(0:00) Intro
Beau(0:11) Hello, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the free agent podcast. Super pumped. I’ve got Louis Gump today, author of the Inside Innovator, a Practical Guide to Entrepreneurship, which I have here. So graciously enough, you sent me a copy, and I’ve I’ve not been able to read it full disclosure. But very good looking book. Thanks so much for coming on.

Louis(0:32) Thank you. It’s great to be here, and and I’m glad you have a copy of the book too.

Beau(0:37) Yeah. No. No. It’s it’s fantastic, and it’s it’s it’s definitely legit. Hard copy, you know, that’s, that that that means you’re all in. So, let’s let’s jump into things here. So prior to writing the book, you were in the media industry in a myriad of executive level positions with large media conglomerates, CNN, Cox Media, just to name a few. And now you’re a fractional exec adviser turned book writer. So I’m sure there’s a a story here, which I’d love to learn more about. How did you get from corporate America to fractional adviser and then eventually book author?

Louis(1:10) Well, thanks for asking. And it really, feels like a logical progression. I really have been fortunate to work with some of the most talented people around, especially in the media industry. And as we work together to build businesses at places like The Weather Channel and CNN, it became increasingly clear that there’s a very specific skill set required and a very specific mindset required in order to build a business within a larger organization. It also became clear, especially after I served as CEO of 2 small companies, that the skill set and mindset required in a smaller organization differ, you you know, it differs in, in really dramatic ways sometime in order to have the most success and to have the greatest experience. And so what I wanted to do was to write a book that illustrated that and hopefully, you know, help some folks who are in similar situations.

Beau(2:13) Yeah. No. No. It makes sense. I totally agree with your sentiment about kind of, you know, large business skills don’t always translate well to the CEO spot in a small business. Definitely a learning curve there. And the the whole entrepreneurship term, while not new, I feel is really kinda picking up steam and interest, you know, over the last, you know, 12 months, 18 months, or more. In fact, I had somebody on one of my other podcasts recently about entrepreneurship. And so I I’m I’m really excited about, about your take here. Now prior to jumping into kind of the definition and getting a little bit more tactical, I am curious about the book itself. Like, what was the the process? Had you always aspired to to be an author, or did you just find yourself with a bit of a bit of time and decided to kind of, you know, utilize that time to to write a book?

Louis(3:02) So it probably started with reading. I love to read and love to learn and have, you know, been active in that since as far as I can remember, since I was, you you know, reading those little golden books years ago or whatever they were, and, really gained an appreciation for what authors can do to open up the world and tell stories and help people learn. And so over 20 years ago, as I was thinking about some goals over, you know, 20 plus years, I thought, you know, maybe someday it would be great to write a book. It was a fairly undefined goal, with one notable exception and that is I only wanna write it if I have something to say. It’s not something just to check off a list, rather it’s something if there’s a way to add to this amazing body of knowledge and wisdom and and this this expansive, you know, offering of stories. And what became clear to me over a career journey is that there were some stories that weren’t being told, and I believe they should be. And so I wanted to shine a spotlight on some people who have done amazing work, and I wanted to highlight some things that have become clear to a number of leaders, not just me, but others who have been in similar positions, which led us to this topic of entrepreneurship. And I agree with you, you know, it’s not new. In fact, it was coined as early as 1979. And a book called Entrepreneuring was written by Gifford Pinchot the 3rd in 1985. But on the other hand, the knowledge about this specific term and what it means is very spotty. On the one hand, I’ll run into people when I say entrepreneurship, they’ll they’ll kinda look at me sideways and say, did you mean entrepreneurship? And on the other hand, I will run into others who are very familiar and and they’ll say, oh, I’m one of those. And in fact, I I, earlier this year after the publication of the book, one of my favorite experiences on this topic of familiarity, with with entrepreneurship is there is actually a company that I’ve run into that has an enterprise resource group, an ERG, just for entrepreneurs. I thought that was brilliant. Wish I’d thought of it. And so now I’m gonna make that one of my recommendations for some companies too.

Beau(5:38) No. That that that is brilliant. Maybe there’s a way to get involved with that group. But, so, basically, it sounds like this this book is the embodiment of of Lewis Gulp’s, you know, career path, right, over the last, you know, 15, 20 years, which is great. So let let’s dive in here a little bit on on what what what is entrepreneur, ship, or what is an what is an entrepreneur from your perspective?

Louis(6:00) Sure. So it’s pretty straightforward. An entrepreneur is someone who creates value through innovation and growth within a larger organization. And that’s it. Someone who creates value through innovation and growth within a larger organization. And therefore, entrepreneurship, picking up on what you said before, is the practice of creating that growth through, innovation, within a larger organization. And once once you understand that, it’s really simple. It can be applied in a lot of ways in a lot of places.

Beau(6:34) No. It makes sense. And then so just to further define this, so what are the differences, the key characteristics between an entrepreneur and an entrepreneur?

Louis(6:42) Okay. So, this is really important and there are several of them. One of them is the span of control and influence that someone has. Typically, if you’re an entrepreneur, you have control and influence and decision making authority, within your initiative or within your business unit, but it’s typically very limited outside of that. Whereas if you’re an entrepreneur, as the owner of a business or the founder of a business or both, you have a wide, you know, scope relative to the size of the organization in in terms of how you can make decisions. The next is the processes used for decision making. In a larger organization, you tend to have more complex, sometimes, processes that have been developed over decades, even centuries. And on the other hand, if you’re an entrepreneur, maybe you have, something that has been, time tested, but it tends to be more streamlined. Next, you have potential access to resources as an entrepreneur that many entrepreneurs don’t have. Tell me about it. I know. I know this firsthand. A 100%. And I do too. Been there, done that. And the implications of that are pretty profound. On the one hand, an entrepreneur can say, oh, I’d like to get some market research and go over to the marketing department. If you’re an entrepreneur and you you have a small growing business, you might be the marketing department. And if you aren’t, you know, you may be reaching out to someone who is not in the company but can help you with that or other resources. And these days, even AI can help to a certain extent.

Beau(8:15) Got it. No. That’s that’s very interesting. I appreciate you kind of sharing the the the contrast between the 2. So digging a little bit deeper to the entrepreneur, side of the house. So why are they important to, to organizations, and is there a sweet spot in regards to organizational type or size where an entrepreneur makes the most of this?

Louis(8:35) Okay. So my research uncovered four reasons that entrepreneurs are important to the future of organizations. Sometimes it’s just the strength of them. Sometimes it is really, you know, make or break. And if you invest in entrepreneurship, the company can thrive. And if you don’t, short term, you might be fine, but longer term, you’re gonna have some very serious and preventable challenges. So the first way that entrepreneurs help that that came through the comments from from a variety of folks I’ve spoken with and also from experience is they push established organizations to adapt. They’re the ones who are asking lots of questions. They they may want to in fact, they probably do want the trains to run on time, but they also wanna know where should we put another track. Next, they train the next generation of leaders over and over again. And and I did not see this coming early on in the writing process as clearly as I did after completing the research and writing process, and that is I just see so many instances where someone who’s promising, they have talent, they they work hard, they have the opportunity to do something that is really challenging, that’s really important to the organization. Maybe it’s outside of their current capability set, but they grow in terms of their ability to contribute. And months or years down the road, they turn into the most promising and talented and experienced leaders in the organization in many cases. Next, they create transformative growth opportunities for entrepreneurs. This is another one where it makes sense when you look at it, but it may not be obvious on the surface. And for example, if you have someone who is head of corporate growth at a large company and they know they need to gain a certain capability and they don’t wanna build it inside, then guess where they’re gonna look? They’re gonna look in the market landscape to see if somebody has created that capability. And if you have a scrappy entrepreneur who’s seen an opportunity and has built a a technology or a process or a team or all the above so that they can help the big company, then, you know, it’s one thing if you have a small promising company that really is brilliant. It’s another thing if you have that same small promising company that’s brilliant that’s working with Home Depot Sure. And, and has a real substantive and longer term relationship with them. And last, they drive value creation within the organization. Small today is big tomorrow. And so you can have, for example, a mobile business in the weather channel that’s generating hardly enough money to, you know, buy a nice dinner for, half the team. And then a few years later, it’s driving a significant portion of the value of the company.

Beau(11:25) I assume that was your, you’re doing within that within that organization?

Louis(11:29) I cannot claim credit for that, but I can say that our team did that.

Beau(11:34) Fair fair enough. We’ll we’ll, we’ll respond. And so one kind of follow-up to that is is there a sweet spot in regards to size organization? Are we talking, you know, Fortune 500, Fortune 50? Could this be for the your SMB? Like, where where does this make sense? Because I’m sure it’s there is a point where an organization is just simply not mature enough. You you don’t have the resources financially to support an entrepreneur. But where does that where’s that threshold typically?

Louis(11:57) I think you’re on to something important that that there is a range, within which entrepreneurship is likely to be more valuable. Mhmm. However, one of the most interesting insights from writing the book and doing research is that there is a wide range of organizations that can benefit. And so I actually don’t believe there’s a single sweet spot. I I haven’t found that yet, and the evidence doesn’t support it at the moment. On the other hand, actually, the contrary is true. You You can have a Fortune 500 or a Fortune 1000 company, which is frankly where I started when I was writing the book, but then I discovered, hey, wait a minute, maybe you have a company that’s a a $10,000,000 company. It’s a growth organization and this entrepreneurship is critically important so that they double or triple or quadruple their size. And, one of the things that does happen, however, is that in a larger organization, it takes a bigger initiative to make a dent from a percentage perspective. Of course. I wanna be careful about missing any important observations related to strategic value or, you know, revenue or profit not reflecting the true value of an initiative to a company because all that’s true. But at the end of the day, let’s say if you have a $10,000,000 business and you have something that’s a $5,000,000 growth opportunity, that’s 50% growth. But if you have a $1,000,000,000 business and it’s, you know, a a $5,000,000 growth opportunity, it it’s a small fraction. And then there are some decisions about how important that is to the organization, overall, strategic relevance, and so forth. Another angle on this is that, I started with a primary focus on for profit companies on the private sector. What I quickly realized is that entrepreneurship is highly relevant within nonprofits. It’s highly relevant within educational institutions. An old friend of mine who works with the government said, hey, this looks like exactly what we need in our organization for the government. So there are lots of different types of organizations where it matters, and I think that the, practice of entrepreneurship spans types of organizations and a wide range of sizes. Although, as you pointed out, at at a certain point, you get to a place where maybe, it’s too small and it’s best to focus on the the knitting.

Beau(14:34) Sure. And then, you know, follow-up question. So, you know, you kinda alluded to some of the the top characteristics of of entrepreneurs, but I’d love to get just a layer deeper on that, maybe both soft skills as well as as well as hard skills. You know, what the traditionality is typically like? I mean, obviously, they’re they’re they’re orchestrators. They’re probably like a COO, chief of staff type, but love to get a a a layer deeper on that.

Louis(14:56) Sure. They they tend to be multitalented. My research uncovered 16 characteristics. I’ll go over 5 of them today. Plus, for our conversation, I’m just in the middle of reading a book called Grit right now by Angela Duckworth. And so I’ll insert a comment about effort because she had a fairly profound observation in her book that I think your listeners may be interested in. So first of all, the top five characteristics are curiosity, action orientation, ability to build bridges, risk tolerance, and grounded optimism. Okay? And these just came up over and over again in the research that I did. The curiosity is required. Sure. For someone who isn’t asking questions, has less interest in learning, feels like they just wanna focus on the ongoing business, that’s okay. I try to be very careful about value judgments here. However, for someone who’s not curious, it’s almost impossible to succeed at being an intrepreneur. There might be something else, that that feels better and is more successful. Next, entrepreneurs take action. They have, what Bill Burnett and Dave Evans in a book called Designing Your Life refer to as a biased toward action or a biased action. And, I have found that I I’m thinking back to serving in the mobile marketing association. And this was in the 2000s, and we were building new guidelines for the mobile marketing and advertising industry. Mhmm. And at the time, what we realized is that we could have conversations all day long about what we needed and what was good for the wireless carriers versus the media companies versus the the smaller service providers, but we had to create guiding documents and then secure adoption. And we talked a lot about action orientation in a world where it’s easy to have lots of conversation. And so, I would say that that’s the second characteristic it’s required. The third one, and this is where you start to get some differentiation in particular with entrepreneurship, relatively speaking, is the ability to build bridges. Because there’s a specific skill set and and a set of practices required to navigate within a larger organization that many entrepreneurs don’t need to worry about so much. Obviously, communication is required anywhere. But on the other hand, if you have both authority and you have resources, then as an entrepreneur, you can say, hey, we’re building that spaceship. Right. But on the other hand, if you have exactly the same mission and you’re within a large organization, I guarantee you, you’re gonna have a few people to talk with. And they might have fancy titles like CFO and COO and and head of procurement and all that sort of stuff. And so the ability to build bridges in that environment is super important. Risk tolerance is next. For anybody who just insists on succeeding all the time, you know, you you’ve, you know, we’re I’m all for, taking calculated risks and, you know, doing assessments before you move and doing experiments. But some of this is gonna be experimental, and some of it’s gonna work better than others. And one of the best ways to be a successful entrepreneur is to try a bunch of stuff with the knowledge that that’s gonna happen. And lastly, this concept of grounded optimism. Hey. Look. This is hard work most of the time. Every now and again, you just, you know, let’s imagine you’re getting you’re you’re looking for oysters and you like oysters. Every now and again, you’re gonna find some in, like, a foot of water and you can just wait in and get it. Most of the time, you might have to put on some, diving gear, or you might need a boat or something like that. And so, for people who who are gonna do that type of work, you wanna understand what the vision is and then go after it. And then I do wanna touch on this topic of effort. Angela Duckworth made the observation in her book that effort counts twice. And that ties into one of the characteristics of entrepreneurs that that came up over and over again and that is hard work. I’ve never found a successful entrepreneur, at least over time, who doesn’t have a strong work ethic. What what she said she she quantified it a little bit more. She said, here here’s what happens. You have people with talent and then they put in effort, and that creates skill. And then with that skill or ability, that times effort equals achievement. So she observes that effort counts twice. When I think about her statement, that has some additional meaning to me because I think when we’re looking at the qualities that result in successful outcomes, not everything is created equal. And so from my perspective, you could have all 5 of those top characteristics. But if you don’t have a healthy and maybe double dose of effort, it’s gonna be very difficult to succeed the outcome that that creates as much value as we could.

Beau( 20:01) Yeah. It’s super interesting. I mean, listen. We we also do, in addition to fractional work, we do full time executive placement, and a lot of those characteristics are what the companies we represent actually do look for. So so that’s a continuous theme, I think, probably the executive sector, with the curiosity component being, generally at at the top of the list. But this is this is a really, really interesting list. You know, action oriented ability to build bridges, you know, risk tolerance, grounded optimism. So, basically, a pragmatist you need on the, you know, on the books, which is great. I do wanna dig into the ability to build bridges. I do agree with you, and I think the picture you painted in regards to entrepreneurship versus intrepreneurship is is very different. Entrepreneurship entrepreneur does say, we’re doing this. And, I mean, push back, if you will. They’ll go find somebody else. The intrepreneur literally and mainly probably due to politics is going to have to make sure that they are building the bridges both literally and figuratively, getting the right people on board, the right business units, the right leaders, etcetera. So, you know, how how can they best succeed in aligning, like, a broader company strategy, And what type of communication typically works best for this type of role?

Louis(21:14) Okay. So we could have a very long conversation over multiple days on each of those topics. I’ll try to share a few top of mind thoughts. 1st, with strategy, and this is gonna be so obvious that it almost might seem, to be assumed, but I’m gonna say it anyway. Learn the company’s strategy. Really understand it. And that doesn’t mean just read the email. That’s right. Understand the vision, understand the mission, understand not just what the, evergreen version of that is, but what the company strategy is over the next 1, 3, 5 years. When you understand that, you’re gonna have a much better chance of coming up with ideas and supporting and evaluating ideas that align with that strategy. Marie Quintero Johnson at Coca Cola, shared with me as I was interviewing her for the book. She said that, hey, every now and again, you find an idea that just comes out of the blue, and I’m paraphrasing here. However, the vast majority of the time, a concept that you have that’s really gonna be picked up by the company is already either known specifically or the area is understood, and what you can do is kinda bring that concept or that idea to life. And so this isn’t necessarily, let let’s take, I don’t know, Apple and and the iPhone and the iPad. Every now and again, you’ll have something like the iPad and the tablet concept, which just got created that was brand new. A lot of the time, you’ll know what you’re gonna do with an iPhone or you’ll know what opportunities are with the iPhone, and then you can run with them. But in any event, the initiatives need to, align with the strategy. Obviously, it helps to build relationships with people who are within the company who can help you tie together your actions to the strategy. And then, you know, specifically for entrepreneurs, securing resources to, support these ideas and develop them, that’s really important and having enough time. One of the things that, quickly stops promising initiatives and talented entrepreneurs is when there’s some sort of corporate guideline that said, you gotta get this result by this time. And if you don’t, you know, we’re gonna move on. That’s not a bad idea in concept, but often the timelines for established businesses are too short for the unpredictable nature of an entrepreneurial venture. I don’t know if anybody who’s listening to this has done a house project recently, a renovation, but there’s a guideline that often those sorts of things cost twice as much and they take twice as long. And my experience is that often entrepreneurial ventures are like those renovation projects. And on the other hand, every now and again, you get a surprise. Right. And you’re moving faster than expected. The marketplace just lifts it up. And and of course, with some planning and derisking, you can actually come pretty close to the mark. But all all things considered, it’s very important to be aligned with the strategy and then there are practices to make that happen. With the communications, there are just so many ways that are important. However, that is a critical observation in of of itself. There isn’t a single mechanism to communicate effectively with the wide range of audiences and people inside and outside of an organization. Some of the most important ones are, you know, conversations with people as opposed to emails or as opposed, or as opposed to a text. Some of them carefully placed are off sites. So you can get a big strategic advance and a big dose of alignment, in one place. And there are also kinda there’s this practice of what I call the quick pings. And in the context of people working remotely or in a lot of different places, it’s the quick phone call or the text just to check-in and see how someone is doing. In traditional work environments where you’re in the office, it’s, you know, management by walking around, where you just walk around and check-in with people. Some things are because you plan them and some things are because you just asked. There are a couple of things that don’t work so well. One of them is if you act like a basketball coach on a basketball court inside a large company. I agree. Other people that I know have tried that. I’ve tried it. It rarely works well. The idea, you know, with a basket for anybody who loves hoops, you know, you’re on the court. It’s an intense environment. Maybe you have an audience, and you gotta get somebody to drive to the basket. And if you wanna communicate, you might be yelling across the court or you might be bringing somebody in and giving them a real talking to. Those things don’t really work well, when there’s an audience, when there are people around in a corporate or an entrepreneurial environment. On the other hand, really seeking to understand first, in many cases, giving guidance but doing it in a private space, giving people the space to use their own creativity, those things tend to work well. And then I’ll come back around to this, you know, epidemic we have of people trying to be efficient but not effective. You got, well, I don’t have much time, so I need to communicate quickly. So I’ve got this contentious topic, or potentially contentious, or difficult topic. But I’m gonna send a a a 2 sentence text. That’s a really quick way to be, inefficient because you can spend a lot of time cleaning up.

Beau(27:00) Wow. Yeah. No. It’s super interesting. A lot to impact you know, a lot to unpack. You know, when you were talking when you used the the homebuilding analogy, I thought about, you know, the one where it’s like things can be good, fast, and cheap. Choose 2. Right? Yep. But I I love the component on the, the office office politics, getting people in the broader vision. And, you know, the in person is is so important. And I try to do this and make this a practice myself that if I’m in the car, I have idle time. I’ll open my phone, and I’ll try to have conversations with people, business that are in my business, kind of purview, but not business related. You know, where I just actively call them and see how are they doing? How’s life? Maybe business will be talked about a little bit, but I think that’s really important. Also too, you know, about the communication style. In person, a 1000 times better than email. Email, a lot of times, things can be taken out of context, particularly when people are fast and you do have one sentence or 2 sentence. So I thought that was really interesting. And so it’s almost like the, the entrepreneur needs to play, like, the the role they need to be, like, you know, the antithesis of politics, within an organization and and kind of add the humanity component back into it in order to be successful. And I feel that’s the only way to really get people on the same page versus just steamrolling, which I feel we see a lot of in corporate America. And, candidly, that’s one of the reasons why I left it. No interest in office politics, no interest in favorites, and no interested in getting steamrolled. Just life’s too short for that. One one oddball question I wanna throw at you. You you mentioned Apple, and as, you know, at the outset of the the initial call, I I was thinking, you know, about Steve Jobs. And, you know, is he is he the best entrepreneur to ever live? I mean, obviously, he was an entrepreneur first, but he really was kind of the orchestrator within this organization. And he’s got the the old adage of why hire good people if you don’t listen to him. So what’s your perspective on Steve Jobs as, you know, is he is he one part entrepreneur, 2 parts entrepreneur? Like, what what is his, what was that makeup that that made him so unique?

Louis(28:59) Well, I I think he had the capabilities for both, and he demonstrated those. However, I would describe him as a classic entrepreneur, especially because of the scope of his decision making, even leading a large company. And what you’re touching on is a critically important observation, and that is the chief executive officer or the equivalent of any organization sets the tone. They need to walk the talk. What I would say about Steve Jobs is he created an environment where entrepreneurs could thrive. Wasn’t always easy. Right. Wasn’t always obvious or quick, but he had generation after generation of, product launches and services and integrated offerings, which have turned Apple into either the most valuable or one of the most valuable companies on the planet these days, depending on when you check. And so I I think that he brought the ability to create an environment where entrepreneurs could thrive. Look at Tim Cook and how he grew with the organization, and just go on and on. And and I’m familiar with some of the folks. I I don’t know if Apple likes names to be mentioned, so I’ll avoid mentioning names. But I’m thinking of this. 2 people in particular that I work closely with at The Weather Channel and then at CNN to bring products to the marketplace. And they had enormous spans of control and influence to help Apple achieve its goals and in the process, to help companies like, news and information providers to bring apps to the marketplace that reached millions and tens of millions of people. They made it happen.

Beau(30:46) They did. Yeah. Louis, this was super, super interesting. Really appreciate you taking the time. Last question for you. Where can people find you? Where can they get a copy of this book without you having to send it to them? Share share some of that information.

Louis(31:01) Oh, thanks for asking. So my website is louisgump.com, l o u i s g u m p, dot com. And that’s an easy place to learn more about the book and to learn more about some of the people who have made comments on it to, access additional information. Also, it’s easy to find the book. I know you and I are in Atlanta, so you can go to Eagle Eye Bookshop in Decatur, and they have the book in stock. Last I checked, Barnes and Noble in several locations does, and of course, Amazon, it’s super easy. One of the things that I did wanna mention is that, we put a lot of time and effort into the hardcover. Thank you for noticing that. I’m very grateful to graphic designers and others who who helped us deliver on, the intention of a world class, book, not just in in the content, but in in the experience. We also have an ebook that is available, on Kindle and other readers, and in addition to that, an audiobook. So if you go to Audible, you can find it. And so we’ve tried to make this really customer friendly and and so that if someone’s interested, they can find, an option that works well for them.

Beau(32:10) Excellent. Well, hey. Thank you so much. We’ll be sure to add some links, to this as well as to the notes, and, just really appreciate your time lending your brain to us for a little while here. Great pleasure. Very nice to talk to you again. Thanks for taking the time.

Louis(32:24) Oh, you got it, Beau. It’s been a real pleasure, and I look forward to talking soon.

Beau(32:28) Absolutely.