The Power of Purpose for Long-Lasting Organization

Starting the conversation:

Have you thought about what resources are necessary to do your computing work? There is a real resource cost (in addition to the creation and delivery of electricity) for being able to build or use data. Steve Russell, CEO & Co-Founder at Upstart 13 shares that a key element of innovation is questioning what a company is doing today, and how innovation can balance the growth and sustainability that tough technology challenges bring.

Bringing the values to life within your organization starts with you. Big changes take time, sometimes years or more. Incorporating continuous innovation through asking big questions and testing those questions against day-to-day work is one way to innovate. The ability to have conversations about topics which impact your business and your industry keep you informed to navigate threats and opportunities facing your business.

In this program, you will hear how to embrace fear and keep going, that the expression of business values is an evolution, and about the power of disruption through innovation. Facing the risk that comes with working with purpose and aligning a team to a common goal will create significant results. Jess Dewell talks with Steve Russell, CoEO & Co-Founder at Upstart 13, about embracing technology to solve tough business challenges.

Host: Jess Dewell

Guest: Steve Russell

What You Will Hear:

1:06 When you quit something BIG is when you really start learning.

• Usefulness of a 10-year roadmap to look forward.
• Know what experiences one is seeking and anticipate decision points.
• Awareness that it was necessary to let go of security in a regular paycheck.
• Momentum for success came from three co-founders quitting big together.

8:15 How you can burn the boats.

• Clear about the runway you have (time, energy, money) to achieve positive cash flow.
• Weekly reflection on what is working and what isn’t … about every detail.

10:58 The reality of quitting big.

• Alignment and focus are what is necessary to leap forward and bet on yourself.
• Stay real. Be aware and pragmatic. Know what you have available and what it can actually do.
• Facing the critic between your own ears is a feat in itself: I’m scared and let’s get going anyway.
• When you know your purpose, it is possible to use your work to pursue it.

17:03 When you know your priorities you can get to your goals.

• Focused energy is the key to making progress.
• Your tangent interests help you with your purpose. (Steve is a builder.)
• Recognize the size of your initiatives. In addition to growth, Upstart 13 focuses on its Carbon Footprint.
• There is a real tangible cost of technology; for example, the water it takes to cool servers to do computing.

25:10 Caring for our world will drive new ways to collect, filter, and receive usable information from big data.

• The path forward may mean you are an early adopter for change. Claim it!
• How do we tap into AI computing? < This is an incomplete question, and what needs to be added.
• Start having conversations about the impacts of our business being, doing, and achieving MORE.

37:30 How to bring big knowledge into day-to-day practice.

• Do your own work. Calculate it out.
• Be more aware, ask questions, educate yourself and others.
• Every action forward is an opportunity to put strategy into practice to reach your biggest goals.
• There is real work with tactics for systems and processes needed.
• There will be an impact on key metrics and performance indicators.
• Embracing change in HOW we work will make a difference.

42:00 From Steve’s experience, here’s what he’s learned:

• There is power in a commitment.
• A person can keep the commitment and build it into a purpose.
• Identify the right resources to be able to do the right work.
• It is ongoing deep work to fortify and lean into a strong culture, walk the talk, refine understanding and live values.

52:58 It is BOLD to embrace technology to solve tough business challenges.

Resources

• Are there shortcuts to innovation?
• Burn the Boats

Transcript

Steve Russell 0:00
Had no core values for five years, and they wrote the core values five years in looking at the success. And I learned from that experience what it means to work in an environment with people who really lived the values of the company. And it was the only company I’ve ever worked for where I felt like what people said and did matched what was written. I’ve never experienced it before.

Jess Dewell 0:25
I’m so glad you’re here. Thanks for stopping by at the Bold Business Podcast. We are normalizing important conversations. Yes, there are tips. Yes, there are ways to solve problems. More importantly, we are going to cover what do you need for yourself to be able to solve those problems and make the most of the education, the training and the programs that you are already using. This is a supplement to that. It can sit on top of it, fuel your soul, fuel your mind, and most importantly, regardless of where you’re at on your journey, maybe you’re starting out, maybe you’re ready to scale. Maybe you’re going through a reinvention. The conversations we are having will help you at each of those stages. So hang around, see what’s going on, and I look forward to seeing you engaging with our videos.

ANNOUNCER 1:18
You are listening to the Bold Business Podcast where you will hear first-hand experiences about what it really takes to ensure market relevance and your company’s future.

Jess Dewell 1:30
Bringing the right people together to solve a problem is incredibly important. Sometimes we take for granted how lucky we are that we have problems to solve, inspiration that gives us these big ideas that we might be able to mull over and think through and look at through different lenses to find out, what can our impact actually be within the organization that we have? Speaking with Steve Russell in this program, he’s a visionary CEO of Upstart 13 embarking on a transformative journey that is reshaping the outsourcing industry. He has a vast background in services businesses, and he saw an opportunity for improvement, which is where Upstart 13 came from. He’s sourced top-tier talent, creating a culture and ethos rivaling the most esteemed US companies. What this actually matters is, it matters that there’s impact, not only impact, real impact, to the way business is done. And in fact, in this uncharted territory, we’re talking about the future. It’s scary to know and make decisions that we now have to go forward and solve, and we’re good with that. It’s also knowing that when we have a clear purpose and mission, we can find the values that support that. So we are walking and talking the way that we need to make the biggest impact. And what we say we do is what our customers expect and experience that we do. And we’re also talking about the path forward. Are the ideas too far in the future? Is it early adoption? Is it something that supports our purpose? Even though we’d be doing it first. This is where we should be first, versus maybe other places. It’s okay, but we’re not, and we’re waiting for things to get more mainstream, or whatever the decisions are. We’re all running companies where we’re thinking about this at least sometimes, and it’s a really neat conversation when we have so much opportunity to talk about change, potential, opportunity and growth in all of its forms, and that’s what I’m really excited to share with you that Steve and I are going to talk about. Did you plan to have the scale potential at the beginning that you have actually achieved, Steve?

Steve Russell 3:59
I know I did. I don’t know whether everybody else who’s been along for the ride knew exactly what that meant for them, but yes. Do you want me to elaborate a little bit on…

Jess Dewell 4:09
I actually do. I was like, let me see what comes out when I say this thing.

Steve Russell 4:13
Think most of us are certainly from myself. I read a bunch of books about entrepreneurship and starting a business, and the do’s and don’ts and all that good stuff. And the reality is, like, when you actually lose your income, when you quit a job, or you go all in on something, that’s when you really start to learn. And my first thought was, like, what are we going to be like, what do we, what are we trying to accomplish? What are we trying to build? We defined it, and for me, I’m a little bit of a long-range planner, so I said, I need at least a 10-year roadmap for me to feel good each year knowing I’m pointing in the right direction. So the original plan was, we wanted to build software that helped software outsourcing as an industry improve. The why behind that was, we’ve all been consumers of software outsourcing, and myself, I’ve worked with companies all over the globe, lots of different types of teams, lots of different time zones, navigating all those different issues. I never enjoyed it. I used to feel like the people that were in my team, I felt very responsible for them, and I didn’t see the companies I was contracting with having the same sense of responsibility, which used to grind my gears a little bit. I felt like they, they treated people almost like batteries, where they could move them around. So I said, Okay, we’re going to do this, and we’re going to try to make it a better experience for everybody, the people doing the work, the business owners that are responsible for these companies, and, most importantly, the companies that are paying the money to do that. Because we didn’t want to go out and raise capital, we wanted to bootstrap. We said the first thing we must do is build a services company ourselves. Because until you’re sitting in the seats of the people I’m talking about, I don’t really have a place to criticize from. I need to go through the same trials and tribulations as they have, see those decision points and try to make them differently. So we said three years. It might take three years for us to build the services business up. In that time frame, we will see what the first product need is. The path will reveal itself, and we’ll start building something around 2023 and put it into the market in ’24, and then we had a similar kind of expectation to do that again in 2026 and 2028.

Jess Dewell 6:48
When did you know that’s what you were doing? Quitting something big, to go do this, knowing that there is going to be a three-year period of time, of building and watching and exploring…

Steve Russell 7:01
… probably 15, 20 years ago. Okay, I guess I was an entrepreneur, as they say, like doing entrepreneurial things inside of the bigger businesses, but I always had this yearning to do something from scratch, build something. I lacked the courage, and, I’ll say, the spine, to be able to walk away from the income that I was so dependent on and needed in order for me to feel like I was providing, this, the security and comfort to my family, and that was the biggest hurdle for me to get past. I think the fear of failing and having nothing to go back on, like that was a big challenge for me, but I knew I wanted to do this. And then as we started getting into, what are we going to do? How will we do it? I started realizing that this could be a number of years before we were able to take an income.

Jess Dewell 7:59
How many of you started Upstart 13?

Steve Russell 8:03
Three of us, me, plus two co-founders. We very quickly added some key seats, key individuals to the team. So we have a little bit of a core of around, sort of, 10 or 12 people that have been behind the movement that we’re creating from day one, really.

Jess Dewell 8:24
Did your co-founders go through something similar, where they had to quit something big?

Steve Russell 8:28
One actually was ahead of us, like he was… So this started in 2020, an interesting year to start a company. So in December, -ish of, not, 2019, we started talking about what we were going to do, and then in January, right before the lockdown, we flew to Columbia. We interviewed like 50 different people for engineering, software engineering roles, met a bunch of different companies down there that could be potential partners for us, came back to the States, we all got COVID, we all got super sick, and we all said, “Hey, this is probably going to be a March, April timing.” And then, of course, all that happened. So April became May, became June, and we kept kicking the can, but one of us had already walked away from what he was doing and was like, pushing the other two of us saying, “Hey, come on, guys, like, I’m ready.” And here we were, like, kicking the can, going…

Jess Dewell 9:34
So that’s actually, though, when the momentum really started, when everybody said, “Yep, we’re quitting all of that, we’re putting all of our attention, effort and energy here together,” as a trio of founders. It moved quick.

Steve Russell 9:47
It moved. That’s when it all happened. So July time was when we were almost all in at that point, and we spent the first two months just planning, thinking, designing, building that road map, starting to understand what we’re going to do, coming up with branding, all of the early names, all that good stuff. But September was when we got our first proper client, and that’s when traction began. And our philosophy, I should just say this out loud … burn the boats.

Jess Dewell 10:16
Oh, you like burn the boats?

Steve Russell 10:18
Burn the boats. There’s only one place to go. There’s no going back at that point.

Jess Dewell 10:22
I want to know how you do it. How do you ensure you, your co-founders and the culture that you’ve created in Upstart 13 actually, truly do burn the boats?

Steve Russell 10:33
For us, it was pretty straightforward. We quit our jobs. There was no going back at that point. We had to figure every little detail out in order to make it succeed. And failure wasn’t an option because our house, the roof over our heads, our families, everybody’s depending on us to make something work, whatever that something may turn out to be. For me personally, it was, my path was saving prior. I saved as much as I could, stockpiled as much cash as I could, said no to a lot of things. The company I left really took care of me at the end. And that all added up to me feeling okay, I have a little bit of time here, and that little bit of runway. And then, you know, tightening the belts at the beginning and just accepting that I’m not going to take any cash from the business was part of burning the boats. And I guess, more philosophically, I would say, once we got going, it, it became more of a, “What are we seeing?” Like, a constant question that we kept coming back to almost weekly. What’s working, what’s not working, down to, what messages are working, what messages aren’t working? What are we seeing in terms of the people we’re hiring? Who are succeeding? Who are not? Who are struggling, who are just outright failing? And realizing very quickly, start to make changes, make adjustments and tweak, tweak, iterate to great.

Jess Dewell 12:09
You’re listening. to the Bold Business Podcast. I’m your host, Jess Dewell. This is your program for strategizing long-term success while diving deep into what the right work is for your business right now.

ANNOUNCER 12:23
You’re listening to the Bold Business Podcast hosted by Jess Dewell, a nationally recognized Strategic Growth consultant. She works with business owners and executives to integrate just two elements that guide business through the ups and downs of growth. Number one, know what work is necessary. Number two, do all the work possible. Schedule a complimentary consultation to find out more at Reddirection.com.

Jess Dewell 12:52
Hey, it feels big and dramatic looking back. Was it as big and dramatic as you thought it was going to be?

Steve Russell 13:02
Oh, right. That is really interesting, because emotionally, yes. Emotionally I’m still, like, I look back and I have to take a deep breath because it was so much fear tied up in, but the reality of it, this is why I liked your question, when you look at the actual mechanics and the nuts and bolts, suddenly it didn’t look as big and dramatic. It just needed alignment focus. nothing else.

Jess Dewell 13:30
We talk about not celebrating the small wins enough. And there are certain personalities and workflow styles that were just like, head down, keep going. We have no idea how great our grass is. We’ve got to just get more green grass, right? We don’t even know this awesomeness that we’re doing. And I believe in that. I also believe that sometimes we hate, we’re hangers-on, hanging on to this stuff that was good, and it prevents us from fully seeing what we actually have in reality going forward. Have you ever experienced any of this? Have you ever thought about any of this?

Steve Russell 14:12
I think you could… I think you could underline what I said earlier about not having the courage to go do this earlier, and that’s probably the biggest regret that I have. However, I will say, it wasn’t until my last corporate role, when I looked in the mirror and I said, “Actually, you have the experience,” and I needed to take stock of what I had, because I, at that point, I didn’t really fully appreciate it, and I felt equipped. And I’ve told this story to a number of my team. When I took my last corporate role, which was like 2018, I went from having a team of around 50 people to a team of around 200 something. And my P&L how, had I don’t know, something, or somewhere, in the region of 80 to 100 million in revenue that my business unit was responsible for, and a good 30, 40 million of labor that grew so, so fast, that it was hard to keep up. My labor was 52 million a year, and my revenue was around 140 million. And at the time, each step of the way, I looked at that P&L, and I, my, my book clenched a little, and I said to myself, “Whoa, Steve, you’ve never done this before. You don’t have the experience to do this.” And you know what? When we started the company, I looked at a blank spreadsheet that had no revenue and no labor, and I had that same clenching feeling and thought, “Steve, you’ve never done this before. You have no experience to do this.” How many you have that in your career all the time?

Jess Dewell 15:53
I think there’s a big difference, right? I think there’s a big difference of who are we and what we bring to the table, so we can lean into that to learn whatever we need, because I still, to this day, I’ve done a lot of cool stuff. I’ve made a lot of, looking back, “How did I make those silly mistakes? Those were silly mistakes.” Or, “How did I miss those great big minefields that come along?” I got all of them. Spectacular, spectacular failure in addition to amazing success. And I will tell you, one of the things that I think you, you basically were saying, that you’re like, “What’s going on between my own ears?” That is, what is actually holding us back or not? So how do you work on your, what’s between your ears, so that you can go, “Yep, I’m scared, here we go,” because that’s basically, I think, you’re still doing that.

Steve Russell 16:40
Yeah. All of us are. And on a personal front, we decided to adopt, the journey started two years ago, and we met our son in December last year, and we took him in full-time in February, and now it, it’s coming to almost a year later when we met him, and it feels like he was never out of the picture. But these moments are like, “What’s going on in between?” Because it, for five years, it was, “It’s not a good time. It’s not a good time,” until you wake up one day and you realize, actually, there’s never a good time. You just got to get on with it. Aha. So I think that had happened for me with my professional life. And I will tell you that I think if I was smarter four years ago than I am today, I would have answered you then how I will answer you now, and this is, unfortunately, not what I did. I think you should know what you want your purpose to be in life, and I think you should focus all of your attention, and therefore your energy, into pursuing that purpose. If you understand that, and then understand what the sub-purposes are that go underneath that bigger purpose, which, by the way, is a permanent thing, shouldn’t depend on anything or anyone, something that you can do irrespective of who’s in your life, what’s going on. Sub-purposes are transitory. There are things that will depend on people in some cases, or will depend on some things that you have going on. Behind that comes your focus, which allows you to identify your priorities. When you know your priorities, you can define your goals. When you know your goals, you can start working on a plan of how you’re going to get there. And if you follow that framework, you essentially are going to be putting your attention, which means where your energy is going in life, to things that have a direct impact on your bigger purpose. And if you feel that sense of harmony in what you wake up to do every day, and the energy you get from doing those things, because you see results when you put focus towards something.

Jess Dewell 19:02
Well, there’s egenerative qualities to that, big time. And there’s a lot of elements of this, right? There’s regenerative leadership as a concept, which I find fascinating, which focuses on open and honest conversation and setting ourselves aside for what somebody else might need in that moment to make progress. There’s regenerative farming, where, and there’s a lot of different kinds of regenerative farming, is what I’m learning, which I find fascinating. So you’ve got all of these things that we’re doing, and the, just, trees naturally do it. So we’re learning what nature has had forever in this. Now I’m going to get a little nerdy because now you know where I like to spend some of my time as outside of this, which is, I’m reading a book called The Mother Tree. Okay, Steve? And in this book, The Mother Tree, it’s about this woman who is studying forests, and she has found that trees, not just aspen trees, but like trees in healthy forests, actually will communicate with each other, and the trees know which are their family and which are other trees’ families, and they still communicate about danger. They communicate about good things and bad things through the soil and the other things that are growing in the soil. So they figured out how to use this stuff around them to communicate. And you look at a tree and you’re like, “Well, it’s nice to be around you. Maybe we hug a tree once in a while. We might be nature bathing and just being out there in nature,” with all of this awesomeness, but they’re actually really smart beings all on their own that have created these ecosystems, which is what we’re trying to do when we’re setting our priorities and our goals. And so where do you get excited about, right? What are some of those side tangent interests that actually, understanding how trees grow in their ecosystem is actually really useful for business and how we might approach making really good change for lasting change. That’s why I get excited about it. I’m like, “Ooh, cool tangent.” But how about you? Where are your cool tangents that you’re bringing back?

Steve Russell 20:55
I think I’m looking at the background right here behind me that is, I think, a little disclaimer of, Steve is a builder. Steve likes to create, create, whatever that might be. It might be opportunity. It might be better quality of life for others. Now, one of the things I’m going to tie it to your tree example. I recently asked somebody in the company to start researching, how much energy are we consuming as a team, as a company, and, of course, we have people in 20 different countries, so it’s a little bit complex for us. What’s the CO2 footprint? And the reason why this is relevant and important is because we have a tree planting program in the Amazon in three different areas.

Jess Dewell 21:48
Okay, totally, by the way, I’m going to just tell everybody right now, listening and watching, I had no idea until this came out of his mouth. So I work there, and it’s best right here, exactly.

Steve Russell 21:58
You, we have not talked about this at all. And I’ll tell you what’s really cool for me about this is, obviously I’m invested because I want to offset our CO2 footprint, but I also love the symbolism of what we’re doing because one of the things that we’ve built, for to be attractive to people to come and be a part of what we do, is the investment in them, in their growth and development, and we plant a new tree in the name of every person that joins. And my hope one day will be at some point, when somebody’s been with us for a period of time, wouldn’t it be nice to have them go to the Amazon, stand next to the tree and have a photograph and see the tree’s growth as a symbol of their growth during that time frame, right? The reality is, though, it’s super complex to calculate this. Different types of trees consume different amounts of CO2 and produce different amounts of oxygen. And, of course, they’re constantly growing, and we’re putting them in the ground when they’re a certain age, and they’re not as optimal as what it would be if it was a 100-year-old tree. So it’s constantly changing. And the reason why this is so important now, so prevalent to where we are as a, as an, as a tech industry, but also societally, so I heard some startling data facts about AI recently, as recently as last week. So I’m going to try to get these numbers correct. The, the equivalent water consumption of one question to ChatGPT currently is around 16 ounces of water that the data center that is being used to crunch all of this information is currently in taking 16 ounces per question, roughly. That’s the average. Now, what that really means is, it didn’t just gobble up 16 ounces of water and that’s gone from the planet. It took 16 ounces of water in for cooling, and some of that will be evaporated out into the atmosphere, and some will be recirculated back through the same system. But here’s the crazy number, we’re currently using around 180,000 US American homes worth of energy per day on that data center, 180,000 homes, US homes, the equivalent of the energy usage of 180,000 US homes is being used to power this thing per day currently. How big is the city you live in?

Jess Dewell 24:45
We are around 2 million.

Steve Russell 24:46
2 million and you’re in Austin.

Jess Dewell 24:47
I’m in Kirkland, Washington, and there’s 100,000 people here.

Steve Russell 24:52
That’s more than the size of the city I live in. I want to give some perspective here. Here comes the real perspective.

Jess Dewell 24:56
So there’s been the ask of analysts us to forecast what we think that’s going to grow to by 2035, they said by 2035, at the rate we’re currently going, the energy need will equal the current United States energy production.

Steve Russell 25:08
So we basically got to double our energy production as a country to meet the demand of what energy will be needed, unless you look at how computing is getting done and find more optimal ways. So there are companies, here’s where I got this data from, so I was watching the CEO of a, of a company, who is focused on trying to do the same work, the same compute in a more optimal fashion, using different technology. So I’ll leave it at that. But when we think about where we are going as an industry, it’s a responsibility of every company to take care of the world and the environment that we live in. And being in tech, for me, that means really paying attention to those types of details.

Jess Dewell 26:07
I’m 46 now. In my lifetime, the biggest thing has been, how do we become less dependent on fossil fuels and how do we get, and then, more recently, in my son’s lifetime, he’s 13, we’re talking about, how do we get the materials we need for things like batteries and computer parts, to do this computing. So our kids are about the same age in that, so we’ve got that. So are you saying, by the time, whether you’re graduating from high school or doing whatever they’re going to do post-high school, that this is going to be the thing? It’s going to, this is going to be where the disruption is going to be, the R&D is going to be focused on more. Are we like, at the beginning trends, of the early adopters of this, and it’s going to become as mainstream as, how do we get an alternative energy source?

Steve Russell 26:50
I think it’s a little bit above, you can’t, if analysts that are smarter than me and smarter than the average and have access to the data that most of us don’t see every day, have spent the time to think about what the need is going to be just 11 years from now, and they’re coming back with those kind of numbers, the need isn’t going to change. The demand is clearly there, and they expect it to grow. And we all know, if you’re in a room full of people and you ask everybody in the room, “Hey, who uses ChatGPT?” Now, there are other questions that we should ask around AI, but we’ll stop there. Now, if that continues, then the demand is clear, and more and more businesses are trying to figure out, how do we leverage, how do we tap in? And they’re not, they’re maybe asking those questions because they don’t want to get left behind, or they see opportunity for efficiency gains or creating a capability that is going to be unique to them. All of the right reasons, but most of us are unaware of the environmental implications of moving towards this. And, and I think we might see something a little bit like what, in the past, from human behavior when you know something’s not… My vice is, I love chips.

Jess Dewell 28:13
Not…no microchips, not cookies, actual potato chips. Okay? And what’s your go-to chip?

Steve Russell 28:18
I don’t want to say the name, but it’s like a ruffle brand, okay.

Jess Dewell 28:21
Oh, got it. Okay.

Steve Russell 28:23
So we’re talking, we’re talking vices, right? I know it’s bad for me to eat, but I love them. And if I, if somebody has a bag open, I’m not going to be able to resist. And if I take one, I’m taking 10.

Jess Dewell 28:33
I’m the same. way with Milk Duds, I’ll be real with you.

Steve Russell 28:35
Okay, so then just no go around.

Jess Dewell 28:37
Yeah, I got you.

Steve Russell 28:40
I feel like AI might be one of those things where we all know it, it’s bad for the environment, and somebody’s got to figure it out, but I’m still going to use it. I’m still going to consume it and be part of a bigger problem. So when I think back to your question about, is this going to be a thing? I think in order for us to be able to leverage that type of technology to its fullest extent and make it pervasive in, in our lives, in our technology, in our software, we’re going to have to figure it out. And I don’t think doubling our energy production is the only solution that we can rely on. I don’t know how we would do that, honestly.

Jess Dewell 29:25
That’s also a very big challenge, right? So if you say, “Let’s just do that,” that comes with its own challenges. So you’re right, how do you think creatively? How, what are some of the other things that might come up? And this is interesting, because I’ve actually never thought about it in relationship to the environment because, in my world, right, and I’m actually fairly, I’m not as in technology as I used to be, and I’m definitely not in technology like you are, Steve, but I will say, it’s coming across my radar a little, so I can only imagine how much more access that there is to this type of dialog in your industry. And then there are people whose industries don’t even understand that there could be this side effect yet. And I think that’s a really interesting thing. Where was I going with this? Oh, I had a point and I don’t know, I lost it. It’s in a bubble floating around here. So my question is going to be this then, and maybe it’ll come back. How do these complex questions that you’re chewing on right now, that you’re taking action to make sure your business understands, to just know its footprint, to know its impact, so that at some point, reasonable solutions or ideas and initiatives can come from it, because of your priorities and your goals because of your purpose, right? I tie back to that other part of our conversation. But how does this impact what you discuss at dinner as a, when you’re around the dinner table, when you have people over, when it’s just the people that live under the same roof as you, what are the, do you have conversations like this? Are you, and maybe not this exactly, but these bigger questions to really test, what is our purpose in this world, and how can we contribute?

Steve Russell 31:02
For sure. Yeah, absolutely, yeah. I was in a room full of 200 CEOs last week at a conference, and I’m listening carefully to the dialog, and I’m going to, I’m going to have to tell you that I don’t think the dialog around this particular issue is happening the way you might think it is happening in the tech space. Not yet.

Jess Dewell 31:25
I accidentally give too much good credit all the time.

Steve Russell 31:28
Yeah. No, back to reality, because we’re not talking about it. You…

Jess Dewell 31:32
… reach good, here we go.

Steve Russell 31:35
This is exactly why I chose to bring it up because, yeah, it’s astounding that the numbers are this large, and yet nobody’s talking about it. And here’s what, where my head went, right? So there’s, this is after the data was shared because this toothpaste is, no, never going back in the tube, it’s out now for me. So now I’ve got to think about it. Now, when I look at the strategy that has been in play with some prominent companies, namely a prominent EV vehicle manufacturer, and trying to get everybody to adopt solar, trying to get everybody to put solar tiles on the roof, or solar panels on the roof. And the incentives, I’m starting to see the bigger system, starting to recognize like, “Hey, we need to be on this.” And they was, they were on that years ago, like, already been working on this for a while, right? But for us, we’re just coming into the conversation. So there is definitely this clear understanding of, yes, we need to create. I live in Texas. I believe the amount of sustainable power produced in Texas is 10% of our overall energy consumption, and it, obviously, is going to have to be a lot larger, but it brings into question, how will we produce the energy needed if we cannot do it only through sustainable? We’re going to have to become even more dependent on fossil in order to keep up with the need. And I, it’s going to be a really interesting conversation. Are we going to see companies like, like companies that went from, “Hey, we need to be a paperless office” two decades ago, and then you end up like, seeing departments within the company innovating around being totally digital, and then other companies were being totally innovative about turning that digital into paper inside the same building, or inside the same company, just so that they could get the work done. Are we going to see things like that happening in the industry? It’s quite possible.

Jess Dewell 33:39
We’re talking about a very large organization that has been pushing solar for a long time. And I actually know that, I don’t know. How long has that, how long has that initiative been on your radar? Get solar, turn your house into, get off the grid a little, make your own energy, whether it be tiles or the tops of cars or just something in your yard, it doesn’t matter, right? How long have you known about that?

Steve Russell 34:01
It’s at least 5, 10, maybe even longer, years.

Jess Dewell 34:05
I was going from the five to eight range.

Steve Russell 34:07
and I think the options have become a little clearer over the, over that time frame, because I remember 5–10 years ago, up in this conversation.

Jess Dewell 34:14
Yeah, but knowing that could this be how could this be right, and you’re right, and then, but actually seeing it come to market, actually hearing media outlets start covering it, actually, maybe knowing somebody who knows somebody who had it. It was—you—news covering, for me, was somebody who had an Atari, yeah. And then it was, “Oh, my neighbor has a computer.” At—look, I’m the neighbor that has a computer, right? It was—it’s that kind of concept, but it’s—it goes back to the beginning where you said you had made a 10-year plan, right? So here is—and that you had big, and you had big—you have big things in terms of milestones or pivot points or check-ins with this big, long-term plan in 2026 and 2028. Coming back to this, I know we’re talking really big, I’m gonna bring it back. I’m gonna say, so how are you using these same kinds of conversations on this big scale to keep the pulse, know what’s going on, but to bring that back and actually put it into practice in your company?

Steve Russell 35:11
Oh, that is a brilliant question. Thank you for that question. I’ll tell you what I’m thinking right now. The first thing that I have to do is understand my own footprint, and I need to have a robust way of doing that. What kind of data inputs do I need? How to forecast it? And once I’ve cracked that code, I’m going to put a calculator online for free for everybody else so that they can use the same kind of thing and give them the ability to make some changes to it, because everybody’s industry is a little different. But first of all, build awareness and make sure that we all can understand the either the negative or the positive impact that our organizations have on society. I think the next stage is giving people a framework of how to move forward from there, how to define a goal that’s achievable, it’s got to be aggressive, but how to actually move forward, what’s the strategy that a company can take, provide that to people, and then the tactics, and that’s where it gets way more in the weeds, super nuanced. What tactics can a company employ to achieve their goal? And I think that’s where it has to become a conversation.

Jess Dewell 36:32
How are you actually doing that in your company? Are you doing this? Are you doing this annually for your company? Here’s what we were thinking. This is actually what happened. Where’s our awareness at right?

Steve Russell 36:42
I’m building the awareness right now, because I was so startled by that data last week, and ironically, I’d put somebody on this task about 2 weeks prior. So this is a very new sort of, “Hey, we have a responsibility. We’re not talking about it. We’re planting trees, great, but is that making a difference?” This is—this started for me about a month ago. Now where we go with this? We’ll tie these numbers, and you can have heard this before, KPIs, but the P is in performance. It’s purpose. We’re going to have key purpose indicators that we look at on our weekly, monthly, quarterly scorecard, so that we can track it. So that’ll be the frequency, and we’ll—we know a lot of our business is correlated to headcount, so as we grow and change, we’ll be able to more easily get this data together for us to look out on a more frequent basis. And my hope is that we’re not just offsetting. I don’t want to just offset. I would like to offset at a much bigger level, potentially offset a good portion of my biggest competitor. One small company, four years in, we have 180 odd people. My biggest competitors are in the 1,000s, but they are talking about this topic. They’re not talking about it at all, and they don’t know if they’re even do anything about it. So I’d like to do something a bit more beyond just offsetting for ourselves.

Jess Dewell 38:15
I’m your host, Jess Dewell, and we’re getting down to business on the Bold Business Podcast. This is where we’re tackling the challenges that matter most to you with actionable and achievable advice to get real results that lead to your success.

ANNOUNCER 38:32
Focused on growth. Listen to more programs like this, which support the challenges and opportunities you are working with right now. Search Bold Business Podcast for the key terms at Redirection.com or your preferred podcast listening app.

Jess Dewell 38:48
We can say we like the idea of making a difference, and we can be authentic in that belief, but we are not actually authentic in walking the talk or walking, the walk that comes with that. And that’s where I get frustrated with the whole concept of that. If you look at any person, any business group, any forest, any farm, right? There’s going to be all of these pieces that are mixed together. And if every single one of those is not authentic, and if every single one of those is not represented, and if every single one of those is weighted to different scales, I’m not going to say weighted equally. I’m going to say they’ve got to be weighted on the same scale, then and only then is there an opportunity for mass change to occur. Otherwise, there’s erosion, and and it holds us back, and it it’s waste basically, right? It’s the waste that we can’t get back. And so I’m listening to you, and I’m super excited, and I’m like, “I’m glad you’re starting to think about this.” And do you have an example of something you’ve done in the first four years that you know that you’re going to be authentic in its truest sense of every aspect of consistency through this new, awesome endeavor that I hope other people like start thinking about after listening to our conversation, that is challenging for everybody.

Steve Russell 40:09
Doesn’t—whoever is listening, whatever company they have, doesn’t matter what size it is, it’s a challenging topic to try to face, so I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. So there’s a an organization or an association that is managed and run by the United Nations for this around the world that believe in companies have the biggest amount of influence and power on society and the environment. They have a mission associate this. It’s called the Global Compact, by the way, and they have 10 principles that they ask each company coming into the global compact to adhere to, and you get audited on those things. And some of it’s self-audit, and some of it is having other people come in and perform. So that’s a way for me to be held accountable to staying true to what I’m saying. I think the other thing that that I will—because you said something that was very interesting, a very interesting choice of words. And then what have you done as an organization in the last four years that tells you you can do this? I’m all on board for that. I’ll tell you a little story about some of our earlier experiences. So the essence of what we started came out of the most unlikely area of the world for inspiration, and it came from a visit to a poverty-stricken, once-was-very-violent, dangerous neighborhood just outside Medellin, Colombia. I’ll leave it at that, because we don’t have time to get into the story. But that inspiration led us to say, “Hey, we’re going to build a company, and we’re going to—we’re going to hire Colombians, and that’s where we’re going to grow our employee base.” And we realized super quick that where somebody is located is actually not very relevant or important, and far less important than who they are, alright? So the big “aha” we had to pivot because we knew we needed to deliver what we’re trying to do, to change the experience that we deliver customers, we had to have the best, we had to have people that really knew what it was like to work in a US company so that culturally we could align to what we all have to deal with day to day here, the standards that we have to work towards. So we had some exchange, and it caused us to have to stray away from the original aspiration and get real about it and then figure out all the complexity that came with that. How do you do all of that? How do you get good at hiring and understanding how to do background checks and all the noise that comes with working in different jurisdictions? So that feels like we’re entering one of those moments again where, “Hey, if we’re going to do this, we’re going to have to do it.” And I feel this some—the way that the word “authentic” gets you a little sparked up, I feel the same way about companies that put core values on the walls, but then don’t live by them. They live by some unspoken core values. We have constantly pivoted our culture and our core values year after year for four years because we realized that the things we wrote down at the very beginning, they were aspirational, and then we very quickly changed six months in and looked at the people we had around us and said, “What is it that they’re doing that’s making them so successful? Why do our clients love working with this person more than this person? And what is it that person’s doing? What behaviors?” And we kept refining our understanding of those values. So I have no tolerance for putting core values on that we’re not living, and if we say we’re going to do this, we’re going to do this. It’s just a—it’s just the way I am.

Jess Dewell 44:18
In your core values as they show up in your executive meetings, as they show up in strategic planning, as they show up in the cadence of the days, the weeks, the quarters, they show up in the way that they look, in the way that they sound, or the way that they feel. Have you been lucky enough to get all of those?

Steve Russell 44:37
I think there’s values that we possess that we haven’t written down yet. So we decided—we made a conscious decision to shrink our values. We had five at the beginning. Had five for three years, as I would say now, we have three. Be you, solve problems, and show you care. For us, it’s—we never have to cheat on that. We know exactly what that looks like, and I feel it in myself, too. If I’m in a meeting, let’s say I’m with the executive team and I’m hearing things that are either grinding my gears or I’m having questions popping up that I know if I ask them, it’s going to be like throwing a grenade, and the—there’s a big part of you that doesn’t want to throw the grenade. You don’t want to derail, you don’t want to create all of the tension that could be easily avoided by just, right? But I’m not being myself if I do that. I asked the question, or multiple questions, for those that work closely with me know I have a lot of follow-up, so I think you have to live true to, yeah, those values have to be true to who you are as an organization, and we do live them. And if you hear—if you hear a core value like “solve problems,” you have to ask yourself, “Where did it come from?” And—and we learned very early on from our early customers that they would tell us things like, “Hey, you guys don’t always say yes to things, but you also don’t say no. You say, ‘Let me figure it out. Give me some time. I’ll figure it out.’” And that really allowed us to see, no matter what the issue was that we ran into in the first early years, where it was really difficult, and you’re just saying yes to every revenue you can to stay alive. You have to solve problems constantly, and you can’t be just focusing on the obstacles or the challenges that are going to trip you up like it was about navigating around any issue that came our way.

Jess Dewell 46:52
It’s one of the hardest things for companies to learn, and the sooner a company embraces it, regardless of where they’re at in the business life cycle, the better because there’s a different kind of learning. It’s almost—there are certain things that you can hear about, and until you do it, you really don’t know what you’re talking about. It’s all theoretical. And you can listen to somebody who’s been there, and it’s still all theoretical because you have more than it yourself, and that’s where I think that it sounds like there’s also a constant learning, right? We also have three values at Red Direction, and I chose three because I figured anything else that comes up or the way that we’re working or what something sounds like, can we keep testing those? How is that going to be in our conversation? Most importantly, I have yet, after we’ve been around for a little while, and I have in the last five to six years, I—there’s a little less modification of what does this actually mean? Are we actually doing what we say we are going to do? Specifically, because we’ve gotten it down to three that anything that comes up we can work within. And it actually is a representation in the look, the feel, or the experience of it, which is why I asked the question because you’re right, and you went there with the—this is where my pet peeve is. And I’m like, Yeah.

Steve Russell 48:13
I had an amazing experience in the last role that I had. I joined a company that was eight years old at the time. They’d just been acquired for $1.4 billion, so they’d grown fast. And when I went in, I was hiring 50 to 150 people a month. And we did that. The organization just did such a good job of aligning. It had no core values for five years, and they wrote the core values five years in looking at the success, and I learned from that experience what it means to work in an environment with people who really live the values of the company. And that was the only company I’ve ever worked for where I felt like what people said and did matched what was written. I’ve never experienced it before. So going back to what you just said resonated because it’s all theoretical unless you’ve experienced it firsthand.

Jess Dewell 49:09
It’s theory. What makes it bold to be so anchored in your purpose that it’s actually exciting scary to look at the challenges that we can tackle as a company and make a difference in the world?

Steve Russell 49:26
Before I go there, I’m going to tell you, this is really hard for me to talk about. So even in itself, what I’m going to tell you next, it requires a little boldness just really anchoring the point here. Okay, so I’ve recently started exploring what my purpose is, and especially now—we’re the same age, by the way—46 going in 47, I’m looking at 15 in the face. What’s my purpose today? What do I want my purpose to be? Be in the next coming years? Now, as a dad as well, what I’ve realized about myself is I like to create balance where there’s some imbalance, and it usually is where there’s unfairness or where I perceive some kind of inequality to exist. Now, what happens, and I’ve looked back over my life, and I realize, and I’ve been told by others that I’ve talked to about this topic, you know me well, when I do that, it creates opportunity for other people. So my—my understanding of my purpose today is to create balance, which also requires creating change and share prosperity with others. That’s my jam. Why? What does that come from? I think it comes from—getting a little deep here now—I think it comes from—there’s some roots stemmed in the fact that my dad left when I was born and had to grow up without a father figure in my life, and therefore, we had a lot less than a lot of people I grew up with. I think there’s something there. I think there is something in the fact that when I—when I turned 17, I knew at that point I wasn’t going to be like everybody else that I saw, but I didn’t have a label, didn’t have a name. Turned out I’m gay. That it prevented me from being able to go into the army, which I wanted to do. All I wanted to do is become an officer in the British Army at this age, and it was illegal back then. So I knew I couldn’t do that. That felt unfair, and it changed—it required me to change my entire course of my life to something else. And as I’ve grown up and now in—in my industry, in my space, I was around these companies, around these outsourcing companies where I felt like people weren’t being really treated fairly. They were being taken advantage of. They were the cream or the profit of the industry was being taken by a choice few, the business owners and not shared equally, not shared fairly. People weren’t being invested in. That didn’t seem very fair either. So lots of similarities playing out here, and that gave me my purpose, my why I wanted to do this. What I saw in District 13, just outside Medellin, and how unfair that was for them and how amazing those people are, and what they’ve done would encourage anybody to go Google it. And when I think about boldness, it requires a level of bravery or courage to face those kind of things and, let alone, build a business around it. And what I recently discovered, getting into this industry from this side of the table, instead of being the customer was, “Holy cow, like, this industry is like 93 or $94 billion a year, and 84%—a whopping 84%—of that is being consumed by us here in the US, and 50% of that is going to India and Asia because they’re the most mature industries for outsourcing. Only 6.9% is going to Latin America.” And that felt unfair straight away. I was like, “Why is that the case?” Because, like, they’ve got—we have these economies that are so close to us, on our time zone, that have this energy and vibrance and creativity about it, and they want—they’re hungry. They want an equal opportunity, and they want to stand on the global stage of technology and play their part. So why can they not? They should be able to. So that—that kind of became my bigger purpose, and it requires boldness all the way. Bold to quit your career, bold to walk away from an executive role in the sixth largest company in the US. It takes a lot of boldness. And I will say this as my last point here. Every time I made a big, bold move—choosing to leave Europe, come to the US, choosing to adopt, choosing to get married to a guy—and all what those things bring, really good things happened, not just for me, but for others. So I know it’s the right thing. Feels right. Feels good.

Jess Dewell 54:45
Every single time I have a conversation, I take away something that I want to share with 25 people. I know when you’re listening to this podcast, you’re also listening for that and will have something that you want to share in the comments. I would like for you to engage with us. What is that thing that you want to tell 25 people from this program? Here’s why it’s important. It’s important because, yeah, there are going to be how-tos. Yes, there are going to be steps. Yes, you’re going to be like, “Oh, I wish I wrote that down. I wish I wasn’t doing this, and I could actually take action on that right now.” But guess what? You’re not. So engage right now because that one thing you want to share with others will be the thing that you can figure out how to incorporate in your business, in your workflow, in your style tomorrow.

ANNOUNCER 55:36
Jess hosts the Bold Business Podcast to provide insights for building a resilient, profitable business by deeply understanding your growth strategy, ensuring market relevance and your company’s future. It is bold to deeply understand your growth strategy with your host, Jess Dewell. Get more information about how to drive solutions and reset your growth mindset at Redirection.com. Thank you for joining us, and special thanks to our post-production team at The Scott Treatment.