from America's Heartland in Indiana this is get in the podcast focused on the unfolding stories and extraordinary Innovations happening right now in the Heartland today's guest is Steve Johns CEO at one cause if you're a founder or if you're just kidding your company started I think you really do need to do self evaluation and figure out what am I good at and what am I not good at and really be able and maybe you need some help from somebody to say what you're not good at um Steve Johns is the CEO at one cause which is a company based in Indianapolis helping non-profits Build A Better Tomorrow by leveraging technology to fuel their missions and raise more money Steve has over 30 years of experience in Tech corporate development Venture Capital event production and Entrepreneurship he started his career up in Chicago and eventually became vice president of global business development at Gateway Steve has also built a venture accelerator which eventually became a hundred million dollar investment company and then built a 10 plus year career in the music industry before taking the helm at one cause his most recent accomplishment is the launch of his book Fearless Leadership Lessons at the crossroads an incredible collection of Timeless learnings real life experiences and stories from Steve's prolific career Steve welcome to get in let's get started so yeah I was raised in the midwest I was I grew up in a small town outside of Chicago called Lockport Illinois back then we would never have called ourselves a suburb but now all of a sudden with suburban sprawl it's now part of the suburban Chicago area small town uh you know kind of roots of blue collar and and kind of hard work and uh hard-working folks what did your parents do my dad is a Lutheran Minister actually and not a lot of people know that but but if you read I actually do mention it a couple of times in the book and he's a Lutheran Minister but he's also an amazing preacher and I think that I learned a lot from him about delivering a message you know kind of organizing and structuring presentations and so he's an amazing he's still he's still with us he's 88 years old he has dementia unfortunately uh but he is in a beautiful retirement uh and and Care Facility out in Oakland and I actually mentioned him a couple of times in the book sounds like a great Storyteller absolutely yeah he he was fantastic yeah he was great it's no surprise that you're as good a Storyteller as you are Steve well I do say that I I tried to learn like he always had these things he had three sections that he kind of tried to organize he loved alliteration I love alliteration yeah I know and so that's uh I'm definitely trying to pay some uh some honor to him and some tribute to him in my storytelling I love that yeah do you have any other tips for telling a good story yes speak from the heart you know again it's kind of like what you do in business is if you find something that you love and if you speak from the heart and you speak truth and authenticity the words just flow and so that's what I that's what I tried to do with fearless and and well actually the weekly updates that became Fearless were essentially just sitting down in in just writing letters to the company about how I was feeling how I thought they might be feeling and how we could get through that situation together so right from the heart what are some stories do you remember growing up from childhood and into your teenage years that you heard your father talk about like what did you witness with the church as a leader of the church and you know he's trying to Rally the congregation and and you've got to raise money and you've got to keep the lights on and and keep the faith all those types of things what are some things that pop out I think one of the things that was very powerful that he could do and I think that really captured everyone's attention is he did a great job of taking current events or current media and then translating them to the lesson of the day and I think maybe that's what I and you're making me think tof because that's what I'm doing too is I'm taking these Inspirations these learnings that I'm getting from Netflix or from a daily Calm app or from the headlines that I'm trying to provide some inspiration to the team and so what he was able to do he I I remember these days he would hold up you know we back then magazines you know that were like pieces of paper what's that he would hold up these magazine articles and say and he would read from them and he would try to you know correlate that to to the scripture lesson or the lesson for the day and so again I thought I think that that really held people's attention it wasn't just uh preaching it was communicating in a way that people could really truly understand and again you've helped me just realize in this moment that that's what I did with Fearless as well that's really cool how did you go from kind of being pastor's son to then deciding you know what I think I want to be a businessman yeah and and that's it's a great question Matt because when I grow so I grew up in a different era than you guys did I graduated in 1985.
this was this was like the world of Wall Street you know uh greed is good Gordon Gekko so when I graduated and not a lot of people wanted to be entrepreneurs it wasn't something that we aspired to do what we wanted to do was go into business what we wanted to do was make money what we wanted to do was wear blue suits and white shirts and red and yellow ties and have shiny shoes wingtips exactly wingtips and so you know I I really foundationally I really look back at the beginning of my career with with a lot of joy and and um there were some hard times too but I got some really foundational and fundamental lessons that I learned during that time I started with a prep well they were called Coopers in Labyrinth at time but now part of pricewaterhousecoopers and I did that for almost 10 years and what I learned was foundationally about cash and once you break a business down to cash you can really do anything and I was I went from I did financial analysis for leveraged buyout transactions mergers and Acquisitions troubled debt restructuring stuff and so I had to learn really quickly uh a hat manufacturer women shoe manufacturer uh corn wet Milling process for creating you know high fructose corn syrup wow industrial sewing machines you know and quick and my my my learning curve had to be very very short and so what you do is break things down into Foundation again when I think about that what that provided for me was this ability to be Fearless literally in terms of what I did next which allowed me to go into technology Hardware software SAS the music industry you know you think about there's a lot of industries that create a lot of jargon around their business yeah and a lot of it is to confuse people and to make it look like it's harder than it is but it's not yeah it's an investor investor created buzzwords exactly let's create some buzzwords and talking jargon so people think we're really smart and people can't understand what we do right but if you sit down you say okay let's just do this how does cash come in okay got that how does Cash go out okay got that all right let's go yeah yep yeah that's I I like that you're kind of taking something that can seem really complex and ultimately you're just breaking it down to the simplest Parts absolutely and again that's a lesson that I learned early on it's a lesson that um I've taken forward in my career and it's also a lesson that I want to retell for young entrepreneurs as well is just don't be intimidated don't don't be afraid or don't be scared of jargon and and and something is too complicated it is not yeah simplify it to cash I love that so um oh my gosh I love that so it literally just was talking with a group of aspiring entrepreneurs a couple days ago and and there's some Mystique about well entrepreneurialism and starting a business and it's so complex Etc so you mentioned earlier in your career you went out and hit multiple verticals right doing this analysis on in multiple verticals different types of business totally different business models on how they get cash how they spend cash yeah and so so any other common denominators between those businesses and then maybe touch on as well like at the end of the day a business is no different than your household balance sheet right you have you have let's say you have a job and so you have a salary so you have Revenue coming in and then you have you know cash in and cash out being your mortgage or your apartment rent or your car payment or your lifestyle having drinks or dinner Etc so like business is the exact same thing as that when you really break it down to the basics what other common denominators did you notice in those those verticals and then how would you parlay the household balance sheet to the business balance sheet I think it's a great example tofin in fact I use that example at our last quarterly uh company update because I was trying to explain the need for debt and the need for investment or equity and to the extent that a company is not uh is spending in excess of the cash coming in it's like a credit card balance right right it's like whatever's reflected on my credit card balance is how much I spent in excess of how much I brought in or made that's on my credit card and so I was using that exact is that exact uh example I I think that's a great one but again I think that breaking things down to their simplest elements I think is key and I'd say again if you if you look about across all of those different verticals it is about people and so I think that that it is about simplification through looking at cash and then looking at the people that are making that happen and the team that's making that happen and I think again I think I took that and parlayed that into some of the work that I was doing at Gateway when I was head of corporate development and looking at making Acquisitions making Investments building businesses hiring people within that company and it's all about making sure that the people that are running those business or the people that you're surrounding yourself with share your passion share your knowledge share your enthusiasm and share your set of values and and how you you know value culture and I learned a lot of that at Gateway so after spending what 10 years at a at a Consulting agency whatever you want to call that right um then going to Gateway during that time did you feel like you were still an entrepreneur even though these are big massive companies so my time at pricewaterhousecoopers I'd say no there's probably nothing that's further from being an entrepreneur than working for a big eight Professional Services organization in the mid to late 80s it was not entrepreneurial I have one question did you have one of those uh leather-bound hard briefcases with the leather handle that you used so with the little locking mechanisms that were gold talking about so I know exactly what you're referring to uh I did not have one of those but so if I I carry these giant cases full of work papers down you know like six blocks from the train station down to 203 North LaSalle in downtown Chicago I would wear marks across my pants because I would be carrying two of them down six blocks and they would just be scuffing up my pants like crazy because I had like 50 pounds of work papers on on each arm it was like a pack mule it's ridiculous they treated us like that and they paid us like that that's great so Nate back to your question so when I got to Gateway I was able to take in a lot of the learnings that I brought forward from from my time at Coopers and library and apply them then in a very very very entrepreneurial setting so Gateway was already a multi-billion dollar organization it but they were young and and Ted Ted Waite who was the founder and chairman of the company he was only 31 years old when I joined the company wow in 1995.
and he had already created a multi-billion dollar company and he had already created that kind of wealth for himself but it was still entrepreneurial it was fast-moving it was it was fast-paced we were doing things really fast and we were we were making some mistakes but we were getting a lot right and so my job there was to look for opportunities to buy companies to kind of tuck in to what we were doing software companies distribution companies look for product companies we built it we bought a large server company from Southern California as well as starting then businesses inside of Gateway kind of in this kind of Entrepreneurship type of model so it wasn't entrepreneurship or out side so I didn't have the fear of not making payroll I didn't have the fear of not having an income which came you know later in in my career but but what we did is we took risks with kind of like house money with Gateway capital and we for instance we started gateway.
net the the the first ISP service that was created by a hardware company at the time yeah we were bundling AOL with every uh system that shipped and AOL is getting was essentially getting free customers from from us and and the best I was one of those customers yeah there you go the best customers in the business were coming and then so he said why don't we start gateway. net and so when you came to Gateway and bought a PC we would turn you we would Finance you with a monthly payment and we would sign you up for internet access all for one kind of bundled monthly payment on gateway. net Internet services so that was something that was that was very forward thinking uh at the time and so we we did a lot of those things in fact if you've ever been to a Gateway store um back in the day I happened to write the original plan for the Gateway Country Stores concept oh that's amazing grew into you know a very large sub-segment of the Gateway business but I went and did research down in Michigan on Michigan Avenue there was the Sony Gallery store right next to the Nike store and really kind of took some of the best of let's say inspiration we don't copy took some inspiration from each of those and said you know this is what we we think should be the um the Gateway store concept that I remember getting our first computer that was a PC my mom was always a in a school system so we always had an apple growing up but our first like I would say real computer where it was like connected to the internet and had all the things I remember opening that box that cow print cow box I loved it and I remember hooking up the speakers and turning it on for the first time first time I had a subwoofer you know connected to the speakers like that moment was just magic and you felt so sophisticated right absolutely and I I was fortunate enough to live next door to the guy who managed the computer labs at Purdue so like he got me hooked up to the Internet and so thank you for making sure that I got connected to the internet when I was a kid so you're so welcome and again I love that story because that take that story multiply it by thousands if not millions and and when I talk about my Gateway Days today unfortunately I have to add Gateway you know the computer company what happened to Gateway I I don't remember how that all ended what what ended up happening so Gateway was ultimately sound sold to Acer and you you can actually I think you can actually go into Best Buy today or maybe Costco I don't know who sells it and buy a Gateway branded laptop but it has nothing to do with the original company it just it was just it's a Acer sub brand at this point in time yeah got it it was the brand yeah for personal Computing yeah and again it just I I love the fact that we were able to create those types of memories for for you same for my kids we it the Gateway was the first computer that they had we have these home movies of them playing that silly dinosaur game you know that they were really excited about but it was very very not sophisticated I love it your cosplayer box story told me do you remember these days you remember that yeah you bought a Gateway computer yes yes that exactly happened the other funny thing is you're driving through your neighborhood after you know Christmas morning and you see people who threw away the Gateway box yeah right most people kept them for because they were really sturdy boxes oh yeah but you see the Gateway box is kind of lining your neighborhood the Johns film we got a new key City and Steve's like what I call Cash yeah exactly I hear the cash registers ringing on that one when you were at Gateway and looking at those companies to acquire how did you kind of break down those companies taking what you learned at pricewaterhousecoopers and then saying and maybe even now as you're assessing startups because I know you do a lot of mentoring other entrepreneurs as they're getting started what are some of those questions that you ask any entrepreneur when you're either considering in investing or acquiring or doing business with yeah so first of all from the Gateway perspective we created this grid of you know kind of like what do we do and what are our the sum total of our needs and then where are the gaps to fill and so we would look at you know we would look at well here's here's an opportunity to grow in distribution here's a re here's a here's an opportunity for us to add intellectual property here's an opportunity for us to get geographical expansion here's product expansion so we would kind of grid this out and then we would look at opportunities for hey so in organic so we were already growing growing organically in certain areas but how are we going to fill that in with inorganic growth opportunities and and again looking at these companies is a little bit different than from a from a investment standpoint because we had the Gateway machine already yeah and so it was like okay we have a massive sales and marketing engine like how do we it's kind of it's kind of like that that machine that tosses footballs uh I can't remember it has a weirdness machine the jugs machine yeah nice so it's like take that can you can you just throw it into that machine and just let it fly yeah and so that's what we we had that benefit behind us that we had massive distribution we had massive brand we could so we could go in you mentioned um you mentioned your subwoofer I still have some Boston Acoustic speakers that are sitting on my desk well we got Boston Acoustics into the PC speaker space because we had million unit purchase orders that we could wield wow and we could just take those and kind of create value in these are the early days of cross-sector innovation absolutely yes yeah that's very cool very cool very cool so again it was it was fun and and as a think about it too I think of um the word mentorship really comes to mind as well because at Gateway I had two amazing mentors who gave me something completely different so the first the first Mentor that I had was Rick Snyder Rick and I worked together at Coopers and library and he was the president and Chief Operating Officer so what I learned from Rick was discipline Excel spreadsheets analysis you know really you know thoughtful due diligence yeah what I learned from Tad was gut instinct gunslinging you know I mean it's awesome yeah he's so cool he was the Gunslinger yeah and and so it was really fun for me as a young professional growing up and and just learning from Rick learning from Tad different lessons yeah but bringing those together in in matcha to the answer to your question too how do we make decisions about what to do next it was Financial based as well as gut based and Instinct based do you have a favorite lesson from either of those guys maybe that kind of came through a story or a business deal that you were working on well there's one story but I can't say that we'll save that for the after party but yeah but but I guess what I will say is here to and so I will say that here are two guys who are completely different yeah but honored and respected each other's differences and the company needed both and so I I would say is this if you're a founder or if you're just getting your company started I think you really do need to like do self evaluation and figure out what am I good at and what am I not good at and really be able and maybe you need some help from somebody to say what you're not good at because sometimes there's some blindness about what you're not good at what I know Nate it's part of everything get somebody to help you understand what you're not good at and then go find Partners go find co-founders find someone to to to do this with I find that even today yeah my executive team first of all are are the best executive team in Indiana in in our industry for sure and and what they do is they fill in the blanks for me you know I they are each one of them experts in their respective fields and I honor and respect that and they fill in those blanks I do you know and it allows me to do what I do yeah tell me a little bit about what you do now with your leadership team to help lead and set that Vision uh for one cause it is it is about setting the vision as it is about leading but it is also about trying to get out of the way and realizing that they're they're really they're really good at what they do and and and making sure that I give them uh I need to make sure that there's fuel in the tank so my job is making sure that there's a there's enough cat back to cash making sure that there's enough uh capital and available to to grow and and make investments and and keep doing that making sure that there's a a North star making sure that there's a vision that everyone is working towards the same goal in the same direction and and you know we're also starting to implement things like EOS that that help us really track accountability uh really get into weekly reporting on leading indicators not lagging indicators so that we can stay in front of some of these issues and start to identify them early on in the process and so I would say that's a little bit more tactical yeah but it is really important to to the growth of the business and we have now a very regular Cadence of quarterly off-site strategic planning so every week is pretty tactical but we make a commitment a couple of weeks before every quarterly board meeting to get off site for a day and a half two days do something fun and do some really good strategic planning where we can say those time limitations I put on every meeting are off yeah you know and let's just let's just get deep on these issues and and what what have you found worked for those off-site leadership team meetings what is uh what did you try that you're like that kind of didn't work that was a whiff and then you know what were you like oh my gosh we didn't know that was to be so powerful any example yeah I think I think the the time together is so important and so we were we were playing so I've got a couple of senior leaders in Chicago and and some of the senior leaders are here with me in Indianapolis and early on when we brought everybody together in Indianapolis and maybe we went to you know um well maybe we were getting off site but not off site and I was going home in the evening my my Indie execs were going home in the evening we missed out we missed out on that time after dinner hanging out after dinner going and playing pool or after dinner going bowling or just sitting around and and talking because again that was think think about back in the Gateway days I lived in North Sioux City South Dakota there is nothing in North Sioux City South Dakota but we lived in Dakota Dunes which is this really beautiful Golf Course community and we went to each other's homes and and so and I you know people talk about work-life balance there was no work-life balance it was just life and and we we worked at Gateway during the day and we we drank Gateway at night we ate Gateway way we talked Gateway we smoked Gateway cigars I mean this is what we did we just hung out and and chatted about the future and about the business and I think that's what we were missing when everybody was going off to their homes and so now you know we went to French Lick now we're we're all going up to Chicago and we're going off to a hotel and even even the people who are who live in Chicago are going to stay at the at the hotel in Chicago and I'm dragging them to a White Sox game I love it I love that everyone's like can't we go to the Cubs game no that's your team man White Sox oh yeah I love that I love that but again it gets back to my roots it's a chip on your shoulder team sure you know I I grew up in a small town a little chip on my shoulder you know and so the White Sox makes sense for me the Cubs are Chicago's Town they're they're The Darlings it's um it's the White Sox for me yeah I love that a quick break from our normal programming I have Erica schweire CEO from Elevate Ventures here in the studio today Erica thanks for being here yeah thanks for having me and you're going to tell us a little bit about this rally Innovation conference that's coming up yep so it's the largest breast sector Innovation conference in the world um we're going to feature six Innovation Studios so think hard tech software Sports Tech Ag and food Healthcare and Entrepreneurship is going to tend to be our catch-all I love that so tell me what is who's it for yeah it's for innovators entrepreneurs investors honestly anybody probably listening to this podcast it's going to be a multi-day thing that's multi-day in downtown Indianapolis yep people coming in from all over the country maybe even all over the world to be here that's our hope yep and the dates are actually August 29th to the 31st perfect and if people want to find out more information about speakers tickets things like that where can they go yeah so they just go to rallyinnovation.
com and sign up for communications they can also get their tickets I love it you heard it here rallyinnovation. com we'll see you there well I um I'm I'm curious uh just thinking about kind of that transition to one cause you could have probably done any number of things after pricewaterhousecoopers after Gateway and I know you launched an accelerator and and and kind of plugged it into the music industry uh maybe you could kind of help close that gap for us of how you ended up taking a CEO job at one cause a couple years into the business uh from kind of going going through that whole music industry yeah happy to do that so I started this industry accelerator together with Rick Snyder and a couple of other partners and we grew that pretty well but we had to survive two years 2001 and 2008. we started the business in 2000 and got hammered the next year in 2012. then then the recession of 2008 came just when we were looking at maybe doing you know raising another fund and and and doing something else so we all kind of went our separate ways and it was it was pretty much of a break even but I think it was a win from a net net basis having survived 2001 having survived 2008.
you know before before the pandemic there was we had a really great run we had a really great run there were 10 years maybe where people just thought the the only thing the only Direction was up there to the right yeah right hey it doesn't always happen that way yeah unfortunately not wait what series I know this is all like lessons for Nate yeah so so what did you learn during those two yeah do we have another hour but but I think the primary learning from that was always have a plan B you know like you can get really excited about like plan A but always plan for Plan B maybe plan C and I think again we've carried that lesson forward and again the pandemic really helped us understand that as well so let me kind of jump forward to to one cause because it is a story that I want to tell yeah and it was called bid pal at the time and and it but it starts about a year prior and it was about 2013 and I to your point I was I had a great career I was doing all kinds of really cool things really fun things the kids were now gone we were empty nesting I was just hitting 50 it was maybe Weighing on me a little bit so I was in the spunk and I didn't know what was bothering me I didn't know what it was and I was reading an a Wired Magazine article with Bill Gates and Bill Clinton on the cover and the story was how they were using their power and influence and wealth in their first careers to do good in their second careers and I literally I was on the beach with my wife and literally put it down and I said that's it that's what I'm missing it's impact it's Mission purpose that is what's missing from my professional life and because the my why before that was my kids and I'm sure that you you understand that yeah and and it was it was what drove me it was what drove me to create wealth to to to create income to to create a better life for these kids and then they were set they were gone they were on their own they were doing great it's like now what I think maybe it was like now what yeah and and it took a year later in Don equilano who you guys all know um came to Chicago and we had lunch and he started telling me the story about a company that he was on the board of that was seeking a new CEO and he was taught and it was funny though they had a portfolio company in Chicago which I thought he was coming to talk to me about and I'm like this is cool yeah I'm gonna walk to work because we were living in River North we were living in the city at that point in time he was describing the company and I was that doesn't sound like that company and uh but it was about serving non-profits yeah thousands of non-profits were now several thousands of non-profits doing good work helping them raise money with software and with technology which was you know part of my DNA at that point in time yeah and you know of course I had to keep it cool through lunch but you know I came away like okay this is it I I have to do that yeah and so that was that came a year that came a year later and I think that when you decide or Define what you want to do next then you're able to see it when it comes across your radar if you don't you might miss it yeah and so it was really important for me to have already established what I was missing and what I was looking for because when that opportunity came I knew to grab it I I knew that that's what I needed how did Don find you uh actually Don found me through one of my former partners with the Venture accelerator so his name is Chris Isaac he is he runs Renaissance up in Detroit and Renaissance is an LP of both Don's fund alos and MK Capital which is the other Venture investor in in uh one class and so I had reached out to Chris just letting him know I was I was kind of looking for a new opportunity and he had reached out to Don and he made the contact for those who don't know Don aqualano partner at Alice Ventures founding partner at Alice Ventures uh one of the more active VC funds throughout the Midwest um really just amazing guy key player in the entire ecosystem so it's amazing that yet linked up with him and and that spark led to you joining one cause it it really is amazing and again he continued to be that person for me on the board and and and and marcoola George as well I I've I have never had a more supportive board to look to and I was on in my Venture accelerator I was probably on a dozen boards and so I know what it I know what it's like to be a good board member yeah good board to bed board yeah yeah yeah I I've seen I've seen bad board members and I've tried to be a good I've tried to be a good board member could you maybe share some of the the things that you do and that you've appreciated from other great board members yeah so again I would say that number one um there is nobody who knows the business better than me the CEO and I think you need to respect that but also you as a board member bring all of this other outside experience having seen it 10 times or 20 times in your portfolio which I might not have seen yet so I know my business but you may have seen the specific issue that I'm facing 20 times and so as a CEO you have to be open to hearing that that there are other ways of of looking at it and so when I serve on a board I always try and say well based on our experience or based on my experience I don't want to say this is the way it is for you but I want to say this is this is the way it was for me in my experience I think what you just said is so powerful it uh so EO or EO or YPO wpo that whole organization of entrepreneurs um they use this Con the concept called Gestalt and it's experience sharing not advice giving because it's it's so easy for advice to come off as is uh antagonistic right adversarial and when you when you when you put forth ideas from based on experience then the correlation of whatever's happening in the company is like oh okay we could do X and so it's magic right it takes a whole other level right and the CEO can do he can make that connection and just say oh yeah I I get it now that I'm making that connection yep yeah I love that I I had a a Founder friend uh Max Yoder you guys both know Max uh he he always kind of described to me this idea of like sure sharing through experiences this idea of like I'm just gonna put this here on the table and if you want to pick it up that's great if not you aren't going to get it anyway if even if I said do this you aren't going to pick it up and run with it anyway so that that sort of for me that visual of like I'm just gonna set this here it's your gift if you would like to pick it up and and that is such a great example and and and again then you have to be aware enough to say oh you know that's a that's a good nugget yeah and sometimes you don't get it right away you know you got to suffer a little bit and then and then you'll remember remind you remember that thing I put on the table you might want to pick that up now a year ago I think that leads leads back to like your original point on storytelling right like how you can frame even if you're delivering the same message you know like it's at the end of the day the advice is still there but like telling someone and and like directing them to do it versus like this experience and story and my three bullet points and it's yours if you want to take an actor like people can really really resonate with that you're so right Nate I was actually thinking about that when Toph was describing it it was I'm gonna tell you a story and I'm going to relay an experience that I have had and hopefully you can see some value in that or some relevancy in that but it's it's telling that story do you have advice for let's say CEO that maybe their board members don't tell stories they they give them the more you know hey this is this is what I think this is what you need to do or or just take pot shots with no Solutions yeah or that either never do you have advice never yeah do you have advice for CEOs that might be in in the seat that they don't have the great board members that are storytelling I do so maybe maybe it's twofold because I just thought of another one but I would say definitely create your own kind of informal network of advisors and so make sure that you have a support network if it's others so I was involved in a group of CEOs who were in the software industry supporting nonprofits and we got together every once in a while shared best practices shared ideas because again sometimes being a CEO is a little bit lonely you a little bit okay you're right it's very long and I I have the I I'm the Good Fortune of having a wife who is um smart uh listens to me uh is a confidant who is frop probably should be running your company because based on her knowledge you know I I think that that she could but I have a confidence so I'd say create create a network of of of people that that you you can go to for advice and and create a CEO network of your own the other thing I would say and and this is um I which is what I tell my Executives as well you know if if my executives are saying hey you know I'm really not getting through to that other person or we're really not seeing eye to eye on the certain uh issue I said have you had a beer together you know and again you can take it metaphorically or you can take it literally right like I will say like you can go have a beer or just just go have a coffee yeah but so I would say go ask that board member to lunch ask that board member to breakfast ask that board member to Coffee get out of the boardroom and have a conversation about as people and and again um I see this beautiful cover of the of the book here and I have to to think about yeah there's there's a chapter a little Shameless plug there's no Shameless at all there's a chapter in there chapter 15 it's my favorite it's called connect and in what I'm what I'm reminding everyone in the kind of Leadership Lessons is the pandemic took away a lot of things but what it took away was human connection in human connection I talk about family I talk about your your immediate family I talk to the extent extended family of one cause nation and how we missed each other through this period of time I talk about friends and friendship and and just being able to hang out with people and I also talk a little bit about um I think it's called accelerate life yeah death came to us in the pandemic and we couldn't celebrate it we couldn't be with people and it it it it it accelerated the the the down the downward I know that accelerated the downward spiral of my dad's um dementia because of that separation because of that lack of human connection and so I am always about get together as human beings Were Meant to connect as human beings physiologically Were Meant to connect as human beings let's and and I think we're going to have issues for years and you know it's not a big big idea that I have we're gonna have issues for years yeah mental health issues that we're gonna that are coming out of that lack of connection we were taught we were taught during the pandemic to avoid people yeah I mean imagine that like here comes some people you're walking out in your neighborhood Here Comes people walking down the sidewalk Let's cross the street so we don't cross each other because they're not wearing masks right or you're not wearing a mess we were taught and we were teaching our kids to avoid people yep they're so so talking about Connections right like one cause is a company and you guys serve non-profits and a big part of that are Galas and events where tons of connections are made Global pandemic happens a lot of connections being made in person right tell me about that where where you're running a business that's helping with these events and all of a sudden there's no events what do you guys do you know again that that's like it it leaves me speechless today just thinking about it on that week that was Friday March 13th and uh going into Saturday March 14th of 2020.
in-person events went away we had 2100 scheduled in-person events for that spring they went to zero overnight 100 2100 overnight they went to zero so we had to and and thank goodness we had a really strong kind of end of February early March so there had been a lot of fundraising before that so we had a little bit of capital built up so the first thing that we had to do obviously is to make sure we put our masks on first yeah and make sure that we stabilize the company and made sure that there's viability in the company and then we had to go to go to work we had to go to work reaching out to those non-profits and saying hey we know what happened um and so let's go virtual let's go online let's reschedule it let's figure this out because there was there was never an answer that was like we're just not going to do fundraising this year because they need that fundraising to fund their mission for the year yeah and so there wasn't an option to not fundraise and so what we found and what our customers found is that our technology solution thank goodness I won't knock on the table because it might sound yet but knock on wood thank goodness we were mobile first to begin with we were Native we were we were a progressive mobile app we weren't a native mobile app but we were a neighbor Progressive mobile app that you use your phone to bid and to give and so nonprofits were bringing us into the ballrooms with 500 people a thousand people they were just walking around the ballroom using their phone to bid well they can use their phone to bid at home in their kitchen in their living room in their basement and they did and and nonprofits got into rooms like this and broadcast cast on uh YouTube or on on Twitch and early on we had two screen experiences where you could bid on our application in watch the live or watch the live stream video on Twitch or YouTube and then ultimately we built a one screen experience uh that we released in September of 2020 and that has become now the foundation for our the fundraising platform that we just released and so it was about shifting changing I'm trying to avoid using the word pivot because I'm okay with pivot but I know that some people don't like the silver but I just yeah I just said it pivot's not necessarily like a negative word like some people think it's a negative thing I'm like why why is that a negative thing I don't know because you're learning and changing and adopting and adapting and I'm I'm with you so if I mean we did pivot we pivoted like hard like that moment did you actually gain a lot more customers because your ability to have virtual events we our customer base grew by 35 there you go in 2020 right yeah I mean the soft the software just took off because in in our world you know in the nonprofit world there's a lot of paper paper checks and and in the Asylum Auction World It's Paper bid sheets and so you've probably been to those Galas where they have the multiple layer forms and they tear off the top and that's a paper that's what we replace there was still a large number of organizations who had not made the move and then you have to track them down to collect the money yeah exactly exactly because it's just a p it's just a piece of paper with writing on it and so what we were able to do is capture those non-profits who thought I'm never going to need technology office and they needed technology so we were part of this digital transformation that occurred in so many Industries and so what's happening now is because we grew our customer base so strongly in 2021 22 we're beginning to see the benefits of that it's just you know we're just increasing that base of customers and then monetizing that through more events larger events more uh donations and generosity coming through that and so that's what we see in 2023 and that's what we you know really hope that's we see early on and that's what we see hope as we hope we see continue thinking back to March of 2020 Steve um you know World shuts down you have 2100 Live Events go to zero um what were some of those key things that you did as a leader that helped kind of rally the team so immediately it's all hands so it's communication and transparent communication and communicate often because you can't have people uh sitting at home ringing their hands wondering what's next yeah so what we what we did we had about we probably had about maybe 100 50 people in the company maybe half of which are maybe a little bit more were of that were in Indy and so of course we all went home on March 16th March 17th when when everyone went home now what do you do you you we had just established this beautiful set of values that we were building and culture and you know just kind of creating that office culture and that just evaporated that just went away and so it was let's get together let's communicate early and often and and through that first communication is really the Genesis of fearless so in that communication I said basically this our our journey back is not going to be measured on a calendar I'm not going to say in September we're going to be good so you know everything goes back to normal I don't know so the only way that we're going to be able to measure our journey back is it will be measured by how our customers get back to fundraising and so the only way that you're going to know that is if I communicate that to you and I'm going to commit to you to communicate you know kind of dot dot dot weekly and that was the beginning of sitting down April 2nd or first week of April or something and said hey how's it going like here's the first of my weekly updates yeah and that's how that's you know so I didn't sit down to write a book I call myself The Accidental author I love that good alliteration yes my dad would be happy yes so I call myself The Accidental author because what I did was I sat down to write a weekly update my first weekly weekly update and then I wrote another one and then I wrote another one and then it just became a succession of weekly updates and they did start to take shape and form the the beautiful lotus flower on the front of the book is an illustration that I use maybe on my second or third maybe my third update and and I was being I was being pretty factual the first couple of updates because I really hadn't found my kind of my my my voice yet my groove yet and I was doing my morning mindfulness and and call map and I heard the story and that story is about the from from ancient Buddhism uh the the Lotus bud in the mud in the muck and mirror of the pond and making its journey through the mud and through the pond and finally emerging at the top of the pond as this beautiful white flower and the bud symbolizing potential and the flower symbolizing the resilience and the beauty and the transformation of that bud and I and I said this is a story that I need to retell to my team because right now we are in the mud we're in the mud and and we can't like if we looked up we couldn't even see through the pond right we were in them absolutely and so but but I want to say that I wanted to create this Vision that we could become this beautiful lotus flower sitting on on the the surface of the pond and so that really was the first update that I use this illustration and to kind of tell a story of how we have this way back and but I also was pretty honest uh very honest in in in authentic and saying don't know how we're going to get there I don't have the solution there's not a Playbook that I'm that I'm taking from it I love that and so let's do it together everyone preaches you hear authenticity so important be authentic what's your advice to people out there to leaders that want to lead authentically right so you know let's just be true be true to yourself be true to who you are uh tell the truth um and and and and so again I think that as I look at that we were in a situation where there were where there were no answers to to be had and if I would have gotten up and said I've got all the answers don't worry I'm Your Leader just follow me I've got it okay everyone would have known that I wasn't being truthful and I wasn't being authentic and so the the thing that you do there is you kind of take inventory and you say this is what I know this is what I don't know but I will commit to you I will commit to you that if we work together we will do this we will get through it we will find a way we'll find a way through the mud through the pond up to the surface I love that uh you mentioned the lotus flower it's like some companies have a North star you have a North flower yes and that that visual is so powerful um what was what were some of the responses to that note and some of the other notes that you sent they really became my fuel mat I really appreciate that the opportunity to talk about that and we we that's why we included some testimonials from some one causers in the book as well so I would be essentially writing this letter to everyone and asking for a response sometimes like tell me how you're feeling or are you with me and sometimes not just like there it is you know you know kind of stay Fearless Steve and I would get these messages back thank you so much for that update I was waiting for it you knew what I was thinking how did you know what I was thinking it's what I needed to get through to the next week and that was my fuel that kept me going because you know honestly week after week after week it took a lot it was pretty draining and not everything not everything that I wrote made it to the book because we took out a lot of confidential information sure every week I put together uh details on the number of events that we did the type of those events and the the total proceeds that were coming from those events wow to see how that was tracking and that was a big undertaking did that every week that's not in the book yeah and so that it there was a lot of energy that was expended on that and and every once in a while I think you know maybe maybe it's time maybe it's time that I would stop and then I would get one of these amazing emails back from somebody on the team and said I can't stop I have to keep going yeah I did finally stop uh about maybe second quarter of 2022.
it was just like okay yeah you guys got it yeah that's great to take the training wheels off take the training wheels off you got it what were some of the unexpected benefits that you noticed from just developing a Writing Practice like this where you didn't know you were writing a book but you knew you were writing something each week um did you have anything that was unexpected that you benefited from just from having a Writing Practice as a CEO so maybe what I did is I developed a better point of view and a different perspective out of myself as a leader and I began to Define again what I what it was that I believed in and um and was able to communicate to others and so I think again we've been talking a little bit about lessons for CEOs or lessons for leaders Define who you are and what you believe in yeah I I have in my career taken a blank sheet of paper wrote the word I believe colon and just and just write one through Thirty whatever it is what do you believe what do you stand for and and uh and and so I think you know developing a point of view was was really important the other thing that that I was able to do was keep culture intact and so it was very very hard and so it became this tether of culture this this one kind of touch point that everyone could get every week and see the the message that was coming from me and where we were going how how I was feeling and again providing a a foundation for everyone to know and understand I think probably you know there was probably more CEO communication during that period of time than in pre-covet or post covet yeah they heard from me every week yeah I think that these talking about writing it down right I believe is so critical there are a lot of there's a lot of people out there who watch some like you as a successful CEO they're like well Steve just has it he just he just has it together and I'm not Stephen so I suck I'm sorry right they don't see Steve writing down what he believes behind the scenes at night at two in the morning or whenever and rewriting it and rewriting it and rewriting it in one of the updates of my book I share that exact story it starts with this isn't the first draft of this update I want to tell you what just happened yeah I spent several hours putting together the first draft and I looked at it and I read it and I was horrified yeah and I threw it away that sucks and and it was and it was not constructive and it was it was more venting I was angry at something that was happening in the country in the world and I was writing about it and it was not for the company it was for my own personal edification and gratification it was it made me feel better but it didn't tell a story it didn't make anyone else feel better and I said I'm sorry that I did that I tore it up and I started over and so I know exactly what you're saying because and everyone else does too because they know that it wasn't perfect from the very beginning that it was it was not worth publishing and it didn't get published it it got deleted I I really appreciate uh just your transparency Steve how authentically you lead you share these stories you you write in the book Fearless which I highly recommend people pick up I've got my copy um thank you Steve you're welcome and um I'm I'm just so I so admire what you've built with one cause you know every year we've had the Powder Keg tech companies awards for best company culture you have won several Awards in several categories uh and I say you as a collective you because I know it's it's all the one causers who are coming together and following your leadership um but I just want to say thank you for coming and sharing a little bit about this I really hope people pick up the book Fearless and I just want to say thanks well first of all you're welcome but thank you for having me it's it's been an honor and and a privilege to be able to just kind of share I love talking about the background I love talking about Gateway days that was really fun too yeah about one cause and again particularly about Fearless it is just I've heard already heard many many uh stories from my team and how we feel so blessed and so fortunate to have this record of the two years that we spent during the pandemic and there's one there's one person in there that I do I do want to bring attention to I think it was maybe April of 2020 and it was a list and I said I promise you that we will do the following things again and it was shake hands go to a movie get a haircut go on a date go to church like these and you look at that list and say we weren't doing those things yeah it's when you when you look back at that it's a crazy it is super emotional to see what we were going through and I've already gotten that type of feedback from my team just like I kind of forgot Steve like and that's I think what we do as human beings sometimes we leave some of the bad stuff behind yeah and so it's it's a good reminder well not so not so fast Steve you're not getting out of here without the lightning round oh yes at the end of every episode we uh we go through a couple quick questions lightning so I got the feedback that our lightning round should actually be lightning so okay now to our usual three questions we have outside of the amazing entrepreneurs what is Indiana known for well I'll tell you based on my experience last Saturday in Indiana is known for robotics oh what's the story there they the Indiana State robotics Championship was held at Lucas Oil on Saturday uh for kids uh from elementary through High School it was mind-blowing it was so amazing there are Future Leaders coming from that I love that that's that's great what is one Hidden Gem in Indiana so I'm an outsider I came down here from Chicago so I don't know probably as well as you guys know so so I'm probably not qualified to give you a hidden jump but let me tell you can I switch it up on you and tell you here are some things that that we found that we think are just gems and they're not hidden yep I think a gem in this town is new Fields it is gorgeous I can't believe that it's right there I mean my daughter lives maybe a less than a mile away from from it it is a jump the indoor display the outdoor grounds is is a gem Newfield here's another gem Victory Field in downtown Indianapolis where the Indianapolis Indians play I don't know if people in in Indianapolis or Indiana understand how lucky they are to have a a baseball field a professional baseball field in the middle of their City it is super cool yeah absolutely opening day is Friday it's looking like it might get rained out obviously but whenever we posted this but again I mean think about summer evening hot summer evening uh it is just spectacular Thursday night beer specials there for anyone that wants to enjoy it yeah some good stuff there okay all right why am I being lightning enough last question who is someone that we need to keep on our radar someone doing something big wow okay so I'm trying to stay lightning so I I don't have a specific name for you but I'm going to hearken back to my comment on Indiana robotics somebody in that room is going to do something big and so what it made me feel like is you know you you when you're watching a professional baseball game and they show a picture of that kid when they were in Little League yeah you know before they ever were even determined to be like a superstar there are superstars in that room so I'm sorry I don't have a name for you but look for Future Leaders coming from that robotics program they're learning communication they're learning competition but collaborative and Cooperative cooperation competition they use the word Alliance when they compete there's something special going on there I think that's a great answer and perfect perfect mic drop moment please don't drop your mic um perfect mic drop moment to end the episode absolutely Steve thanks so much for thanks for sharing your story congrats on all the momentum with one cause congrats on all the momentum with the Fearless book um it's wonderful and thanks for sharing your story appreciate it thanks for having me thank you Steve thank you this has been get in powder kick production in partnership with Elevate Ventures and we want to hear from you if you have suggestions for our guest or segment reach out to Matt or Nate LinkedIn or on email to discover top tier tech companies outside of Silicon Valley in hubs like Indiana check out our newsletter at powderkick.
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