IAM510- Author and Coach Showcases Entrepreneurs’ Stories

Eric has spent his career in entrepreneurial and leadership roles, including as chairman and CEO of Sensitech, a venture-backed business twice named to the Inc. 500 before being acquired by Carrier Corporation. Eric served as a CEO-partner with Ascent Ventures, as executive chairman of HubCast, and on the board of advisers of the Avedis Zildjian Company.

His nonprofit work includes chairing the Gettysburg Foundation and the New England Historic Genealogical Society. He is co-author of “Food Foolish: The Hidden Connection Between Food Waste, Hunger, and Climate Change,” and “King Philip's War: The History and Legacy of America's Forgotten Conflict,” and author of “Weathermakers to the World.”

Eric is a graduate of Brown University and the Harvard Business School.

• CEO Hack: Building, accessing and nurturing a community
• CEO Nugget: Establish a reputation for doing what you say you're going to do
• CEO Defined: Being a leader who puts people first and is brilliant at the basics

Website: https://theoccasionalceo.blogspot.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ericbschultz/?trk=profile-badge-name

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Innovation-Tap-Entrepreneurship-Broadways-Hamilton/dp/1626346631/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=

https://www.forewordreviews.com/reviews/innovation-on-tap/

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!

Intro 0:02

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 Harkless 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.

Gresham Harkless 0:29

Hello, this is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast and I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Eric Schultz, the author of Innovation on Tap.

Eric, it's awesome to have you on the show.

Eric Schultz 0:39

Gresh, it's nice to be here.

Gresham Harkless 0:41

Super excited to have you on. What I want to do is just read a little bit more about Eric so you can hear about all the awesome things that he's been able to do.

Eric has spent his career in entrepreneurial and leadership roles, including as chairman and CEO of Sensitech, a venture-backed business twice named to the Inc. 500 before being acquired by Carrier Corporation. Eric also served as a CEO-partner with Ascent Ventures, as executive chairman of HubCast, and on the board of advisers of the Avedis Zildjian Company.

His nonprofit work includes chairing the Gettysburg Foundation and the New England Historic Genealogical Society. He is the co-author of “Food Foolish: The Hidden Connection Between Food Waste, Hunger, and Climate Change,” and “King Philip's War: The History and Legacy of America's Forgotten Conflict,” and he is the author of “Weathermakers to the World.”

Eric is a graduate of Brown University and the Harvard Business School. Eric, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO Community?

[restrict paid=”true”]

Eric Schultz 1:37

I am prepared, Gresh.

Gresham Harkless 1:39

Awesome. Let's do it. I know we're going to talk about your book, but I know I touched on your bio, could you tell us a little bit more about your background? What led you to write this kind of book?

Eric Schultz 1:49

Yeah, well, I graduated, I have an MBA, and for most of my career, I have been doing entrepreneurial kinds of activities, launching companies, or in some cases launching innovation. Before that, I had a degree in history and I've always had a love for history. When we sold sense tech to United Technologies, a few years back, I had an opportunity to do a little more writing. It was the first time I've been able to combine these two interests, both the interest in entrepreneurship and in history.

I thought, wow, why don't I look at doing a book, which is the history of entrepreneurship in America take a look at innovation over the last three centuries? At about that same time, I was also doing a little bit of consulting and some board sitting and I was out with a portfolio CEO trying to raise some money at a venture firm. We were invited to an after-work session where they were going to have three of their CEOs present their portfolio companies. So we went and of course, if you've ever been to one of these, the CEOs are really on the spot.

They're in front of their investors their colleagues and their potential investors. They have to tell a good story. The three of them told a great story, hockey stick growth, everything was terrific. Afterward, we were standing around sort of this makeshift bar that the venture firm had set up. People started to let their hair down and tell the truth. One was running out of money in 90 days, and another had a competitor that they hadn't seen for months before another had lost a couple of her best coders.

At that time, by the way, as part of my research for my book, I had been reading a biography of Eli Whitney and he was born just before the American Revolution and sort of launched his cotton gin company, and later a musket company in the early republic in the early 1800s. I thought, wouldn't it be interesting if Whitney could have joined us at the bar that evening, he had been involved in a shipwreck, his factory had burned down in a fire, he'd caught smallpox, he caught malaria, he'd lost his partner and his best friend to some awful tropical disease, it would have been quite a story to tell.

Then as I was going home that night, I thought maybe that's the best way to structure this book. There's so much material, so many good stories, why don't I bring a bunch of entrepreneurs, both living and dead into this imaginary bar room and have them tell their stories? That's the way innovation on tap evolved and it allowed me not only to focus on a whole variety of stories but also in between the stories to have a little barroom scene, where the entrepreneurs could chat with each other, maybe poke each other in the ribs, play a little one-upmanship and for me to bring out the important themes that were being created in the book.

Gresham Harkless 4:39

Nice, I appreciate that. I know when we talked offline, and I first heard about that kind of the concept and what you had done with the book, I was like, this is awesome, just because any entrepreneur and creative I think is always thinking about what if this happened, or what if this happened, or this would have happened or this act would have happened at this period, and then you created that entire kind of scenario. I appreciate that.

Eric Schultz 5:01

Well, it gave me the chance to bring people together who might never obviously never could have come together otherwise. It also allowed me to not just do. I wanted to do good history. I wanted to do a good scholarship, but I wanted it to be fun readable, and accessible for people.

Gresham Harkless 5:17

Yeah, absolutely. I know this might be part of what I call, like the secret sauce, or the unique thing about this book. I know you touched on kind of like those themes. What are some of those themes that we'll get from like actually opening up the book?

Eric Schultz 5:29

Well, I ended up sort of just opening up my brain to all this research and literature and all these stories. As I started to read, the themes evolved. I ended up with six themes in all, and the book is meant to be read from cover to cover. You can see the themes unfold but also, if you just like one of the stories about Branch Rickey or Buddy Bolden or King Camp Gillette, you can dive into the stories. The themes evolved this way. The first one is mechanization. In early Republican America, if you could work with pistons and ratchets and cams and gears, then you had a path into entrepreneurship because the country was really in need of machines that could replace human labor.

That involves people like Eli Whitney and his conscience. Once mechanization, takes hold, then we start to do it faster and faster and you see the Telegraph and the Railroad start to appear and we end up with these large factories doing mass production. It's mechanization on steroids. That's when we get someone like King Camp Gillette, making his razor blades. Once American entrepreneurs get good at those two things, then they start to overwhelm their markets. When you can start to produce that fast you run out of customers. The third phase, the 13th, became consumerism. How do we create consumers as fast as we create all of this stuff? One of the entrepreneurs, one of several that I feature there is Alfred Sloan at General Motors who defines consumerism in the 20th century.

Now we've got a world where we're mechanizing things very quickly, we're building consumers. That leads to the fourth theme, which is we overwhelm our markets, and we have to start thinking about sustainability. So sustainability is the fourth theme, how do we do this stuff, keeping in mind that we can't destroy the ecosystem that we're selling into? Then the fifth theme is the one that a lot of our listeners will recognize and that's digitization, which is very close to mechanization, the first one.

Again, if you could use gears, you could mechanize. Now if you can write code, you can digitise and that opens up a whole world of entrepreneurship. If these are the dominant themes in each period of American history, there's one overarching theme. That is what I call social and cultural entrepreneurship. There are people like Buddy Bolden, who are creating jazz, or Lin Manuel Miranda, who's bringing the founding fathers in rap to Broadway, who don't fit into any of those dominant themes, but are nonetheless really interesting. entrepreneurs and innovators.

Gresham Harkless 8:07

Nice, I appreciate that and appreciate those different aspects and it's funny what you were talking about with mechanization. I immediately was thinking about that's kind of like what's happening now with all the technology innovation. I can see how there are so many synergies there. I love how you kind of spoke about where a lot of times those things overlap for one by getting the opportunity to hear through the stories of entrepreneurs and people that have created phenomenal things and kind of traditional ways. It sounds like maybe even in untraditional ways, we kind of get to hear how those themes kind of manifest themselves in their different stories.

Eric Schultz 8:43

That's right. Daniel Kahneman, the Economist has a great line. He says, nobody ever did anything because of a number, they do it because of stories. That's the focus of the book. There's some expository material in between, like, what was it like to try to be an act for in a world of slavery for example, or Jim Crow, but really, it's the stories that I think will stick with people as they read the book.

Gresham Harkless 9:11

Yeah, absolutely. I don't know if this was what you were thinking about doing but I've always heard that when you're trying to teach different lessons or you're hoping people can take in different content, whether it be numbers or themes or whatever it might be. Stories are the way to do that. Because a lot of times people love great stories, they love to hear them. Then in doing that, you're also learning different skills and different things that people have done to be successful as well.

Eric Schultz 9:37

I think that's right. I mean, that's the liberal arts background. My history background coming through now, which is stories are what moved the world.

Gresham Harkless 9:44

Yes, absolutely. As an English major, I would correct my pros then.

Eric Schultz 9:51

I need to correct my pros. That's why I need to work on myself so after me.

Gresham Harkless 9:58

I want to just switch gears a little bit and I want to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. This could be something that's from the book or anything additional you kind of wanted to build upon. But it's something like an app or book or a habit that makes you more effective and efficient.

Eric Schultz 10:11

Yeah. When you think of 25 entrepreneurs, people who did Broadway shows, and people who did cotton gin, just think is there anything that they have in common, there were several things that came out of the book, but the one that stuck with me is about an entrepreneurs ability to build an access, and nurture community. Nobody has all the tools necessary for success. There are a few entrepreneurs that I studied, who aren't at some point overwhelmed for a moment or feel defeated. None of the ones that came to the bar room were successful without the collaboration of friends and partners, and the wider community, even genius entrepreneurs, like Lin Manuel Miranda, did better because of the community he formed.

Gresham Harkless 10:57

I appreciate that hack. Now I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO nugget. You might have run a session on this. This is a word of wisdom a piece of advice or something additional that you found in your book, what would be something you would tell your own business?

Eric Schultz 11:11

Well, I dedicated the book to Steve Dodge, who died tragically earlier this year in a cycling accident. He plucked me out of business school and gave me my first job as a general manager. And later he was on the board of the first company where I was CEO. After I had my first board meeting, I pulled them aside and said, Steve, is there any advice you can give to a new CEO? And he said, make your numbers? I said great. Anything else? He said, No. Just make your numbers. What I think he was saying was this, establish a reputation with everyone, your board, your team, your partners, your customers, for doing what you say you're going to do. That is as good advice as I ever got.

Gresham Harkless 11:52

Yeah, I think that that goes as you say, kind of, well beyond that it's important when you're trying to make your numbers and you're talking to the board of directors and people, but you start to build that reputation and that reputation precedes you a lot of time. If you're constantly somebody who says you're going to do something that you do, and then that's going to manifest itself in different opportunities we see and sometimes don't see.

Eric Schultz 12:15

That's right. The truth is, I didn't always make my numbers. If you're an adventurer, back firm, you're constantly stretching. The point is that you're credible, that you are dependable that you try as best you can to do the things that you're going to do and you don't let people down.

Gresham Harkless 12:32

Yeah, absolutely. If you would echo this as well, too, when a lot of times, even when you don't make your numbers or things don't necessarily go as planned, which usually what happens is, as long as you can stand up and say that and show up and be that person that delivers the good and bad news. That also speaks to your character as well.

Eric Schultz 12:52

I agree.

Gresham Harkless 12:54

Awesome. Now I wanted to ask you my absolute favourite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. We're hoping are different, quote and quote, CEOs on the show, so Eric, what has being a CEO mean to you?

Eric Schultz 13:04

Oh, it means being a leader who puts people first, who does what they say they're going to do, and who becomes brilliant at the basics.

Gresham Harkless 13:16

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

Eric Schultz 13:33

Well, thanks again for having me, Gresh. Innovation on Tap is available on Amazon, at Barnes and Noble in the stores and online. I host a website called theoccasionalceo.com, which I was for several years. It's on that website that I post updates to the book. I ended up just writing about 650 pages about 350 made the final cut. Over time, I have a bunch of other material to supplement the original stories with that I post and if you want to link in with me on LinkedIn or Twitter, please do that.

Gresham Harkless 14:09

Awesome. Well, we will have those links and information in the show notes so that everybody can follow up with you. I am super appreciative of you taking your time out of course, to give your gift and SARS creating that scenario of all those innovators and creatives in that room and what they would be talking about and what they would be discussing, and how we can learn to be better entrepreneurs and business owners about that. I appreciate you, appreciate your time and I hope you have a phenomenal day.

Outro 14:36

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]