from the crossroads of America in the Hoosier State of Indiana this is get in the podcast focused on the unfolding stories and extraordinary Innovations happening right now in the Heartland on the show today is Doug Booth CEO at multiply technology I know my dad saw me I know he was proud of me and I know he loved me and he did that while running a business and that was a big deal to me and that's the Legacy that I hope to carry on forward Doug Booth is the CEO of multiply technology an Indianapolis based company that helps Global Enterprises in rapidly growing orgs Implement complex I. T Asset Management strategies and solutions Doug began his career at exact target by way of the ore fellowship program and during his time at ET Doug identified a need and started building we're going to talk about that today as well as his transition from exact target to starting this company multiply technology on in today's show we're going to cover turning entrepreneurship into entrepreneurship building a business starting with global Enterprises and sharing some startup stories on resilience and Innovation that are sure to inspire Doug thanks for being on the show today thank you for having me yeah great to have you here man uh excited to dive into the story and learn a little bit more about the multiplied technology story but figured maybe we could start with where you grew up take it back to your roots what were some of your earliest memories of business entrepreneurship and home yeah that sounds good and I feel like there's need to be a little disclaimer that this is my first one of these and I still feel like we're running your first stories your first podcast my first podcast holy moly well breaking the story here this is awesome going back to my roots I come from northern Indiana actually I met my wife when we were 15 and she's the first person I dated and I'm the first person she dated and here we are now and growing up my my upbringing was in a family business I got to participate with my dad in that family business we what we we called we did what we called half days you get in when the sun goes up and you might go home when the Sun goes down if we're lucky but I think that sounds like farming yeah it was basically farming it happened to be in the golf Arena but more or less it was farming what was the business it was a golf course okay awesome which Golf Course Plymouth Rock yeah it has you know it 15 miles from my hometown boom there we go Plymouth Rock probably the closest golf course here that and sprig fun fact getting to do that with my dad I got to learn some of the what it takes to run a business a family business the balance between him working on the golf course and him investing in my life and my dad unfortunately passed away actually soon after I graduated and someone asked me now I have my own son and they asked me okay what do you want people to know or what do you want your son to know about Bob booth and I said I know my dad saw me I know he was proud of me and I know he loved me and he did that while running a business and that was a big deal to me and that's the Legacy that I hope to carry on forward but learning at the golf course in that tenacity of hard work and just getting things done was a huge part of my upbringing I then went to Purdue was in the Purdue band really enjoyed that there was a whole thing and if you see the outtakes we have some Purdue songs going on and then came to really the or Fellowship because my dad had talked to me about these things called the golden handcuffs these allurements of corporate corporations and big business and the all the trappings or siren songs that we can go after that really may or may not pan out to what we thought they would be and they also lock people in to be able to take risks take calculated jumps and build your wings and fly and so the ore Fellowship was that for me for those that don't know the aura fellowship program can you give us a quick flash yeah so the or Fellowship really is connecting the next generation of Business Leaders and entrepreneurs to those that are already doing it in Indianapolis specifically it happened to work out for me really well because my wife was going to be going to medical school here in Indianapolis and so to work at a company like exact target that had just an awesome culture an awesome trajectory three and joined the ORD Fellowship it was a slam dunk opportunity and in talking with my dad the alternative and I'm not trying to say anything negative to Big organizations but the alternative for me and I did try this was at a large organization in Cincinnati and it was the trappings it was the corporation that there was a path that path was blazed but I really enjoyed the encouragement from my dad to say you know what go down this path because you're going to connect to people those people and those relationships matter and you can trailblaze yourself so was there any discussion about taking over the family business there was and that's in part why I brought it up awesome question the year my dad passed away was a big year for me it was 2013 in early 2013 with Purdue bands we actually went to Ireland which was an awesome time how old were you in 2013 2013 I would have been 22.
okay yep and so we went to Ireland but the why I bring that up is I just lost my aunt and my uncle my dad my brother and I got to go alongside Purdue bands to Ireland and intersect the band in all the places and I say that because it's really a joy to get to spend spend time with Max Jones from Purdue bands and Jay Gephart now because this look that was life-changing and I can go back and tell them how life-changing that was but at that moment in Ireland we're talking about this next chapter of my life which was my wife's going to medical school my dad was done with the family business and golf at that time wasn't great and and so it was do I want to take this over or move on and in the spirit of doing my own thing my dad did encourage me to move on and to grow my wings and fly on my own and at this time I look back on some of those conversations like man I was a little I was a jerk to my dad in those conversations at the time but he was so gracious to me and encouraging in what way just in in the fact that he did have an opportunity on a silver platter to say hey this thing's set up you can run it it's working it's profitable it's making money right and I said no thank you because I want to go do my own thing I want to go be with at that time I hadn't gotten married yet but soon to be married be with my wife and start this new thing and the old Fellowship was just this culmination of all those different pieces as this is the launch pad and my dad actually called me I have this voice recording still today because I missed the call but he was just sharing those things I see you I'm so proud of where you're going I'm so excited I'm cheering you on all the way for this next chapter your life and it's those things this yep it just made sense all the stars aligned and said okay this is where I need to be who knew what was going to come from that but definitely stepping into that with a lot of Courage because of the support that I had I want to go back real quick and repeat what you said earlier about about your father so you said your father saw you and he loved you he was proud of me and he was proud of you and so I just want to encourage anybody to listen to this podcast like that's where it all starts all this rest of stuff is great but like at the core the human element being a parent I'm a father myself of a 15 year old son and not to make it about me for a moment but I literally almost died last Thursday oh my gosh in a Riptide I thought it was over I was it was done and I was trying to find my son on the beach I could see him one last time oh man and when you said that I'm glad you're here I'm glad I'm here too and but when you said that my Hope was God if something if that did happen I hope my son would say the exact same thing yeah so anyway my way to bring it all down but no I think that to be honest this is the real stuff this is the good stuff and my dad unexpectedly had a heart attack he was actually on a retirement road trip all he wanted to do was get a motorhome and go travel the world and he actually was at a friend's retirement party in Kansas City when he had this heart attack so it was completely unexpected yeah but it was one of those he created a meaningful Legacy because that's what I remember and that's what I want my son to know from me because that's what I got from my dad and that changed my life and is continuing to and I think one thing as far as where we might Veer the conversation I do think just putting a point in in the Purdue fight song There is a a line that says filled with joy our voices raise yup hail Purdue but the filled with joy our voices raise I think we have a responsibility to to go to people yourself included all of us at this table and say Hey you make an impact I see you I'm proud of what you're doing and if it happens to be family or even extension of that we're called the love I love man yeah yes totally awesome it's the human element and I think that's a wrap what else can we say at the end of the day the rest is logistics and doing business but at the core I think those things are really powerful and so I'm glad we called it out early and I'm sure it's going to be a theme as we probably continue to discuss I can't help it your journey and I'm glad we talked about the ore Fellowship too because we talked a little bit about the origin story with Angie Hicks on that episode Shameless plug to go check out that episode if you haven't checked that one out yet Nate and I are both or fellows you've got an orfellow on your team Jackson Who looped Us in and brought multiplied technology into the Powder Keg community so I think it's it's just pretty amazing to talk about the the power of community and or Fellowship is one one of those really key ones in the state of Indiana so many entrepreneurs so many Business Leaders have come through that program I'm so grateful that I stayed in Indiana because of the ore Fellowship instead of going out to California like I thought I had to do in order to grow a high growth tech company yep so it's definitely a great example here of getting to join exact target at a very interesting time yeah and for me I think so exact target had a catapult rotational program combined with your fellowship so it was like I was getting all the things so it was wonderful but I think specifically with the ore Fellowship provided was really a an audience to bounce ideas off of but also a network of people to talk through things like I know from when I went through Mark Hill was critical in the establishment of multiply and as we're going through that those first stages I had the opportunity to sit down and have a couple cups of coffee with Mark and that was huge for me as a new business owner and also to encourage me to keep going because there's not wasn't always just awesome but I would say also I think the the folks that supported the ore Fellowship like Scott Dorsey and just having access to those sorts of people when I was at the big organization in Cincinnati one thing that that that internship did give me was access to some of the top folks and just having those conversations and talking through and saying what does it look like on a random Tuesday for you and I'll be honest and I don't have the exact date or time when this was said and Scott maybe can keep me honest maybe you can tell him if this happened or not but what I recall him saying to that type of question was I take my kid to school every day yeah and it's wait you're telling me that you run exact target which just got acquired by Salesforce for the biggest at that time acquisition ever in the planet yeah and you take your kid to school that's what I want to do yeah like I don't know that I would have had that access or that conversation if it weren't for the Catapult nor Fellowship programs that I was a part of and that was huge especially as an aspiring entrepreneur someone who really wanted to do this didn't know how it was a total Black Box yeah yeah I'll talk to the power of or fellowship and the connection community that it made because that's how I originally got connected with Doug so this was probably 2019 and I was sitting down with Bo Dietrich which also an orfellow alumni and I had mentioned my mom had passed away two years earlier I was interested in entrepreneurship and it was deeper than just the Business Connection it was like hey Doug is a member of The Ore Fellowship Community and you need to sit down and talk with them and that's how I got my intro into Doug what four years ago now it's funny to see all that things come full circle and how that was going to be a meaningful relationship not just professionally but also just like personally as well but I love that that intro and I hate the context for how it introde but you shared a little vulnerability there that hey I lost somebody that was important to me I got to share that with Bo because Bo was part of the reason why I came to Indianapolis to even look at the order Fellowship in the first place and I know when I lost my dad I shared that with Beau and I know Bo has had his own set of hardships and we've gotten a whole nother level of a relationship that is so much more than the fact that we have some businesses that's not the point I would say just took Vera again back to relationships Aaron Padgett my business partner he and I met while we were trying to wrestle life's mysteries together happened to be through a study that was looking at the good book and trying to understand how can we live a life worthy of the calling that we've received how can we do these sorts of things and what we'd envisioned was a business that can be a place that restores things restores hope and people restores dignity and work restores a lot of things happens also be restoring technology because we're buying all technology that companies were getting rid of and I think through the meetings and the weekly discussions around what this could look like that set of foundation for our business that is beyond any sort of crossing any sort of teas and dotting any eyes it was foundational to who we become and who we've became and I would say in in looking at Aaron Aaron Was a Serial entrepreneur he started a lot of business he would call himself a Serial failure I would call himself an incredible learner and I got to write on the coattails of those learnings that he had though he wasn't a part of our fellowship I bring that up because it's those sorts of stories that I think you guys are trying to share is what are the learnings what are the Nuggets so that we can Fast Track each other and one of those nuggets that Aaron brought was hey let's lead with Revenue because guess what that's how businesses work and he had a whole host of opportunities to try that and and his mind fail and try and fail but that's as I was an or fellow at exact target I happened to be working Aaron was a contractor at exact Target and so more or less Aaron was involved when exactly went from 900 to 3 000 employees and he was building every single one of those new hires so physically building those computers for those people my role at that time happened to be how do we automate this how do we put some software behind it how do we make it a wow experience for these new hires so it's like Christmas day yeah but also get air in the information he needs and in doing that I think when we said hey there's an opportunity here to start a business let's lead with Revenue to do that okay we were able to figure out how to turn around make a contract actually signed and start having some cash flow and some Revenue so that we could have longevity in the future and build that Runway to keep going and to start it as Aaron buying 50 computers and selling those 50 computers making a little bit more money and then buying 60 computers it got to a point where it was outstripped his capacity and that's where we joined heat on a handshake and hug he took a chance on me I took a chance on him when we went into it and but I think it's those relationships Again The Ore Fellowship is an incubator for those this is an incubator for that same opportunity but when you see those people when you build those relationships sometimes it's you got to take the leap and build your wings on the way down and that's what Aaron and Aaron did with me and I did with him and I'm so thankful for that so I may have missed it so where'd you meet Aaron in the old Fellowship right now 18.
he was at E. T he was that exact target as a contractor and I was on the I. T staff working directly with him through that so when you launched your business when did you ever take on investors early on because you've taken no investors on today yep I'd love to dive into this that whole part of the story right because I think that what we've seen here especially in the last kind of six months or a year is everything goes in Cycles it seems like we make the same mistakes over and over as Industries real estate or investing and and everything gets really hot for 10 years and then it dies and everything gets hot in 10 years and it dies there's a new buzzword and everybody gets behind it and then they want to do 20x multiples and valuations and then the company can't live up to the growth and then there's a big down round Etc and so I talk about that like how did you make the decision to so lead with Revenue that's really powerful I think investors put a lot of pressure on companies way too early to spend a bunch of money on trying to grow revenue and the fundamentals or the ICP or the basics aren't covered yet so talk about that how did you guys make that decision yeah I think a lot of it came from Aaron's background he and his wife had made the choice to go debt free personally and they achieved that and it was really grabbing it from your bootstraps and be Scrappy like how do we make this make money and how do we make it make help make it work and when we first started it it seemed simpler in some ways because it was a side thing right the what we started as was an I.
T asset disposition that's the technical name of it but it was buying old computers from Big organizations wiping the machines and selling them to other people simple economics Buy Low sell high you're good and at the time it was basically a cash business yeah because we could buy all the computers sell them put the cash and coffee cans and move on to get to the next round right that's how it started very humble beginnings in in a storage unit that that's another part of our story that's another one we can get into but the reality is the humble beginnings got us to a point where okay this is working Aaron and I have used over the years this idea of let's fire BBs at different opportunities those little BBS could be Investments could be like hey we're going to try this thing we're going to build this product let's see if we can get a customer to sign or get someone interested in it and if we do let's pull out the Canon and go and that mindset has been the evolution of multiply really started from that kernel of we need to make sure this makes money and works because we don't want to take on debt are you doing this on the side I'm not doing this on the side no back then oh when you're starting it yeah yeah sorry so nine ten years ago because eight years right yeah so originally were you doing this on the side nights and weekends nights and weekends and how long Aaron and Mandy were doing that primarily themselves nights and weekends as a side thing for them side hustle and again Aaron and I had been meeting in that Weekly group and just talking and wrestling through vision casting and I shared very the depths of my grieving with my dad with Aaron a lot and we connected on a lot of those things and at that time it was 100 nights and weekends it got to a point where it's oh my gosh this is going to overtake him how long was that going on I think about I think it was about a year and a half yeah I didn't know the exact time all right that's the backstory that nobody ever realizes right you're the successful company you're doing unbelievably well but there were 18 months of walking through like the first Valley of Death exactly figure this thing out yeah and it took Aaron to have and again I think it took Aaron to have that vision and try it and then he welcomed me into it because he said hey this is working it is making money and is doing something yeah let's go and let's just light it on fire and see if we can go to the next level and man we had no idea where we were going after that but here we are that's awesome quick break from our normal programming I have Erica schweire CEO from Elevate Ventures here in the studio today Erica thanks for being here yeah thanks for having me and you're going to tell us a little bit about this reality Innovation conference that's coming up yep so it's the largest cross sector Innovation conference in the world World we're going to feature six Innovation Studios so think hard tech software Sports Tech Ag and food Healthcare and Entrepreneurship is going to kind of be our catch-all I love that so tell me what is who's it for yeah it's for innovators entrepreneurs investors honestly anybody probably listening to this podcast it's going to be a multi-day thing that's multi-day in downtown Indianapolis yep people coming in from all over the country and maybe even all over the world to be here that's our hope yep and the dates are actually August 29th through the 31st perfect and if people want to find out more information about speakers tickets things like that where can they go yeah so they just go to rallyinnovation.
com and sign up for communications they can also get their tickets I'll love it you heard it here rallyinnovation. com we'll see you there talk to me a little bit about some of those early customers you knew that this worked with that exact target but if revenue is the way you're growing you got to find customers yeah and that was a hard thing to be honest I'll share a couple pieces to that on one hand because we had the relationships with exact target Salesforce and there was a whole lot of Buzz around that helped come on when you walk into a meeting and say hey they're trusting us with this come on but also some of the partners that and vendors that we worked with at exact target knew about us as well and so one of them Shi they actually were working with another company at that time called interactive intelligence and so we said hey if there's a need there it actually started with a need specifically in repairs repairing current technology not disposing of old technology but we got that introduction and then we talked and we still actually have this relationship with Ken Moore over at Genesis now and it said hey we can do so much more than just repairs and and also our model with the its a disposition specifically was very different we wanted to to show up pay up pay pick up no grading no hassle those who were in the space and sometimes even today are in the space it's you send me your old technology I'll go great at all and then I'll write you a check but it's going to be a black box over here to let you know what you're actually going to get and I might say hey grade A I'm going to pay you this much but then everything I'll come back to you and say you were more like a grade C on everything so I'm going to pay you less what we do is we just show up pick up pay up no grading no hassle so we set a price you know what we're going to pay you up front that turned the heads of Ken and thus we were in the ball game so I don't know if you guys are picking up on this what I'm what I love and what I'm hearing is like specificity there's no BS right yeah and no sugar coating it's just this is what we can do this is the value it isn't boom you want internet yep that's what it was and it's a unique selling proposition like that was the thing that you were differentiated on yeah so we had a couple and I wanted to take it a couple different directions we had a couple in that scenario like genesis where we brought on Genesis lydo's Health was another one on Westfield but also we had some struggles to be quite honest because we were position positioned as it asset disposition another perhaps synonym to that is we're a recycling company and so we don't have a seat at the table for some of the Strategic direction of it Asset Management that was a problem for us because when we first started it was all about hey do you have any old technology we'll buy it and then it became a price game and when it was only a price game there were some that said yep I'm in because I know I've been burned and I know you're not going to burn me because I know what I'm getting into yeah to others it was now wait a minute they're telling me grade A's or this much and you're telling me that much I'm gonna go with them and then they get burned and then come back but I think over the years what we've tried to do is let's craft a better Vision because the reality is we are guides and it Asset Management the whole picture we need a seat at that strategic table and that's the seat we've had with a company like Salesforce where we're building products actually we're building the products to automate its asset management and we're doing the services and that whole picture is the what the value that we bring it's not just we're a recycling company here take my junk so that was a hard point in the very beginning for us because we were focused hard on we just won its at disposition business we just want your old computers because that's Buy Low sell High easy economics what we were developing and I'd say we are still developing today is the more it Asset Management role and just to give you a little nugget when we were at exact targets of Salesforce that transition period the opportunity that was given to us was all of the exact target computers needed to be swapped out for Salesforce computers easy enough that's a lot of the work that we had already been doing functionally in in our roles and we were given basically six months to do it and said here's the Playbook go and to be honest we looked at that Playbook and again I'm not trying to look down a nose or anything like that but we just looked at that Playbook and said hey I think keep in mind my role was automation I think we can automate a lot of these touch points make this an awesome user experience and deliver wow and do it with not an army of people because the alternative to using our team which is smallest Scrappy was using a large organization that does what we do that had 30 people committed to do this project we did it with three and we built a tool in that ecosystem everything at Salesforce is something for us we called it Swap Force swapping computers Swap Force and that took off that that was a BB that we said hey I can my wife at that time was in medical school so she did not have much time and it's like I I like to code that blend of business and technology management information systems that was something I picked up at Purdue it's like connecting the business problem with some Technology Solutions even though I'm not a coder necessarily I could put something together so let's try it that did turn out to work it worked very well for that exact target to Salesforce migration we then were a part of quite a number of M A's with exact target and they still use those programs that we built for its management we've expanded that that Suite of it Asset Management expertise and product but that's where it started and it was really how do we make it better than we found it let's fire a baby and try it and it panned out can you talk about navigating that conversation you are less than two years out of college in your first job ever your first professional career and you go from being an employee to now exact target Salesforce you're my customer how did you navigate that yeah I think in part back to relationships in part it is the people the leader of the it organization at exact target was an incredible mentor to me and he actually still works at Salesforce but more or less it was hey can you help me figure out how to navigate some of these discussions it wasn't him as the decision maker it was him as just a sounding board to say hey maybe you need to get your idea a little bit more clarified on what you want to do or how you're going to do it and but he gave us a chance and I think that was huge and then to back that up we actually did something about it so when we said we're going to do it we did what we said we were going to do and we did deliver that awesome user experience and by the end of the six months all of those exact target computers got swapped over and we were Off to the Races so it was we're going to give you a chance and then okay now they gave us a chance we're not going to take that lightly we're going to knock it down and do it well one of the phrases I heard you say I recognize from Tim Kopp former CMO of exact target and I think he got that from Tony Shea the writer of delivering happiness co-founder of Zappos wow service yeah talk to me a little bit about that and how you're still using that today yeah I think back then there was we didn't necessarily clarify it to the wow I think now we know it's wow but there was a couple iterations when we first started Wing you at Salesforce was one of the higher ups and he caught wind of this thing multiply and these multipliers he actually saw one of our team members as he was in town he says oh you're a multiplier so we picked that one up and kept it nice but what he what we talked about and what he shared was we disrupt Industries because we were not only swapping out those exact target computers but we were also buying those old computers and remarketing them so it was like a double whammy yeah benefit to our customer benefit to us industry disruption and then fast forward we had Sarah Franklin who is one of the presidents at Salesforce and specifically in marketing area she was thinking about and commenting upon the drudgery of an I.
T computer swap if I have to get to a new computer that how do I even do that I don't even want to start right like it was a drudge rate and she said man the way that we did this was seamless I got a couple text messages got a couple boom and then it showed up on my doorstep and it was just boom and it's okay that's it it's delivering wow it's when you have a new hire that's starting you don't want them to have an afterthought of it am I going to get a computer where is my computer and now I have 16 boxes coming to my house with all the different accoutrements we'll distill it down to one box so you have what you need for day one and it's frankly so your it team doesn't have to worry about it that's the stuff that we do best love that what are you most excited about for multiplied technology now and going into the future yeah I think right now I'm really excited again I did the disclaimer that we're still writing the story I think we in a lot of a lot of ways we've learned a ton and we're applying that knowledge we also have an incredible team of people and I think we talked about if if you make your employees happy your customers will be happy I picked that up from Scott dorsey's man that there's that can preach that's true and I think I'm so excited about the team that we have rallied arounds together we're a scrappy group and it's how do we rub two sticks and make it happen again and make the fire happen and I think we now also on reflection we have a Playbook that we can use we can apply to high growth tech companies that don't have any I.
T staff or we can apply to Enterprises we just picked up another Enterprise here in Indianapolis this last year and the type of work that we're doing with them is scaling because they see the value that we bring and that just is more affirmation to where we're headed so I think it's that Playbook it's also the plat platform it's the it Asset Management products and the knowledge that we've built we've built all of that in-house and we have some of those tools that we use to run our daily operation and it's in in fact trying to use those tools and offer those tools to our Enterprises and our high growth Tech organizations as well and it's hey look we know we've cracked this nut we know how to do this very well come join us and we can ride it together that's awesome we used to use these phrases at demand jump but one of our core tenants was serve each other right after your comment about if the team is Happy customers will be happy but also ad broker in the office I mean you're my customer right somebody asked for something we need something okay you're my customer and yeah I don't care if it's filling up the coffee cup whatever it is like you're just anticipating the needs of others yeah and it doesn't have to be like major things but like very even some of the smallest things make the biggest difference yeah another I would say if I may just don't that comment I think we've always been a flat organization we're small and Scrappy and also and this is in large part again from just some of the discussions that Aaron and I have had over the years but our hierarchy is actually inverted we believe we have a multiplied tree where we are at the bottom we're in the roots and we are there to serve the rest of the organization not the other way around and I think our hope is May Our Roots go deep so our branches can go wide and that's really that's the heart and the mission behind what we're trying to do as leaders in our company let alone trying to serve our own customers two but I think it starts with serving our own people like you're saying our multiplier can you talk about that yeah leadership you were two years in your professional career now you're running this company and you've been doing that ever since have you picked up tips yeah qualities of good leaders and how have you instilled that across your team at multiply yeah I think that's a great question I think it's to be honest again I'm still a work in process on this a progress process whatever but I think I had enough people in my life my dad being probably the Pinnacle of saying I see you I'm proud of you I love you they believed in me before I believed in myself Max Jones Jake eppart those guys at Purdue bands they had me become a leader of Purdue bands as one of the younger leaders and then I was the leader by the time I was a senior I was pretty good at it because I they gave me a chance and I took it and I think Andy White being another example here in the tech not really Tech ecosystem but Andy was a huge mentor to me and his leadership style the just the servant leadership style so picking up on that like a sponge and just taking those in and saying how can I apply that how can I do that how can I practically serve my own team serve my people and I think there's a number of ways that can be done if it's getting coffee if it's grabbing lunch if it's saying hey I noticed that we're going Mach 5 with our hair on fire let's take a pause let's go out and have a meal or do something together I think it's those sorts of things just having a pulse on that and actually acting on it is really critical I love that I love that you I did pick up a quote that you've tossed around talking about that a plane will write itself if you let go of the yield you want to talk about that in terms of your company I can yeah yeah I think so in let's say 2020 we had some pretty significant all of us had some pretty significant life changes happening I would say for me I also had some additional ones we welcomed my first son our only son but we welcomed Henry to the world in February covet happened in March and oh my gosh what's happening but at that time it was critical piece for some of our business too because you know what we needed to grow we needed to continue finding more revenue and building our business and maybe crafting or crystallizing the story that we're telling and I think there was a moment I know there was a moment I was face down on the floor in my son's room my wife was holding Henry and I'm like I can't do it I cannot do all of this myself and I think I had this realization that oh wait I'm not doing it myself number one because we have a team of people but I love Aviation and if you're flying in the fog and you don't know which way is up which way is down which ways otherwise and you're actually inverted your body will tell you're not you won't know that but the best way as long as you have enough altitude the best way to write yourself is to let go of the yoke and that's essentially I know there's practical ways like how did you actually do that I think part of it was I wasn't taking as much control and I was trusting in our team and there's become a Jackson's over here I trust your judgment I brought you in here because I see what you are becoming I see and I believe in who you are becoming I trust your judgment make it happen I think it's those sorts of things that like that's a practical way that I had to let it go I had to let go of the Yoke the airplane righted itself and it just so happened that year we doubled our business I do laugh on that I don't know how that works I do believe in Divine guidance and perhaps there was a lot of that going on but the reality is I know for a fact in March of 2020 I was face down on Henry's floor and I'm like plane analogy okay gotta let go of the yoke and our team figured it out our team figured out how to continue doing our business in a pandemic and our business did double that year there's a song about that and there's Jesus doesn't have quite the ring too yeah this is great a ton of great lessons and tidbits for for entrepreneurs and inspiring leaders to pull out there I do want to wrap up with my favorite segment which is the lightning round so the lightning round is going to be three questions I'm going to ask you and first thing that comes to your mind you just rattle it off all right okay so outside of the amazing entrepreneurs I'm gonna restart that because I totally messed it up it's okay I'll mess up the answer yeah outside of the amazing entrepreneurs what is Indiana known for racing racing Indy 500.
boom it is this is almost May we're almost about there yep uh what is one Hidden Gem in Indiana hidden gym in Indiana Plymouth Rock Golf Course now called Woodbury Golf Course by the way full circle I love that what's your handicap still around I don't keep a handicapped ah there we go all right and finally who is someone that we need to keep on our radar someone that is doing something big Drew beechler oh Drew from holder great yep great I love that can you tell us a little bit about what Drew's working on yeah Drew's working on a business called holder I would say maybe more I'll tell the person behind the business I've gotten to known Drew we were or fellows together and there's a group of four of us actually Jackson's included that we've meet a monthly and we've done that for basically 10 years now and I know the person the man that is Drew beetsler he's a incredible father incredible husband and I I'd say look out because Drew beachler's a machine and he's coming yeah I love it it's awesome incredible he's working on something pretty exciting in the web 3 space and I'm sure we'll have him on the show here at some point thank you so much for being here on the show and sharing your story Doug it's really exciting to hear what you're working on and I really appreciate just the level of Candor you brought to the conversation and sharing some of those more core moments for you yeah I really appreciate the opportunity and again if someone can get some encouragement out of this then it's well worth it to me yeah if if listeners out there want to get connected to multiply or is there anything you're working on or ways that they can support you within the powder Community yeah I mean I would say if you're a high growth tech company and you need some I.
T work and you don't have it staff or even if you do look us up because that's exactly what we do well and if you're in the Enterprise space and your it Asset Management can use some help we are right around the corner so I'd love to get to know you I love it this was great thanks Doug thanks thank you everybody thank you 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 a 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 in 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 at casted.
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