Main Street Summit: Connection & Learning Packaged into a Dynamic Event

Opening Remarks

Main Street Summit in Columbia, Missouri. It’s a unique feel and event, bouncing around the town of Columbia as locals and college students at Mizzou go along their daily routines. No ballrooms, not stuffy conference centers, but get togethers across the town in local businesses of various kinds. The general sessions, are in a classic theater. This absolutely breeds comfort, genuine conversations, and makes it all about helping people out, and real, true, connection. I met some of the most interesting yet authentic people I have ever met this year, which was just like last year’s event. The stories from Founders were exceptional. Great learning. Great connections. It was all about what matters in a business. People are just looking for people to connect with, relate to, and learn from. All about business with a purpose and vision, and how to move forward.

I’m going to cover some of the main takeaways from this past week, but this by no means covers it all, and is just a small view from my corner, with a focus on what I am interested in most. When I think about this event, and all of these conversations, I really just think about one thing, which is figuring out how to articulate who you are and what you do. What is your one thing? If you can deliver that, you can make connections that build.

When you break that down into your “elevator speech”, how about intro?

With the first 10 seconds, you have an opportunity to explain:

1. Accomplishments - big thing

2. Business - what you do

3. An odd fact

For me:

1. Accomplishments/big thing: have turned around over 10 business entities, leading and optimizing organizations delivering nearly $200M of revenue during my career through leading professional and managed service operations, up to $50M Annual Revenue and 500 person, headcount business organizations.

2. Business: enable and teach leadership, turnaround, scale, and integration

3. Odd fact: Led a team that heavily influenced achieving higher quality ratings for a contract manufacturer, topping the actual OEM itself with their own ratings.

Embrace and share your story  with confidence and conviction

The non-exhaustive takeaways from Main St Summit from my lens and the sessions I was fortunate to attend:

It’s about the story - every founder has one, and that really shined through last week in Columbia, MO. Here are a few of my favorites:

• Alan Barnhart owns a crane and rigging company, moving some of the biggest equipment and structures you can think of - this is the type of business that is changing what’s possible with construction. “They move big stuff”, Alan said. 2000 ton (yeah, not lbs.) items like transformers, warheads, big equipment. In this picture, they’re moving part of a bridge because it was in the way for oversized cargo. Unreal.

• Shegun Otulana, an immigrant entrepreneur, who was just trying to make it in the US when first getting started, raised money in one of the toughest places to raise capital, Birmingham, AL. His learnings from his experience are invaluable for start-ups seeking funding, and any founder for that matter.

  
  

• GIANT, Steve Cockram - Love his take on building and transforming leaders. So good. Pictures say it all.

• Tyler Hogge, Pelion Venture Partners - VC Overview- This was a VC crash course. Tyler gave away all of the good stuff, very quickly! Fascinating to hear about the early days of VC and “Founder Market Fit” from Andy Rachleff’s brain.

• Rebecca Fannin - Silicon Heartland - hearing her talk about taking the rust belt and building a tech ecosystem was interesting to hear about. Indianapolis plays a big role in this topic.

• Jason Illiam, Highmount Capital - His style and talk were awesome. So real, funny, and true. Everyone wants to be SOMEBODY, no wants to be a NOBODY, consider being ANBODY. Another one where pictures tell the story. He even worked the word “sternum” in as a punchline, funny story for sure.

• Eric Jorgenson, Rolling Fun / Scribe Media - VC Overhaul. Eric is a CEO for a business (Scribe Media) separate from this talk, and also runs his own fund, Rolling Fun. Oh and he’s an author of one of the most impactful books of our time in the business world. His passion for building tech towards a utopian society is inspiring. “What sells venture funds is the opposite of what produces returns.”

A few takeaways

• Small business is hard without your tribe, community, co-founder, peers, associates, or clients - whatever gets you to keep going at it

• It’s all about the people, period. This continues to gain truth - the difference will be those firms that can navigate People, Process, and Technology for the better, with their people, not attacking them with tech

• Opportunity is everywhere - you just need to open your eyes and believe

• No one is an expert at all things with all of us having something (or many things) to learn - stay curious and meet people

Introductions were great - I met really interesting people, including founders, investors, analysts, and operators

Saw a few familiar faces also. Quite an experience.

Lead10x OS | Building the Organizational Leadership Framework of the future

Discovery Call with Graham

Set-up a complimentary discovery session with Graham

• Founder GTM

• People & Operations

• Leadership & Team Developmentt

Takeaways

Need Help? Graham can walk you through his approach, provide thoughts and suggestions, and see what kind of support you need. And if Graham isn’t the right person, he will connect you with someone who can help.

Supporting Content - For More to the Story

Hopefully, this added a little value to your business or leadership journey. Thank you for reading. If you think this may help someone else, please repost ♻️ or share. Thanks for being here. 🌍🏔️.

Want to follow along on LinkedIn -> Hit the 🔔.

Climb Higher | Raise Your^ROI

Founder GTM

Executive Summary | The Dynamic Leader, brought you by Founder GTM

Founder GTM is your ecosystem for getting the work done that isn’t core to your business, but needs to get done. Our Vendor as a Service offering delivers, talent, solutions, and value add to your business operations, allowing you to focus on your core work.

Building the one stop resource for Founders, VC firms, PE firms, Holdco’s, SMB’s to transform turnaround, scale, and grow business.

» Bringing you solutions to your non-core work through our trusted partner network

AI/Digital Transformation | HR Consultation | Recruiting (US/UK/EU) | Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) | Fractional Execs | Fractional GTM Package | Leadership & Business Consulting/Coaching | M&A Services - Buy Business to Grow Your BusinessFuture | Digital Marketing | TA Workforce Community | Business Education | Investor- Start-ups | People & Service Operations | Sales Acceleration/Process/fCRO

Adding soon: Purchasing/HR Tech/RPA/Fractional Client Growth/Investor - Start-ups/Holding Company/Investor- General/Scale & Invest Marketing/Exit Advisor…and more…

Building your SMB suite of services

For additional content, check out articles on Medium.

"Twenty years from now, you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover."

- Mark Twain

Looking for a community?

Operations

Human Resources

Curated Modern Business Education