Brian Moyer, welcome to the Advisory Board Insider podcast.
I'm glad you're here.
I'm glad to.
Yeah, it's really good.
So, what are your geographic coordinates today?
Where are you located?
Give me a bit of uh, sense of where you are in the world.
36, 86 are my actual coordinates, and, and I only know that I'm,
I'm in Nashville, Tennessee.
I only know that's the coordinates because we host an event every
year called 36 86, and the name is the coordinates of Nashville.
So,
Oh, that's so interesting.
I, I don't, I, I've, I didn't know that.
That's really kind of cool.
So let's begin the conversation just to get a sense of who you are
with your morning drink of choice.
Uh, What, what do you drink every morning?
What's the first drink of the day?
Coffee straight up.
Straight up.
Are you particular to a type of bean?
Do you have any sort of, are you a little bit geeky about
what kind of coffee do you have?
Do you have a special machine that does this?
What's your, what's your thing?
So Starbucks French roast is our coffee of choice right now.
We'll probably cycle out of that, but no, I've never been that geeky.
Like, like some of my friends it's just gimme, gimme some caffeine in
the form of coffee and I'm good to go.
So you could, I I, I love this conversation because this morning I
was looking at the new Jira S 10 or Z 10 I think it's called, which is the
brand new dura fully automatic button push machine that I'm, I'm longing for.
But I, I've gotta sort of pull myself back because I'm,
I'm very excited about coffee.
So, That's, that's kind of cool.
So nothing in it, just, just straight coffee, Starbucks, dark roast.
Yep, we've, we've got a Keurig machine that's, that's dual.
So we, we, we we cook a pot every morning, but it also will handle the individuals
in case, you know, sometime in the evening we want a cup of coffee, we can
just throw an individual cup in there.
So
that's it.
Nothing super fancy.
You know, we don't grind our own beans.
We just
Wow.
Okay.
So you're not a geek at all about it.
that's, that's
there's other things I geek out about, but coffee is not it.
right.
Right.
And, and I might get to those because in your background, I
noticed some interesting things.
So, take me back to how you start your day, either today
or at least an average day.
What's, what's a day look like when you start it?
How, how do you, you know, are you an early riser?
Do you just kind of crawl out of bed whenever you do?
What's, what's your, what's your pattern?
Uh, I am a very early riser.
I on any typical day, I'm up at about four o'clock and three to four days a week.
I'm at the gym by five 30.
So that gives me time to kind of get up and go through email and, you
know, peruse the news for a couple of seconds and eat some breakfast.
It's the older I've gotten, the, the earlier my my, my time ha has
gotten, when I was in college, I, you know, I slept in like so many college
students and, and stayed up late.
This, that's not the case anymore.
Yeah, it's a, it's a weird thing, isn't it?
As, as we age how the, the clock inside of us starts to change.
It's, it's, you know, when I, when I was younger, I used to
think of my dad and grandparents.
I was like, what's wrong with them?
And now I'm at that point, and, you know, I'm in bed by nine
o'clock and not up quite as early as you, but relatively early.
So, that's, that's interesting.
And then d so you get that done and then you have your coffee, or do you
start your, with your coffee before you, or you do all your stuff and
then you come back to your coffee?
So the coffee is ready to go.
I just, I just turn it on.
And so that's the first thing I do is turn the pot on.
And so by, you know, four 30, I'm having my first cup of coffee.
Got it.
All right, good.
So, let's begin at Missouri University of Science and Technology, if you will.
So how'd you end up there?
Tell me what was happening in your life.
Give me a little bit of the story of the origin of Brian in terms of,
you know, your post high school.
What's your plan?
Where are you going gi?
Give me a sense of, of that, that point in your life.
So that school name sounds so impressive these days.
When, when I went there it was university of Missouri at RAA, as some people still
called it the the, the School of mines.
So, army brat raised by a master sergeant, which I'm sure is why
I drink black coffee straight up.
And it doesn't matter what it tastes like.
Right, right.
we, we ended up in a small town in Missouri, Raleigh,
Missouri, which is where.
The university is located.
I was there for all of my junior high and high school years.
It was one of the top rank, still is one of the top ranked
engineering schools in the country.
And at the time my, my dad was part of the Army Corps of Engineers.
I have this engineering tinkering in, in my blood.
I was raised with it and so I thought I wanted to become an electrical engineer.
And I applied and went one year, my freshman year in the, in the um, Prereqs
for electrical engineering and realized that's not at all what I wanted to do.
I love tinkering with this stuff.
I didn't wanna design it nec necessarily.
And so my best friend was majoring in economics and he talked me into,
into moving over to economics, which seems like such a strange migration.
right.
Ne nevertheless, that's that's what I did.
I ended up taking every economics course I could get my hands on every engineering
management course I could get my hands on.
And in my senior year I had, you know, whatever, 30 hours left that was English
and biology, and it's like, forget this.
I'm leaving, I'm starting my first company.
And that's what I did.
So I'm one of those I'm, I'm, I'm one of those people that dropped
outta college and never looked back.
Oh, that is, that's so interesting.
So tell me what, what happened?
So you, you have 30 hours left to go.
It's all courses you don't wanna do and you drop outta Missouri
University and start a company.
So what, what, what did you learn that caused you to start a company?
Because there's often an impetus there.
There's something that starts brewing inside of us that makes us go, I
want to go out and do something instead of finish my schooling.
That's a big jump.
It is, and this what I'm about to describe on my LinkedIn profile, it's
not on my resume because it's so long ago that it's, it's not really relevant.
But I guess the, the economics and finance background that I got
while I was in college led to this.
I actually I started selling insurance.
This wasn't my first job, but, but nevertheless, I, I started selling
insurance, life insurance while I was in college to help pay my way through.
So selling life insurance to college students, that's a way to learn to sell.
Let me tell you.
Right, right.
So were you se selling, like term or whole or what?
What
Hold on, this is an investment in your future kind of thing.
It.
Okay.
that and that, that actually sparked my interest in, in
finance beyond beyond insurance.
So a lot of the, a lot of the insurance firms back then did, and probably today,
I don't know, but they did more than just sell, they did general financial planning
and they were involved in securities.
And so the first thing I did when I got out, I actually started
my own financial planning firm.
I got my series seven license so that I could sell securities.
And this was back in The very late seventies, dare I say, early eighties.
And there were the laws were different back then.
There, there's several tax reforms that have that have passed since then that
have, that have eliminated a lot of this.
But it was fun.
I mean, you could sell tax shelters where, you know, if you invest whatever, $10,000,
you could actually write off $50,000.
And, and it was perfectly legal back then.
So I was in, I was in oil and gas, I was in gold mining.
I was, I, I ran a string of of arcades set up as limited partnerships, and I
brought some of my clients into those.
I was just, I was just doing blues and having fun.
So, so this entrepreneurial bug lives deep inside you.
And I, I mean, it's intriguing to me because it, it feels to me like as I've
observed the world over the last 40 years where I've been more observant of things
it seems to me like entrepreneurs have a unique predisposition of looking at the
world, but, but it comes from somewhere.
So, where did that, where did that bug come from?
Because if your dad was a army Corps of Engineers, it doesn't sound like
he was an entrepreneur, but was there some, something that happened?
Like, did you grow up making lemonade stands?
Where's this entrepreneurial bug show up in you?
That's a good question that I don't know, I've given a lot of thought to.
So when my dad retired, he did he, he at first went to work for somebody,
but eventually started his own company.
He didn't
something in the family, B.
B in the family, D n A, A little bit,
He, he didn't really talk a lot about the challenges or, you know, the fact
that he was gonna start his own company.
And that lasted for only a few years.
And then he went back into kind of corporate life and management, which is
what he had learned in, in the military.
I mean, yeah, I, I sold greeting cards when I was in the Boy
Scouts and there's, I dunno what it is, but yeah, you're right.
It was there.
Yeah.
So that, that shows up.
And so you, you start, you, you have an in you have a insurance company and you start
doing investments and you start creating this series of different businesses.
And then it seems to me, and I've just looked through your LinkedIn profile,
so I'm just pulling off what I see now.
You start a couple of other companies sort of in succession.
You had one called PhD in Novis and I, I've just pulled those names.
But, but what, what were those and what was starting to emerge in you
that had you changed from sort of that, that con conglomeration of
things you're doing into more specific focused, it appears to be tech focused.
Yeah, so I've always back in, back as I was growing up, you know what the, the
gifts that my ga, my dad would give me would be heath kit, if you remember that.
So it was you know, a box of parts and you'd put it together and build a radio.
You'd build a transmitter or, you know, so, and he always had this kind
of stuff laying around the house.
And so I was always tinkering, taking the lawnmower apart and, you know, putting
it back together again kind of thing.
So, There's, I'm not gonna go into the details of how I, how I migrated from,
you know, the financial planning and the investment in, into my next phase, cuz
there's long and detailed stories there.
But I ended up working in consumer electronics and I still consider
that, generally speaking tech.
But I started to work for a distributor and then one of our manufacturers reps
hired me away and they were based in St.
Louis.
And so I spent five years working for that company as their sales
director over four and a half states selling things like Kenwood and
tac and it was fun for a young guy.
You know, I traveled four and a half states I was doing, you know, judges
for, for car sound offs and it, it was, it was a very enjoyable time.
So
married
along the way.
fun.
I mean, you, you mentioned those names, tak and Kenwood, and that just sparks
It does.
I mean, it's, it's, it's fun stuff and, you know, and right in the beginning
of digital sound and the DVDs that were coming out and, you know, having to
learn about, having to learn about that.
So there was a, there was a company, this was late eighties.
There was a company from the UK that came to the United
States called Cion, P S I O N,
Mm
and they.
One of the first pre palm handheld computers.
So Barry Bort, I still, after all these years, remember his
name, he, he was outta St.
Louis.
I mean he was out of New York.
He came looking for companies like ours to try to get placement in the
United States for these devices.
And it was, it was about the same size, only quite a bit thicker.
Two line by 16 character display.
And I'll never forget him saying one day everybody's gonna carry one of
these, and it'll be your calendar.
It'll be your book, and it'll organize your life.
Wow.
And I was so intrigued by this that I started to teach myself to code so
that I could write applications for, to, to run on this handheld computer.
And, you know, the, the first thing I did was I wrote an expense tracking
app to help my, me and my team keep track of our expenses and, you know, a
bunch of other, a bunch of other stuff.
And I found my passion, which was tech and which was software development.
And
code were you?
What code did you learn?
Like what form of code,
so, there were, there was nothing graphical in those days.
And this particular device used a proprietary,
Software language called O P L, organizer Programming Language,
which was very similar to basic.
And so that's what I was teaching myself.
I mean, first.
The proprietary side of it.
And then, and then basic Microsoft.
But I was talking, my wife worked in a hospital and one of our mutual friends
ran their supply chain operation, their materials management operation.
And I was probably helping him calculate a mortgage, you know, using, using this.
I, I don't remember exactly, but he said, what does that thing, what else can it do?
And it barcode printer and it.
Oh, and so that probably ignited the entrepreneurial side of you too,
which is that you're this product, you're learning how to code it, and
now the entrepreneur in you goes, look at all the possibilities here.
So he said, I think that could help solve a problem that I have.
Hmm.
dumb luck.
You know, cuz so many entrepreneurs these days create a solution and go out and look
for a problem to apply it to dumb luck.
Here's a problem that was presented to me, and we started, look, we started
working on a solution to this problem.
And, and the problem was keeping track of supplies in his hospital.
And so we created a solution.
We barcoded all the supplies, we replaced his clipboards with these
handheld computers, and we, we dropped his lost charges 21%, which was
millions of dollars a year to less than 2% within a couple of months.
So that, that's how I got into the more traditional technology and
software development side of things.
right.
And so that then launched, that became your company, so you started that company.
and that was MW Technologies.
And when I, through a series of introductions, met some people
in Nashville they, they hired me to do some work for them.
And one of those had a company called Partners Healthcare Group,
and they were in the health business, medical equipment consulting arena.
And we realized that here's.
Two relatively small companies calling on the same clientele.
We should join forces.
And people don't realize, I won't spend a lot of time on this, but
Nashville's known as Music City.
That's, that's an I, that's, that is our brand.
It's an important part of our economy, but music represents
about 10 billion of our economy.
Healthcare is like 50 to 60 billion of our economy.
People don't realize that.
And when I, when I came to understand how important healthcare was, it's
like Nashville is where we need to be.
And so I, we, we merged our companies in 97.
I moved to Nashville, my wife and I in 99, and the, the rest went, went from there.
Got it.
So it PhD grows and then just based on your LinkedIn profile, you start another
company, it appears called No Novis.
Novus Technology Group.
So the partner that I took and, and we had, we had a lot of success.
We, we ended up doing business with every for-profit hospital system
in the country, most of which was, was headquartered in Nashville.
Then we, then we expanded into the Department of Defense and got all of
those approvals and certifications and started selling to army
hospitals and Air Force Hospitals.
Hmm.
He wasn't a technologist, he was a sales guy.
I, I wanted to continue developing new technology.
He wanted to go in a slightly different direction.
Became apparent that we, we were not going to reconcile this difference.
And so it just made sense at the time to, you know, I sold my interest to him.
We separated the country, a company I took a boot of the intellectual
property that I'd been working on, some of the newer stuff.
He kept the rest of it.
And I started a new company, Novis Technology Group in, in 2010, which
in retrospect was not the smartest time to be starting a new company,
Right.
Because
Well, cuz the bubble had just burst then, right?
I mean, we're post bubble at that
We're, we're, we're post-internet bubble, we're post recession, you know, the, the,
the country is trying to recover from from the recession and then in healthcare.
And this, this gets into, you know, some really details of the healthcare industry,
but there was there was a big initiative at the time you may or may not remember,
to incentivize providers, doctors, hospitals, to digitize the medical.
To move away from all the paper-based records and to, and to implement
electronic medical records.
And there were incentive dollars, significant incentive
dollars attached to that.
And so all, any hospital or all any doctor was interested in, besides providing
care of course, was are you going to help me get to my meaningful use money?
And if not, I just can't afford to talk to you right now.
And I wasn't, I wasn't gonna wade into that because there were a
gazillion companies doing that.
I, I was, I was, I had a vision of doing something else that eventually
caught hold and, and, and everybody, you know, it was digitizing the intake
process you know, allowing people to register using kiosks and using tablets
and using smartphones, which were just kind of coming out at, at the time.
So, anyway, I.
I did some other things.
I made money every year.
You know, I, I, I worked on some really cool projects, but a friend of mine who
used to be a former client approached me and said, Hey, I want you to come to work
for me as my chief information officer.
He was c e o of a software company.
He said, come, come work for me.
Let's prop this company up and flip it two years.
You know, that's all I'm asking is two years.
And I thought, okay, that sounds like fun.
And I did that.
It was headquartered in Nashville, but the entire tech team was in Dallas.
And then within a couple of months after going to work, and this was
Gaffey Healthcare, we a couple of months after going to work there,
they bought another company.
Actually, they, we bought Gaffey and we rebranded as the name of
the company we bought, but they were in they were in California.
So I ended up, On a plane every single week.
You know, I had 200 Hilton Nights, the, the year before I finally
said, enough's enough, I've, I've gotta get back to my family.
yeah.
I've been there.
Got that t-shirt too.
And uh, yeah, the scar tissue.
The scar tissue from 200 nights in hotel rooms.
Yeah, yeah.
So, so that, that, that process, so you launch companies, you've
got this entrepreneurial instinct, you move to tech and, and you're
evolving this practice so much.
So you become the CIO of a company now and, and then you're on the road.
And so, you decide what, what comes next?
What's the, what's the evolution of the story?
so very fun.
Very fun segue here.
I reached out so I knew I had to, I knew I had to do something different.
I hadn't looked for a job.
Ever since I was in college.
right.
Entrepreneurs don't look for jobs.
They don't.
They create them.
And so I, I wasn't necessarily at that point in time looking to
start another company, but, but I had to do something different.
So I called a friend of mine who was in the recruiting business,
but also did career counseling.
And I said, help me out.
I don't know what to do here.
And he had this process that he took me through.
You know, it starts with what are the 100 most important things, so, you know,
it's gotta be Nashville based and it's gotta be tech and da, da da da, da.
And then you just keep narrowing that narrowing, that narrowing that.
So you had the top three things that were most important, and those were, has
to be Nashville based, has to be tech, doesn't have to be healthcare, because
that's what I'd spent the last 20 years in, but it didn't have to be healthcare.
And along the way, I had served as president of Tennessee hymns,
which is the Healthcare Information Management System Society.
It's, you know, the, the, the tech side of healthcare.
It was a, it was a volunteer president overseeing a board of volunteers.
But I had, I just got a lot of I, I, I, I really enjoyed that.
We, we did some, we did some really amazing things.
We ended up becoming the chapter of the year, first time that, that, that
Nashville had gotten that distinction.
And so I, I looked at that with fondness and I said, I wouldn't mind.
Doing something in, in for a nonprofit.
Again, you know, that's, that's kind of a walled card, but
I'll throw that out there.
So that day that we completed that process, my friend gets a call from
the chairman of the board of the Nashville Technology Council saying,
our c e o just resigned and we're beginning a search for the new c e o
of the National Technology Council.
And we want talking to my friend.
We want you to lead the, the search effort for, for this.
So now I had to go through the whole process.
There
were
hundreds, you know?
synchronicity, whatever that is.
It interesting that it shows up right at that point,
It's, it's, you know, you, you couldn't make something like that up.
I, I still have a hard time b believing that, that that happened.
But and that turned into another very meaningful six years of, of service
here in, in the Nashville area.
It's a, it's a very high profile position in, you know, you're involved with a
lot of economic development activity and, you know, we saw a, a very a lot
of growth in the tech sector and I understand right place, right time.
Nashville was already on that trajectory, but I got to oversee and be a part of
that, which was, which was wonderful.
Wow.
What an amazing adventure.
So what, what were some of the, in that six year span, if, if you were
to go back and say, these are the top three big insights or lessons
or, or things that came out of that for you, what might those be?
Just I, I realize that's kind of a general question, but is there
something there that you go, wow, this was so critical in me getting
So it introduced me to the world of economic development.
You know, I traveled with the state and the city and the chamber several
times selling Nashville became, became really good at selling Nashville.
Because every company these days is a tech company and what, what Nashville,
and they're we're, we're not, we're not unique in this, but we're one of the
best, I believe is really, really good at, is recruiting companies to town.
So some big wins along, you know, the, that period of time
was Amazon announcing that they were moving in and, and building.
Technology, logistics, center of excellence and hiring 5,000 people.
Oracle announced that they were coming in and committing, you know, a billion plus
dollars and going, committing to 8,000 jobs that they were bringing to town.
And then there were a slew of other companies, N NTT Data
that opened an office here and committed to several hundred hires.
Just a whole slew of, of companies.
We, we developed some critical mass.
When you get announcements like that from top name well-known companies, that, that
ratchets up your profile around the world.
And people that might not have understood the opportunities in
Nashville now understood that th this was a place I oughta, I oughta look at.
And it was already very desirable, particularly for the younger
you know, there were hoards of.
Kids graduating from school who just decided, Hey, I hear
Nashville's a cool place.
I'm moving there and I'll find a job.
I'll figure it out once I get there.
That was, that was going on all the time.
We had this wonderful reputation, the entertainment sector and,
you know, the Music City brand.
And we just were able to mesh that and in particularly build and tell
the story of the creative class that exists here which were all these
music writers and, and musicians that had that, that, that were here.
And the The correlation between that and technology.
So something that I left outta my story is, you know, I was voted
most musical in high school and, you know, had a jazz band of my own that,
that I ran for, for eight years.
Considered doing that as a living and decided at the last minute that
no, I'm gonna go into engineering instead and keep music on the side.
Oh wow.
That's, That's, really cool.
which is, you know, why some of this stuff behind me is, is on the wall.
Right.
so I I kinda lived through this, this process of leveraging these
musical skills that I had as I was teaching myself to code.
Cuz it's very similar, you know, there's this mathematical underpinning of both,
there's the creative side of both.
There's um, you know, so many of our boot camps, which are the, you know,
the short term schools to try and teach people off the street to become software
developers and our universities, a large percentage of the students that
are graduating from these programs came to Nashville to pursue music.
And maybe they actually hit it and they were on the road for a while,
and like me, they wanted to get off the road or maybe they never
got to that level in their career.
And they were looking for, okay, I've gotta, I've gotta put food on the table.
What, what's gonna happen now?
They make.
They make great software developers and other technicians.
And so it's, you know, pulling that story together and kind of solidifying that.
And then at the same time, we started to see, and this was in my mind,
the final step where we started having exits of tech companies.
So there'd been.
Lots of exits in the healthcare realm, you know, millions and millions and
millions, if not billions of dollars uh, in, in wealth generated here
through, through healthcare and, and the sale of these hospital systems.
But now we started to see a string, a a steady stream of tech company exits.
And these weren't, you know, there were 50 million here, 84 million
here, a hundred million here, 500 million a couple of times.
That's when things start getting serious and start getting fun because these
people chose to stay here, not take their, not, not take their earnings and
leave to a, to an island someplace, but stay here and get plugged in and invest
those dollars back into the economy and back into the startup sector.
And, and that was the final piece, like I said, that where things really
started to get fun and exciting.
Yeah, that, that is so interesting because you, you get to both from your history,
but also from sitting in this particular unique spot with the technology council.
See all of this really interesting stuff start to emerge.
Not emer, not just emerge, but actually come to fruition and see
some really cool things happen.
So, this, this podcast is obviously about advisory boards, but, but in that whole
process, are you observing and seeing or experiencing how advisory boards are
actually helping support what's going on?
I, in the work that you're doing and seeing happen in the city?
I was aware of that, and I was approached a few times to join some, some advisory
boards, and I, I always felt, although some of my counterparts around the
country did that while they were running technology councils, they, they did that.
I always felt that was, might be perceived as a conflict of interest.
And so I didn't I, I didn't accept any of those, but as I started looking
at what life after the technology council might be, that was definitely
one of the things that was high on my list because I knew that.
I still wanted to be involved in supporting and driving the economy,
and I wanted to get back into, because the technology council
mainly dealt and supported the enterprise sized companies in town,
it, it's not that we excluded or, or didn't have anything for a startup or a
scaling company, it's just that we didn't have as much to offer in our portfolio
of resources as, as we had to offer for, for some of the bigger companies.
And so I wanted to get back into that s that size of things.
And so as soon as as soon as I announced my resignation, I started getting calls.
And you know, so that's maybe to somebody else who's looking to start
a career in advisory board work.
That was an unfair advantage that I had, or, or at least an advantage.
And, and I started getting calls.
And the first two of those calls are the two that show up right now
on, on my LinkedIn profile, which is S3 Recycling and New Orchard
invitations to to join their boards, which made a lot of sense to me.
And I, I actually, and, and I still have this thought in the back of my
head of creating, you know, what, what we call a portfolio career of just
having, you know, 6, 8, 10 different boards that, that I was serving on.
And, and I still think that's fun.
I'm enjoying that work.
Right.
No, that's, that's exciting.
And, and when you think about that, so the transition is you retired or, or decided
to, to leave the technology council and move into some of the, let, specifically
the two advisory boards you're on.
But I wanna go back to your instinct around this and what you've seen
tech companies we know seem to be big users of advisory boards.
Tell me what you've seen in the sector, and maybe from your observation of
these big companies that came into Nashville that you had sort of an inside
look at, even the enterprise ones.
Did you see advisory boards as a significant vehicle that they,
they used to create results for them, or were you, were you.
Aware of it.
As you thought about your future, what, what was kind of the catalyst behind
your, your decision to go that direction?
Because I mean, somebody coming outta your career could, could probably have
lots of opportunities elsewhere and not necessarily think about advisory boards,
but, but you've had this in interesting instinct your whole life, right?
Like you're, you're somewhat aware of something coming and
then you place yourself there.
And I, I just think it's interesting that you leave an you know, a, a not-for-profit
technology council, and one of your first instincts is advisory board.
So what's, what's the connection, I guess is what I'm asking?
I think, I think there is a, a trend and a common theme here,
and that is wanting to give back.
And so this is giving back in a different way.
This is, this is using a lifetime of experience to try
and help a CEO of a company or a founder of a company do better.
And sometimes, I mean, it had been.
It had been many years since I had run my own co.
I mean, I was, I was running the council, which is different
than for-profit uh, company.
But
there there's not that much difference and, and what I'm learning.
So take take S3 recycling as an example.
This is not, I had no experience.
In this kind of a business, we take we take end of life electronics
from major companies like Deloitte and H C A and Tractor Supply.
And so every year they're having to refresh their electronics.
And the question is, what do we do with this old, we don't
want it ending up in a landfill.
You know, we, we, we, we believe that there's a better way to do this.
And so S3 will, will pick that equipment up and bring it back to a warehouse and
then refurbish it if it requires that.
And then it's resold through, through a few different channels.
So still technology, certainly still electronics but something completely
different than I'd ever done.
And yet the fundamentals of running a business are the same.
right.
And, and really to start with I realized that what Rod was looking
for were introductions into some of the big companies in town
that, that I could help provide.
And I was happy to do that, but just as important there is.
Okay, that's great.
But I, I, I really also want, I think you can help me just with
advice and running my company.
So I, I think that that desire to give back and to help is, is, is a common
theme that, that, that tracks throughout.
What I've observed is there are a lot of companies, particularly
startups, but even larger companies that they're going about assembling
advisory boards or maybe they're not going about it at all and they really
need to, but they're missing the boat.
Either because they're not doing it or because they're doing it wrong.
And the way I've seen them do it wrong is they, they go out and find some
friendly faces, some people they know, and it's, you know, the borough network.
No, you wanna be on my advisory board?
Yeah, let's go out and get a beer.
Let's talk about this.
You know, instead of, okay, what do I really wanna accomplish?
What are the, what are the challenges that I'm facing now?
And what are other specific skills that I need to recruit to help me out with that?
That is just not the way the average company goes about it.
And it's what, you know, why I'm so glad that I ran across the advisory
board center and, and in that whole process, because that's what they
teach first, the difference in a governance board and an advisory board.
And then secondly, what's the right way to go about this?
And I just think there's such a potential, you know, advisory boards
in the United States are growing, but I think I think in large part
they're growing in the wrong way.
Yeah.
I, I think there's such a potential here for, for that
and to do it right.
yeah, and so.
When you're sitting on an advisory board, based on your history and
your practice and the knowledge you've had, what's the perspective
that you like to bring to the table?
Because it sounds to me like you sit on an advisory board and you also manage an
ad or, or you chair an advisory board.
But what, what perspective?
Because when you come into when you're at the table, I assume that you have
a way that you're looking at things, your musical background, your tech
background, your sales background, your c i o background, that's driving a way
to look look at the issues in front of, say like an S3 that you're working with.
What, what would you say are, are kinda like your superpowers when
you're sitting in an advisory room?
so to be a good advisor And I will, I will separate to be a good advisor
versus to be a good board member on a governance board where you have
fiduciary responsibilities that you've gotta bring to be a good advisor.
You have to be a good listener.
And, and, so it, it starts there and.
You know, the gray hair doesn't hurt.
We, we were in
a
we, we like the gray hair.
You know, somebody, so I said, so you're the, you're the chairman of the board.
You, do you have a background in in electronics recycling?
I said, no, I just bring gray hair to the equation.
Mm, yes.
it's, you know, The, the challenges are managing the team and managing cash flow.
And it's, it's the same challenge that every company faces.
And I've been there, I've had the responsibility of having to meet payroll.
You know, even though S3 is incredibly successful in doing well, nevertheless,
from month to month, week to week, quarter to quarter, they, they, they
will encounter some, some of these very common challenges that's that,
that they, they need to think through.
And, you know, rod will call me and say, I just need to, I just
need to bounce something off you.
And I said, sure, let me have it.
And many cases, it's nothing more than just listening while he talks through the
issue and what he thinks the solution is.
I say, yeah, I think you're right on there, or maybe you
might want to consider this.
He said, wow, I feel a lot better.
And and doing that is just really rewarding.
yeah, yeah.
No, that's great.
So if, if a tech, and I'm, I'm gonna say tech or medical tech, just because you
have such a strong history in that is considering this as a option potentially
in implementing an advisory board.
What, and, and they're uncertain about it.
They've heard about it and they're thinking of doing the.
The bro system, like just calling, calling three of their buddies.
And they, they get a chance to talk to you and you've got like, just a
couple of minutes to share with them.
What, what two or three things are you gonna say?
Don't this is really important.
Don't miss this, don't do this.
What, what's your advice to that person?
Yeah.
My advice is do you, do you have clarity on what it is that
you want to accomplish here?
I mean, have, have you, have you given enough time or, or
are you just in survival mode?
And, and some of 'em are just in survival mode, but have you, have you
given, given enough time to this is what I really need to accomplish and
the smaller the company, in almost every case, I've gotta grow revenue.
The larger, the company may be more nuanced than that.
And, and, and it gets more fun at that point because there might be,
I'm considering an acquisition or I'm considering a sale and, you know, I,
at that point I may say, all right, then I can, I can help with that.
That's not necessarily a strong background that I have.
So let's go out and identify some other people that we could recruit that really
have a, a good background in that.
That's a little bit of what we did with, with s3.
There, there was a board, it was in its, it was in its early stages, and
we really just had to take a step back and say, okay, let's, let's reorganize
and look at this fresh, let's, and so I had Rod take the what, whatever
it's called that, that a b C provides the, the survey to try and identify.
And there was nothing new there because he already had taken the time
to kind of identify, these are my pain points, and then let's go find
some people with some specific skills that can help us achieve these goals.
And we, we, we had already created the advisory board and ended up
taking another kind of half step back and said, okay, now let's.
Let's have a strategy session.
You know, the very first meeting with the full board was a strategy session
which is, is maybe a little backwards, but, but nevertheless, that was so
eye-opening and everybody enjoyed it.
Rod got a lot out of that.
So anyway, identify what your problems are and then let's figure
out what the skills are that you need.
I mean, that's kind of the same conversation I have with everybody.
Yeah.
So identify it first, because the bro process is really get the people
before you understand the need.
And when you do it backwards, those generally don't have
long and I call them long legs.
They, they just don't last as long because there's not, there's not that sense of
being fit for the purpose of the board.
It's, it's fine to hang out with people that are peers and colleagues
and, and get their advice.
The dilemma sometimes in that is you, you kind of get stuck in a
spiral that doesn't get you anywhere.
A lot of times it, it's nice, it's good.
There's nothing inherently wrong with it.
It just doesn't give you, I think the capacity or the leverage that can come
from understanding your purpose and putting the right people in place.
That's, that's how what I'm hearing you say.
Yeah.
And if the company has raised money, they probably have a governance
board because their investors want to have a say in what's going on.
And so it's, they, they should not be threatened with the advisory board.
The advisory board is here to bring additional insight and skills.
We can't make you do anything, but we can bring our advice.
And hopefully you find that valuable and, and you choose to act on it.
Yeah.
No, that's really cool.
So, and in an earlier conversation, you and I had sort of in setting up this this
interview you hinted that you've got this really amazing new adventure unfolding
that that's, that's connected to your past, but it's also connected to a really
cool future, and there's underpinnings of your role as an advisor in it.
So tell me a little bit about what, what you're doing, what's, what adventure
are you unfolding it now, if you're open to sharing more about that.
Yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm happy to, I mean, we're, I've been working on this idea
for the, the greater part of a year, and we have not issued a press release.
You don't find it on my LinkedIn profile, but plenty of people in town
kind of know, know what's going on.
It's just still in quote, stealth mode.
So we're, my, myself and, and my partners in the process of launching a venture
studio and a venture studio is it's, it's an approach that I wasn't even
familiar with until about a year ago.
That differs from a venture fund, and it differs from an accelerator, and it
differs from an incubator, and yet it.
Attributes of all three of those.
So you, instead of starting with an entrepreneur that has an idea at
least the way we're going about it there, you, you, there's, there's
no entrepreneur in play in day one.
There's no company in play except for the studio on day one.
You start with an idea and so you, you define a focus area.
For us, it's applied ai and so within applied ai, so no industry
or Vertical focus, just technology.
And so this might be, Hey, we, we'll probably end up
with some healthcare ideas.
We'll probably end up with some finance ideas.
We'll probably end up with some retail ideas.
So you, you start with an idea and the source of those ideas at least
in the early days, comes from the team, the founding team of the studio.
And, or, you know, I'm leveraging corporate relationships.
I have, I'm, we're, we're leveraging as a group our academic
relationships that we have.
And so we'll be, we'll be building a queue of potential ideas to consider.
And then once a.
We're going to select what we consider the best of those ideas and start a process.
And this is the secret sauce of a studio.
Start a process that will last three months or more.
That's very detailed and very repeatable.
To flesh this idea out and to evaluate this idea to make sure that, okay, we
have a problem that we're trying to solve.
This is the solution to that problem.
What's our market that we're going after?
Who's our first customers?
You know, can we.
Can we get buy-in from some customers that say, if you build
this, I'll be willing to buy it.
Can we can we create an, an mvp, a a, a minimal viable product
that kind of test or prove out that, that this is going to work?
So basically over the next three months, we do this, this very
intense deep dive on this idea.
And if it, I mean, we're trying to make it fail, and if it fails,
we just set it aside and we take the next idea and we start this
process over again once a month.
The studio will take an idea and start this process.
So think of the studio as a factory for creating startups.
So once a once a month, we start this process.
Out of these 12 ideas that we begin to evaluate in a 12 month period
of time, we believe that two of those will turn into companies.
So if the idea makes it all the way through, then we actually
create a new legal entity that is the company we write a check to.
So we're first dollars in seed fund for, for that idea to start the company.
And we, if we haven't already through the process, we go out and recruit
the person that will be the c e o of this new co, of this new company.
mm.
a co-founder with the studio.
And so the studio de-risks the idea that's part of the secret sauce.
And then the studio actually takes founder shares in the company.
And so we are aligned with the c e O that, that we recruit to the successful
completion of, of this company.
And so we'll go out and help them as they, as they complete the the process
of building out this, this product.
We'll go out and help them recruit.
We'll go out and help them market we'll, we'll help them with
their go-to-market strategy.
We'll help them with their fundraising strategy more so than
a typical venture capitalist would.
So we're, we are writing money, but in addition to the monetary capital,
we're bringing a considerable amount of human capital to the table.
right.
Yeah.
Wow, that's fascinating because I, I was, you know, I've been aware
of the other peripheral approaches to that, but I've never heard
about a venture studio in that way.
That's, that's really you, you mentioned that you hadn't heard of it either.
So I mean, there's, there's something really powerful about having, having
vetted the idea in advance, done all that work, and, and now put money behind
it, and then bring a CEO o to bear.
So often it's a CEO who has the idea who then, LO goes and searches for funding,
and a lot of times it's what you said earlier, it's a idea looking for a problem
instead of doing all that pre-vetting work to try and destroy this idea.
It's brilliant.
It's absolutely brilliant.
Yeah, I, I'm, I've become a huge fan and it's, you know, it was new
to me as you, it is new to you.
It's new to most people I talked to, but the first studio actually dates back
to 1996 and there's about 800 of them in, in operation around the world now.
Um, The biggest.
The biggest cluster uh, Europe, not the United States, which, which
I find fascinating, although there's, there are plenty in the United States.
Um, But, but nevertheless, I think this, you know, bringing the human
capital to bear on the problem.
And there's nothing wrong with the traditional approach to, to starting
a company, but the success rate of companies started out of a studio
is like which is way higher than
the success rate of, of, of a typical company.
Um, And just, you know, to, to drop a few names, Twitter
was started in a, in a studio.
Instagram was started in a studio Dollar Shave Club, which isn't tech, but
people know it was started in a studio.
There's uh, there's um,
Oh, that's so fascinating.
So you're, you're launching this I just want to clear one, clarify
one point, because I think it's really intriguing right now.
We are being inundated in today's news media and everything about ai and you,
you mentioned a term, we, we hear a lot about what's called generative ai.
You mentioned applied ai.
What's the distinction?
Because there's an important distinction it would seem, or you
wouldn't have said it that way.
Yeah, it's, and so we, we selected this close to a year ago.
You know, it's, it's not, we're we're, we're not trying to just jump on the
bandwagon right now, although the, the timing, the timing could be good for that.
So the generator things is, you know, scouring and, and, and pulling, pulling
information, creating creating content.
Which is what chat g p t and g p t four and three do.
Um, Applied AI is more on the automated side of, of AI and the machine learning
side of ai, where, you know, here's a problem that needs to be solved and
we are going to, we're going to take uh, artificial intelligence and we're
going to apply it to this problem and, and come up with a solution.
And so many cases, it'll be automating processes to take care of that.
Uh, And, and that be, you know, going out and finding can be
applied to making decisions.
Um, But it's, it's really,
Right,
we absolutely don't want to have to, to be a solution looking for a
problem to solve, which is what a lot of the generative AI is right now.
Look what we can do now.
What, what problems do we need to solve with this?
We, we really want to start by going out and, and finding
really
So good.
That, that's really fascinating.
Brian, I, I feel like you and I could talk for hours, but we've, we've all
fully consumed almost an hour now.
So, love, love your perspective, love your story, and love where you're going.
I mean, that, that, that where you're going to me is utterly fascinating.
But I, I always like to end these conversations with a couple more rapid
fire questions, just another way to get to know you a little bit better.
So, let me throw a couple at you and I love the fact that
you come from a tech background.
So some of these questions are, are kind of interesting, but the first
one is Mac or pc, which, which is your where do you go with that?
Okay.
What if you have one best jazz album that you can only, it's the only
album you can have, what's the album?
I know it's a terrible question to ask.
I, I know, but is it Miles?
Is it is it Coltrane?
Like, is there anything that that rises to the surface, even if you can't,
you know, I mean, if it's two, give me two.
so
Oh,
miles raises to the surface.
I'm, I, I'm a, I'm a trumpet player, so you've got uh, and I grew up on, you know,
big band, you know, Stan Kenton and you know, Maynard Ferguson and Doc Severson,
Okay.
A book that has shaped you more than any other in your lifetime,
grew up
is there a book that has, has un you know, outsized created impact on you?
I'm trying to come up with a, with the title of the book.
It's been a couple years since I read um, Phoenix is in the name,
but it's, it's all about this, this, this changed my life when I was a
c o because it was going through.
The, the process of trying to really refine that whole role of, of
managing the team and the process that
needs to
Send it to me.
Send it to me afterwards
when we'll put
it
in the show notes.
It sounds interesting.
Is there a podcast that gets listening priority for you?
Because
you
I'll, I'll,
podcast player, okay.
yes, there is now that that
one's, that one's is a podcast series that's called Founders.
Um, it's, um, I, I, I describe it the same all the time.
It's this dude, his name is David, and every week he reads uh, a
biography or autobiography of a founder, and he creates a podcast.
On that book, and it's not a cliff note or a book report, it's here's what I
learned as I was listening to this book, and he's done almost 300 of these now,
and I've listened to about 250 of them.
Um, And what's what's interesting is you, you begin to see trends.
And this is everybody from Elon Musk all the way back to uh, to Vanderbilt
and Carnegie and Benjamin Franklin.
Uh, So it's, it's the entire of entrepreneurs, but you start to see these
common themes and threads of um, of,
Thank you.
I will link that one in the, in the show notes.
What was the first question you asked?
Chat, g p t.
Do you remember, do you remember what you, you
placed in the box?
Yeah, it, you know, just, just testing it out.
It was um, me a pitch deck for a venture studio and applied ai and it
actually uh, iterated 10 different
slides with 10
That's beautiful.
And how would your closest family members define what you do?
like how would they, if I were talking to them, what would they say you do?
They probably have a much uh, higher than what I actually do.
You know, that they, they would say that uh, um, that I've been involved
in you know, kind of shaping the future of tech in Nashville and, been
All right.
Final question.
It appears to me that yes, you have the music memorabilia behind
you, but there's two swords and I'm fascinated by what are the two
swords and what do they mean to you?
Those are my No uh,
Mm,
my brother was stationed in uh, in the Air Force and he sent those to me.
you can kind of see the uh, why I sword.
That's, that's below that.
Um, We, my wife and I traveled to Spain um, several years ago, and I, and I
brought back there's, I don't have a particular affinity for collecting swords.
I
just,
right.
No, that's
beautiful.
Brian.
It has been an absolute pleasure.
Thank you.
Uh, I am fascinated both by where you've been and the work you're
doing now and where you're going.
I, I'm uh, I'm excited to stay in contact to see where this all how this all unfolds
for you, specifically in your venture studio, but as well in the, in the work
you do in advisory boards and more.
So, I really appreciate you being on the uh, on the podcast today.
Thanks again for all of your insight and wisdom and continued
success and great luck.