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Creating connections is essential to building a community. It’s even more important when the people you’re trying to connect with aren’t in the same location. Businesses and companies have always found geographic distance to be a challenge to building a really great community-oriented culture. At Empowered Ventures, the same challenge holds true, which is why we decided to start Empowered Owners, the podcast that takes you inside Empowered Ventures.
In each episode, CEO Chris Fredericks will have a discussion with one of our employees to discover and highlight their distinct personalities, perspectives, and skills while also keeping you in the loop with exclusive news, updates on company performance, and a glimpse into the future plans of Empowered Ventures. Not only is this an opportunity for Chris to learn more about our amazing employee-owners, but it’s also an opportunity for you to hear regularly from Chris and others from within Empowered Ventures.
Hello, everybody, and welcome to another episode of Empowered Owners, the community building podcast by and for the
employee owners of Empowered Ventures. Join us as we take you inside the world of employee ownership, discovering the
stories, insights, and sometimes surprising adventures in a family of businesses where everyone's an owner. Now let's
dive in. Dan McGowan, welcome to Empowered Owners. Thanks, Chris. It's great to be here. Yeah, so I think there's a ton
of ways we could take this conversation, a lot of different angles that will, and things we'll definitely, I'm sure, try
to cover. But the first thing I want to ask you is kind of a little bit, you know, off to the side maybe, but, you know,
I think it's going to help people get to know you really quickly a little bit here. So you're linked in, you have a
background picture on your LinkedIn profile, and it's a view surrounded by a bunch of people wearing helmets. What is
that background picture, Dan? Well, that is from a huddle of a roller derby team that I've coached in the past. That was
Team Indiana. Specifically, I believe the picture might have been one of our first bouts ever as a team, but it was an
all-star team formed of Indiana roller derby skaters, and I've been involved in that sport for going on 16 years now,
maybe more, started as a volunteer, became an announcer, and became a coach. And it's one of the most challenging,
rewarding, eye-opening. I mean, it checks every box for me, competitive. Everything about it was wonderful. The
community's great. That's awesome. And I know we're not going to spend a lot of time on that topic in particular, but we
have to spend a little bit more on that. So, it's roller derby, and it's women's roller derby, right, Dan? Yeah, the
teams I'm involved in are gender-inclusive, but it's a women's organization, generally. The sport kind of had a
resurgence about 20 years ago, and they now play on the flat track. So, the stuff you may be used to of elbowing and
dropping off of like a bank track thing, that still kind of exists, but it's this much of the sport. Now, it's a more
global sport. There's, you know, top of memory, something like 1200 teams globally that play this flat track version of
it. And I've been involved on that side of things for, yeah, like I said, probably 16, 17 years. It started, you know,
Indianapolis has four teams, plus Team Indiana that I mentioned earlier is based here. One of the teams I coached, the
corn fed roller derby team there in Muncie, Indiana, which is about an hour north of Indy, go corn fed. They're great.
And it's just a, it's a sport where there's, I'm not going to say no professionals. I don't believe there are any
professionals in it. There's people that get some endorsement deals and such. There's no money to be made in it. It's a
pure passion sport that is built by volunteers and driven by these incredible athletes that also have day jobs. So it's,
you get all walks of life in the sport, incredibly empowering group of people that you, everybody learns from everybody.
So it's, there's no real playbook for how to run the sport, you know, even 16, 17 years that I've been involved in it.
The teams are driven by the skaters driven by the volunteers. And it's fantastic. That's awesome. I really want to spend
the next 20 minutes just talking about that, but I think we'll cover some other things, but it might come back to that.
We'll see. All right. So yeah, why don't you give us a few minutes on just who you are, Dan? Obviously, people will know
you work for TVF, your title is content manager, but like a little bit more about who you are, where you grew up, like
whatever you want to share just to kind of tell people a little bit about who you are. Sure. I could tee it up with kind
of what got me, I could work backward from what got me here. You know, handling content is a heck of a lot like media
production, which was sort of where I got started in college and even a little bit in high school. I was kind of
interested in that stuff. Sixth grade, my brother and I sat at the dining room table writing the old like, what do you
want to be when you grow up thing? And we were both at kind of an impasse. I have a twin brother and we both have a lot
of the same interests and it was Sunday evening, probably last minute kind of thing. We didn't tell our mom that we had
anything to do until then. And she's like, well, you know, trying to reason through like, what do you like? What
direction would you want? We kind of landed on sports announcer. You know, we both were huge baseball fans, played
sports growing up and loved listening to the Cincinnati Reds on the radio, happened to live near the announcer of the
Reds, a longtime announcer, Marty Breneman, loved his style and everything about that. Got to meet him a few times. And
we sort of took that all the way through from sixth grade on. It was like, all right, that's a pretty good direction to
go. Went to Ball State University, which has a great sports broadcasting program. My brother sort of diverged from that.
He ended up going into teaching. He's an English chair at Warren Central High School in Indianapolis, which is, I admire
the heck out of the dude. He's doing awesome work over there and has for a long time. And then I kind of stayed on the
broadcasting path in college, got out of college, no job yet, but the idea was, I don't know, maybe I'm going to hook
onto some small market and do sports broadcasting. That didn't take, but I ended up working at a radio station in
Indianapolis that did sports news and talk and blended all those things that I've learned along the way to become a
producer for their morning show and then the afternoon shows for a while. So, you know, seven or eight years I did
sports talk radio and news talk radio, various aspects of that, did a little bit of television production in there as
well. And then moved into the PR and marketing thing, you know, most broadcast careers have a coda to them and, you
know, whether it be the hours, the low pay, I'm not, I'm not shining a huge like negative light, I guess, and too, too
much because it was a lot of fun and the skills in it are amazing. The people you meet are amazing. It's just not always
a sustainable lifestyle for everybody. So, moved into communications, marketing and, you know, media relations, worked
at a trade organization for a little while, worked then at an organization that manufactured acoustic products, you
know, like you see, well, like I've got a little piece of it here, like stuff you would see in a studio, for example.
And then, you know, through a connection, through who turned out to be my boss, she let me on to a job that was open. I
recommended a bunch of other people. And then my job situation sort of changed. And I'm like, could I apply for this
too? She's like, yes, please do. So, you know, matter of weeks, then it all worked out. And I ended up at TVF and three
years now for me, like almost on the nose as we're talking. That's amazing. So, you got into kind of the world you
wanted to get into, you know, from dreaming about it with your twin brother, you know, the world of broadcast and all
those types of things. Is there part of you that's, you know, like, gosh, it's sad that you had to move on from that,
ultimately? Or like, how do you feel about that twist in your career path? Yes and no, because I've still been able to
dabble. We talked about the roller derby stuff earlier. I've been able to quench that kind of play by play analysis sort
of side of me through that sport. I've done some high school, local high school football and basketball games as well.
So, I've been able to dabble, which is wonderful. The specific things I do with my job actually are like super in line
with it. It's all about storytelling. And that's good broadcasting is good storytelling. Good content, my job's content
manager, good content is good storytelling. And it's writing, it's audio editing, it's podcasting. We have a, we began a
podcast here a couple of years ago with Laurie Atone, my partner. We do, you know, the textile nerd podcast and it's
really starting to get some legs, audio only. And it's kind of geared toward exactly what it's named. It's geared toward
the geeky side of fabric and textiles and any real curiosity we have. We turn it into a show which scratches all those
creative itches. We're both incredibly like curious, willing to learn people. And we extend that into the show and have
people that are incredibly knowledgeable, but also incredibly generous with their time and incredibly thoughtful about
the industry. So I get to scratch every itch, I think, communications wise, broadcasting wise through work, but also get
some little, you know, some side gigs along the way. That's awesome. And your podcast is fantastic. You know, obviously
I'm a listener and you guys do a great job. Textiles are, it's a pretty, you know, it's a niche. Not everybody out there
necessarily thinks about textiles on a day-to-day basis, but I think textiles is a really interesting topic because
they're literally everywhere when you stop and start noticing, like they're in everything almost. Is that something that
for you, you've experienced too as you've, you know, come to TVF and gotten involved in the textile industry? Sure. And
Chris, you can relate to this a little bit too, where your initial training wasn't in textiles at all. And a lot of the
folks around us, it is, it's an absolute lifestyle for people. And to be able to now plug into that myself is incredibly
exciting, but it's at first a little daunting because textiles goes back to ancient, like I'm going to pluck some plants
away, weave them together, and that's a textile. And that's, but that's a, you know, basket that's holding me together,
you know, whatever it is. So it's an old field, but there's so much innovation in it. And there's so much passion in it.
And there's so much learning to do that even those of us or those, those around us that have been in it forever
seemingly, they're constantly learning and they're constantly innovating. So being able to tap into that, that part of
it where you're talking to people that, that have seemingly been everywhere and done everything, but it doesn't matter
because they're going to continue to learn, they're going to continue to grow the field. And they're so generous with
giving back the knowledge because they understand how people-centric textiles is. And physically, it's everywhere, but
also in terms of people, it's everywhere. The amount of hands that touch any given piece of finished textile, fabric,
or, you know, woven material or substrate that you see has been through dozens upon dozens of people along the way in
some way, shape, or form. Hmm. Yeah, definitely. That's cool. So yeah, I encourage everybody to, if they want to go
deeper on textiles and start nerd not on textiles, check out the Textile Nerd podcast. I think the other thing that, if
I had to guess, that might have been new for you, Dan, at TVF other than textiles was employee ownership. So I'm curious
if you've had any prior experience before TVF with working for an employee owned company. Glad you asked. And no, in
fact, I had no experience with employee ownership. In fact, hearing the word ESOP was gibberish to me, to be honest.
However, once I understood that, and, you know, my boss, Desiree Friedman, who was the one who she sort of let me on to
the job that was open that I eventually got and still do here, she told me right away, she's like, I'm telling you, this
is different. And in the best ways possible, we had worked together at a different place in the nonprofit sector. And
she has had just from the get go had such a positive impression of employee ownership that she sort of, in the few
months she had even worked here, was evangelizing it already for me. And all of the, you know, promise and thoughts
about it have come to fruition. There's a sort of team-mindedness that you get here through the ESOP that bonds
everybody together that you, you can't get anywhere else. This sort of collective idea that what we do impacts other
people, but impacts the entire business. It puts such a fine employee ownership puts such a fine point on that real
driving force of what we do. You really can't get it anywhere else. And the thing that absolutely you can't get anywhere
else is that share value that you build as a team. And that at the end of your retirement, you now have this pot of gold
that you're watching grow all along the way. And when it's all said and done, you have this unique opportunity to set
yourself up financially later in life in a way that you cannot find anywhere else. That's really cool. When you first
took the role and you heard about ESOP, how big of a factor was it? Or was it more like, Oh, that's interesting. I'm not
sure what to make of that, but like, I want to take this role for other reasons. I'll be honest. It was a, I would say
if I cut everything into a pie about the decision I was making at the time, because I was, I was already employed, I
would have been leaving a job. I would say that it was 50, like 50% of the decision. Because at that point, specifically
that point in time, the idea of having a stake in the company and having a stake in the future and being able to help
both of those parts of it was so appealing because the situation I was leaving, it was, it was a, you know, one sort of
sole ownership situation. And that didn't go well. It really was, you know, making the company perform significantly
worse because of the control of one person. So having this ownership idea where everybody feels drawn in and that
literally invested in the company and able to make their financial futures better, but also make their day to day better
by just working better together because you have a goal in mind was so appealing to me that like, I jumped. Like the
second I got the email back from Des when I said, hey, you know, would it make sense if I applied here? And she said,
yes, I'm like, here you go. Let's do this. I'm, I'm, I'm all in on this. It made a massive difference. That's amazing.
In your first couple of years, are there any moments that come to mind any, like, like you were already kind of hoping
and expecting this would be, you know, a really different kind of place to work? Anything in the first couple of years
that stands out as like, wow, this really, there's like proof is in the pudding kind of a thing. Anything come to mind?
The first one that comes to mind for me is my colleague, Blake, and Blake, Blake's been a guest on this podcast and has
an incredible story himself, where he started working in our warehouse and, you know, built himself up through those
roles and ended up changing to sales and Blake's now doing incredible in sales. So there's these growth opportunities.
So just knowing Blake's opportunities at that point felt different to me too, where jobs aren't siloed, where, and that
seemed incredibly appealing from previous places that I worked where you're sort of on your track and that's it. So
Blake right out of the gate is like, hey, man, you want to see my financial statement, my retirement statement? Like,
whoa, whoa, whoa, hey, like, I mean, kind of, but you don't have to show me that. But there's this willingness here and
transparency to say, hey, I have made like, this is what this company can do for you. And this is what the situation can
do for you if you and the rest of the team all pull together. And I am so proud of this. Look at it, please do. And
there's just an openness here of people to talk about their financial situation that you can't find other places for
many reasons and many good reasons. But you kind of have to have that transparency. If you do want to show people the
true story of what you're working toward, you can talk ethereal all you want about, well, you're going to get some
additional money when you retire, like, okay, that's cool. But if you have people that are like, not only is it nice, is
this is this financial situation you're going to retire with very nice because it is, but I'm going to show you because,
you know, beat my chest a little bit about how impressive it is. What do you think some of the benefits are to people
that join an employee owned company that's successful and, you know, starts to have that impact for folks when they can
start to feel like their retirement is kind of maybe possible in a way that it wasn't before or where other things might
be possible in their life? Or are there other benefits too that come to mind for you, for people that work for employee
owned companies? Well, if we'll stay kind of on that end of the rainbow sort of retirement track, one of the duties that
I perform here is every month we write profiles about one of our employees. And for me, it's a great opportunity to just
get to meet people because that's one of my favorite things in the world. But then you get to share that story with the
rest of the company. We share it online. And it's neat to see that. But another thing I do is I'll write a profile about
our retirees. And at TVF, we've had a couple in the last few years who have had incredibly long and storied careers
here, which is a little intimidating as a new guy in a way. But it's also invigorating that people will stay here for,
you know, 30, 25 plus years, 30 plus years, 35, 40, almost 40 years for people that it's unheard of in current times.
But that's one of the like, you know, old school things that you, you know, my dad was a mailman for 43 years. And you
do that by job security, by passion and by pride in what you do. And just hard work, but also some opportunities to do
it. You got to love where you are. And that to me, that was the first thing I noticed was that people love not just what
they do, and they're not just getting by, they love where they are, and they love who they work with, and they love
supporting each other. So getting to interview those people as they're retiring, it makes me even more hopeful because
Chris, you like to talk about life changing outcomes for people. And nothing is more life changing than as you're
retiring, looking back on your career, seeing all the successes and all the, everything you've poured into your company,
but then being able to walk away and say, all that time, I've also been earning this additional financial opportunity.
And it's, it's real money. And everybody that I've talked with that retires, they, if they don't directly use the word
like dignity, they, they sort of peck around that word. But it's like, there's this, like, this dignity that you now
have that like, when you retire, we're out of the era of pensions, like people, those rarely exist anymore. Certainly
for my generation, it's, it's a, I wish they were around, but they're just not anymore for companies. So you don't have
that gold neg anymore that people work toward and can always look toward. But when you're in employee ownership and
you're in an ESOP, you have those shares that you're accumulating throughout the years. And you really do have that,
that pod at the end of the, the rainbow. And it's real. I mean, the, the, the folks that have retired have been very
satisfied and spoke glowingly about what it's going to do for their lives now that they're not punching the clock
anymore. Do you think that's kind of a relief for folks to be, to hear that, that this is happening and has happened now
for, for some of the former TV efforts? I think it is. And I mean, I can mainly speak for myself, but I would say for
me, absolutely, it's a relief because I, you know, not to say that my, my family doesn't like think about finances or
anything like that, but it's like, we're not, like I said, my dad was a mailman. My mom worked as a health aide at an
elementary school for 20, I think she was in there for 25 years or so. The hardest work, like I, we could do a whole
podcast and me just bragging about my parents because I love them so much. And all the lessons they taught me about hard
work and about how to be a team player, whether they like directly said it or not, I just watched them and grew up just
admiring the heck out of my parents. And I still do. But, you know, one thing that we didn't really talk much about is
like, is, is finances because it just, I don't know. I don't know why that is. And it's just some people don't. So I
think that's a common thing. Most Americans don't grow up really talking about finances in depth budgeting and such. I
mean, it's not a common thing. I don't, I don't think so. I don't think your experience is that unique, unfortunately.
Right. And, and especially the longer term of it is like what you do in when you retire, because, you know,
theoretically, by the time I retire, they're not going to be with us. So it's like, it's just not a thing that comes up.
And, and in their cases, both of them had pensions to look forward to through their hard work. And, you know, in my
dad's case, he really fought hard for that. He was part of some movements in the 70s that really, that helped draw those
benefits out of his employer. And, and create that for other people. So for me to come to a place where, I mean,
previously my employers, it was like, well, you get, okay, get into a 401k and we may throw some a percentage of money
also on top of that, maybe that percentage is going to go down over time. And, you know, having no financial background
myself or even know how to talk about it. That, it's so abstract to me. And, and I barely have any handle on what my
full financial future is or, or, or pot there, thereof would be. And then I get here and you have somebody like Blake,
who's like, Oh yeah, come on, look at what I made. All right, dude, like, oh, it's, it's, it's, it's shocking, but in a
good way. It's, it's this, like this transparency that immediately hits you and you're like, you can now think about it.
Whereas I was almost in, in avoidant territory about like, well, we'll figure that out when I get there. Cause I don't
know if I'm going to have any retirement or whatever 401k money I have, maybe it'll grow, maybe it won't. I'm not
looking at it. So here we are. But, but because the rewards, as everybody will tell you here, the rewards are, are quite
nice when you retire. Now I've, now I've looked more into it. I'm now trying to take a little bit more command of my
future. I'm trying to see what that may look like and, and see now, realistically, is it a thing where am I going to
have to work till I get dragged out of the place? Or am I going to be able to retire in a healthy, comfortable spot
sooner than I, than I could have ever anticipated? And I think so far the latter seems overwhelmingly like it's going to
be the outcome. That's awesome, Dan. Anything in your few years here at TVF, and it's, it's crazy it's only been a few
years because you're such a phenomenal advocate for, you know, employee ownership and your positivity and, you know,
even for textiles, like it seems like you've been with the company for a lot longer. So in that, in a great way. So I
just want to thank you for your advocacy for, for everything that's going on at TVF, employee ownership, textiles and
otherwise. But like, what do you summarize as like key ingredients to so far, like in your experience, like a successful
ownership culture or whatever, like, you know, that, that own employee ownership mindset, culture, et cetera, that can
take hold in a lot of employee owned companies. What do you think some of this ingredients are of that? I think you can
relate to this too. I guess I could draw kind of like sports metaphors for it. And it's, if you look at the teams that
are built to last, they're not built overnight. And they're also not built by like one person. They're built by the team
contributing. And it means, um, in basketball terms, all right, let's bring up the Indiana Pacers, for example. It's a
great example. I love the example. Have you, have you, have you, are you, are you, you know, more through your morning
period with what happened in game seven? It's not, it was rough, but what a ride. I mean, what an incredible fun ride up
until that moment. Yeah. Yeah. The Indiana Pacers this season made an historic run that, um, ended in, I mean, frankly,
in the sports world ended in tragedy where their star player got injured. Torres, Achilles tendon, uh, shooting up the
finals, which is just wild. And, and he was having a whale of a game until that moment. And they looked like the Pacers
looked like they, they were very well going to, to pull this one off. So taking that team and you look at a guy like
Tyrese Halliburton, who was their star MVP candidate, all star, you know, this guy is the envy of the league because of
his shooting ability, but also his distribution ability. This dude can work the ball around. Yeah. It worked the ball
around literally, but also he works the ball around with the teammates. If he's not having a game, he's going to dish
it. And, and he's still drawing that attention because of how much skill he has. The other team's still playing defense
on him just as hard as they would if he's shooting, you know, 70% from three point that night. But if he doesn't have
it, he's dished into the open guy because he's still probably drawing double coverage and he's still got somebody open.
He realizes that, um, they had, I remember in the playoffs almost every game, it was one other player who rarely played
throughout the season coming in and giving them impactful minutes. A guy named Thomas Bryant came in a couple of times
and, um, I always enjoyed watching Thomas Bryant because sometimes the guy goofed up. We're all human. Sometimes he
missed an assignment on defense or something. He'd go to the sideline and you'd see him kind of get dressed down by the
coach. It happens in, in every high level sport, but he kept with it. And in the playoffs, he shined. I mean, he barely
got any playing time throughout the season. There were two games down the stretch where he took over for some time and
really became this, um, you know, outside threat. He made some great defensive plays, which he's not necessarily known
for. Um, but translating that now into like the employee ownership world, you have to have everybody stepping up and
doing things. And whether or not you're like a, you know, the CEO or, or president or, you know, whatever really
highfalutin title you have, you have opportunities to step up and, and, and people kind of, you know, they hit their
shot. They, they will take the, they will take the opportunities. And because we, that, that ownership mindset sort of
imbued in all of us from the time we get, we just talk about things differently around here. We, we were constantly
talking about the idea that we are owners. We call each other employee owners. We don't call each other, you know,
whatever a title is typically, like we almost always kind of lead with we're employee owners. So, um, that just the
concept of constantly talking about it even changes your perspective and makes you understand that your role, um, isn't
just to affect your team. Your role is to affect the entire company. And, and in our case, because we have, um,
empowered ventures, we have other companies also that we're also supporting. So it's this entire ecosystem of support
and of individual responsibility and accountability that we understand goes bigger. It goes way bigger than just our
lane every time. Amazingly said, Dan. Um, this has been a lot of fun. We're going to resurrect as we close out here, uh,
an old segment, an old segment that we did in some of the early podcasts when we got empowered owners going. Um, it's
kind of a draft or a Mount Rushmore type thing and you're prepared, Dan. Obviously people know now you're into sports,
especially Indiana sports. You've got a lot of opinions on sports. Um, so you're a great guy to, to basically educate
all of us on Indiana women's sports. And you, we thought it'd be fun for you to come and share your Mount Rushmore, Dan
McGowan's Mount Rushmore for Indiana women, Indiana athletes in women's sports. So yeah, hit us with it, Dan, and
relatively quickly. All right. All right. Well, thank you for indulging me for one. This is great. So number one, I have
to go and, and number one and number two, because we're in Indiana basketball is still has to be the best here. I'm
going with two, uh, Indiana basketball players right out of the gate Tamika Ketchings, who played for the Fever, helped
Indy get its second ever pro sports championship. That was in 2011 and she was also the league MVP that year. Um, but
also as a pillar of the community, she has a foundation that still gives back to kids. There's a backpack drive every
year and Tamika Ketchings is the absolute embodiment. Like she's number one. She's where like George Washington's
position is on Mount Rushmore. Like, like the biggest head. I'm not saying you have a biggest head of all these
athletes, uh, all the other three. So, uh, yeah, Tamika Ketchings for me is number one. Number two is Caitlin Clark and,
and all the headlines that she's grabbing right now. It, what a, what a blessing it is to have her in our city. Um,
right now showing up and, and, and in this state. Um, then the third one I would say is, uh, I'm going to dip into the
roller derby world here. Melissa Will Smith, who used to be known as Maiden America and for the Naptown roller derby
team also played in on team Indiana, still playing. Um, I think it's their 15th season in the sport and, um, Will Smith
is one of my heroes as a human being, but also as a skater. Everybody in this state looks up to Will Smith, um, all time
leading score among jammers in the entire state. So, uh, Will Smith slash formerly known as Maiden America. That's
number three. Number four, going with, uh, Dottie Schroeder. And if you've ever seen the movie A League of Their Own,
uh, Dottie Henson is loosely based off of Dottie Schroeder, who's a real person, played in the All-American Girls
Professional Baseball League after World War II, um, was a star short stop for two Indiana based teams. Um, and was just
like super scrappy, stole a bunch of bases, wasn't the best hitter necessarily, but, um, I, uh, Cubs GM at one point
said that if, you know, I'm, I'm using kind of diminutive terms here, but if you were a boy, I would pay you $45,000,
like, sure time was the 1945, I would give you a big paycheck. So, like, so yeah. So I'm going to Mika Ketchings,
Caitlin Clark, Melissa Will Smith, and Dottie Schroeder on the Mount Rushmore of Indiana women's sports. I love it, Dan.
I think one person who might be the most famous that might come to mind for Indiana, in my opinion, would be Danica
Patrick, but she's an Illinois native apparently. So I don't know. I don't know if I'd put her on there. But man, her,
you know, her, her meal ticket was, was punched in Indianapolis at the Indian 500 and then still has the highest finish
for a woman in Indianapolis 500 history. That's a, that's a, she's definitely an honorable mention, I would say on my
list. Very good. Dan, this has been so fun. Appreciate it. Um, I'm sure it'd be fun to do this again sometime. Agreed,
Chris. Thank you for the time. It's an honor to be here. It really is. Thanks, Dan.