IAM1273 – CEO Creates a Human Connection Platform that Cultivates Engagement

Pete Schramm grew up on a farm in Butler, PA. Studied mechanical engineering at college in DC. Played basketball and track then studied abroad in Hong Kong. While finishing his Master's, he started working at Lockheed Martin (defense contractor) and traveled around the world building systems and leading teams to keep our soldiers safe. He then worked at a smaller defense contractor; leading a team of 100 people building robots for the Army. He realized that his true purpose was connecting people and in March 2018, Pete decided to start a company around this. Pete has been working on Lattus full-time since October 2020. As of Dec 2021, Lattus is working with 60+ organizations around the country and will be launching with the Army in early 2022!

• CEO Story: Pete grew up on a farm with a big passion for connecting people by bringing them together. Kept fascinated as he explored the real world. He worked as a defense contractor but later shifted to his true purpose which is connecting people.
• Business Service: Human connection platform that cultivates engagement. Either you learn or teach. You will be matched inside your trusted private community.
• Secret Sauce: Privacy. Not connected/integrated with other apps. So you can focus on the engagement to connect with the person.
• CEO Hack: Recommended Books: Starts with Why – by Simon Sinek; Psyched Up by Dan McGinn –  how to prepare people for the biggest moment in their life; Turn the Ship Around – empower your team; Essentialism – setting priorities.
• CEO Nugget: Always take time to appreciate the journey you have been on.
• CEO Defined: Steering the ship. Removing the roadblocks. Leading, motivating, and setting the vision.

Website: www.lattus.com

LinkedIn: pete-schramm-pmp

LinkedIn: lattus

Instagram: lattusinc

Facebook: lattusinc

Twitter: LetsLattus

Youtube: www.youtube.com/channel/UCp3zuVw1_otkAEoL9Y9ZKiQ

F6S: lattus

Check out one of our favorite CEO Hack’s Audible. Get your free audiobook and check out more of our favorite CEO Hacks HERE

Transcription

The full transcription is only available to CBNation Library Members. Sign up today!

Please Note: Our team is using the AI CEO Hacks: Exemplary AI and Otter.ai to support our podcast transcription. While we know it's improving there may be some inaccuracies, we are updating and improving them. Please contact us if you notice any issues, you can also test out Exemplary AI here.

00:12 – Intro

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harker values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO podcast.

00:39 – Gresham Harkless

Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast. I have a very special guest on the show today at Peter Schramm of Lattus. It's great to have you on the show.

00:48 – Peter Schramm

Gresham, thanks for having me on. Excited to chat and look forward to what we're going to dig into today.

00:53 – Gresham Harkless

Yes, absolutely excited as well too. And before we jump into that, I want to read a little bit more about Pete so you can hear about some of the awesome things that he's doing. Pete grew up on a farm in Butler, Pennsylvania, studying mechanical engineering at college in DC played basketball and track, and then studied abroad in Hong Kong. While finishing his master's, he started working at Lockheed Martin, a defense contractor, and traveled around the world building systems and leading teams to help keep our soldiers safe.

He then worked at a smaller defense contractor, leading a team of 100 people building robots for the Army. And he realized that his true purpose was connecting people. And so in March 2018, Pete decided to start a company around this. Pete has been working at Lattice full-time since October 2020 and as of December 2021, Lattice is working with 60-plus organizations around the country and will be launching with the Army in early 2022. Pete, exciting news to hear about the opportunity that you're creating and the connection that you're making. So looking forward to connecting with you as well too. Are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

[restrict paid=”true”]

01:54 – Peter Schramm

Let's do it. Yeah, so it all starts with why, and it all starts with kind of my mom and dad, right? So growing up on the farm, I was always told that our purpose is to better the lives of others and to make their life easier. And Gresham, it didn't really make sense to me. How in the world am I going to do that by, you know, all this manual labor? And I realized that you know, you can do it at different pieces of your life. And for me, I found the most satisfaction out of connecting people and bringing them together. So in grade school, right? Middle of nowhere, Western Pennsylvania, it was, hey, Pete, how can we get connected?

Somebody to help me with my math homework. Where can I go play basketball? You know, who can help me get my tractor fixed? Because that's what the conversations were around. And as I got into high school, first a public high school and then a private high school, I realized that there was more than just those first 3 topics. There's like this thing called life after high school. There's this thing, you need to get a job, right? You have to go to college at some point, right? Optionally, I thought at that point, you had to go to college, but now I'm learning. There are a million different paths that you can take and it's not a one size fits.

So as I continue to meet more people and hear about new experiences. I'm just getting super excited because I can make all these more connections. Right. And then I go down to the big city of Washington, D.C. And I'm like, whoa, check this out. People from all over the world that I'm getting to meet and Gresham my first year at Catholic University and second year at Catholic University I met at least one new person each week and you go back to talk to anybody you know freshman year sophomore year they're like yep that was Pete always doing stuff you know getting involved with different activities but it's because that's where I got fired up right I feed off of the energy of others.

When the people around me are excited, they're catalyzing those aha moments, tapping into those opportunities they didn't know existed, opening up those doors they didn't think they could reach, that's when clearly I get excited about it, right? So that's what was going on. And so as I go in through undergrad, you know, studied abroad in Hong Kong, and I realized, oh my gosh, people from all over the world are having these questions. What can I do with my life? Who's there to help out? Who can I talk to? Who's available? When can I talk to them? How do I track these relationships over time?

And I'm like, huh, okay. So I had this issue when I was growing up on the farm, right? People in these public high schools and private high schools have this issue. People in college, right down in DC, people from all over the world, because there are people from like, I don't know, 35 different countries in our exchange program. So it's not like this is just a micro, you know, case study if you will. This is about as macro as you can get. So I came back and I decided I'm gonna quit college sports so that I can focus on doing my master's degree.

Cause again, I never wanted to hear the words, no, you can't do that because you don't have enough experience. You don't have enough training. You don't have enough education. So it's all about challenge, opportunity, and adding more and more transferable skills to your toolbox. So as I'm working at Lockheed Martin, I find that the people that you surround yourself with really kind of define who you are and where you can go.

You've probably all heard of the, it's not what you know, it's who you know. And I said, no, no, no, no, no. Let's do both. Let's get you the who and help you with the what as well. And so over those 4 years, that's whenever this idea of lattice came to be. And as you mentioned, it's fully functional today.

05:20 – Gresham Harkless

Nice, I absolutely love that, and especially like I think the true entrepreneur starts to look at why either or when we can choose both and have them together. So I love how you decided and had that experience throughout different paths of your life. And you started to see that there was an opportunity there and you don't have to choose that either, or you can go down and create your own lane, blaze your own trail, so to speak. So I love that you've been able to do that with Lattice. And so I wanted to drill down a little bit more. I know you did touch on it a little bit. I did as well too when I read your bio. Could you take us through what Lattice is? How are you making an impact and how you're building those connections?

05:53 – Peter Schramm

Yeah, so number one, Lattice is a human connection platform that cultivates engagement, right? We do this through conversations, and people helping people. And imagine yourself, Gresham, you just got into a new role in a company. Okay, HR is probably gonna talk you through your benefits, your insurance, your payroll stuff, but then they oftentimes will talk to you about a mentor, a buddy, a champion, a sponsor, different ERGs, employee resource groups. How do you find those people? How do you track those conversations over time?

I'm a big-time notebook person. And we think about it, we're now working from anywhere. Flexibility is paramount to kind of any role that anybody has. So that's where Lattice fills the gap, right? Adds a lot of value, not a lot of time. And if we think about it, it's a software platform. So you Log in and in step one, tell us what you want to talk about to learn or to teach, okay? Step 2, integrates to your calendar because we live and die by our calendar. And this is where you say, hey, this is my lattice office hours.

I'm available to have a conversation on Tuesday mornings from 10 to 12, right? If something pops up on your calendar and you're no longer available, your lattice availability gets removed. Step 3, you get matched and have the conversation inside your trusted private secure community right on the platform. No Zoom, no teams, no Skype, no giving out your phone number, your email address, no spam, nobody's barraging you, hey, selling you this thing. Then step 4, you track your notes and provide feedback. So you are actually gonna prepare an agenda before each of these one-on-one conversations.

You can go back and reference what you talked about in the past. So whenever we think about the secret sauce and what really sets us apart, it's the structure. It's the continuity. It's the fact that this is active, right? Not passive, right? We have, you think about Slack, You have Zoom, right? Those are great tools, but that's sort of a passive engagement, not as structured. You don't really know what we talked about the last, when did we last speak? What did we talk about? Right? I'm a big action items guy.

So that's how Lattice works. And the impact that we're creating, right? Saving people time. People love this because it's everything you need all in one place without the extra stuff. And that's how it's helped us grow and the warm referrals along the way. It's like, hey, this is what we do. And if that works for you, awesome. If it doesn't, that's okay, right? So being genuine has been a big piece of it as well.

08:21 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, I appreciate you sharing that, especially, you know, the secret sauce piece, because I think I was almost envisioning like kind of like the duct tape and making sure like we have all these different tools and pieces, but as you said, they are not connected. They're not integrated. So I wanted to switch gears a little bit. And I want to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an app, a book, or a habit that you have, but what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

08:43 – Peter Schramm

Yeah, so let's talk about a couple of books. Let's talk about a couple of feedback pieces that I've gotten through different lattice conversations. So one is focused, right? Most businesses, most small businesses fail in the first year. And the ones that stay alive, a whole bunch of them are gonna fail in the next 3 years, right? A bunch more in the next 5 years. So the odds are against us, guys, gals, everybody, right? But to focus on and really remember what is it that fires you up. So keep going back to your why.

One of the books that talk about that is Simon Sinek's Start With Why, right? Another book that I recommend is Psyched Up by Dan McGinn. So he works for Harvard Business Review and I love this book. It's how do people prepare for the biggest moments in their life and kind of how do you harness that energy? I also recommend turning the ship around. How do you empower the people? So anybody that's the leader has a team out there, empower the folks inside of your organization.

One of my previous managers recommended that to me and it's kind of like, aha. Another book is Essentialism. And this is a big one where you think about less but better. And I might my different mentors will continue saying, Hey, Pete, are you doing that less but it better thing you talk about it, right? Walk the walk and talk the talk. But something else that they talk about in there is yes, no, and hell yes decisions. So whenever you're going through and you look at your calendar for the day, you're driving to a meeting or something, you're like, is this a yeah or a nah or a heck yeah, right, conversation?

Do more of those heck yes. And surround yourself with other people who are going to be there for you and not sugarcoat things. So to have your own personal board of advisors, of course, you have one legal for your business, but to have your own personal board of advisors is super impactful and balanced. If you don't take care of yourself and you're working, 80, 90, 100 hours, week in, week out, you're just grinding, burnout's a real thing and it's happening more than ever.

And so I learned the hard way that, you know, burnout and stress and worry can kill and can have a negative impact on you. So take time for yourself. And that's something else that your personal board of advisors can help. So structure, focus, prioritization of your time, and being with those other people who care about your success, but they're not gonna sugarcoat it or make things easy.

11:14 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, I absolutely love each of those hacks and how they have manifested themselves from the books that you read. I definitely have to check a lot of those out. I want to ask you now for what I call CEO nugget. You might've already touched on this as well, but this is a little bit more of a word of wisdom or piece of advice. It might be something if you were to hop into a time machine, you might tell your younger business self.

11:34 – Peter Schramm

Yeah, so it's, life is what you make of it. And always take time to appreciate the journey that you've been on. And we talked earlier about climbing the mountain. And whenever people ask me, what's this entrepreneurship journey like? By no means am I the best entrepreneur out there? By no means am I the smartest guy in the room? But I'll share my perspective.

The entrepreneurial journey is like you're starting out on this adventure. You have to figure out what this adventure is, you got to figure out what this map looks like, and then chart your course. And imagine it's like, okay, we have to go from here to there. And you get to decide where that there is. You don't have a guide per se that tells you when to wake up and what to do and what your goals are, what your metrics are, what's your OKRs, right?

Measure What Matters, is another good book. And so that's a huge, huge piece of this. So you say, okay, we got to climb this mountain. Well, I got to go find the mountain to climb. I got to figure out, am I going to go this way, that way? And you might get to the top, or what you think is the top of that mountain, and realize, oh no, we're supposed to be over there. We're supposed to be at that mountain, right?

And then once you get, you go back down, go over there, and of course, this whole time it's rainy, it's dark, you don't have really good footing on this path, on this journey, but every so often, you just gotta stop and turn around and look and say, wow, Look at all that ground that we've covered. Look at this, you know, all the different people that we've talked to, right? Everything that we've learned, the network we've built, this opportunity that we've created for ourselves and others. And so that's a huge, huge piece that I keep telling myself, would tell my younger self, would share with everybody else that's on this call as well.

13:21 – Gresham Harkless

And I want to ask you now my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. We're hoping to have different quote-unquote CEOs on the show. So, Pete, what does being a CEO mean to you?

13:30 – Peter Schramm

You're steering the ship. You're removing the roadblocks for the people on your team. You're leading and motivating and setting the vision. You're getting people excited about where you're going and you're backing it up with facts, you're meeting people where they are and doing what matters most for the business. And there's always the adage, right? Do what's right, even when it's not popular.

So the CEO, you know, thinks about the basketball reference, right? You're the first one in the gym and you're the last one out of the gym. Right. And you have to lead by example because you never know who's watching and your actions speak louder than words. But the CEO is the one at the end of the day who's responsible for the good, the bad, and the ugly and what actually takes place.

14:23 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Well, Pete, truly appreciate that definition. I, of course, appreciate your time even more. What I want to do now is pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional that you can let our readers and listeners know. And of course, how best they can get a hold of you, find out about Lattice and all the awesome things you are working on.

14:39 – Peter Schramm 

Yes, I just want to say thanks, man. This is awesome. I love sharing the story and to everybody else that's listening, reach out. Well, I want to hear from you. If you want to get connected, right? Lattice is providing this solution to 100-plus-person companies. If you have a smaller strained HR team or organization, if you have a tech-savvy workforce, They know how to use a phone, tablet, or computer. If they're distributed, right? Maybe not everybody's in the office. Are they having those water cooler conversations?

And ask yourself this question, right? Are your people connected? If the answer is yes, I want to hear about it. If the answer is no, I want to hear about it. If the answer is I don't know, I want to hear about it. So Lattice will be kicking off a dozen more pilots, some pretty exciting news to hear soon. So check it out, www.lattice, L-A-T-T-U-S. You deserve to have access to that shot. So that's what Gresham's doing here. That's what this is doing here. And I'm fired up to be part of this community as it continues to grow. So thank you again for this opportunity to chat.

15:42 – Gresham Harkless

Absolutely appreciate you, Pete. To make it even easier, We'll have the links and information and then show notes. And I truly appreciate your mission and everything that you're building. You're growing. And I thank you so much, my friend, and I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

15:53 – Peter Schramm

Thanks, Gresham, really appreciate

15:55 – Outro

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

[/restrict]