Orr Fellowship: Indiana's Plan to Recruit the Nation's Best

we can put you in front of any door but you still have to knock that's really like the value in or current or fellow is an executive director that's I know whenever lni say like what can I do to help or it's like go and be great that's the best marketing we could do it what is a hidden Jam in Indiana okay so there's two that come to mind from South Bend to Evansville and everywhere in between this is get in the show focused on the who's your state and the incredible stories happening here today I'm Nate spangle founder of git Indiana and I will be your host for today's conversation today I'm joined by Steven M president of or Fellowship Stephen has an incredible background in Economic Development as well as high growth tech companies but now he's leading the charge at or fellowship or Fellowship is the nation's leading early career development program for high achieving new college graduates and future focused firms say that five times as fast it's a tough one uh I would know that this is a great organization because I was an ORF fellow and this is going to be an amazing episode I'm super uh excited to dive in today we're going to be talking about Indiana's appeal to Young professionals and why you should start your career here in the hooer state why young people should invest in organizations like or fellowship and or Fellowship in particular and we're going to discover a little bit about the future of work and innovation in Indiana and some cool things that the fellowship is doing with AI stepen welcome welcome to get in yeah yeah teaser AI it's going to be awesome yeah thank you glad to be here excited to talk to you this is a full circle moment for you I feel like being in alumni now having your podcast and getting to have more Fellowship on it oh my gosh it's amazing like it's so cool to like I remember sitting down in my first ever month meeting Max Yoder was our was our speaker the goat which is also full soer for you right like from your time at lessonly like Max was the speaker he was talking about he had just released this book and we all got a copy of it and I was like yeah this guy is just like that's the dream like he started his company and is's growing and was an or fellow and like now I get to like go build this company and like get to work with or fellowship and hopefully uh in the near future like be a host company at some point which would be fun uh where uh please pay your ad sponsorship like please help us out there uh and and then we'll be able to hire or fellows but um I'm super excited to dive into this cuz obviously I'm like the Indiana like I love Indiana Indiana is great it has been an amazing place for me to start my career and grow my career and grow a business um and I'm excited to dive in and tell a little bit more of that story I know you're a big data and numbers guy and I want to hear some of those um some of those stories and whatnot of like start at the top like what do you feel like being from Arizona coming to Indiana like makes uh the hooer state a great place for people to start their career you know just to give context to your audience here like I moved here when I was 24 2017 I had been working in family business my whole life which was Child Care um so it's spent about a decade in that which is kind of a funky business spending a decade in child care at the age of 24 like oh that's family business right yeah my dad's uh birthday present for all of us kids at 13 was a job and so we were all we were all janitors so I was cleaning up uh bathrooms and uh kitchens and hallways and uh classrooms for the kids and u a bunch of toddlers we took care of about 1,00 kids a day so like uh it's a lot of messiness so it was not insignificant the amount of cleaning that I got to do in that decade but uh it was really great for me to get exposed to quite a bit and we can totally come back to that um but you know I met and fell in love with a butler girl she wanted to be out here my mom's originally from a small town called winnimac Indiana Oh go go uh Warriors wiac Warriors come on let's go yeah and so we still have family out there actually two my sisters have moved out there now and we actually to winac yeah yeah your sisters moov from Arizona to winnimac I know I know that's so that's wild well it's it's the lifestyle they wanted they wanted a little bit more space and uh my sister has four kids and wanted them to be able to run around and experience that there's not a lot of space for that the seat of plasy County wi Indiana baby come on yeah it's been fun uh we actually started how did you meet wait this is like not necessarily professional but like how did you meet a butler girl being in Arizona yeah it was actually on a mission trip that we were both on we were uh you know I was still in Phoenix Arizona she was living in Central Illinois so Morton Illinois pumpkin capital of the world that's we don't we don't brag about anything that's out of Indiana on here sorry myad just kid we're we're okay yeah so they're right outside that's right outside Pur Illinois which most people know uh instead of Morton but uh yeah we were in New York on this mission trip met there did long distance and ended up getting married and I was trying to get out of the family business she wanted to be an indie I thought felt like it made sense and so I moved out here uh started over was super blessed have ended up at lessonly which that's sort of where this whole or Fellowship through line in my life starts so you're 24 you get a gig at or at uh at lessonly yeah what stage of the company was that at uh I was employe this is such a startup thing to know but I was employee number 83 that's pretty still early there it was decently early uh the week after I got there we closed uh series B I believe so we closed I think that was $8 million we had champagne at work and all this stuff and it's like man startup life's amazing so so exciting so exciting how long did you stay at leson Le I was there two and a half years and then you moved iedc right yeah leson Le two and half years it was series B to basically series C I left a couple months before they closed uh series C which is another A8 million doll I believe in that time we doubled employee size from 80 to about 160 quadrupled Revenue I was on the sales team which was like that's a very fun group to be a part of while that stuff's happening at the company so that was really fun moved to the state to uh work on economic development and specifically Innovation entrepreneurship activity at the iedc trying to make more stories like lessonly happen here in the state not just Venture back startups but startups of all um shapes and sizes so Mom and Pops on a on a street we call those Main Street uh companies so like a hairlong a restaurant whatever trying to make those start and be more successful more often and then obviously the Venture Community making sure startups are happening and are getting funded and hopefully going through liquidity events was there for two and a half years also during Co so that I started my job March of 2020 20 there which was a weird time to be transitioning a job for sure especially into a state agency that the governor ended up tasking with buying all the PPE for the entire state which there's a lot we there's a lot of like many stories we could get into that was a very wild time um I was iedc was in charge of buying the PPE for the entire State yeah so uh the iedc uh this gets a little granular but it's a quasi governmental agency so it can move much much faster than any of the other governmental agencies especially when it comes to Contracting and we were Contracting large amounts of cash to buy large amounts of PP and time was of the essence in Co right CU nobody knows what's going on and everybody's scared and so we were trying to get all the especially all the doctors and nurses the equipment they needed to actually provide care for people coming into the hospital so uh iedc got tasked with that and we got tasked with a bunch of other things like my specific responsibility during that ended up being uh the small business restart grant program which in total was $90 million of money from the cares act that we were respons to give out to small businesses which was nuts that was like a startup experience within the state cuz the governor announced it on a Thursday during his press conferences that he would do every week and he said we're going to take applications starting tomorrow at noon and that was the first day i' had heard about that yes it was a fun time well I think that's so crazy to put that in perspective it's like I always say it's like yeah you know we're not saving lives here like I'm making hosting a podcast we're not saving it's like IC like you show up on a Tuesday like you know we're not saving lives here and then all a sudden we are now we're saving lives here yeah it pivot well you go through that like that insane experience I mean it has to be like the whole there's like I mean 10,000 Stories we could probably go into there but that experience parlays you into now the president of or fellowship and talk to me about like one what was appealing about this job and the opportunity uh because you are the first president of or Fellowship it's had like executive directors and different titles and employees and stuff like that but this is the first president job so talk to me about that yeah yeah when I think to like fully answer your first question like why this is a great place for young professionals I I share my story like in response to that question because I don't think my story of coming here 24 and I was in SDR for two and a half years at lessonly so not the most glamorous job a very hard job very grindy job but you know I was able to go from that and uh through sheer force of like a lot of hard work but tons of great people go from that to being president of an organization in roughly like 5 years right so from uh 2017 I became president here at or and I think that's a story that can be possible and attainable for a lot of people here uh because of the community that that is in Indie and that who's your hospitality that people talk about there's always the dollars and cents comparisons which like we almost always come out ah head on but what I think is really what sets us apart and even in my own lived experience is like the fact that people recognize hard work there's this is such a small uh town when you uh start plugging into it everybody knows everybody and I think opportunity really starts to find you as your brand here what what seems to be valuable is working hard and being good to people that's the advice I give to fellows all the time is like work hard be good to people be patient and these opportunities tend to find you and that's been my story and it's like be patient but it's like it comes quicker than you think right it's like you mean be patient but do doesn't mean like just sit on your hands and do nothing it's like keep doing the good stuff and Indiana does find a way to reward I mean I'm sitting here like living proof of it as well like uh I remember and I'm going to give my my or Fellowship experience right it's like going through process and I I love John goaz and the whole team of Apex benefits so if you if someone does listen it's like they were my fifth Choice out of five I was like I was like dude I don't know if I want to get into insurance and like someone gave me the advice was like trust it like trust the process like all these companies are vetted and I'm a I'm a dumb college senior like I don't know anything and like I didn't think I was dumb I thought I was really smart and like we all do okay all right I'm going to do this and I showed up and those were the like the it was the best first job so full circle there right any like it was amazing they were so good to me like I had amazing uh mentors and I just had a great experience and then it was like not only just work but like all the stuff within the fellowship was just like it was insane and I felt like I started like like miles like miles ahead of other 22 23 24 year olds uh because of my time in the fellowship and not just like doing like the bare minimum of that but like just going and and putting this hard work and meeting everyone and being good to people like that's such a great slogan yeah no and I think we try to tend to over complicate life and careers but I think it is generally that simple like work hard to be good to people especially in this city and what I see in or Fellowship is a way to compress that the same way an accelerator tends to compress time for a startup I see or Fellowship doing that for our alumni of the organization where they're able to move much much faster in their career because we're functionally compressing anywhere from 5 to 10 years of their career down into this 24mon experience in or where they're going to be at this firm where they're going to be focused in height agency roles with business outcomes they're going to have executive access people like Max that you got to talk to like I had executive access through just by nature of the team I was on was a lot of or fellow so they sort of lumped me in with them which was great for me by proxy he was he was a fellow by proxy right yeah um well I guess and just because we might have a few listeners out there that aren't totally aware even though I talk about all the time in my experience with but like if you had to give the the one minute elevator pitch for or Fellowship like give it to us yeah totally so we're early career development program for versatile High achievers you can read that as generalist too so people without really discreet skill sets but broad that have displayed leadership and high Community involvement and we pair them with future focused organizations here in Central Indiana and soon to be Evansville as well so when we say future focused that means firms and businesses that are able to think outside of just the day-to-day operations so they're thinking not just how am I going to meet payroll next week which is a very real thing you know growing up in an entrepreneurial family like there was dinners where we went out to dinner and my dad was like no sodas for anybody tonight like we got to drink water cuz Dad's got to hit payroll and that's the very real thing right so we want companies that are able to think a little bit further out than that and be thinking what's the future of my organization's leadership pipeline what's the who's going to be driving us into the future here on new ideas and new thinking coming into the organization and uh the another way to look at it would be who what's the future of a Workforce here in Indiana look like like not everybody's in a space where they can hire a ORF fellow and just keep them forever but they're like I want to help retain and and plug into these individuals coming here and this is important right cuz I think there's a stat right like 84% of people of of young talent that come into the fellowship end up staying in Indiana yeah at the end of the fellowship they end up staying here and we've been doing this for almost 25 years now we found in 2001 it's kind of crazy to think about but of our entire alumni base which is over 600 people now almost 60% of them are all still here which is crazy when you look at what is happening at the University there no shade a very huge fan of and we're blessed as a state to have such prestigious universities here in the state but we're able to couple with that this great experience post uh University post undergraduate program to really uh enhance their experience here in Indiana and show them what life can look like so uh we're going to recruit assess and match these individuals with these high agency roles in these businesses and together or fellowship and that company we call them partner companies we partner together in the development of the individuals that they hire these fellows to build them into the leaders of the business Community the community broadly and then maybe even public institutions depending on if that's where they end up so uh it's very very fun to watch this development cycle across 24 months people change so much especially earlier in their career as they get into the real world like you made made the comment earlier about how you thought you knew what you wanted that like 2021 years old you're graduating you're like so sure about your life plan I know what I thought my life plan was and I'm so thankful that that didn't come true yeah right I was so wrong and that's what's great about life and it's like uh I mean the the best kind of thing that I think about when you're a recent grad and it's like you don't know what you don't know and you got to go out there and like have the coffees and meet the people and do the things to like realize like like I think back I always wanted to like start a company and be a founder and like I was like okay I'm going to graduate college and start a business and it's like dude I did not have the discipline I like starting a business easy anyone can start you can start a business today but like grow a business like keep it alive like I'm glad I had 5 years of experience in the real world before like taking that leap cuz like I mean I have no idea I would be so screwed right so I mean I felt the same way like you know i' had been working for basically a decade moving out here when I was 24 and I get to lonly and like um you know egotistical stepen at 24 25 years old is like why am I not like an executive here like I have more experience than like all these people because everybody's young at a startup and then you work for two three years and you're like oh that's why I'm not an executive because I actually don't know what I'm talking about most of the time and like they've earned their stripes and they're further ahead than me or whatever the thing is you start to realize how much there is the learn and how much opportunity there is and you check your ego like I think the the and this is for hopefully there's some fellows that that come and listen to this and it's like the gamechanging piece of my career was when like I started like being comfortable saying I don't really know and like asking questions about that to go learn it versus like trying to make up some like BS of like oh I'm the smartest person like if I'm the smartest person in the room I'm in the wrong room right like I want to be I want to always be the like the person that has the most to gain from being in the room and those are the rooms that you want to spend time in so yeah absolutely I think what Mark Caswell a good friend of mine a mentor of mine for a long time he just had this great post on LinkedIn where he was talking about across your career you should always chase your curiosity never your ego like never chase the title game or whatever because there's things that you can only learn at each stage like when you're a senior manager you should stay there and learn whatever is uh you can only learn as a senior manager and then as you progress through your career those things just sort of come naturally the progressions and we sort of I see this a lot in ORF fellows because they're a group of Highly ambitious individuals which is how they get into the program is cuz they've been successful so far but we end up uh unfortunately compressing the time frame of our careers so much where our expectation is we're going to be leading an organization in 18 months out of college or whatever the thing is and you're constantly feeling like you're on this hamster wheel trying to keep up and so it's really like he life is a very long game here like how old are you Nate I am 27 so you're 27 you already have 5 years of experience and now you're starting a business which like 21y old Nate was like that's forever away like being 27 before I'll be so old I'm like I'm still young and spry baby come on and like you think about the experiences you know I'm 31 and like the experiences I've been able to collect just in my time even just here in Indiana but then stretching back into Phoenix growing up like there's so much time in this game of life that we don't give credit for it we end up playing it like it's a really short game and making short-term decisions so and Seth Morales actually this was crazy I was a fellow and I was like so hungry and like I had this like oh I I should be this or like and I thought I was entitled to something because I had like gotten this prestigious program I'm entitled to like I should I should be in the executive steering committee I was like you're such like looking back I'm like you're a dat but he sent me this post on LinkedIn and it's like if a CEO sends you a post on LinkedIn you're like oh shoot like this is yeah right and it was um a podcast of dab o Sweeney who is a Clemson football coach and it was like there's no elevator to success like you have to take the stairs and I think that a lot of times like you read these or you see these post or these people in the Forbes list or whatever and you're like oh my gosh it was so easy for them and it's like man you got to take the stairs every single day and just like work work work work work work work work work and that's what presents the opportunity and I think a lot of times people think you can like hop on the elevator and it's like they don't see all the like you know the flights of stairs you had to climb yeah and like the the iterative steps I um shout out to one of your previous guests Elliott Parker he recommended I think two or three years ago now a book that I quote all the time why greatness can't be planned and it's B basically saying like you can't predict the or you can't game your way to an outcome you actually have to like go through the iterative steps to even know what the right outcome is and uh the way they this book is written by a couple computer scientists that they were trying to teach AI this algorithm on how to make new discoveries and they found that the way to get to novel new discoveries that are exciting is uh through chasing Serendipity basically and Novelty not necessarily the super iterative process where you're like oh that's the end goal and I'm just going to make this really linear point A to point B plan it's actually through this really random process where you're the analogy they use is like you should collect Stepping Stones instead of just trying to get to this next this viny thing and try to game everything to that you're trying to collect as many Stepping Stones as possible and get as much optionality as possible what what I learned in that book was like the the end destination is actually kind of unknowable because what we've talked about already on this podcast a couple times is like how much we've changed and just I mean we're both fairly young right and so it's like how much we've changed even just this far in our career and say we're going to do this for another 30 years like there's a lot more change coming right yeah it's like I'm going to get bored with something and I'm going have like I need to go chase something new and go be curious about whatever right so I think like the right thing for anybody early career or in their career just generally is like you don't know the end destination The Experience actually helps Define what the end destination is supposed to be right because you don't necessarily know those things about yourself and as you learn things it's where that's where you make new discoveries and new to learn new things about yourself where I love it yeah at Apex benefits you never would have picked insurance but there's things you learn there oh my gosh it's like it's wild so much that like it's just crazy like I could go and do a whole master class on like why that was such a good experience for me but it was great shout out to you all um hopefully there's some listeners from Apex but I do want to like dive into if we had to summarize like when for the young professionals or the young like college seniors that are out there listening of like man I think I want to go be in Chicago or I want to go to New York or LA or San Francisco or wherever it's like what are the like hey man you need to really evaluate Indiana Indianapolis Evansville like Indiana in specific to start your career because of X Y and Z what would you say yeah well I think the community that I've mentioned already like through my experience I I that again that does not have to be a unique experience and I think Indiana and Indianapolis and the people I've come to know in Evansville are far and above some of the nicest and most like hospitable and collaborative people I've ever met in my life like I spent a decent amount of time in Arizona and uh the the quality of people I know here is so much higher partially because of the things I've been involved in but I think the people here are just so great and so nice and so willing to help out so I think that's a that's a huge piece of it I think uh the cost of living is obviously like not uh close to what Chicago or New York or the coast is going to be like uh you're going to come out way ahead there uh and then I think there's such a variety of Industries here in uh in Indiana like whether it's software and technology or like agriculture ulture there's a ton of interesting things happening in agriculture I think it gets a bad rap and people think about it as like uh the farmer and overalls and like while that is a part of it there's a ton of innovation happening in there uh in that space that is really exciting and really a Kindle what's happening in life sciences too and obviously life science is a huge uh deal here manufacturing all that to say is you can get broad exposure to so much stuff here in the state that people tend to write off and think a good life for me is in this other these other places I can't have that here and I think that's just like an untr narrative where there's great compelling lives to be lived here and there's great opportunity to take advantage of like I think that you can make an impact here quicker totally like 5 years in that you got the opportunity to be a president of like a really meaningful organization that's like doing amazing work uh for for young people and and for industry and companies in the state like that was what I was drawn to I was like man I can make an impact in my local community very quickly here in Indiana if you do the right things and you like are willing to work hard yeah yeah it's not complicated it being having a lot of ambition working hard being good to people and life seems to come to you like put in time be patient absolutely there's no substitute for the stairs there's no elevator right um but if we go into like the ways in which or Fellowship because the organization is a little bit different from I mean I was 2019 to 2021 so 3 years it's gone through um some some changes that are good changes and and it's growing and we're I'm excited to talk about uh the ways in which it is growing but like talk to me about about the ways you're investing in young people and um and the outcomes that you're seeing from fellows uh we're highly I would say evolutionary or like iterative program on purpose because people changed so much over time you know we grew a lot when Millennials were partaking in the program but now you know we're on a different Generations so it's like what what are their needs coming out of college what are they interested in and how do we uh provide for them in those ways to make sure they're uh they're getting what they need the employers are getting the development they need from those individuals but some of the highlights of the things we do uh it's a business leader speaker series is one of them so you're familiar with this this hasn't changed from when you were involved but this is a lot of like the guests that you have on this podcast coming in to talk to or fellows in a much more scaled down intimate environment where they're sharing their life their Lessons Learned what what they've done and helping fellows understand what's possible for them too full circle moment tomorrow I have a guest Leonard Hoops Leonard Hoops was my second ever blss right uh so like I sat in there and he talked to me about we're going to host Allstar Weekend this I was like it was 2019 it was like this was years down the road I'm he's already thinking about 2023 or4 whatever and I was like and now he's coming on my podcast like like five years later it's like that's a crazy like the speaker series is amazing yeah yeah it's consistently far and above the most popular event that we do with fellows and I think it's because it shows what uh shows them like role models of like hey like none of the people we invite in have these super linear career paths like even when Max came in and talked to you it's like he was at lessonly he was growing really fast and doing great but he had a field business before that in quipple right which I'm sure he actually talked about CU that was super meaningful part of his development and so like very not linear like his career path right and so uh I think that's really important but a couple of the other things we partner with a firm called advisa shout out advisa if you're watching uh they built a two-year curriculum for our fellows so moving them through self-awareness to self-management to then like leading and influencing others oh I'm jealous of that one that's dope and it's like look I I've been blessed to be able to do some Executive coaching in my life and uh what I see the Fells going through is really just like a scale down version of what exact coaching does uh and specifically for their time frame in life so I think that's really amazing and an awesome opportunity for them that but you don't get outside of our fellowship for sure they get involved with nonprofits and just community events generally but we do nonprofit Consulting we'll bring in nonprofits take on strategic projects with them so that could be uh helping find a new executive director volunteer management fundraising all sorts of things they'll take on and help coach them case and pitch competitions a ton of social activity because we got a bunch of 21 to 23 year olds in the program oh yeah that's important and that's like we're friendships and those like deep meaningful moments are born I think wrapped around all of these though and what's most important to us is like building this dense Network for these individuals that's like the biggest value that people tend to get from or there's certainly the jobs and like the education on the jobs but I think of uh Jim Collins in his book good to great he talks about who Luck versus what luck and to for a quick definition Hulu for him he talks about over the course of his career the biggest uh changes in his career and the biggest leaps he's made have all been on the back of people he's known it's never been his what luck which is like the technical specific thing you're working on and that you have your hands in right now the things that are going to change your career and pro provide these leaps are these people that you get to meet and so we try to find the best people we can to be involved in this program from the fellows and the partner companies to create this really meaningful ecosystem of a players where you have this horizontal Network I mentioned our alumni Network 600 people we have 120 people in the program right now it's not insignificant amount of people involved and the quality of those people I had to build that on my own when I got here and that took a lot of hard work like a ton of hard work and it was pretty lonely for a lot of it we're giving that to fellows coming into this and I think it's easy to understate the value that comes from that network but it just increases across time it's crazy like I think about like when you compare um joining or Fellowship versus like um a lily or a ro like cuz I remember like those were like the desired jobs I want to go work at Lily like you spend all of your time at Lily like uh networking with other people that work at Lily because you want to climb up this corporate ladder get on the NBA track and all that stuff and it's like all of a sudden like you become 30 and you like pick your head up and you're like I don't know anyone who does anything else and I don't like drug farmacy anymore like I want to go do something different but you don't know anybody and it's like man I got to meet so many people like I can't overstate how impactful the fellowship has been like I raised my first round of of like investment dollars from or Fellowship connections amazing like I got my job at powderkeg which got me this SP like I am here because also founded by an Al also founded by or and like I didn't have to update a resume like I have never changed a resume from when I got into the fellowship and I've never plan to hold me to you like well now you're a Founder so you don't hopefully you don't need hope I don't ever need to right but it was like uh I like met Matt because he was a fellow and I been coming through and I was meeting a ton of people and like uh after like a few you know conversations and whatnot he was like yeah dude you should come and join as head of community of patri and I was like I don't even know what that means but this is sick let's go and it came from the fellowship like so many great friends and like mentors and people that like have my back like customers like all of these things like like center around uh my time in the fellowship and I like it's just like put me like I mean I'd like to believe out in front of you know the average 27y old yeah but I think like the other part of that Nate that I think is really important especially for people listening is like the network exists but it's really um like latent unless you activate it so like nobody the Network's not valuable unless you like being Nate like what was your like like you met with all the people with cof whatever I sent everyone in the alumni directory a a LinkedIn connection request started in 2002 all the way to 2019 or whatever like five at the time it was like 400 I think and I would like split it up into like 50 a week and like over the course of eight weeks and I asked every single and I had like I mean I did like 75 coffees over the course of a year with alumni like from all the way all the way from like a financial adviser in Evansville and I like got off the call and I was like I do not want to do that like respect like good for like whatever but I was like that's not for me to like seeo like Max and Matt and all these Founders and cosos that gave me the time because I said I'm a current ORF fellow I don't know what I want to do when I'm done with this but I want to start a business one day you look really successful like would you talk to me they did totally do yeah I think Scott brenon one of our founders says consistently like we can put you in front of any door but you still have to knock and that's really like the value in or is like we create all these opportunities for success to happen and we really stack the deck in your favor but you still got to play the game like you still got to get out there and do the things and I think you brought up a point that we don't talk about a lot but I think it's actually really important as part far as value coming out of War Fellowship is the sort of learning by proxy so meeting that financial advisor you're like I don't want to do that meeting Max and Matt you're like that seems pretty cool being a Founder seems like what I want to do and so you you get to learn not just from your own experience but because this community is tight and there's this uh inherent bond between you all that's like fairly fraternal it's it creates the the opportunity for you to have those experiences and meet with individuals that you wouldn't meet otherwise in jobs that you have no clue about to get you that exposure and I I think this is important to know that it kind of takes away the like you have to prove yourself when you're like when you're cold calling on this person to like get on there hey I'd love to pick your brain for coffee I'm Nate and I'm like I promise I'm yeah and it's like no like hey I did this program that you also did like we have this stickiness and like it's like a it's like a threshold like oh this person's probably worth my time yeah and I think about that when they reach out to me current when current fellows are like I'm like oh if they made it through like your vetting process to become a fellow then like they're probably worth the hour coffee and like the four bucks to buy him a to buy him something from job house right I would hope so like if we're doing our job right then it should be worth4 ex okay so so I have two kind of questions like wrap it up like how you guys are investing one is if you were a fellow right now like if you had just got into the program started in June what would you be the most excited about would be blss for sure is there a speaker in particular' be like I just love to be a kid again not Kid Young professional I'd love to be a young professional again and listen to so and so speak you know we just had a bunch of uh people just this past week uh come in that are super involved in the community uh like Al Carol from Indie Hub and a few others come in and share like what they're working on and all the opportunities to get plugged in and basically um I think one of them said like if you're in India and your board it's fault like you're the boring person not indie but I think like the ability to get exposed to all the things going on that that was just one of them but then uh we had a sports themed one where um yeah Bulls was at that talking about his experience but uh that that panel had five different people on it so you get it's like broad exposure and they're all eating you know like Pacers fever all this stuff uh you get that broad exposure so I think those are really interesting we had Max the other day max Yoder shout out to him like I think any of those man like I I don't think it's specific I know that's kind of like a out but I think that's really important and then the other thing uh I say this because it was what ended up being a big deal for me in my career even Sans being a fellow is there is an opportunity and an expectation that as a fellow you're going to like raise your hand for projects at work and I think the ability to take on more than just your role and prove value like for me at leson Lee when I was there they were reworking how we did objectives as an organization like completely they wanted to start over build it from the bottom up how we wanted to do it and make it so like everybody as an SDR all the way to Max as CEO had uh objectives tied to their day-to-day they asked if anybody wanted to help on that and it was myself and one other person in a company of like a hundred people that raised their hand to help out on that and so I worked with Brian mamin the COO uh and uh our CFO there he's CF now at Stitch and Connor Bert as president on that project and Megan Jarvis and it was so fun like being able to work on that and get that exposure so I think fellows have that opportunity to raise their hand to get involved and so much more than what other people would be able to get involved in simply because they get this sort of credibility rubber stamp around them as ORF fellows to get involved and learn and be a part of these things that are going to stretch you they're certainly going to be hard but that's the point yeah and even if it's like not within your company it's like oh you want to you might be a salesperson you want to learn about marketing cool join like the marketing team for or fellowship and help Market the organization and stuff like that like yeah we have a whole fellow leadership team which uh they vote on uh the fellow that take those jobs there's seven of them but then they all have teams underneath them like Megan green our current director of marketing and she's like her team's almost like 30 people that's insan know true story I ran for chief of staff for war fellowship and got beat and it was one of the best things cuz it was like you know you still think you know you're I'm going to be like this and I deserve this and it's like and then and a jury of my peers I was not elected and I ended up becoming the true story I ended up becoming the chief morale officer there you go and Co happened yeah and it became a really important job right and and I started putting out a weekly video series that was like morale Mondays and I like but and like I could still go back and it was just like me making funny videos to like give people entertainment while you're like locked up in your house and like Fast Forward three years or whatever and I literally put out videos on Instagram for a living like all be but had I had I become Chief of Staff then I like definitely would not have been the morale officer and y y y and like full circle moment there now I make videos so yeah when I think I mean the through line through a lot of this conversation is like when you're too like when you hold your life plan too tightly like you end up closing enough opportunities like this one like if you were just bummed out about chief of staff and you're like no this is like the plan I got to do this you never would have been able to do the chief morale officer cuz you would have like been too bummed out I stick in the mud like BR you guys don't like me then I'm I'm I'm done with this whatever so I think like the ability to adapt like I always say as a leader your job is to do your best to predict the future and then adapt where you're wrong and I think that you're supposed to do that in life too with your career or whatever it's like you're all everybody's going to be wrong some amount of time and probably more than we're all comfortable with and I certainly feel that as an executive and uh even like as a dad and husband it's like there are hard things that you wrestle with but your job is to do your best to predict the future and then let leave your ego at the door so you can adapt to whatever the right answer is then in the moment amen this is like a master class on like being young oh um okay well then the what I want to wrap up this little segment about is is um you've been president for three years now two years just over two just over two um you've seen you know 120 at least alumni graduate graduate finish the program whatever you want to call that we say graduate you graduate right you get a little diploma yeah and we do a little graduation ceremony now too which is pretty fun fun fact it was a roast back in back in my day we still do that there's a day after that now that's a little more formal there's a little more for a little like nicer like I remember like it was the best part cuz like I'm like the most roastable person in the world for sure and I think it was I don't even remember who all it was but like a lot of people hey on it and I was like I love it come on well that's like part of the problem is like the the more you're involved in or Fellowship the more you get roasted at the end cuz everybody knows you and has more material so it's kind of a backs part like I remember I I got to roast Tanner but it was so funny it's like T like we've never even talked and they chose me to roast you like that's the roast right like that's you should have done you should have done more so that was fun but if you had to like the 120 alumni that uh have gone through that you've seen who would you say like do you have like a story of someone who's just like crushed it who's like oh man like I point to this person as a model or fellow from your time there's quite a few that that have gone on to do great things I can think of two sort of off the top of my head that I probably know the most intimately because really because of them reaching out and asking for advice so much throughout their process but uh one's CLA bany who just wrapped up uh she graduated in our last class here and she was Chief of Staff in her time but uh we worked a lot on where she was going after or uh throughout her two years with us and she ended up being accepted into this impact investing Fellowship through Princeton University in Africa right I saw this and I was like wow it's pretty wild right and it's like you know obviously or Fellowship we're trying to connect people to opportunities here we'd love to have them here but if they're going to leave and go do stuff like that it's like you should leave and go do that yeah like you're going to Africa like that's dope yeah it's really important and I think for that for her story to have its roots in Indiana and have roots in or Fellowship I think is really really meaningful the other one I think of and I know you know him is Hunter Beal like killer very much the same as you he like the the lemon that was or Fellowship he squeezed every freaking ounce of juice out of that thing as possible it is like you you know you get a salary and you have a full-time job and you get compensated like you make good living in or but like Hunter and I mean I I thought myself like I'm G to get a million dollars worth of value out of this Hunter might got a billion dollars of value out of his time in or Fellowship yeah that guy's he's a hustler but he you know through his two years he was very involved in our fellowship despite uh you know some stuff in his family like getting popping up and like pulling him away but like still super super involved and then uh now he's executive director already so he beat he beat me director way faster than uh than I was but he's running an organization called side hustle school that really tries to help uh I would say like poverty stricken communities and uh young kids that are stuck in poverty communities uh tries to help show them what entrepreneurship is and sort of the sweaty startup Vibe so think power washing painting window cleaning dude there's a story we're actually GNA going to work on telling it and it's going to come out later but like David they're like Star pupil like made4 or $30,000 in a summer cleaning gutters and it's like Hunter like is like a mentor to him and like helped open some doors like this this I think he's now a senior in Arsenal Tech and he gets to go like he runs a business that does 30 or $40,000 a year as a and that's like so attainable like it didn't take a whole lot of work it just takes like role models to expose you to that and I think or Fellowship can help with that Hunter's now helping uh show that to the community but yeah those are just some of the ones I can think of we had another person that went on to do full bright scholar Scholars right after or another one that's in the Peace Corp right now a bunch in grad school like I could go on and on but those are some of the really specific stories I can think of oh my gosh yeah and they it feels like uh I think there's like an old say and I'm going to butcher right but it's like look around the world and there's usually a hooer right there it's like look around Indiana and Beyond it's like you can usually find some ties to like pretty amazing things from for more Fellowship yeah yeah I would hope so like that's what we've seen uh prove to proved to be true over the course of our time like we did a study on our lni last year and it kind of blew my mind I knew or Fellowship was valuable but it helped put a bit of a dollar amount on Al comes for our alumni and compared to average bachelor's degree holder when they uh go through life their lifetime earnings are just over 3 million bucks like I believe it was 3.

2 or $3. 4 million and that's from a commission for higher education report they did or fellows based on our projections and these are conservative we think it's actually a little bit higher but this is what we're comfortable marketing uh at a minimum is like $7. 5 million do over the course of their life so you could say is that I'm a millionaire yeah for sure yes on so our fellowship is Loosely worth $4 million at minimum right yeah and like I think that's like the tradeoff that is easy to make when you're young is like a few thousand like when you look at comp cuz we set comp and or Fellowship it's what we've always done it's what we'll continue to do to keep things Fair between our partner companies and it's easy when you're young to be like well there's $5,000 more here in my salary like that's I'm going to take this job because of that $5,000 and like there's good reasons to take that 5,000 medical debt needing to help the family whatever the things are but there's a lot of bad reasons too and it's like when I just want to make $5,000 more dollars for more drinking money or just because I feel like I'm worth more than this and it's like an ego thing those are not good reasons like those are tradeoffs that you're making that over the course your life are actually very very significant and instead of the $5,000 uh you're trading off what seems to be about four million bucks yeah at a minimum and and like people don't think about that right like I remember being there and I was like dude $5,000 $110,000 raise like I know that I'm going to get more out of this like I know that down the road whether it's raising money finding customers writing co-founders people you're going to hire like having this experience is going to pay off I didn't know that it was to the tune of $4 million I was like probably like oh I'll make millions down the road for my time in our fellowship literally you will right yeah I think so and I mean it's important to note that like when we did that study our oldest alumni we like young 40s and so when they self-report whatever they're making it's probably going to go up from here and so like the number is probably going to grow so that like I said when this Media Company grows to be a multi-billion dollar thing I'm like that number next year when I'm hosting my get in Summit right I will exactly so I want to talk a little bit about uh well one I want you to give like U the pitch to a senior right where it's like who are you looking for because you guys get to be I mean it's it's a selective process and so like hey if you're a senior that have these qualities that are interested in these things like this is the right Organization for you yeah yeah so I used the term uh versatile High Achievers earlier and that's a little bit vague on purpose because we there's what maybe is helpful is to say what we don't care about I don't really care what your degree is like we take people with any degree I don't care what university you went to we don't really wait that in our um selection process like if you went to Princeton or if you went to Wabash I don't really care like oh well we care about no but it's like you have Notre Dame and you have I mean yeah like last year in our applicant pool we had 60 different universities involved a lot of people think it's just Indiana but we had 60 different universities that somebody had applied from with a variety of degrees so uh we don't really care about that what we do care about is displayed leadership either on campus or off- campus and so what I mean by that is you could be student body president on your football lacrosse team field field hockey shout out Maggie Williams Field Hockey Captain uh depa uh go Tigers yeah go Tigers uh to I don't know uh leadership in your Greek organization or whatever else makes sense on campus or shift leader at Wendy's like I don't really care where you fall in between that Spectrum so long as you're stepping up and accepting responsibility that's what we're looking for people that are willing to be involved take responsibility take leadership positions because that's hard to do especially when you're young so we're looking for that we are looking for some amount of uh academic Excellence we prioritize people uh with 3.

2 or higher we do take people uh lower than that 3. 2 GPA or higher uh but there's got to be a pretty good reason why your GPA is lower than 32 right it can't be CU you party too hard cuz I was too busy leading from the front of the fraternity parties yeah exactly but like you know if you started a business first first generation college student or whatever the things are you're working your way through college like there's good reasons that your GPA might be lower and then interest in Business and Entrepreneurship and I I would say we don't necessarily judge on this but I think it's helpful for people that get the most out of the experience is people that are willing to give Indiana a chance right as like a place to build a career and a life like if you have already written off Indiana in your head or fellowship's not going to change that you know it's like you you got to be open to the idea that Indiana could actually be pretty amazing and we can show you how it can be amazing but if you've written that story in your head already then you're not going to be that knowing that it's not like the buck doesn't end here just because you join our fellowship does not mean you're like oh my gosh I'm locked into Indianapolis forever like no I have friends that have gone to Nashville Africa like like La Hollywood like all these crazy cool place like it's two years like you go to grad it's like it's like I always the real world NBA like it's so true it's like your real world NBA right after school you except for you get paid instead of having to pay yeah yeah which is a great flip right but I mentioned earlier about 60% of our alumni are still here but that means 40% are all across the nation doing stuff right so you could when you look at a city that you think about moving to it's like maybe you want to move to New York or Chicago there seems to be a big collection of WARF in Denver for some reason I think a bunch of them just decided to live there shout out Trevor yeah a few classes yeah Trevor being an aren leader so I'm still upset at him for taking War fellow but uh yeah I think it there's opportunity for you to EXT extract value from this uh across the Spectrum but um one final thing on who we're looking for we are not complicated on who we're looking for we're a bet making organization we're trying to find people that are the highest potential that we can find we're going to be wrong on some of those but the way we measure that is through um Patrick onion's book ideal team player we lean a lot on that book inside he has a rubric called humble hungry smart and we rate fellows across that or the applicants across that throughout the whole process so we get about we're on Contra I have a little over a thousand probably close to 1100 applicants this year uh for the program we're going to take probably about 100 into the program just for frame of reference so it's like just under 10% and that's not to say we're proud of how many people we turn away it's to say that like hey we have options and we are very intentional about who we let into this program it's hard because it's dictated by yeah like our success is dictated by the success of our fellows dude I remember like I like when the cuts were coming out I was like oh man I hope I get a good email like I really like please it's stressful for us too you know cuz it's like you can only know so much about these people and it's like for people that don't know the process right it's like you go through like you put your application in and then there's some on campus like do so calm forums is that little thing right so you're on and you got to like be the best at your school you know like you got to make it through that round then you get invited you come to Indie for reception on the circle is that still thing yeah sure is right not on the circle anymore but we still call it that yeah it's no it wasn't on the circle when I was going to do it hasn't been for years but we've stuck with that name but it's a really great name Roy feels like it fls off the ton of reception yeah you know it's like you're there and then it's like you got to be the best like I don't know probably three 400 people come there and there's like a 250 okay and then half of them get invited to finalist day y finalist day was one of the craziest days of my life it's nuts it's a wild day like you get if you're a college senior you're getting five interviews with five different companies in in one day inter eight interviews yeah it's eight yeah eight interviews across eight different companies oh now it's I only had four in a lunch meal sorry yeah I'm thinking you're the part company side from from from the fellow side well sorry one of us went through it's like I run this thing yeah only one of us is sat on the other side of the table I know right so but I had five interviews with five different companies and five different Industries and it's like it's nerve-wracking you're in there we were in the IMs uh like the pagota or the be Tower or whatever and it's like you're in there and it's like an open air thing and like you see all these other killers in their suits up there and I'm just like oh man I really hope I don't screw this up it's nerve-wracking for sure and then the best part of it all you finish that day and then you go home and you wait yeah and you wait and needles and you wait cuz you're it's like draft day and you're like man with I I get the call and it's like you get the call and it's like oh my god let's go I got a job let's go and and then it's like your board member is like call mine was Kate brochers she gave me a call like just want to let you know you got offered a job by Apex benefits yeah come on I got my hat on there I'm like on the table like making my selection it was sick it was so cool it's fun it's got a great energy to it like in that single day we coordinate close to 500 interviews within it's basically 8 hours it's nuts like a lot of Logistics go into that day it's a bit of a house of cards unfortunately because of all those people right it's like that's a ton of entropy we're kicking off for the state I it gets me so jazzed because like even if the answer is a no for or Fellowship the the opportunity to get exposed to all those businesses and get those interviews and get that those repetitions and then the other candidates that you meet there's like no telling the value that's going to come from that day so it gets me really jazzed for the entirety of the organization but yeah like 500 interviews that day and then we do have this big draft night basically where we we put a big logo up and it's like the company logo and the person that got matched with them at the end there's cheering hooting hollering and then yeah one of our board members we have 15 board members great great people that were happy to have involved in this organization they make those calls that night and they're supered it's like you're invited to or Fellowship this is the company that picked you and you got matched with it's so fun great enter uh I love it I actually you know I set a record for finalist day my uh I think my first or second year because it was still it was still at the IMs or out at the speedway and set the record for most high fives given in one day so every round eight rounds oh I tracked it every round I sat right by the stairs cuz you had you'd be on the bottom floor and you'd walk up the stairs to the top floor I sat up the stairs and gave every single person before every single round a high five even the ones that didn't want a high five giving you a claque for that most high five most high five and people were like getting I'm like hey it's cool like come on high five like and I gave so many like eight rounds of it 100 100 each round or whatever it is it was crazy it was so much fun I love it um okay well we're going to get to the next piece which is just more broadly talking about the future of work and innovation in Indiana and or fell is doing some really cool things and the first thing I want to talk about is this expansion and then I want to get into how you're you're thinking about leveraging AI um and it's not just a buzzword we're actually he has some some interesting um ways we're going to put into practice so talk to me about the way that or Fellowship is growing we're growing sort of two ways we're growing up and we're growing out so we're continuing to grow class sizes here in Indie till really we feel like we hit that upper limit of what we can do so we're going to keep finding great companies until we run run out of great companies to partner with and we're going to keep finding great finalists until we run out a great finalist to find so we've always the bottleneck for us has always been uh partner companies really and as we as you think about or Fellowship a lot of people associate us with the tech industry we were born out of the tech industry uh Bill AUST Scott brand and Angie Hicks started us out of Angie's List maybe you've heard of them if you haven't heard of them you should go you should hear it up for sure yeah they're pretty high up there on the family tree of Technology here in uh Indianapolis but they started us and for for those reasons and the fact that we've been deep in the tech industry for so long people just associate us directly with tech and if they're not a tech company they write themselves off but uh we now work with companies all across but I think our fellows work in 70 different Industries right now Tech just makes up roughly like 15% of our uh partner companies so like uh if you thought you're not a good fit but you'd love to participate feel free to reach out to me step atorf fellowship.

org it's try to keep it really simple uh but yeah so we are going to growing up in the number of partner companies we work with and number of fellows in the program here in Central Indiana but then uh the group at Evansville they literally reached out I think it was I started my job August 8th 2022 I think they reached out like August 15th 2022 saying like hey will you expand to Evansville hey new guy bring it down here totally totally and I was like pretty overwhelmed like trying to learn a lot um and we were in the middle of recruitment season which is like a bit of a hectic time for our organization it's a big like four month Sprint so like I didn't have a ton of extra time on my hand to think through this big strategic thing but um they were persistent and uh what I found in them and this is where I get to pull back into my time at the state is really great collaborators with us and really key partners for making us successful when you look at or fellowship's Legacy of success it's not really on the back of any uh single person although Scott brenon really carried us on his back for a long long time still on our board today still helpful for us uh in setting the course forward but it's I think we're really successful a because of the quality of the people coming into the program but then I think one of the bigger things that we don't talk about a lot is how industry has really wrapped its arms around or Fellowship we are we do not fund raise as an organization like we our funding comes from uh partner companies that pay partner company dues for the fellas that they hire for the Recruitment and then the development in our their program and that's largely how our funding has always been uh we are thankful to get a grant last year but historically that's the only thing we've been we've only lived off of our uh partner company grants are does and that's important because it makes us very tied to value for industry players right industry is not going to just like throw good money after bad like if we're not producing valuable uh employees and valuable fellows for them that are creating business outcomes they're not going to participate so uh in Evansville we found people that were very willing to wrap their arms around our fellowship and bet on us and now our job is to execute back uh for them so we have application open for both chapters right now people coming in and applying for them it's been really cool actually to see the Evansville chapter has people applying for it from like all over honestly like it a lot of people thought it would be you University of Evansville and University of Southern Indiana and like that's certainly the majority but we have people from IU Purdue Taylor Wabash depa all applying to this program as well so it's really really cool to see this uh excitement for this chapter from our applicants not just the partner companies because everybody knows how big Talent is for everybody these days it's really what starts and stops most conversations is the people you can get to wrap around an idea and it's been really cool to not only see the businesses come alongside Us in Evansville but we're starting to see the applicants come alongside us too which I think is always sort of the concern when you Branch out of uh Indianapolis which is you know the capital here it's the biggest city we have and then you go to a new city that's smaller uh probably doesn't have as quite as much like night life or whatever the things are and hey I've been out in Evansville it's a pretty good time everybody thinks I think people write it off too quickly actually um I've said a college town college town times too come on they have good stuff going on and like um I think as people get exposed to it and as we get more in mesh there we'll just see more and more of that so we're really excited to partner with them and really experiment with this chapter we'll end up hiring somebody down there they'll be really plugged into the community the fellows are going to be plugged into not just their companies but um there's some they're redesigning like 50 miles of the riverfront down there and they want fellow to have like input on what that looks like like they want to pull them into all these exciting projects that're that are going on I'm actually like if I was a I'd be like the opportunity that you could go and like do something crazy cool in Evansville is like it's very yeah yeah and like one of the stats that shocked me when from when I was down there meeting with um er their chamber and then erbc which helps Co some of the bigger companies is they shared with me that 20 to 34 year olds is their fastest growing segment down there in their population which was surprising to me based on your face I'm guessing it's surprising to you too yeah I did not I not pick that one I think it it's helpful for us cuz it's not just that we're plugging ORF into maybe like a dying Community or anything it's like hey this is a community that's really got it going on and they actually came and talked to our board and um after they left I remember Scott brenon saying the way they're talking about Evansville is exactly the same way we talked about Indie when we started this thing oh that's pretty cool so there's like a wave basically to tuck into of intentionality of development States ready dollars are going to be a big part of that as they invest in that community so I think there's a lot of things coming together that are going to make that really exciting and so uh should Evans well be successful I think it obviously opens up the possibility of additional chapters across the state we're going to stick with this right now and just focus and get it right but like obviously there's a lot of opportunity here in the State uh to continue to do that so you hear that Fort Wayne South band ter vincon we've already had cities reach out when they saw the Evansville press release and they're like hey what when's it going to be our turn it's like 2027 give me a call yeah right yeah just uh get in the list it's a hot commodity yeah for sure there's a waiting list actually there's a lot of cities on it but uh so I think that's really exciting we're growing a team we're at four people now which might not sound like a lot but considering we hired our first employer in 2017 um and it was a working board up until then shout out Karen Smithson being executive director for a while Karen was great yeah she's great she's great uh really did a great job for the fellows and the fellowship during her time here retweet yeah and then uh now we just got to a point we just hired Amber Ferrari who uh she's the first alumni we've been able to hire back into or Fellowship to help us run this thing which is so fun she runs all of our partner company relationships uh then we got Katherine and Jesse helping out on fellow engagement and fellow recruitment specifically so really great team that's coming together and I'm excited to you know grow it with somebody in Evansville and then uh see what continues to happen here as we evolve yeah and I mean the big news was you guys got a huge Grant from the L endowment and so talk to me about huge for us yeah based on the checks they're writing these days not huge for them oh but I mean that sorry in the grand like yeah that's true I mean not the $20 million to every University they literally wrote 50 million to for Parks like last week or something like that it always makes feel bad parks are on their rise and and I need to do a whole like debrief of just like what's going on with the Lily endowment and all the money they need to spend on Mak yeah like um they're growing like crazy and if you're a thought leader in nonprofit specifically around Lily endowment let's like get together and talk about what you guys were doing and the way you're making impact in IND but talking about what you guys are doing like it's for to funding the growth because they believe in what you're doing yeah yeah and I want I want to be really clear um don't definitely don't want to speak on behalf of Lily endowment but uh they saw the track record of success and that's what they look for in organizations and so they came to us and said like if you had money to invest in Your Capacity to increase what you're able to do what would what would you spend that on and so I put together a few ideas for them and they liked a few of them and ultimately at the end of last year we got a grant for $750,000 which for us is like yeah very significant and uh they're going into core investments in uh some marketing work and staff training velopment so myself and a team trying to level us up to do more be more we're doing uh some software development where that's actually where we're incorporating AI which we can get to I'm a geek about AI right now uh my team makes fun of me because I'm always like let me go to chat GPT but I think it's a real thing and uh obviously a real thing but I think it's going to be transformational I think it's is it catch well technically it's like an artificial thing you call that real I think I call it like I'm more of a natural intelligence guy yeah sorry you could have fool me so I do want to just type in briefly like two minutes tell me what you guys are doing with AI and how you're incorporating into or Fellowship yeah so there's one completed project and a couple other ones I'll just talk about the completed one right now we can get into the other ones later but uh every year as people come in like I mentioned we get about a thousand applicants for our program each one of those rumes that comes with those has uh previously been reviewed by uh human and it's been three humans for each one yeah right and so like the fell doing that it sus it was process yeah it's like the energy you can feel it just like leave or in L cuz like our application is closed and then like a few days later all those need to be done cuz that's how we're uh doing advancements and uh making decisions about people so what we've done historically on uh resume reviews and like how we've trained fellows to do that and we trained the AI the model on how to do that so we have our historical resume reviews so like how we what our curve like grading curve looks like right and then we have like the the PowerPoint and everything that we use to train fellows and we fed all that into uh an AI agent who now can do it instantly and so I I would say over the course of I would love to feed my resume back in and see if how it would rank me yeah kind it would be interesting actually um let's do that so like all told that's about 200 hours of work that the fellas would do and now it happens instantly it's going to cost me like a dollar in tokens um over the course of the entire like yeah in entire recruitment season like it's very insignificant and for the amount of time we save from our fellows and the amount of like less pissed off fellows you which is valuable for me for sure less pissed off fellows but we actually pivoted them into what we hope is more value added activity which is is just how like technology adoption works but the time that they would have spend on resume reviews were actually just saying like hey get together as your school team and you tell us who the top 10 20% of the people you recruited are so instead of them uh reviewing all these resumes which is kind of tough to grade a human based on just a piece of paper right it doesn't always feel Fair we're also asking them to be like okay based on who you know and what you know about campus who are the top 10 10 20% of people that they came in from your school uh this year and we'll couple that with what the agent does to come out with like do you have a name for the agent no we don't but I've been coached uh to not call it a bot or a robot but it's an agent you can actually think and it's like tunable and we've been making tweaks across the recruitment season which is part of what's fun is because like you can train an agent actually a little bit easier than you can train 120 fellows because uh it's all controlled one sort of box here but yeah so that's the first project the other ones are going to be uh partner company and then hopefully the last one is alumni facing um which I'm really excited about I do want to share it just cuz I'm really jazzed about it and um I believe we'll get there but saying all this with a grain of salt so if you're listening to alumni and you don't see it yet uh don't hold that against me remember His email is stephen.

org uh if you have complaints send them straight to Nate and he'll filter him up to me but there we go uh the alumni I actually want to feed the alumni base into uh agent yeah into a new agent that all the alumni could then use and so like you could say like hey I need help on um some demand generation for a project here at Nate spangle Co right who in the alumni base can help me on this it would go through and hopefully the goal is that it's connected everybody's LinkedIn and like knows their skills or whatever and could pull back people hey here Nate here's the people you should talk to so you can imagine how helpful that' be for you as a fellow like when you're a fellow trying to connect with alumni being able to say like hey I'm stuck on this project at Apex benefits or like I don't understand insurance is there an alumni that I could talk to that could help me figure this out and it would pull people I think you could find uh people living in different cities would be another ones like I'm going out to Denver Colorado I'd love to meet a couple fellows while I'm out there for coffee who's who's out there what industries are they in those types of things uh and then an added benefit if we get it right would actually be to open it up to our partner companies for hiring for position positions that orells aren't qualified for not enough experience but then they could hire from our alumni base oh so yeah there's a lot of I think value to extract and to provide um for both sides of the equation our partner companies and our alumni just keep giving value um I know a lot of partner companies and Executives here in town that it's really meaningful for them when somebody's been in ORF fellow or is an ORF fellow when they're looking at job application so I think if there's a way for us to create action around that in a little bit more seamless way would be really valuable I love that well I mean that's super Innovative and what the work you guys are doing is just I mean I love it obviously I'm a huge fan because I mean the better you make it the better it makes so it's like well likewise like the better you do in your career the more illustrious Fellowship becomes right and that's what I meant earlier when I said like our success is our or fellow's success it's whenever alumni say like what can I do to help or it's like go and be great that's the best marketing we could do it's why we haven't needed marketing and for the uh for the alumni out there it's like take the call yeah like be a good Steward of like what was given to you like I'm always like even if it's like man works hard like I'm three months into a full-time startup but I still find time if someone reaches out like I'll take the call because I was given that opportunity and like people made time for so like I know there are alumni that listen to this make sure you're picking up responding check your link LinkedIn your email or like the ORF fellowship.

org uh email address that I have I have to remember to check that like I'm like I'm like oh so sorry I haven't checked this in a month please I talk to L ner like I still have that it's like uh yeah you do yeah I might need to set up a forward just get it to my email but like you know take the time because uh because the same thing was given to us so this is a very meta part because I'm I'm to the younger years segment and uh I always say this question is brought to you by our friends at or Fellowship right and it's a that's me that's you right so so Stephen what advice would you give to your 22-year-old self ironically I was a College Dropout at that time I was working full-time in a family business at 22 I probably would have said like be patient check your ego cuz I had a big ego at that time learn as much as freaking possible are the only limits that exist in your life are the ones that you put on yourself like those are the things I would think about oh yeah I like that oh that's I mean hey some of the best people in the world dropped out of col right like come on let's go you know like all all the big ones I find it ironic it's like when I think about or fellowship and who we recruit it's like I don't even know that I'd like qualify technically for our program but here I am running it that's part of the fun of it it's like and that's that's part of why we're intentionally vague is like greatness and achievement can take all sorts of forms like it's not a super straight path and that's why I'm so passionate about like this uh nonlinear progression in your career like chasing your curiosity I think that matters so much because you get stuck in these ruts otherwise and like you just make a bunch of decisions just dictated on like sunk cost like I've been doing this for so long so I should keep in it like your Lily example earlier yeah and I I think that what's interesting is like or Fellowship isn't the 4.

0 only the 4. 0 students yes some of them are like the like super high book smart yada yada but it's also like you know like I was definitely not a 4. 0 student but I was like like selling stuff on eBay when I was in college and like just hustling and like knew that I wanted to be like an entrepreneur and like they loved it like I sat in the board meetings and I was like yeah I'm not like I don't have a 4. 0 like but I am above the threshold like I was like I had like a 3 four or whatever but I was like but I like I've done all these like cool startup and I didn't even know they were called startups and I was like uh I just do things to make money because I'm paying for it's called survival right like and they're like oh my gosh like you like sold something on the Internet I was like oh yeah I've sold lots of things on the internet fun well and I think like definitely if you're a student listening to this don't write yourself off if you're not a 4.

0 like to your point like will you take people really across the grade Spectrum like you should apply anyway and we'll have that conversation when it gets there but definitely don't write yourself off unnecessarily okay we're going to get to a little Rapid Fire for some fun questions as we wrap up here besides your current role as president of War fellowship and we Stephen has a great quip about this about like your dream job you know like if you get your dream job right when you're out of college you should have bigger dreams right but as the what you say you're 31 yeah 31 years old what besides War Fellowship right he loves War fellow great job what would your dream job be right now infatuate created with like Ai and what it can do and like how that's going to change things and your agents yeah and my agents um I'm just back from a a conference the last few days and so I think AI was a big uh topic while I was out there and I think the changes coming are unprecedented and I'm so excited for those to be coming down in a pipe and I want to you know Embrace those be a part of those as best I can especially Edward Fellowship like we're a lan team so uh trying to learn as much as possible and use that to push us forward really exciting so something I can see myself getting back into Tech AI um always thought about entrepreneurship more by acquisition as opposed to starting my own thing so I could see that uh for sure being like a possibility and then there's a lot of options I've learned to not be too dictatorial on like what I think should happen in my life and sort of Let It Come to Me and the best things happen that way yeah I mean both my last jobs I didn't they came to me like the state came to me or Fellowship the board came to me like these things as your brand grows again working hard and being good to people the right opportunities tend to find you so I think if there's consistency on that side like um those opportunities find you so um I guess on some level my dream job I have no clue what it is and that's part of what's fun like I think that that's important that the dream jobs will come to you but not if you just sit there yeah you know uh actually uh we Matt had Sam par on his podcast um hunkler did and Sam had the greatest just greatest analogy Greatest Story Ever he's like okay so you're driving down the road and you see someone that's hitchhiking thumb up in the air like how many people stop and pick up that person almost but you're driving down the road and you see someone push in their car like to the gas station where going how many of us pull over and P like like I would do it 100% of the time yeah if I see someone push in their car that's your career that's your startup that's your life like be out there pushing it even if you don't know where the nearest gas station your phone's dead and all stuff you're pushing your car the right people are going to come along there and help you push it and like that really resonated with me on that yeah I mean like pick the best Direction you can think of and just start moving and then again like adapt when you're wrong like if you find out it's the wrong direction make that decision and adapt in a moment like you're not married to anything especially early on in your career and so um I would say just be open to whatever experiences life tends to put in front of you like still be dis still practice discretion and think about them but um life has a tendency to surprise us in really good ways I love that okay we're going to ask a few questions about the fellowship what is the longest tenured uh partner company who's been doing it the longest it's an interesting question I I would actually say who's the longest tenure person that's been involved and it would be Michael Burton at Stitch uh he's been involved years yeah that dude loves himself some fellow for sure he takes I'll just take the rest he's like phenomenal human I'm a very big fan of him and the environments he creates but he's been involved I think for like over 20 years now what was before Le where was he at uh I believe he was at exact target you know part of the mafia um but whether as like a manager or then like leader of organizations he's been involved managed fellows LED fellows so dude he would take so many fellows at left yeah he still hold the record for the most fellows ever hired in a single class which was nine which is there a lot of people to hire on a single day um but yeah he creates great environments for them to thrive and so um big big fan of him and uh the other one that comes in mind is Heritage group they've been great partner company for us very much in our Corner um and uh yeah big fan of what they got going on what's kind of like the most interesting partner company two that come to mind and it's because they're kind of surprising that they find or fellowship and or Fellowship finds them but one is um Indie Auto care which that's run by a guy named EJ Williams great guy very big fan but they own a string of Jiffy lubs all across the yes and they're highly Innovative they do a lot on the back end with data and like trying to level up the whole organization and so I think the end learnings that they learn at their Jiffy Loops um Hunter Beal the fellow I mentioned earlier was there and uh they actually all the Jiffy Loops like within the whole network are finding value in what they're doing so I think they're awesome and then uh Venture Club is another one uh they for those that don't know it's a nonprofit that focuses on uh connecting the Venture Capital Community and uh just making an environment of no known so all the players know each other and there's collaboration and excitement uh but CLA Newman previously Nala she got married uh after taking the job but she's a ORF fellow actually she's their executive director wait a current orell a current ORF fellow current ORF fellow is an executive director yeah not wild and she's doing a great job like she crushing it I know it's like they I remember them reaching out to me and saying like is this something an or Fellowship uh an ORF fellow could do and it's like I pretty confident like it'd have to be the right one but I'm like very confident that somebody can do this and she's gone in there and just very much rocked it and done a great job so very proud of so her first job was as executive director yeah n Wild it's a tough resume to be you know that's hard holy smoke well and it's like going back to just like our consistent threat about uh the connections you make like at the end of two years she's going to be able to go anywhere she wants in Venture Capital like she's going to know all the people and they're all going to know her again like if you're working hard and you're good I'm like there's going to be options that's wild and so it's just pretty nuts um uh okay what university has produced the most orell Purdue what's what are top three I can't I don't know if I actually know the top three I know I know Purdue is strongest and part of that's just because like our founding team had so so much connection I'd like to believe that per capita based on size the depa is up there we we had like seven in my or six in my class seven in my class or whatever I was like dude we're CRA for a school of 2400 people like come on produ doing a good job I think the ones that are up and coming right now that's been really fun to watch happen is uh Taylor does a great job like really tight Community there that recruits really well Butler is doing a great job oh come on W bash as well oh come on yeah I'm not gonna mention TOA man not gonna do it right not right now but wow whoever you are that's up for them to change dep PA School lead you and I need to have some words yeah ma'am sir whoever you may be yeah wow not I'd love to mention them next time I'm here I want to mention we can't have W bash winning um that's so fun man this is such a great conversation uh we're going to wrap it out with my Trident true final questions of the lightning round and I've switched up a few of the wording like one of the wordings um because I think this is important so what's something the world needs to know about Indiana it seems like people have a tendency to write off stuff that happens here because it happens here yeah last Friday we were at the India autonomous challenge which for those of you that don't know that's where they take Indie light cars and they have these teams from around the worlds that around the world graduate schools that have uh put a bunch of autonomous Hardware in them and then they race on their algorithms around IMS so they're trying to see who can do the fastest lap the fastest lap was 180 miles per hour I believe uh this at this competition and I think it's really easy when you live here to be like oh yeah whatever like it just happens but like stuff like that happening here is wild nd500 happening is wild like the biggest sporting event in the world Happening Here and it's easier to write these things off the allstar game that you mentioned earlier because they're here and it's like oh whatever it's Indiana but it's like there's actually amazing things happening here and I I think you don't we don't tend to give Indiana enough credit for punching well above its weight and all and when you want to just be inspired a little bit like just go look at like some of the stuff coming out of Purdue and like I used doing great stuff and all the other like you're talking about Purdue a little bit ago like I'll just like look through and it's like every third article like on any of these sites is like Purdue new e like EV charging highway I'm like e charging Highway go in L yet it's like you're going to be able to like pick up battery for your Tesla while you're driving on the street I'm like what the world I remember uh when I was at the state there was a company called uh adros I worked with LV Ventures a good amount when I was at the state and El invested in them but it was Purdue IP around Rocket Fuel technology that they had started a company around uh these these people had found it on a shelf started a business around it and then it just sold I believe a year or two ago but it's like what a cool story start up here fuel technology in Indiana it's like wild but it it's happening here and I think uh giving Indiana the credit it deserves on some of that stuff is really cool and maybe it's because I'm a hooer by choice like coming from outside that I notice this stuff a little bit more and other people take it for granted but I think it's really incredible the thing that I've Loved about this from the podcast perspective is like all these people are so humble and I get to bring them on and just be like holy smokes you did what1 billion like the freaking Cameron was on he was like one my he's actually my first episode that I recorded in the new studio he ran 11,000 miles around the country and like he's just like oh yeah I just started running and like and I'm like dude you're crazy like let's go Forest Gump energy like I just started I felt like running so I started I'm pretty tired I think I'm going to go home now um all right this is I hope you're prepared for this one this is I mean this could go viral if you if you answer correctly right my first viral moment it'll be fun no no you are a you are a newly minted social media star turn out come turns out what is a hidden Jam in Indiana okay so there's two that come to mind uh one our favorite restaurant here in the city is a restaurant called late Harvest it's in a sort of a strip mall Keystone area a lot of people don't see it but it's actually like really high-end food great outdoor patio great drinks great food all the things and we've been going there I think for about five years huge huge fan but again like it's I think it's next to an Old Navy so it's really easy to miss this Resturant you could get you can get a great outfit and go yeah pick up your outfit for at a fair price sure for sure so I think that's great and then um the benberg downtown I don't know if you know what that is but it's part of Cunningham Restaurant Group and it's like a private bar really great bartenders like it's it's like so I feel so fancy when I walk in there but it's actually like amazing very very cool it's just south of Mass on like the North End so um trying to think of the cross street sort of by St Joseph's Brewery just uh west of there like a couple blocks it's like a little like memb only yeah you wouldn't know it's there like you text them that you're coming and then like they unlock the door when you get there and then like wait what yeah they know you're it's like Speak Easy Vibes it's very fun uh this is Cunningham group yeah well hey Cunningham group if you see this and you want to uh want to sponsor with a membership you want to give n a little membership I'll bring some cool people in there that's dope I think it's so cool very very fun uh we're actually Stephen's gonna get a text he like you can't be talking about our membership on public locations revoked we'll see we'll see uh all right and final question of the day who's a hooer that we need to keep on our radar someone who's doing big things obviously our ORF fellows would be the first answer so uh Nate spangle Claire who went out to Africa on impact investing in Hunter I mean the one that's going to create the most waves and I think the most attention to Indiana yeah Kaylin Clark like pretty obviously like yeah she's gonna you are a hooer now kayn whether you like it or not we claim you uh it's not up to you actually so you're here now and I think you know we heard from A-Rod at rally that women's sports he thinks is like the next big wave here in sports and sports business and I think Indiana on the back of you know the fever Caitlyn Clark and like what she's been able to build and our new incoming volleyball team yeah like I I think there's no shortage of opportunity for Indiana to actually become like the epicenter of that and um there's a lot of really powerful female females that are leading that space um that I'm excited to you know keep an eye on as this sort of develops I love that and Kaitlin if you're ever looking for a place Outlet to come and talk about I'm sure she's like what do I do with all this attention yeah right I need to go on Nate's show uh we'd love to have you my email is Nate nangle and please come on and we'll just ch we'll chop it up about not basketball we'll talk about anything you want corn the price of corn these days be great um Stephen thank you for all the hard work you do for our fellowship thank you for all the hard work you do for the state of Indiana this was a super fun episode I'm excited near and dear to my heart keep making an impact not only in the lives of of these young professionals every single day but as well as the Indiana economy like you get to be the the champion of these you know 120 Young professionals get to go out and do like who knows what you know you're you've had two graduating classes in so far and it's like there's just more to come and like think about the the coaching tree from like this organization it's crazy I'd love to see that maped out yeah it would actually be super interesting to watch like all the connectivity acrosses it and uh yeah the lines that connect one thing I haven't mentioned yet um that I need to is depending on when this goes live applications if you're a graduate or graduating senior uh in 2025 applications are live for both chapters of our program right now those are going to uh be live through September 26 so hopefully this is live before then but we'd love to have you involved uh anybody younger than that you can join our email list get involved uh to stay up to speed for future recruitment classes then partner companies always looking for great companies to join the mix here so uh if you're a partner company and you're interested in getting involved uh we'll be uh selecting partner companies all the way through October so feel free to reach out yeah if you are a college senior that listens to this podcast you are supposed to be an ORF fellow like it's just like diagam is yeah like it's right there and then uh and if you're a partner company if you're a company in general in here in Indiana whether you're in Evansville or you're in uh Indianapolis here and you want to I mean guess get the best talent that there is you need to talk to Stephen yeah or talk to me and I'll make an introduction to you either way it'll be fun um appreciate you keep up with all the great work and we'll see I can't wait to do a little uh recap uh next year and see how how this class shaped up yeah it'll be super fun this episode was brought to you by our friends at hard truth they are an amazing Indiana Distillery that is absolutely crushing it I just went down to Nashville to check check out their operation and it did not disappoint we went on an ATV tour followed by a tiki cruise and then rounded out the visit with a full tour of their Distillery I learned so much about whiskey Bourbon and some history of Brown County then we ate dinner at the restaurant and it did not disappoint mark your calendar for Harvest Fest on September 28 they're releasing their third collaboration with melon Camp whiskey company and will have live music as well as a meet and greet and bottle signing festivities run from 12:00 to 9:00 p.

m. with the whiskey T opening at 2 get your tickets at hard truth. com thank you for listening to this episode of get in if you liked what you heard make sure you leave us a review wherever you listen to podcast this show is made possible by our friends up at Sweetwater whether you're trying to start your own podcast or looking to take your show to the next level make sure you check out sweetwater. com for all your creator needs if you want exclusive behind the scenes content on all things Indiana make sure you follow me on Instagram and Tik Tok @ Nate spangle thank you for being part of what makes the hooer state so amazing we'll see you next week here on get in