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 I'm Matt Hunter CEO at powderkeg and I will be one of your hosts for today's conversation I'm joined in Studio by co-host Christopher Tove day CEO Elevate Ventures and Nate spangle head of community here at Powder Keg and on the show today is Noel Paul CEO at Tiger careers and Consulting and previous Global leader of corporate responsibility at elanco and Global program leader at Lilly wow this is the greatest country you have your freedoms and you get to decide whether you're going to be successful and how successful instead of it being predetermined for you thank you prior to starting tiger careers in 2018 Noelle Paul was the global leader of corporate responsibility at lanco and the global program leader for international MBA recruiting at Eli Lilly he is now an executive Mentor at Purdue Foundry an accelerator and incubator program in Indiana and he works with the International Center and actually coaches expats through his Consulting work at his company tiger careers and Consulting on today's show we will be talking about transitioning from large corporations to entrepreneurship I'm sure we'll be covering corporate Innovation and responsibility and of course Talent attraction and everything else that goes into entrepreneurship Noel welcome to get in thanks very much for having me gang could we just shorten your bio to like hashtag Rockstar absolutely let's do it let's do it I'm grateful I'm grateful for the opportunities that I've had you're not originally born and raised in in Indiana is that right not born but yes raised so I was born in Pakistan and my family moved us here to Indianapolis when I was six years old ironically it was between New York City and Indianapolis and my show is Right made the right choice the universe chose because my dad's cousin was in New York City and he got a job in Saudi Arabia six months before we came so by fault the support structure was only in Indianapolis so my dad had really good friends and when we landed there was already half a duplex it was already furnished they already had a car for us there was food in the fridge and so thank you for the Sanger family for blessing us with a soft Landing how did you know the Sanger family my parents knew them back home and so your neighbors back home and then and they had moved here they'd already moved here yeah that's great that's incredible do you have memories from Pakistan yes very few but a few key ones so I remember I was I remember things like going to school because I was a kindergartner right literally going in a horse and buggy or on my dad's scooter I knew we were Kinfolk I'm sorry I used to take a horse and buggy to church on Sundays oh wow see there you go there you go yeah so then I don't have that claim to fame I have zero horse and buggy experience I was also unfortunately part of the 1971 war between India and Pakistan and I was five years old but ironically enough that we moved to the states and even though India was the enemy I moved here to the United States and I married someone from India so it's interesting how it works out and then very close to the Indian Community even being president of the India Association of Indianapolis as a Pakistani was a great kind of reassurance that cultural divides can be bridged and that's what makes America great that is what makes America great I agree are there any moments that are there a few moments that stick out from when you were in Pakistan for those first five six years yeah so uh I mentioned to you like going to school I remember looking over the courtyard and eating lunch while the older guys played volleyball in the courtyard one specific memory is that during the war there was a bomber that flew overhead and my mom was changing my clothes on the Wicker caught in the open Terrace and she flipped over the Wicker cot and threw me underneath the covered area and just to protect us and later on my uncle took me to see where the bomb had landed and so I remember walking around the perimeter of the crater to see where the The Landing had done and we were also ironically enough I was a five-year-old with a military uniform and a whistle so that when there were Air Raids my uncle and I were supposed to go out into the streets and blow whistles to tell all the cars to pull it aside or stop driving during the air raid since it was just a very unique kind of experience that again built gratitude for when coming to the states is to say wow this is the greatest country you have your freedoms and you get to decide whether you're going to be successful and how successful instead of it being predetermined for you do you remember the airplane ride like what do you remember what you were thinking like when your parents when you knew for sure that you're moving to America yeah which is the feeling yeah two things two things stick out one is I remember that we had a big party the day before we left and we have a picture still today of all of us wearing money necklaces right to celebrate us coming to America right and I remember my dad just like the movie yeah yeah exactly and my and actually I did work at McDonald's that's awesome that's amazing and and so did my wife ironically and so a lot of our friends and family and cousins and stuff like that but the the party before the necklaces and I remember my dad telling me that the valuation of the currency was so impacted that we ended up using those necklaces of money for the tickets and then no way yeah and then the second thing I remember is I can't remember if we flew into LaGuardia and went to JFK or floating JFK went to LaGuardia but there was a helicopter that moved us from one city one one airport to the other and I still remember the lights over New York City looking out at the why we were in a helicopter I have no idea but I still remember the lights the red lights on the back of the cars the white lights on the other side of the cars looking down as a little boy going wow what is this yeah yeah totally different environment definitely clear memory and this year was 50 years since we landed so Valentine's Day 1973 this year celebrated 50 years Landing in the city congratulations yeah thank you you've achieved some remarkable things with your career working at companies like lanco Eli Lilly can you help us understand this the steps that it took because there a lot of people want to work with big companies like that who are doing Innovative things and the leader of their industry and it's not always clear what the right path is to get there sure what was your path let me start by saying that I live in gratitude so I don't know that I had a firm path going in to get there I knew that I didn't want to do a doctor path right but I love math and science and actually when I was coming up I told my parents I'm like I either want to go into sports broadcasting or I want to go to engineering and back in the day there were only three channels on TV right and so my parents would say that means there's only three sports broadcaster jobs in each City because there's only ABC CBS and NBC so if there's only three jobs per City maybe you should do the engineering and fast forward there's ESPN now but I'm still glad I did an engineering path so I went to Purdue for engineering and luckily enough got a co-op opportunity and so I co-op with the Indiana Department of Transportation so it allowed me to pay for my undergrad because I would live at home save the money from one semester to pay for the college for the next semester so that got me through and then my senior year I was in R.
A and back in the day Purdue would pay for your room board and tuition so then money I'd saved up for my senior year I banked it and that was just a great opportunity to get my undergrad paid for what was the culture like at Purdue because Purdue now is top engineering school in the country yeah just graduating an incredible Talent is world renowned for its engineering Talent stem programs what was it like when you were there I think if I tried to get into and out of Purdue today I'm not sure that I could yeah I don't know if I got in a window where they just dropped the standards or something like that it was definitely hard I went in thinking chemical engineering and I took freshman chemistry and kicked my butt and I'm like I'm not doing chemical engineering oh my gosh yeah so then I went to civil engineering because we had a couple family friends that were Structural Engineers and they were like okay and but we had a great I had a personally a great experience academically socially I still keep in touch with my undergrad roommates to this day that's cool and being back on campus I went back for my NBA Lily sponsored me to go back to Purdue and get my MBA from Krannert my daughter did her industrial engineering degree from Purdue and graduated in 2020 so strong ties to the campus but fully respect and have always respected the Purdue engineering program and the campus and the experience that students and families really experience so big fan boiler up boil her up I love it yeah it's a remarkable kind of ecosystem there and I appreciate you sharing that so what was your path out of Purdue was it like hey go find a job at a big company and he said civil engineering right in your undergrad yeah so that seems like an interesting Pathway to end up at a Lily that takes you back to get your MBA because when I think civil engineering this could be way off but I think of like architect type engineering right your spot on Nate I wasn't planning on going to Lily or Pharma or anything like that so civil engineers don't work at predominantly Pharma companies right so chemical Engineers mechanical engineers double E's electrical engineers work in those kind of Industries so I had Co-op at the Indian Department of Transportation and I had an offer for them but I knew that I didn't want to do engineering my whole life and that's what that allowed me to do it paid for my school and told me that's not what I wanted to do so it was a great experience on both fronts right so you figured that out while you're in school you're going to be a civil engineer that's where you're getting your degree in and before you're done with school you're like I don't want to do this forever yeah I don't want to do this forever so then I started to say okay so where can I go do engineering for a little while because I did have a goal to get my Professional Engineers license right for civils that matters and you have to have five years of experience and you have to pass the big exam and stuff like that so I said my goal is do some engineering work for a while get my PE but not do engineering forever and I'd always even thought about doing business sorry doing my MBA right after undergrad but then people were saying no go out and get some work experience first I said Okay cool so my my plan was if I can get into a firm a large multinational that was my criteria that allows me to do engineering for a while but then demonstrates in the interview process that Engineers can do different things in their careers because I was looking for a long-term career so I had an offer from Marathon Oil and an offer from Exxon which was not Exxon Mobil but just Exxon down in Houston and then literally I was in the decision making process thinking that I'm going to Houston for Exxon late stage in the recruiting process I see a job posting from Lily and a physical job posting like on the bulletin board because this is pre-internet right amazing I'm like Lily's hiring civil engineers because I knew Lily from being in Indiana right and I'm like oh I applied for the job but I didn't I used up all my points so I went in that morning with my resume and I said to do three points so at Purdue you have to bid on interview slots no based on points I'd already used up all my points so that morning of that Lily was interviewing I went to the career center and I went to the Lily recruiter his name was Mel Crichton mechanical engineer and I said Mr Crichton I did not have enough points to sign up for the interviews but I'd be really interested in Lily here's my resume and he said hey I have a break between 10 and 10 20.
come back during my break and so I went home I changed into my suit I rode my bike back to the career center and he interviewed me wow and I got the plant visit wow and I got the job offer so then it was Lily and Exxon were the two finalists and my current wife of 30 years was my girlfriend at the time remember I'm Pakistani she's Indian and so she said to me if you go to Houston what about us and she was going to school University of Toledo and I'm like you're right so then I took the Lily job which paid less right significantly less and but it was the best decision she ever made for us so 28 years later I retired from that's amazing yeah 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 and they do amazing work all the videos 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 what I love is that single decision yeah to walk into that recruiter's office and say hey I used up all my points I would love to interview just that single decision of taking the extra whatever it was 15 minutes or first in the same building it might have been an extra five minutes to just go extra mile right and and personally reach out to whomever it is it's recruiting and say I'd like a shot yeah that is a re-occurring theme yeah with we have some pretty spectacular guests on here and it is a reoccurring theme that they can like almost pinpoint it to one moment where they just trusted their gut did this kind of like unorthodox thing like you show up there I don't have any points but I'm taking a risk here I wanna I'd love to learn more about Lily and you stay there for 28 years yeah one moment as a college senior yeah but look I look at it differently right yes I did take that chance but my gratitude is with Mr Mel Crichton because he said I don't have any interview slots but I'm willing to talk to you during my break okay yeah so the defining moment you could argue is not Noel going in at eight o'clock in the morning before the interviews start it's Mr Mel Crichton the recruiter or the engineer saying I'm willing to take a chance on you so my gratitude is to Mel Crichton do you so that's a good example of an outstretched hand foreshadowing for rally speech an outstretched hand right as a responsibility of all of us right to the Next Generation yeah so check this out so now fast forward I'm running Lily's MBA program globally do you think I ever took a break yeah probably not during Career Fairs no I bet I interviewed and was willing to talk to everyone why because I had to pay it forward because mail changed my life I love it oh okay I love that mindset chills I got chills how do you find yourself in that role at Lily yeah I mentioned that my goal was to do some engineering for a while and then do something different so I had hit five years I Lily was really supportive of Engineers taking their professional engineering exam and they even said hey take the courses get together and do study groups on company time because they really perform they really support that professional engineering degree license so I took the test I passed and so I got my PE so then I went to my boss remember there's no job postings back in the day and I go to Nate Lewis and I'm like Nate are there any kind of business oriented roles for an engineer to step into so he literally brings me a piece of paper that says here's an email I got it's a job description for a one-year temp assignment in HR and they're looking for project management experience but you don't have to have HR experience so me and three other civil engineer buddies or two two other civil engineer buddies all three of us applied for the job well I got the job and so I got a one-year temp assignment to go lead a project to bring all of our 13 000 U.
S employees onto a automated benefits enrollment process right because it was by paper and so we automated it right automated meaning we did it by phone and we put in a call center and all that stuff like that we redesigned the benefits and after one year they said do you want to stick around we have more projects for you to do you did good and I'm like okay sure then after that the the question was are you going back to engineering or do you want to declare HR as your new kind of functional home and I said I'd love to declare HR because I was interested in business the HR opportunity they were thrown at me was to support the Global Marketing function and that was going to be my HR role after this project role and I'm like oh cool because that gives me some exposure to the Global Marketing area and I was thinking about my MBA anyway and so I said yes I'm going to declare HR is my new role as my new functional home so from that Global Marketing HR experience that's when I got sponsored to do my MBA so that's where it really led into that 19 years of the 28 years at Lilly being in HR my entire career has been spent working at high growth tech companies and the largest company I've ever worked for maybe 150 people yeah what does it take to succeed at a company of the scale and size of an Eli Lily what are the things that you learned early on that gave you that trajectory to keep reaching New Heights and it kept the momentum going in your career there yeah so first I say Lily raised me right so that culture those values I joined when I was 22 years old and I retired when I was 51 so 29 years 28 years in that organization and I'm telling you I respect that company I respect that culture I respect the leadership both historical and current and already future and so a lot of credit goes to Lily right but what Lilly allowed you to do is to say if you want to pursue something they will support you they will enable you and if you keep doing good things then good things will happen right and that's where my focus was is I really wanted to have an impact in the roles that I I was given I wanted to make improvements so this whole concept of Eli Lily's quote is find what you take what you find here and make it better so I was raised in a continuous Improvement mindset so I think and also I think coming back to my personal upbringing you know Coming to America was this huge opportunity I remember my dad would say America is the greatest country in the world son right and my mom would say education right and so they risked so much to come here right yeah and so that was an internal motivator for me to say man I want to make the most of this opportunity every aspect of my life right yeah I really pursued that and Lily would help you grow I had some great bosses right I can think of an Italian boss named Alessandro Frankie I reported to him in 1996 to 1998 in that Global Marketing HR role I just had brunch with him at Cafe Bundy in December he's 73 still love him still respect him we're still connected and that's just how lily teaches you is the importance of relationships relationships really matter what lesson did you learn from him that stayed with you the most I would say he helped me become assertive yeah yeah he written me a new one he really did but constructively yeah yeah really I mean because can you tell us the story yeah so he was very hard on me but he was very supportive of me right and so there were days when I loved him and there were days when I hated him but I grew so much for from working with him and then he asked me to come again in 2000 to build and create a whole new recruiting structure within the firm and so that was an amazing build talk about entrepreneurial talk about startup mindset talk about business processes changing the way we do things but yeah I think it was really around the area of assertiveness and and what he would say is Noel you're too nice you need to assert yourself and he even gave me or somehow I got some audio tapes and a book and stuff like that and do you remember what those were yeah this whole concept of the example was because it became personal are you the kind of person that if everyone wants to go to Chinese restaurant for dinner and you've had Chinese for the last seven days will you say okay let's go to Chinese or are you comfortable saying hey guys I've had Chinese for the last seven days if we can do Mexican let's go Mexican for me that stuck with me because I was the guy that would say okay let's just do Chinese without ever expressing the fact that I've even had seven days of Chinese okay so now I can say hey guys I've had seven days of Chinese so if you still want to go Chinese I'm gonna go get some Mexican food and I'll sit at the Chinese table with you and I can assert myself in that way personally professionally because of that growth that's a great example I want to double click in you talk about you you went and grew this whole new function your entrepreneurship at yeah you're rolling with with the knee Lily when I think of Eli Lilly I think of this massive Corporation it's like you show up you do your job job and see if I take a sick day does it affect the ability stock is it going to drop down probably not but you're talking about how you actually move the needle forward on something does that happen a lot there it has to right because Lily or any large organization is really a collective of individual moving parts and if those whether you have 200 000 employees or 50 000 employees or 150 employees the pieces need to be moving forward in order for the hole to move forward so that's why the talent you attract to your organization regardless of the size that person has a role right and the reason organizations move forward and I'm talking you know generically now is each individual has to come to work that day and say I want to move the needle on the scope of work I'm responsible for did you ever get frustrated by running into red tape or Road bumps because I I feel like that is something in the startup ecosystem you hear about how hard it is to not get anything done at Big corporations yeah because you know remember I'm high energy like people tell me Noel you're always in gear five I'm like yes I am and if you're at gear five and the others in the organization want to move at Gear 3 or they're pulling your reins to let you drive change or at the pace of change that you want to drive it can be frustrating so what would happen is I would naturally gravitate to areas where people were there were more people operating gears four and five right so I stayed close to the commercial side of Lily right and a little bit in the manufacturing side because of my engineering background because I wanted to be where the action was right so for example that Global Marketing role in HR right that was great because we were working across cultures we were building Global strategies and even though I was not doing the marketing I was around people that were doing that so it gave me energy and then the role after that I went to be the HR leader for our U.
S business to business group okay now that group was 300 employees a carve out of how do we manage our account relationships with at that time hmos and I told my hiring manager Brad Dead who I still have a relationship with right Brad I said Brad I'll come take this job but I need to be on the leadership team table I need to be the HR leader for the USB to B group otherwise it's not going to be a real stretch for me he's of course you're the HR leader I'll coach you from here and you're going to be assertive exactly yeah thank you Sandra we agreed that was going to be the stretch opportunity for me is to be on that leadership team with the leaders of wsb2b we did this huge organizational transformation right to your point Nate is like those 300 people we had to make the change of how we approached our account management business processes the talent that we had coming into the organization the marketing tools we were using the same detail sheet as we would for a diabetes endocrinologist in Greenwood with a medical director at Kaiser Permanente that had 9 million lives of diabetic patients and so we had to transform how we did business to business marketing and so it was a two year journey I remember meeting in the A-frame of Rick's Boatyard with our leadership team doing poster sessions changing our Mission Vision the capabilities of people we wanted to bring into that organization how we coached and develop people so we'd be an attractive place to have talent come into because that B2B experience was going to be crucial for Future Leaders of Pharma and Future Leaders of Lilly because if they didn't appreciate the payer they were going to have huge misses on their big important strategic business decisions so we did a two-year organizational transformation and Manufacturing might have been slow medical might have been slow r d might have been slow so Nate to your point those 300 people we had to move the needle it was critical to Lily's business success nine billion dollars were coming through that account management so there there's a lot of corporates that either don't have Innovation centers today no they need to do it they're thinking about doing it there are corporations that have Innovation centers that maybe not maybe they aren't going well maybe they look at them as profit centers when maybe it shouldn't be looking at their profit Center or maybe they should be and there's corporations are doing really well at Innovation so can you talk about two two high-level questions and one has a part A Part B so corporate Innovation if you're thinking about setting up corporate Innovation or you're doing it today and it's just doesn't seem to be going well for some reason what are some of the things that you've seen work really well in in the flip side mistakes that were made and how something was set up that you had to unwind maybe several years later yeah and then the flip side from the entrepreneurial side is every startup the dream is to get a relationship with a corporate right as a early adopter first time buyer whatever it may be and sometimes what the dog catches the car so to speak and then maybe you regret getting that early corporate customer because they suck all the life out of you wanting a different set of of product requirements that don't serve the core Market can you talk about the good and the bad on both sides of that equation that you've seen yeah to process your question right the first part is Corporate Innovation what's worked and what hasn't worked right second is more in the entrepreneurial side is how does securing a corporate client either help or sometimes hinder the success of an entrepreneurial startup right okay fair okay I want to make sure I process that so I think on the a lot of words in one question that's okay man it's okay I got you I got you keep me on track though so on the first side I would say in a corporate environment Innovation can happen does happen Innovation can fail and does fail and I think a lot of that is really specific to two things one is What's the culture in that organization in terms of nurturing that Innovation right and they're kind of what I call tolerance for it acceptance for it thirst for it right so that culture is really going to matter right and the second part that really matters is the people right and I'm talking specifically the leadership because I think leadership is super critical on nurturing that culture on nurturing those ideas on nurturing that Innovation because if you have leaders that are risk tolerant and that are oriented towards coaching from failure versus afraid of failure or not wanting to fail no one wants to fail but if you have an Outlook that says look we're going to learn from this and if we do this and we get 75 then we can fix the other 25 percent and keep going and improve it right but if you're if you say 75 percent is not enough as a threshold to advance then you're really risking not innovating and someone else at another company at a competitor at a disrupter at a startup could beat you to the punch because their risk tolerance and their tolerance for failure and their willings to learn from failure is greater than yours so I think a lot of it has to do with Excuse me the organizational culture and the leaders and how they view all those elements of risk tolerance learning from failure their tolerance to coach and willingness to coach through those stumbles versus saying I don't want to take that risk does that help yeah yeah and then I think on the entrepreneurial side having coached several startups and being in a startup for a while in a health Tech sector and then my own startup right is you have to keep going right you just can yeah you have to keep going you just can't risk not pursuing that client or not pursuing that big corporate partnership but at the same time if you don't get that corporate partnership then what did you learn about why that corporate partnership did not accept you and so how do you tweak your product how do you treat tweak your process how do you tweak your value proposition because you have to keep going but you have to keep learning right and so I don't think it's a binary answer of don't innovate because I don't think that's an acceptable answer you have to innovate you have to continuously innovate but that's a big word so you can think about continuously improving which is more incremental right sometimes we're chasing the Holy Grail of this big huge destination of we innovated no you innovate by continuously improving and you continuously improve by continuously learning and you continuously learn by trying and it's okay to fail and if you don't have that Outlook then you're going to struggle man it's a verb not a noun yeah it's like not a destination it's that whole you're always working on it yeah I do think tophe has mentioned this before and I'd love to hear your take on out kicking your coverage a little bit as a startup let's say you do secure that massive the mansion that you had to paint right oh we sold this huge contract you're what would you say to leaders that maybe secure that and when is it time to cut ties or figure out a strategy when you oversold you can't deliver or they're taking too much of your time resources that whole thing from a startup perspective I think you got to finish the job right because if that big man even if you lose 3 500 yeah even if you lose 35 hypothetically [Laughter] good memories you have to finish the job because your credibility right my dad taught me this he taught me about your credit your credit matters and what I've adopted for myself yeah exactly your credit score matters right so I've adapted that phrase to say your credit matters but so does your credibility okay so your credit and your credibility matters so if you got that one mansion and you got in over your head finished the job right finish it to the best of your abilities if you take a loss on it that's okay because why if you do that Mansion has friends right and that Mansion can be your referral and you want to be able to tell in the smaller neighborhood like I did this mansion and you can talk to that client and they'll say good things about our firm about our their experience and that is how it works we all know I learned this phrase when I was at the health Tech startup I was at a military conference in DC and I told him I'm like I'm going to give you credit for this phrase he said the difference between a contact and a contract is just one letter the letter r and that R stands for relationships yeah and I don't remember his name I think it was either Dan or Doug or something like that and I'm like that's not my phrase that's your phrase Washington DC Conference in October of 2019 or something like that and I'm like that's your phrase but I'm gonna use it that's amazing okay so finish the job and then use that person as a referral as a testimonial or whatever but finish it yeah and you're talking about relationships which I think you has been a consistent thread throughout this conversation and you mentioned several names like the initial engineer that recruited you totally Mel right and your first boss so these relations that you built within Lily yeah so spending 28 years there was it more important to build relationships with people that worked at Lily or the people that were in the Indianapolis community I think they both matter um or what did you prioritize I think when you're in an organization especially as big as Lily you have to prioritize the Lily organization because in order to get work done across a large entity knowing people across functional areas being able to have relationships to move things or to escalate things or to smooth over things or to massage things or something like that those things really matter so I think in a large org that matters if you're in a startup for so when I was in the health Tech startup there were only five or six of us in The Firm so my external relationships really mattered but we had to be very strategic about those right so who are the influential Sports Medicine doctors who are the influential Children's Hospitals who are the influential military contacts that support sbir work right you had to be very strategic about who those relationships need to be to be able to advance your efforts while you were building that career at Lilly did you ever feel isolated from the Indianapolis Community like if you're focused on growing relationships internally was there like okay Lily's a staple of Indianapolis yeah but I wouldn't say uh that I'm a connector with a ton of people at Lilly because I do feel like they spend so much time connecting with each other um I would tell you that I had a Social Circle I told you I was president of the Indie Association of Indianapolis while I was at Lily so I think generally speaking Lily folks are pretty active in the community in the business community in the Civic community in the Arts Community they're on boards so I don't know that's necessarily a binary thing right even when I was at lanco leading the corporate social responsibility initiatives I served on the board of the Indie hunger Network which had Gleaners food Bank Midwest Food Bank second helping sakoa Meals on Wheels and those relationships really mattered because elenko's cause was food security and being able to make an impact in our local Community those relationships were crucial to engage our employees even through some of the volunteerism that we were doing to make sure that everyone knew that this is what lanco stands for we stand for Global Food security and we're putting our feet and our time and our money and our energy to support that commitment I was just going to ask if we could transition a little bit to the the startup side and the entrepreneurial side just because I want to make sure you have a chance to talk about that yeah and I think it's it's fascinating that you went from 20 some years working at big companies to a health Tech startup to working with the Purdue Foundry to starting your own consulting company can you tell us a little bit about what that transition was like and what was most surprising about that for you okay three three three quick comments before you transition in sure of our listeners out there that may not be uh familiar with the magnitude of Lily so Lily is and correct if I'm wrong I think this is a high level correct Lily's the number one exporter of pharmaceuticals in the state of Indiana yeah in the state of Indiana yeah and then they just the Lily endowment is the second largest endowment I believe it is or top definitely top three four right there in the world and then speaking of like Community Nate like Lily just announcing was a 2.
7 billion dollar manufacturing facility in the leap District that's halfway between Purdue and Indianapolis that's so cool that's going to transform like that entire area yeah I think they made two Commandments I think one was 1. 6 and 3. 1 I think it's like 4. 7 that could be off but it's several billion dollars so it's not small significant that's huge impact yeah that's huge impact and I bet we could ask you three more hours of questions about your time at Lily and a lanco but it's fascinating to me that you did make that transition into startups Innovation entrepreneurship starting your own consulting company yeah was that a no-brainer for you or did it take some ruminating decision making to to really make the leap yeah let me Bridge from the lanco because that was my last experience within the Lily umbrella was ilanka was still before that spin out I I retired before they spun out okay so they spun out in 2018 they offered us the early retirement package in 17.
so I it was still part of the Lily umbrella at the time but one entrepreneurial intern I'd call it an entrepreneurial experience that really was I would say one of my most if not the most gratifying role was leading the corporate social responsibility efforts at lanco which turned into an intrapreneurial experience because we were doing a lot of uh funding and donations and stuff like that and so we were doing a donation into East Africa and the Gates Foundation was the largest donor and we were in I was on the strategy committee for the project and we were in Seattle At The Gates Foundation and they asked us are is the Lincoln going to be commercializing their products into East Africa to help smallholder farmers were like no they said what if we de-risk your investment into that and support you to go in there because the only way to sustainably take poverty away is to help smallholder farmers improve their milk yields improve their poultry yields and so I secured a three million dollar Grant from The Gates Foundation to commercialize Animal Health products for poultry and smallholder poultry and Dairy Farmers into Kenya Uganda and Tanzania oh my God okay and so that was a new business venture it was intrapreneurial we had manufacturing regulatory marketing pricing all the value chain of the firm going to produce smallholder farmer sachets of product for two dairy cows when we were selling to commercial farms at ten thousand head right and so that was an amazing entrepreneurial experience where we said we can create a viable business and have tremendous societal impact right and so the concept is called shared value it was developed out of Harvard by Professor Michael Porter and Mark Kramer in 2011.
so we shaped that whole concept you talk about Innovation you talk about entrepreneurship inside of a firm elenco was 7 000 people three billion dollars and we were going to go into East Africa and sell the smallholder farmers through Distributors that's Quite a feat you think about it like you put in SAS terms you're taking a mega Enterprise SAS product and taking it down to plg yeah right yeah that's hard to do what's plg products gotcha gotcha and that was really an amazing entrepreneurial venture so then when I said okay I'm going to retire and again got permission from my wife to take the pack yeah yes and so I knew for the last six or seven years at Lilly that I really wanted to start my own coaching and consulting company and I knew that was going to be the next chapter and in before retiring I was testing the marketplace a little bit stuff like that talking to people checking my network and so I knew that coaching and Consulting was going to be my space and I knew I also loved Tigers because of the leadership characteristics they have night vision one of the best night vision of any mammal and so because I focus on insights I thought that was a good pairing and also because of my Global experiences tigers are revered in many Global cultures so that's where I anchored on Tigers right and I had done my MBA at Purdue and so I went back to Krannert and I said hey you need any coaching because I've run the MBA program I'm an Alum and so they brought me on to do coaching of their executive mbas and then I went to the international center because I said hey I've used you for my International talent management work do you need any help like yes we could use your help Noel so then I ended up getting those couple engagements and then while I was coaching the Purdue mbas their Career Center Director retired and they said hey Noel are you up for another nine to five and I said sure this would have been March of 2020 so during covid right and so I said sure I'll put my name in the ring and then I got the job so I ran the career center for two and a half years while I had my company to do coaching and Consulting and then in August of last year yeah so about one year ago I wrapped up that and I came back to my firm full time what's the number one piece of advice that you could give any Executive MBA so someone who's already in a leadership position I know you've talked to a lot of different folks that have gone through yeah not just through the Executive MBA program but even when you're at Lilly in a landco if you could only give one piece of advice oh I'm terrible I can't I'm a coach we don't have just one piece of advice that's not how coach what are your top three pieces of advice for a leader yeah so I would say one you have to be able to listen right you have to be able to listen two you have to be able to coach right and it has to be sincere listening it has to be sincere coaching you can't do it because you want to get ahead right because you have to be really authentic in your sincere concern for people and if you're fake listening people see through that crap right and if you're not sincerely coaching because you're really not sincerely wanting to see them be successful then it's going to be inauthentic right so listen and coach and the third thing is more business related and I would say Don't just build a strategy be smart about your strategy but think as much about implementation as you think about strategy because I think I see a lot of people that are either very good at implementation right and miss the strategy they're ready fire and never aim okay then I see people that are very good at strategy and they're like ready aim and you gotta fire right and so if you can combine the two of having a smart strategy with a driven implementation then that's how you win that's those are amazing three golden nuggets yeah that was great and the third one I think of the word execution yeah what you're saying is it's it really does come down to those they're simple words but very complex and Powerful it practice in reality yeah people are looking to connect with you now with tiger and what you're doing how can they reach you what kind of people should be reaching out to talk to you yeah absolutely it's a great question my four areas of focus are career coaching Executive coaching cross-cultural competencies and startup mentoring right so if you're an executive or an a working professional and you are looking for guidance on how do I become more effective as a leader then we should talk right if you're leading a startup and you're like I really need some guidance because Founders can be very lonely right they have their VCS they have their board they have their advisor but they really can't just go to someone and just let it all hang out right and I think having a startup coach that they can just be fully transparent with I'm concerned about financing I'm concerned about burn rate I'm concerned about did I make the right hiring decision I'm concerned about making the right hiring decision I'm concerned about my board Dynamics they're really on an island and I think for startup leaders and Founders and even VCS I think VCS should be thinking strategically about investing in coaching for their leaders whether it's L1 leaders or whether it's L2 leaders typically l1s get a lot of love and attention from investors but those l2s when you start to grow to 50 people and you've got a line of L2 leaders those leaders are not getting the coaching that they need and to your point Nate earlier is every individual collectively matters and if you have a three or five l2s that aren't firing on all cylinders the risk for sustainability the firm is there and those cracks are happening but no one's seeing them because you're only focusing on the L1 so I think any startup leader and any VC firm should be thinking about how can tiger careers in Consulting help coach those those startups and then lastly I'd say that if there are any elements where cross-cultural business or cross-cultural coaching are relevant that's where the multiplier effective I think my experiences can really help whether it's an international student or universities that are working with International students or a startup that's looking to expand to Global markets or has a leadership team that's made up of someone from this country and that culture in this country how are they max effective in those cross-cultural dynamics that are really present but maybe not at the surface they're below the surface so hopefully that helps those are all really great ideas and potential hooks where people could plug in this conversation has been amazing we are at time are you okay to go a couple minutes over sure okay I don't want to put you on the spot but we do have What's called the lightning round and it's it's fast paced there are no wrong answers but it's just three questions three questions quick right off the top of your head so outside of the amazing entrepreneurial ecosystem what is Indiana known for Indiana is known for sports sports I love it the amateur sports capital of the world yep what is a Hidden Gem in Indiana a Hidden Gem in Indiana I would say is the cultural ethnicity of restaurants and grocery stores on the northwest side of Indianapolis called international marketplace there's an Ethiopian restaurant there that we love there are what's it called it's called absinia oh and so I think there's a Hidden Gem of ethnic Cuisines and ethnic grocery stores that if you don't make your way out to the Northwest side of Indianapolis by the way that's where I grew up and those are the two McDonald's I worked at Lafayette Road and 38th Street in Speedway also yeah Hidden Gem amazing okay final question who is someone that we need to keep on our radar someone who is doing big things oh I've got a lot of respect for the iedc okay and I think as I've gotten more involved in the entrepreneurial space as I've gotten more involved in the business Community upon retiring because you did say when you're at Lilly in alanko you're focused but the amount of effort and energy being committed to and the initiatives coming out of and through and from and by iedc I am so proud to be an Indiana business leader because of all those efforts you hear about the Lilly announcement you hear about these initiatives from Elevate Ventures and this whole focus on the black brown and female entrepreneurs you think about the focus on bringing Auto Sports to Indiana you think about the semiconductor Pursuits it's just amazing how firing on all cylinders is happening across the ecosystem across the business Community I think the credit goes to the the leadership I love that that was this has been a spectacular conversation I did want to say to toth's point the Lily endowment is the ninth biggest Endowment in the world ninth largest in the world insane that's huge this has been a great conversation Noel thank you so much I did wanted to remind the listeners that if you want to get your startup featured on get in if you send three larges to 16 Tech address to Nate at Powder Keg will wear your startup T we'll talk give you a 30 second shout out minute shout out talk about what you're doing Cinema to 16 Tech Guys this has been a great episode thank you so much this is awesome thanks for having me it's a pleasure 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 powderkick. 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 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 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. us slash powderkeg thank you
