from the crossroads of America in the hoer state of Indiana this is get [Music] in the podcast focused on unfolding stories and extraordinary Innovations happening right now in the Heartland I'm Matt hunkler CEO of powderkeg and I will be one of your hosts for today's conversation I'm joined in Studio by co-host Christopher to day hello let's roll CEO adventures and Nate spangle head of community at powder cake and you will notice we are wearing our Sweetwater gear today and that is because we just got back from Fort Wayne Indiana touring the headquarters of Sweetwater got some sweet gear so we have to represent got some
sweet gear from Sweet Water absolutely I love Sweet Water I can't wait to buy more gear from there amazing I I just bought some oh love Black Friday weekend work uh on the show today is Janet Stiller president and CEO at lucidia it and I'm sure we'll get some sweet gear from with City at some point so we can represent on a future show I've always thought from an entrepreneurship you either kind of have it or you don't I always approached my jobs even though I wasn't management I was my own owner regardless I mean I I took care of my customers but I also
I was protective of the company as well and took that ownership and that mentality of going after thing I was selling yeah it's almost like you're when you take ownership it's almost like you're running a business within the business and that and that is a massive impact in a positive way to the business and your and your life Janet Stiller is the president and CEO of lucidia it and she is a trailblazer in the male dominated world of it under her leadership lucidia it has surged from number 482 to number 396 on the 2023 Inc 5000 list specializing in data center Solutions Enterprise networking and
Cloud Technologies with over 20 years in the it value added reseller space Stiller's entrepreneurial journey is marked by a commitment to a strong work ethic and a keen trust in intuition which is very evident in her instinctive decision-making process When selecting business partners very excited to talk to her today as a proud woman owner Stiller is not only shaping the success of lucidia it but also Paving the way for the next generation of female leaders in the IT industry Janet welcome to get in thank you so much for having me in here I'm excited to be here I'm you Janet didn't know if I could
when I was doing my I call it research some people call it internet stocking she didn't know if I could find that much on her I found some some good stuff some sweet gems Janet I am so excited to learn a little bit more about your story lucidia story but particularly wanted to just understand how you first got into it in the first place what were some of your earliest memories of just being exposed to technology some of the new and Innovative things that are happening earlier on in your life when I started um I had graduated from Purdue and I went to a head
hunter to help find a job right and I wanted to go into pharmaceutical sales because at that point well that was a hey day back then right that was the job couple years ago yeah you know like the mid90s oh is is great time great time in the world you two might have been the same class we might have we might have I'm a 92 grade I beat you I'm an 88 oh nice I like it so anyway um I went to a Head Hunter and they're like you need to get some sales experience you go sell some copers and come back so I went
to Pitney BOS and sold copers and I was like I am not going back to that head hunter again because he was you know whatever she was like so I went to this Head Hunter and they're like hey you've got your two years in I did very well and um I really want to be a pharmaceutical sales rep again they're like well I've got this great opportunity it's hard rare and I think you'll really like this gentleman and I'm I had the interview and I loved him and he has been a mentor of me ever since wow Steve Bullington what click he works you know
what he was just a good dude and he was the best manager I've ever worked for and he wanted to promote and educate myself and but family was first and I worked on a maritech and was I did very well I was the number one rep several years in the Midstate area for five years wow so that's how that's awesome hey I got into it and cop your sales is is tough but like if you can be successful in cop your sales like you did it for two years you can do anything MH yeah it was hard and I had downtown and you know there
was cold calling where you actually physically knocked on the door wow and when I was at Ameritech we didn't have email at that point yeah so I would get 30 and 40 voicemails gosh and I was a single parent and I would process orders at 2 in the morning and wake up and get my kids out of school up to school and off and I mean it was thinking back at it now makes me exhausted yeah sounds like a grind and you're currently a CEO of a very fast growing company the idea of selling copers in the '90s that makes you exhausted oh my gosh
exhaust well at that point I was with Ameritech and we were selling little phone systems and stuff but that's how I got into it it was dumb luck wow and it sounds like you had a great manager can you talk a little bit about his management style and what really helped you kind of grow within that organization you know what he always said when you're a sales rep you can be selfish and when you're a leader you're are selfless and he really just he lived that motto and he was all about education and making sure that we were informed and he was just completely on
our side and I love that and I I had lunch with him just last week oh that's amazing still in Indiana still in Indiana he works for Salesforce okay there you go there you go that's awesome so it was dumb luck and it was a great start I think it's it's super interesting you're talking about processing orders at 2 a.m. and and those like hard difficult times I think that's an interesting mentality that not a lot of early stage professionals have like that sense of ownership of like I'm going to get this done uh could you talk to that and like when that switch clicked
in you to be like hey it's not a 9o5 it's like you're done when the work's done I've always thought from an entrepreneurship you either kind of have it or you don't and I think that um I always approached my jobs even though I wasn't management um that I was my own owner even regard even regardless I mean I I took care of my customers but I also like I was protective of the company as well and um took that ownership and that mentality of going after the um whatever the widget or thing I was selling yeah it's almost like you're when you take ownership
it's almost like you're running a business within the business you are and that and that is a massive you are impact in a positive way to the business and your and your life um when you're in um Consulting it we were always responsible for own profit and so um I ran I mean I can remember then when I um went on and I worked for a large um value added uh business um reseller I was responsible for making sure that those Engineers were busy and if they weren't they would have to let them go and I did not want that I felt the responsibility and
I still feel that responsibility hugely if we hire someone it's not just them it's their entire family that we're bringing in and I want to make sure that I I never want to let someone go if and so far I haven't done that well you really leaned into that starting your own company that was a little scary yeah tell tell me about that decision we had always we there's a few others back behind me that we decided that we wanted to at some point start a company and uh some things happened in life that we decided it was time and uh that last quarter that
I worked for the big company I kind of it was right around this time it was Christmas time I totally I would respond to customers but I didn't I didn't uh seek out additional business because I want I was leave I was going to be a competitor but I walked away with no non-compete and no non-solicit wow so that's huge I was doing everything above board I did not want do anything that was not right y so and I think that's the way you should be right 100% that's way you should do it and when you do it that way um I don't know if
this has happened yet but like a lot of times things reconnect and so Integrity Integrity but like who there could be business opportunities there will be if there will be Direct business opportunities that come out of doing it above board the right way yes there will be benefits to both companies at some see it right at the beginning but somewhere down the road yes I absolutely believe that absolutely yeah was it scary heck yes I didn't take a paycheck for the first almost year eight months to a year had you planned for that yes to an extent I mean I knew that we were self-funded
myself and another gentleman put a little bit of money in and uh we're debt-free today it's amazing but it was I there was many days I was like what the hell have I done so so talk about that a little bit right cuz as in the same day at one moment you are the smartest most brilliant you know nonfearful person and the next minute you're like what in the hell did I get myself into yeah so talk about that yoyo well I just think that um you know there's just a lot of there's a lot of stuff out here and I I call it put
your blinders on because everyone is going to say she really do it she can't can she do that or you know the naysayer do say the naysayer that's really is the haters but you got to put those blinders on and you just got to keep you got to believe you got to keep and it'll trickle in and then you're like nope just keep doing what you're doing keep going forward believe in yourself honestly cuz there's that person in the back of your head going you doing how much of Entrepreneurship is willpower getting it off the ground I think there's a lot of things I think
there's luck I think there's um the attitude the motivation I think you have to have an entrepreneur spirit I mean what does that mean to you well um if you're coming to work and um you have a mentality of this is not my job it's entrepreneurship is not yours you're the janitor right you're the you know Coke in the yeah if that's not your mentality like you know I can only do these things in this box a startup is probably not your gift yeah maybe it just might not be for you it might not be for you so did you start that's okay that's right
it's okay that's right did you guys start like January 1 2018 we started the 18th January 18th 2018 okay so January 18th you wake up in the morning do you have customers already or is it like hey we got to we're starting from a clean slate you wake up what do you do January 18th I had done as much research as I could and I had like I couldn't go out and start the company cuz I was working for a company and that would be a no no yep so all I could do was research and do everything that I could to press go and
so on the 18th we signed documentation that formed the corporation you know you went out and you got your own checking account I mean all those things that you have to do in order to get a business off the ground and um get a logo and make I think the only thing we did do prior to starting was the name and locking down the um URL yeah how'd you pick the name lucidia I didn't want Stiller blah blah blah Consulting that's know who cares um and I lucidia is um Latin for brightest star and the constellation of Brilliance and I just I spelled it the
French version of it and I'm like Ben oh my gosh we spelled it wrong he's like did did did so and so ever tell Google that they spelled it wrong like you're right yes we're staying with it well you mentioned the mentality and the work ethic and I'd love to know a little bit more about your own mentality uh some of the mental Frameworks that you use uh a to stay motivated and keep coming and building each day um but B also some of the other mentalities or kind of mindsets for you particularly that you think maybe give you a little bit of an edge
I think think a good sales rep shouldn't need motivation they should already have that motivation within them and I kind of come from that cloth where do you think you get that from I think a lot of it comes from your upbringing I mean I detail corn that me too yes now we are so much alike corn area where you grew up I grew up in Crawfordsville okay and then um ended up in Peru do not tell me your W bash fan we're going to have beef I don't have any real I mean there we go yeah W good answer good answer do it that's
a great school I will say that yeah corn cornit tling is a Common Thread in our Indiana entrepreneurs I mean that's hard work that is really hard work Y and getting your butt out the door and all that stuff yes very early I always heard the stories of Cory tasseling where you're like always a little bit wet in the morning you go through the roads you have a poncho or youd wear something and you're getting cut and you're wet and then it gets 95 or 105 degrees out and you're sweating and it's crazy yeah cut dirty sweaty it's not fun yeah but I think you
had that in your D good work ethic and I was a single parent um for a while and I didn't want my kids to you know you just want to be a good example and you want to take care of them and I didn't want want to rely on a man ever and uh there was just a lot of things that happened early on that kind of form and shape you are there some like moments without sharing you know names probably on this question but um are there some moments where the stick out in your mind whether it was since you started your business um
or even previous where somebody put up a roadblock you know and said no Janet you can't do that or or intentionally did something to that you felt like that was putting an INT roadblock maybe for their own selfin um and how did you navigate that to an outcome of success um yeah that happens all the time a l every any favorite stories so this National VAR um the local so they had they were like little kingdoms that all reported to the Lord and this little kingdom was kind of upset that we left and intent went after us um through lawsuits and filed laws they they
had nothing on me cuz I had no paperwork they didn't they didn't believe in sales reps they thought sales reps were only we need we only need Engineers okay so um they had a a lawsuit against two of the guys that helped start it and they were fighting in Delaware and one of the guys was going to have to pull money out of his 401k and I'm like this is insane it was probably the first week after we had filed Y and they intentionally just didn't want us to get off the ground and they were bullying us with fees yeah MH and I'm like this
is crazy so I reached out to the CEO of this said company who had no idea that this was going on and I said of course hey I'm sure we can figure out something to work out here would like to chat 24 hours goes by and one Side Story Ben is in Switzerland installing voice gets kidney stones were without insurance and he's sick and they're suing us so this has all happened and Ben is your co-founder yes and and so we um I sent that email got on the phone with said CEO out of New York the 3 billion company and uh CH talked to
him and within 20 minutes we settled and he kind of got after these books down here and it was done and that's how we were able to sweep that behind us and it was kind of calling out some bad you know Bad actors yeah Bad actors exactly yeah he might have learned some things he didn't know and that were beneficial to you know yeah the Integrity the health and growth of the company right yeah I I uh I feel like 99% of the world's problems are a lack of communication and like and if you can just have two reasonable people that can communicate that that
like like drama lawsuits it's just so taxing and it takes so much energy and bullying it's bullying attorneys are bullying I mean attorneys themselves are not it's the act of it it's a little bit of a bullying they can be turned into that yeah who's got the deeper pockets and sometimes there's legitimate things right but I completely in many cases it's like come on can we not just sit down and figure this thing out right absolutely absolutely I kind of want to boun bounce back real quick you talked about what's really important in sales reps is motivation and I think on surface level everyone thinks
oh sales people are motivated by money right it's like get your commission always I think that's the stereotype though but I would be I'd be eager to hear your thoughts on what are those characteristics and those motivations that make really really good sales reps like the consultative a really good sales rep doesn't work the money is the last thing a good sales rep is going to build a great rapport with not only their customer but their company so that when they call on you to help me with something that's out beyond that they're like yes I will help you Janet it's about building good relationships
with everyone and it's about doing the right thing it's not it's not about the quick win it's about the long road it's about the integrity and doing the right thing and then that relationship blossoms when we go into an account we want to go we want to go wide and deep and we want to be a good partner we don't want to be a vendor we want to be a partner to them and you know what maybe that is just tweaking something and you're good or maybe it's um helping them out and doing a complete redesign but it's about doing the right thing yep for
them seems to me that's probably one of the most important ingredients to the success of lucidia I think so I think that and the fact that we've got really talented people we we sought um folks that were experienced and that sat on the other side so they've been customers walked in those shoes yes they've walked in those shoes they have that experience to help customers and I really it's it's kind of a unfortunate that sales reps have a bad because they do there's some of those they're they're here to do you know grab this and on that's not the way we work that is absolutely
not the way we work and nor has it ever been the way I work is long that's not the way I want to be treated right what is your so what do your ideal customer profile o sorry what does your ideal customer profile look like and how do you typically start a relationship um with a company and in the services youer um well we typically work with commercial to Enterprise accounts um how do you guys Define that um I think our smallest house our smallest account has 500 employees okay and then beyond that and they typically have multiple locations and um they typically have some
type of IT staff whether it's five people or 300 people yep um and that's kind of we we don't do a lot in small business we will help someone if they need it but we're not really in the small business realm how do you balance that mindset of the the consultative approach building relationships thinking longterm but on January 18th you had zero customers zero dollars and you were not taking a paycheck so H how do you balance that like uh that teeter totter before we started I went and asked a lot of questions right to people and the one thing they said it's great if
you could have a couple customers that would do business with you right off the bat um get oh my go that's a proverbial go yeah you got to go get somebody else first before all sign well just that I mean I didn't um I knew that there were customers that would continue to do business with us regardless of what company yeah the chust was with you yeah and with um Jason and Ben too yeah yeah so I knew that but they also said go get good um attorne attorneys and good accounting H so those there there was like you know and I I remember someone
saying you know we started this company but we really didn't have any customer that's that's a hard roow I mean know that's that's hard mhm so we had a couple customers we knew we could get some quick business going so at least we had some little bit of income coming in nice that was probably a relief it paid them you know what I mean like money was coming in to pay them yeah yeah as you kind of scaled to that point where it's like okay we're getting traction with this company I would imagine being uh in a very male dominated industry particularly like when you're
talking about it Tech Stacks uh you know on premise uh I used to work in in Cloud hosting and on- premise hosting and okay so lots of pleated pants and tucked in polos um and you know I wore the uniform um did you ever personally run into any challenges uh getting things done strictly because you were a woman Ben had started a little company prior to lucidia and he went out and because we need credit right cuz we're we are between the manufacturer and the customer so we'll acquire equipment through them and he immediately got a $50,000 credit and I went and I had better
credit than him and they gave me zero because I was a woman I'm like that is the I think that is the most bold um thing that has ever happened related to the fact that I was female now they may disagree that that's what it was but I don't know they were within 90 days his credit score my credit score something doesn't smell right there I don't know how do you handle those things when uh they come your way well I probably get mad first sure and then I have that's a human response sit there and think about it and then uh then I try
to tactfully have some conversations with some folks and see how we can figure this out mhm yeah let yourself be mad that way it doesn't show up in the conversation yeah sometimes I'm not so good about that but you know we're all human yeah of course it seems like there's so much opportunity for women in the it in it specifically oh I think there's tons of opportunity and I think that um it's a completely different landscape than it was 20 years AG 10 years ago I mean I remember it was nothing for me to be in a room room with nothing but men around the
table y case and point say off but now it's like you know you could be one of half of them or something and I think that's awesome yeah yeah and I think that um there's lots of places where um and you know what honestly sometime it doesn't matter I I love there's been a ton of men in my life that have done me right and you know good um but it would be nice to to continue to have more women yeah and that's one of the things that I'm very proud of um I think we have 28 or 30 employees and half of them are
women and I think that's great that's incredible do you recruit like is it what's the mix of of your team that is you know out of college versus five or 10 years and do you find it's uh where do you have success recruiting women uh do you find that you have to go out of college and train them up for what you want them to learn or are you able to get folks that are you know 10 years out of school well I think it's important to have a mix of both because I feel like we were all first timers and it's nice to be
around people that um seasoned right so we do have a mixture and um we have had the great opportunity of a lot of them uh coming to us through friends of friends or knowing someone um we've hired through um Head Hunters um we've kind of had a mixture of both and we've we've honestly it's been good um like I said we've had very few leave us one um they were going to um bump her pension I'm like go yeah go um one was starting a business of their own and I'm like good luck that's great awesome I thought that was like a bad you didn't
file a lawsuit no it was a different one no I didn't um I said there was a bad honor when you have people in your team absolutely right like go start a company it's like okay what can we do to help can we be a customer like you know that's the it's the dream yeah I think I'd like to so we were talking about that first day January 18th 2018 and then fast forward 4 years um and you hit 482 on the Inc 5000 list and for anyone who doesn't know Inc 5000 it's a fast 5,000 fastest private privately held companies in the United States
so to be at in top of the 500 there is is pretty illustrious and you have to be what a million minimum in revenue for three years which by the way um oh I forgot the exact his Stanford stat it's north of well and it's north of 90% uh 90 I can't remember exact percentage but let's say 95% is ever even get to a million yeah number one so congratulations with women owned yeah so like you're the Crim to the CRM like the top of the top so congratulations on that that's that's absolutely awesome yeah I won't go through the Stanford things it's a different
kind of a use case but but um um yeah talk to us about that about that about that growth and taking those steps from getting your first customer to 5 482 in 2022 I think it was 3 million have you ever seen the St STS on how long it takes companies to get to a million it's shocking I've never I didn't know if I should believe these stats or not but it's like five or six or seven years that that uh it takes most companies to reach a million dollars which I shocked me but so that means like you make valorian look like I don't
know about that well that's that's that building that robust Network and doing things the right way and it's like yeah no wonder people want to come do business with you it's like you have yeah your your resume precedes you we've hired the same way I think everyone on our team believes the same thing MH we want to do a good job we want to build great relationships and do what's right and we've steadily increased every year and we've worked hard on our reoccurring Revenue so that we sleep better at night and um it's just been good it's been really good is everything still founder-led sales
or did you have to build out your own sales team at at some point to help we've got uh six reps yeah and we're doing with business with folks I don't even know now talk to me about that how did that's kind of weird really yeah I bet um we would get accounts and their names that I don't know and I would be like okay yeah and we would make sure that we felt comfortable with the terms and um go forward did did you struggle with that that that shift from working in the business to working on the business um well the deal is I
know that there's and people can say that I am very controlling but at the end of the day I can't I can't do everything and you have to rely on the people that you've surrounded Yourself by that they will um do the same and if they run into trouble they raise their hand and say hey I need some help here that's all and we'll figure it out um but yeah that's kind of weird when it when got Beyond like your comfort zone of I know these people will pay us I know these people it's good yeah that kind of thing talk to me about some
of those other pain points of scaling because at a certain point there is that kind of shift when you start going into hypergrowth you know what um when we did start going into um we had hired a gal who was very methodical and she put in processes which was you know nobody wants process really right but it's usually not the entrepreneurial type it's need that's right you know you come from entrepreneur you know when I'm hiring I'm like if you're looking for a standard scope for everything we ever have done this is not your job yeah I want to make sure that they know that
everything's not spelled up black and white it's back to that mentality right where it's like if you're a this isn't my job this isn't my job description it's probably not a good fit it's not a good fit and you want it to be a good fit I want I want us to be happy and I want you to be happy um so yeah there's a good chance like if you have a hyper successful salesperson that's been in a you know a Salesforce for whatever 10 15 20 years total Rockstar good chance that person is not going to be a good first sales person at a
startup I mean they're just not they're going to be used to having it you know yeah all the wheels greased yeah and that's not what this is no it's entrepreneurship and you found that operating type person to balance she kind of came to me and said hey can we put some processes in place I'm like you know what it's probably a good idea and then she ran with it wow awesome right what were some of the big things that she put in place that you think you know Looking Back Now were just kind of foundational to that next wave of growth having a checkpoint process
from statements of work um having a process as we um process orders who needs to see what what they need to have we were always pretty good about um remember legal was important so we had our paperwork in place and we would you know get paperwork with the customer um but just you know complete process so that e um even from um you know payout and HR and that stuff what are some of your main go-to pieces of your Tex Tech that you use to operate the business um as far as verticals uh I'm sorry like um operational um um so hot or Salesforce or
we use a CRM Zoho and it's Zoho ones which gives us electronic document signing um it'll give us I it'll store the documents all the CRM it'll do um um marketing to of sorts we purchased um software that helps us um understand our companies that we're targeting I have more software today than I ever had I never had a CRM that sounds weird but that's the way we operated then the spreadsheet huh the old spreadsheet oh yeah we have a decent amount of entrepreneurs uh Executives scaling companies what two or three pieces of advice would you give an executive at a scaling tech company that
really wants to take that next leap uh for their business well I do think that from today to what it was back and I think technology helps us I mean all those things we just mentioned the CRM the tools that are out there are quite amazing um even website and things that you can do with your website to attract you guys have a very very good website I will say as I did my as I did my research right I was like again this is this is just stereotypical you think of like oh it companies it's like you kind of rinse and repeat and I
got on there it's like con stations and stars right there and it's a really intuitive sight so that's just hats off to you and your team we've redone it re revamped that twice um and we just constantly I mean you're in Tech should use some tech right okay and then let let's go to the kind of last piece on growth and scaling that I want to talk about is 482 think life is good threee growth you're at 482 on the ink 5000 and then to jump up almost another 100 rankings what is the do you have any any tips or just stories from you're already
you have the the gas pedal almost down to the floor but to just put it all the way down there and to go from 482 to 396 advice stories any fun thoughts there I mean if you're not growing you're dying right and um sometimes we have the ying and the yang right I'm I'm Visionary we've been behind the scenes and um if you're not growing grow growing is scary right hiring that next person to help you know expand and grow is scary but you got to do it if you want to grow so and and hiring the right people is very important yeah how important
is having that yindy Yang co-founder and and do you have any advice for these uh aspiring entrepreneurs that may be looking for that uh that counterpart on how to identify that I'm the Visionary I'm the front end and there's someone in the back even though sometimes I hate it when he says no and I have to like bite him for I love it there has to be someone that is you just need that balance right it's healthy yeah if um I think it's good and I actually like it there's three of us in leadership and so there's the chances of it being unanimous there's good
chance actually but it's nice that there's three so then it's like y you got a tiebreaker Jason are we going to gang up on Ben or is you know I mean how are we going to do this yeah and I think it's a healthy relationship and I think you need we each you know like a good team each person brings something unique to the table and we have a well balanced crew have you found a good support network of other Founders or CEOs that have been helpful in your your own growth yeah a little bit Yeah there's been a couple of companies that um they'll
do a um what do they call it basically a a seminar where others will come in and and uh that was very um interesting because they have the same problems right they have you know insurance or um commission plans or um hiring or keeping people on staff or and it doesn't matter really what the company is they all have the same problems and it's interesting to hear that yeah so anyway and and was sometimes insightful right because they may have found a tool that was worthy of like bringing on or looking at sounds like a little touch on cross- sector um that I always love
when people think that way yeah absolutely so true you can learn so much people outside of your day-to-day Circle your industry vertical whatever there's so much value backend stuff is the same with every how how important is being curious to uh to your entrepreneurial journey I would say it's kind of important again if you get stagnant and you you don't care about growing I mean I guess it's okay but I don't think that's what a business is supposed to do we want it to grow right yeah I think that it's interesting right it's like you had an illustrious sales career right and you can go
out there and you can get new business but yet you're still continuing the seat from number one sales rep to CEO is different and and as you didn't sit there before you great on bringing in Revenue great and that gets you so far right a really good first year but to have that sustained growth it's like hey I got to put on my learning hat and learn how to be a CEO learn how to handle all these different things and I think that's that's just a super um as these different interviews we've had with different CEOs and like curiosity just seems to be so important
to entrepreneurs I would agree and I think um it's been a learning experience right there's been a lot of things that I'm like oh I don't I don't like to uh have some of the conversations that I've had to have yeah but you have to be um Mindful and you have to be truthful and it has to be about business and not personal and those are tough I don't like them what are you most excited about I'm excited about the next chapter like where's this going to go we just hired a couple people in Ohio starting to make some great traction there um all of
our business is really from the Midwest and then it goes they usually have some type of uh location or something elsewhere and we've we've done business all over the world and that's kind of fun but I'm I'm excited about seeing where it goes and how big it gets and what's your what's the team size today uh 28 I think it's 28 yeah yeah there's another big inflection point coming yeah yeah yeah because when you get to 50 things kind of change MH y I'm very aware of that I think like that 2025 that's a big change oh is it and so you're like well just
like when you like these customer names show up that like I don't even know who that company is yeah it's kind of shocking right or absolutely or maybe you know there might be some hires that are happening at this point or in process that you're not the leader on the process right there's there's other people leading that and it's just a whole different deal there's definitely um I mean we don't hire a person everybody I mean there's multiple people that yeah yes absolutely cuz they're not working with just me right they're going to be working with the team and I think that culture is a
big deal huge deal and we've got a great culture you know um what I think is interesting is the last company we we started doing this uh and before that I really never I don't think I appreciated the the importance of culture I think we you kind of did it but subconsciously um but I've noticed that when you lead with culture in the hiring process like don't even care about your skill sets like this is our culture this is what we're about this is what we're trying to do this is our vision mission what these are our core tenants Etc it's it's pretty interesting how
many people will self- select out because that may not resonate with them for whatever reason not good or bad right and then you get into in the second or third or whatever discussion you start getting into more of the you know more of skill sets and and capabilities Etc but but leading with culture how that can self- select out things that um that enable your culture to survive and thrive yeah get even better when you have a good culture people are um they're just more willing to do go that extra walls yeah because you would do the same for them right yep I think it's
interesting I'm still pretty early on in my career but like how my perception of what culture really is and from like it's not ping pong t it's not the beer on to right that's not necessarily what that's not what culture is and it has to be lived out from the top yeah where it's not just like the the fancy words you put on the wall um that's like oh yeah this is it's like no you are actually that like you can't just like sit in a room with your three or your two other co-founders and be like I think that we really care about X
Y and Z and it's like no it's like we live this out these are our core pillars of who we are I think that's great I think it's important speaking of breaking through walls it's Nate's favorite part of the show he's probably so excited run through this CH at the bit chopping at the bit this is the lightning round this is the lightning round we have three questions for you there are no wrong answers um but rapid fire quick things uh just just answers that come to the top of your head oh boy yeah I guess so outside of the amazing entrepreneurial ecosystem what is
Indiana known for Pur do basketball oh yeah I just got invited to the um Indie classic uh I just bought two tickets last night that was a little painful well it's uh Purdue versus Arizona yeah it's number one number two number two yeah at at gamebridge right it's going to be it's going to be a big I think the the precursors Ball State Indiana state is the first game and then it's Purdue Arizona in two weeks I think yeah that'll be good we got to get this I got to get this episode out quick then make sure that we we can promote the hoer classic
we got make we be Northwestern on I think it's Monday cuz that's who upset us last year it Iowa game I I grew up going to Katy Camp so oh that's awesome I'm a fan I grew up on West off yet oh cool I love it what is a Hidden Gem in Indiana uh Fountain Square oh is there a specific spot down there that you love I like Blue Beard Blue Beard you know what that whole area is so cool and I love the we're kind of Foodies so like it there you go now she's you're resident southsider so that's a little bit closer a
drive for you I am a resident offsider um and final question of the lightning round who is someone we need to keep on our radar someone who is doing big things table's open for a shout out LC City it love it I love it great answer D this was amazing thank you so much for coming on get in this has been um spectacular just about culture about sales and how to be a really good you know sales rep early on in your career I love it um I do want to give one final shout out we can we represent for the camera a little bit
gentlemen do our to our Sweet Water Sweet Water Sound if you haven't made it up to Fort Wayne Indiana to the Sweet waterer headquarters you are missing out there's some amazing Innovations happening up there I think Matt could have probably spent an entire weekend up there just make make sure you listen to that uh and I I would say watch that one CU there's lots of great b-roll of like behind the- scenes stuff like the Dolby Atmos told Ally yet that you're having a date weekend at Sweetwater she I I've put in my birthday requests yes i' I've got a bunch of old used gear
that uh I I got to take up there and and maybe uh make a purchase that's awesome or two or three or four I love it thank you so much thank you this was wonderful congratulations Janet yeah we're going to get some luidia shirts yes 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 powder.com newsletter and
to apply for membership to the powdercake executive Community Check out powder.com premium we'll catch you next time and next week as we continue to help the world get in since you just listen to this podcast you might be thinking about starting one for your company lucky for you our partners over at casted 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 powderkeg and
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