Raising The Bar on Leadership

Cultivating a gifting strategy that builds bridges between organizations and their customers is hard, and is what inspired Jonathan Legge to start &Open. In today’s episode, Co-Founder and CEO Jonathan Legge talks about how they bootstrapped their company and grew it purposely and organically by hiring slowly, hyperfocusing on their numbers, and staying true to their values and mission.

In this episode, PJ Bouten, Co-Founder and CEO of Showpad, recognized a need to empower sales and marketing teams to deliver a better buyer experience. Since 2011, PJ has helped build a global company with more than 1,000 customers in 50 countries and grew the organization to 350 team members. But when the pandemic hit, he was faced with difficult decisions in order to save the company as a whole....

Tim Schumm, the founder and president of Lucas James Talent Partners, started and grew the organization to a team of 32 people in just 20 months– then COVID hit. Tim shares the step by step process he took to lead his team through this crisis, what it takes to build a culture of feedback, and the daily practices he follows to make sure he shows up at his best for his team and his family. 

In this episode, Matt Kunkel, the co-founder, and CEO of LogicGate, discusses the importance of mentors and relationships. Matt co-founded LogicGate, a Chicago based SaaS platform which operationalizes regulatory, risk, and compliance programs for organizations, just over 4 years ago and has quickly grown it to 120+ employees and raised $35 million. Matt discusses the critical role mentors played...

In this episode, Jack Altman, CEO and Co-Founder of Lattice, a performance management and employee engagement platform, talks about why the employee experience is a company’s biggest asset and how management’s role evolves as an organization grows. Lattice, in just four years, has grown from startup to a growth stage business with over 150 employees and 15,000 plus customers. Jack shares how he’s...

In the 8 years under President & CEO Bracken Darrell’s leadership, he has transformed Logitech and their stock price has octupled - that’s 8x growth! But in our conversation, Bracken doesn’t talk about stock price, profits, or revenue – instead, he shares the importance of the two-person team, of giving power and autonomy to make data-driven decisions to the people on the ground level, closest to...

Tom De Weerdt, EVP and CFO of Mauser Packaging Solutions, blends a bit of right and left brain into his leadership style. Using a philosophical and growth mindset along with plenty of spreadsheets, Tom has led several global teams at a variety of large corporations. It’s integral for leaders to keep an open mind for as long as they can, says Tom, and seek out a variety of trusted perspectives from...

In 2003, Devin Gross started as the first salesperson at a pre-revenue healthcare engagement company called Emmi Solutions. In 2010 Devin was named by the board as the CEO, where he went on to grow them from 35 team members to nearly 200 at the time of the company’s acquisition in 2017. In this episode, Devin talks about the challenges and fear he faced going from salesman to CEO overnight and the...

In today’s episode, Desmond Clark, the former Tight End for the Chicago Bears, two-time author, motivational speaker, philanthropist and Co-Owner of The Insurance People talks about the similarities between leadership on the field and in the boardroom, on his transition from Dez Clark the football player to Dez Clark, the business leader, and what drives him to wake up each morning.

In today’s episode, Kris Rudeegraap, the Co-Founder, and CEO of Sendoso, a leading sending platform for innovative ways to engage with customers, shares why his number one priority as the CEO is hiring and retaining top talent and then enabling that talent to reach its full potential. Kris shares some unique strategies for finding the right fit when hiring and two steps to take when building a tea...

Some things never go out of style: collaboration, the importance of sales, and phone booths. Serial entrepreneur Ryan Leavitt, the Co-Founder of Pillar Booth, LearnCore and Catapult Chicago, says there’s one equation that is necessary for a business to succeed. Success = Collaboration + Accountability.

In this episode, Corbett Drummey, the Co-Founder and CEO of Popular Pays, shares his journey in starting a content sharing platform that helps brands generate high-quality content to tell their unique stories through influencer marketing. Drummey started and scaled his business by constantly consuming information and believes that one should always be learning and evolving.

When the business Laura Coe created sold to a Fortune 500 company, Laura took the path less often taken, leaving corporate America to pursue her lifelong passions of philosophy, coaching and spirituality. She wrote her first book, Emotional Obesity and started the popular podcast, The Art of Authenticity . In today's episode, Laura takes us through her journey, sharing how she knew it was time to...

Frank Riordan, Founder and CEO of DMC, Inc., has built a company that has consistently been a staple on the “Best Places to Work” lists, with over 170 employees in 8 cities across the US. This happened by building a process to hire the very best people, which takes time. In this episode, Frank takes a dive into their process and criteria for hiring top talent and shares how it has helped fuel DMC’...

With 4 successful companies under his belt and over 2,000 employees hired, Jeff Ellman, visionary and co-founder of Humatal, Homescout, Hireology, and UrbanBound, knows something about starting and building a successful business. It’s all about the first ten people you bring into your organization, advises Jeff. They are the foundation of your business. If they align with your company’s values, th...

Doesn’t it seem that some people are just born with an entrepreneurial gene? Dan Novaes, the co-founder and CEO of Current Media, is one of those born entrepreneurs. He started his first company at the age of 15 with only $1000, bootstrapped it up to over $2M/year and now is on his 10th company, a blockchain enabled multimedia platform that empowers a new generation of media streamers where users...

Can best buddies also be effective business partners? In the case of Monarch & Company - a creative merchandising agency based in Chicago and Denver - Founder and CEO Yvonne Lyngaas Zeman and her business partner, best friend, and COO Anna Nguyen have made it work. In today’s episode we talk about the realities of working with your best friend, the trials that come along with negotiating equity, a...

Alex O’Brien, COO of The Cardinal Group, talks about how his 5 years as a Marine were instrumental in helping him grow his company from one single family home development to over 1,000 employees today and how the Marine playbook turned into their company’s core values which guide his team on a daily basis.

Kim Scott, author, entrepreneur, and badass. Prior to writing her best-selling book, Radical Candor, Kim was a senior leader at Google, a faculty member at Apple University and served as a coach to the CEOs of several well-known tech firms. Scott discusses why radical candor with kindness is integral in the workplace, why it’s still hard for her to do, and how fear of retribution can stifle it.

At the age of 16, Dana Gordon sold out her first jewelry collection within 48 hours. Now, nearly 15 years later, her jewelry is worn by countless celebrities and women of all ages and lifestyles. Gordon discusses the difficulty of finding balance as a female founder, mother, wife, and human being!

John Havel is the co-founder and former president of The Hustle, which curates business and tech news in a fun-to-read daily email. Havel shares the secret that helped them grow to over 1.3 million daily subscribers in just a few short years: radical authenticity.

Dr. Teddy Scott co-founded PharmaCann in 2015, acting on an opportunity that presented itself at the right time. With his background in law, pharmaceutical research and entrepreneurship, he grew the company quickly to over 275 full-time employees and recently sold the business for $682 million, making it one of the largest medical cannabis sales in US history. Dr. Scott discovered that culture, pe...

Jason VandeBoom, Founder & CEO of ActiveCampaign, discusses how he’s been able to keep the team performing, as they’ve added over 400 employees and expanded to offices around the world in the last 3 years. Jason emphasizes the importance of listening to his people and in turn asking them to listen to their thousands of clients. In doing this, ActiveCampaign is not only able to create a better cust...