'm wearing stilts to Rally exactly dude I think you should do that I think that would be great certainly a good conversation starter yeah who's the guy on brilliant yeah yeah I love it well that's a good point or like looking at the guest list of like who you want to talk to who you know I would love to know right so put yourself in a contrarian view right people show up the networking events you don't want to make it all transactional you don't want to be sales but what what is one of your contrarian contrarian thoughts when it comes to building community building a network that the average person might think that's oh that's a little interesting like you really grow your community that way well I I will say um over the years I've been in a number of situations where uh it's certainly felt like I'll say at a minimum the person had no interest in engaging or talking and I would just say that sometimes that's going to happen and it's not because of you not because of you might have had a bad day might have had a bad day who knows right and so um I'm not sure if that's what you're looking for from the contrarian thing but sometimes I just think bring it up like there's gonna be moments where you're like did I like do I smell bad or do I talk like an idiot like but sometimes people just aren't going to want to engage and they're going to be cold I think my my contrarian view um I'm thinking about my like 20 something year old self and don't get me wrong I I do feel like I benefited from like building a very Broad and diverse network of people and friends but if if you're just starting out or you don't feel like you have this yet I would if given the choice of a broad diverse super connected you know Network I I know somebody like we've had a conversation before versus I know a few people and I like know them I have a real relationship with these people and like I can share my full self with that person I would hands down now being you know whatever I am 15 20 years into my career hands down would rather be narrow and deep with a handful of just like great people like we're on similar paths maybe if you are ahead of me maybe in terms of like career accolades maybe a few you know haven't or a few years behind me in terms of like just where they're at in their career but having still having a diverse group I think diversity in your network is is super important but I would much rather have a narrow but deep Network than have a broad and shallow and like I'm not actually being yeah it's totally superficial and it's just like everyone has seen that person at the event that's just like collecting business cards as if like that's the thing yeah and I still have like boxes of business cards you know from the early days of verge and like people that I met that was totally my Mo when I was in my 20s I'm gonna meet a lot of people and I'm gonna be Mr connector and um you know that I made a whole career out of that and in some ways if you think about what our software platform does now but if given the choice and what I think is most valuable in a career and in terms of like quality of life having a narrow but deep group of friends like if I said taupe would you rather have the relationships with the the EO entrepreneurs that you have a 20-year relationship with and you've been through it together with multiple different Ventures or you know scrap all that you didn't have any of those relationships and you could just have like a bunch of contacts on LinkedIn yeah I mean hands down even if it was like you could have a million followers on Instagram or you could have your group of 20 people I don't know I don't know a million followers on Instagram you can do a lot with that guys I don't know that might be my contrarian view yeah so I got a butt in here Nate so I hear you I feel you but we touched on this yesterday in the podcast I'm reading this book right now called halftime and uh it's really interesting and they talk about this concept of struggle success significance surrender and uh and it can be applied in the book talks about it in terms of like life right and so kind of really oriented around age um and when you get to be you know 50 years old plus or minus you're in this um which you'll do in 11 years in 11 years yeah um at least that's how I feel I feel like I'm 35.

yeah um but uh so in in kind of in general they think humans kind of go through this you're at that significance Point sometime around 50 they talk about this concept of retirement and um like if you retire you have no purpose there's no core like what's your core what is what is your unique my unique your unique core in life is to do what right and where you really get value and um if you can't do that and be real with people then you feel then you die this is this is great one of my one of my really good friends are you really living yeah you're not really living right so one of my really good friends just like he writes a newsletter right Jimmy Nevine from Freedom files I'll give them a little shout out but he just his latest edition talked about what changed his life at 24. he wrote his obituary or what he hopes his obituary to be yes and then Works backwards from that yeah and like how can you start achieving what you want to do like he has space travel in his obituary he wants to go to space it's awesome and he's like how can I work myself towards it and I think that's super powerful and then let's just tell him not to go to the Titanic yes go space yeah right there we go I will say see you soon oh yeah you know all right I will say thinking about um narrowing deep having a small Network a small circle of people I think the way I think about building Community is you take a lot of at-bats right collect those business cards I'll get coffee I'll talk to these people and the ones that are supposed to be in my life and the ones that are supposed to be deep connections will work their way to the top and it has happened time and time again where but you if you keep the same narrow Circle that's tough to get it's kind of like the spaghetti at the wall analysis yeah it's like yeah you go go meet a lot of people and then the ones that it's like working out go deep yep and then they just like float their way to the top and it's like oh right you have to sit through some tough coffee chats some like brutal ones where you're like oh looking at the time like dude we just not vibing like this does this happen sometimes but the right ones will work their way to the top in my opinion um so I I think it's important for for anyone whatever their their discipline or passion is or whatever it may be so if you're in sales or engineering marketing whatever leadership roles Etc um there are a lot of groups I've noticed spinning up and um that are that are around like like you know a product leader group or a marketing leader group or whatever all these different types of groups are spinning up and that's a way to to really get deep and and develop a kind of a close cohort like you can go deep it's it's it's more natural it doesn't happen always this way but especially in professional relationships like it's easier to go deeper with people who are experiencing the same thing you are if that makes sense absolutely and that's like the Icebreaker of how you can kind of get deep into those you know struggles um and so and if you don't find one your community start it because chances are you can find the next person right if you can get two then now you can get three and you can get six and then you get nine yeah and and it's hard to those groups are hard to manage if they get two if you want to go deeper they need to probably stay 15 or less um or or maybe they get bigger and they spinner off into two groups and maybe you kind of meet for more social reasons which is back to EO right I mean you've got a huge Network now you meet with a forum then you go really deep you know with a dozen people but then you also connect you know in a larger fashion yeah um and and still have you know that larger net I love it this is this has been great I kind of want to switch to some rapid fire questions so we can kind of just like you know Turn and Burn through some quick actionable tips right so if give advice to emerging leaders that want to get on on your calendar you guys are very you're very well connected CEOs time is very precious if there's an emerging leader that wants to get on your calendar What's some advice yeah so I literally just noticed this this morning like um number one a LinkedIn message that is not even on point will never work and I and I honestly in full disclosure I don't even pay attention to the LinkedIn messages really um but the the specificity so what what is the what is the thing that you want to talk about and why do you want to talk about that and um and I would love to have the coffees and the lunches and the drinks with everybody and I just will say proactively right now I apologize from the depths of my heart I just can't do it right there's just so many directions that that I'm getting pulled but uh to be really super specific up front like uh Investment Banking we always call it grab them by the collar like what's the grab them by the collar thing you know put up there first yeah and why you want to talk about it and and like it's okay just to like 50 and I've started even telling some people there's my cell phone call me yeah I missed your call I'll call you back and I just but the calendar is just it's all booked okay Matt I mean I'm in a similar position as Toph as I mentioned I spent my 20s trying to build a giant Network and that was I was successful at it so uh I would love to meet with everybody the thing I've found uh for me is just like these are the events I'm going to be at and if you want to meet up like go to that event and like maybe we it's a great idea maybe you could grab coffee there maybe you know is the event rally come say hi yeah maybe it's rally you know a couple powder kick events I'm like by the way in three weeks I'm gonna be this powder cake event yeah and come there and track me down and we'll talk for five minutes yes exactly like that's that is um that's what's worked for me and I I just want to double down on what you said on just like be specific and usually whatever it is like an emerging leader is looking to get out of a meeting can be handled over email you know hey I'm looking for an introduction to blah blah blah or hey I'm I would like to figure out where to you know raise money from you know and like I've probably written a blog post on it or someone on our team has put a resource together on it or you know we have software developed to help make the introduction to the person that that you want to talk to um and so being specific and if that hasn't been developed yet then yeah I'll probably take the meeting and say like hey we you know this seems like something we can't really talk about on email let's just grab 15 minutes and and hash it out I love that 15 minutes means you got to come prepared the other thing I'd also say is why are why are you reaching out so let's just take an example let's just say that uh you know a company you know you know wants to get into the Elevate port code Network as an example I'm not the best person to talk to yeah right yeah there's there's somebody else on the team that's the best person to talk to like I'm literally not the right person to talk to yeah I think this is that's a super interesting part right so especially for young professionals out there and I've learned this the hard way from trial and error it's like I've reached out to countless CEOs countless like hey can I pick your brand can I do this can I have done it all wrong got crickets and honestly like so for for like a young first time founder it's like you might not be the right person to talk to like just because your title says CEO and it's like a cool person he had coffee with someone who's like one step ahead of you in your entrepreneurial journey in your professional Journey can be so much more impactful giving you actionable items like I say you want to be a director of marketing right like that's your next step in your professional career don't reach out to a CMO or a VP of marketing talk to a director of marketing their doors their calendar is probably a little more freed up they're going to give you actionable items to go from zero to one versus like for a person who's at 100 and I think that that is like a game changer of like really getting actionable items from doesn't have to be the CEO like even though it's a cool coffee to get to it can actually be more valuable for you going like one or two steps ahead so yeah that's and I'm gonna add one more tip in there which is develop a relationship online first you know jump into the LinkedIn comments on a post that I post you know contribute something to the community that way you know if if you see something I post about and you have an opinion on it it doesn't have to agree you don't have to agree with what I say um maybe end up in a conversation uh maybe even more likely end up in a conversation if you disagree with what I say and we engage in like a cordial discourse you're a in the comments don't say that yeah probably won't say that um but you know actually connecting and and developing a relationship on social media right now is very possible and doing that on a professional Network like LinkedIn or on Powder Keg if you're in Powder Keg is a good way to there's a there was a lady speaking of that Matt like and that's adding value first right yeah but there's a there was a it's like literally every once in a while I'll go in I'll scan LinkedIn messages and like really scan them there was a lady in California that reached out through Linkedin and and I can't remember what she said that caught my but it was something like um I saw I saw your event called rally it looks amazing and I think I can blast something and I'm like you know I clicked on it and I clicked on her I'm like she's totally legit and so I'm just like I'm gonna risk it responded to her and I'm like this is my cell phone number if you want to talk 10 minutes she called me yeah yes I just got chills it was insane yeah and she's coming and she wants to Rally other people let's go and she total baller and it's just awesome that's great well gentlemen as we wrap up final question just one one for the lightning round today it's a quick one what are you most excited about in the Hoosier State right now Matt you go first I mean it's probably the same thing toph's gonna say um yeah let's rip on it let's rip on it boys so I I'm the most exciting thing the the thing I'm most excited about right now is Rally that rally the world's largest cross-sector Innovation conference is going to be launched right here in Indiana in Indianapolis and there's going to be people um coming from across the globe in the inaugural year it's gonna be insane there's 443 pitch applications that came in for a 5 million pitch competition um in the investor one-on-ones that are happening there's people in there from 18 countries in 24 States that's just as an investor one-on-ones uh there's over 220 speakers you got Peyton Manning and Magic Johnson Crystal Washington Victoria Arlen Victor Wayne Moyer Gunn uh mung Chang Scott Dorsey a couple of those names I just mentioned haven't been announced yet um so um so anyways breaking news it's going to be insane and the world has changed forever everything is happening faster than it's ever happened before we can no longer do things in a vacuum with just our domain experience and the people we know in our little networks right we have to get outside of our networks we have to get to know people with domain expertise and other things if I'm building a mid device is that Healthcare right is it hard tech is it software it's all of those things right with anything we build today and so getting all of those people disparate stakeholders from Cross sector in one place at one time that is how we enable creative collisions that's how magic happens that's how we really Advance Innovative ecosystems in people's lives I love it and speaking of magic I'm excited to meet Magic Johnson at rally and hear his keynote and the awards that we're doing the national powder cake awards that we're doing just before that I'm so stoked for those talk about those it's going to be great so we literally are looking at thousands of companies we have data both first party and third-party data on thousands of companies across what we call the unvalley the tech hubs Beyond Silicon Valley which are the fastest growing Tech communities where there's just outsized opportunities so whether you're looking to grow your career or looking to invest or looking to partner up with companies those are the places where there's just a ton of opportunity and so we'll actually be launching the national awards in all the major categories you know fintech hard tech you name it we're going to be announcing those Awards there and so it's literally the best like dozen companies out of thousands that we're going to be announcing on stage there at rally so it's gonna be sick three-day conference and I I would be remiss if I didn't say I am so pumped about get in and what we've built here it has been awesome to hear from listen there is what you like about the show what you'd like to hear more of I've got my sweet water water bottle here because they're entrepreneurs in Indiana like Sweetwater and founder and CEO of Sweetwater and we're trying to get on the Innovation at Sweetwater is off the chains just tease it just tease it oh that's right but I I hope we can do some amazing things for our listeners of get in and do some really cool get in activations at rally I think there's a lot of just kind of stuff on the ground that we'll be going to be able to do and hope we can talk to our listeners at rally as well well I just have to mention one more thing real quick all right the other exciting thing is that we didn't have we didn't think this would happen until like three years into it but uh you know just like it's down South by Southwest you have these houses that pop up right so like already in year one Midwest house is coming they are all over it they were putting together South by for a couple years yeah yeah it's it's awesome and so they've uh they've taken over the cohatch yeah face and and launching a bunch of folks are literally line up buses from other City needs to come in it's going to be insane and then there's three other conferences that are holding their annual Summits or annual meetings or their actual conference within rally still keeping their brand names right but you've got Indie women in Tech you've got the Indian technology Technology Innovation Association itia and then generator their AG conference that's over in Illinois they brought that over to Indianapolis to rally and that's what we want to happen in the future like if you have a conference or an annual Summit that you're doing and you typically attract 100 300 500 people or even a thousand people whatever it is Rally is built for every Big Tent open concept open source code yeah I like to think about it right yes that's why we did our Awards with it yeah it's just it's open so yeah separately yeah if we're going to have a group of thousands of people that's right this adds more value for everybody yep well if anyone wants to make an Indiana house I'm down to make that happen I gotta out spot and Broad Ripple we'll spin up the Indiana house for route I like it let's go here we go the final thing Matt talked about listener activation Tov had an amazing idea today that we are gonna we're gonna open up so as you can see if you are watching at home tofu and I are rocking some some oh my God my Powder Keg tea on he's got his demand jump t on if you want your business your company to have a little bit of presence in on the get end show if you send us three large t-shirts we will wear your startup tee on an episode and we'll give a little 30 second Pitch about you what your company does who you are so a way to get the community plugged in you don't have to be from Indiana you can be from anywhere anyone out there listening if you send three largest to 16 Tech in Indianapolis we will wear them on the show attention yes yes ornate yep send them to Nate if you need extra details hit me up on LinkedIn but three largest we'll wear them on the show we'll give you a little 30 second to a minute shout out and we want to learn know who's listening and we want to learn about these Innovative tech companies and I love it that's a wrap gentlemen this was a spectacular episode on pump for rally excited to talk about failure momentum and everything building a networking Community I think that this was really impactful for listening and I'm excited to get in at rally awesome let's do it this has been get in a powder kick production in partnership with Elevate Ventures and we want to hear from you if you have suggestions for a guest or segment reach out to Matt or Nate on LinkedIn or on email to discover top tier tech companies outside of Silicon Valley in hubs like Indiana check out our newsletter at powderkeg.

com newsletter and to apply for membership to the powder cake executive Community Check out powdercake. com premium we'll catch you next time and next week as we continue to help the world get in since you just listened to this podcast you might be thinking about starting one for your company lucky for you our partners over at cassid have you covered cassid is the first and only podcast and video marketing platform made specifically for B2B Brands I love this about them the platform makes it possible to publish Syndicate amplify and measure the value of your podcast and video content in fact we use it for our podcast here at Powder Keg and if you're a startup you should listen up because cassid for startups is definitely for you they are offering exclusive deep discounts of up to 82 percent off retail price for qualifying startups connect with casted casted. us slash powderkeg