Bryan Clayton is the Co-Founder and CEO of GreenPal, an online marketplace that connects homeowners with local lawn care professionals. GreenPal has been called the “Uber for lawn care” by Entrepreneur magazine and has over 100,000 active users completing thousands of transactions per day. Before starting GreenPal, Bryan Clayton founded Peachtree Inc., one of the largest landscaping companies in the state of Tennessee, growing it to over $10 million a year in annual revenue before it was acquired by Lusa holdings in 2013. On this episode, we discussed Bryan’s journey into the tech world, what he’s learned about running a rapidly growing company, and being in it for the long haul. Bryan also shared some book recommendations and explained why as the CEO he still spends an hour or two doing direct customer support daily.
Co-Creating Growth through Creativity
A senior leadership/board advisor, educator, executive coach, and bestselling author, David Nour is internationally recognized as the leading expert on applications of strategic relationships in profitable growth, sustained innovation, and lasting change. The author of ten books, including bestsellers Relationship Economics, Co-Create, and Curve Benders (Wiley, 2021). On this episode, we discussed David’s perspective on collaboration, why he always asks the question “Who else should we involve in this project?”, and how he helps companies build cultures of innovation and iteration. Finally, we discuss his best advice for prioritizing the most important work and why he thinks it’s important for organizations to understand “prudent risk” if they want to become more creative.
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What The Chicken Dance Has to Do With Leadership
Erin Diehl is a veteran improviser from the top improvisational training programs in Chicago, including The Second City, i.O. Theater and The Annoyance Theatre. Erin conducts workshops across the country leveraging improvisational techniques to improve employees’ skills in corporate settings. Her work with clients such as United Airlines, PepsiCo, Deloitte, and The Obama Foundation earned her the 2014 Chicago RedEye Big Idea Award and has nominated her for the 2015-2019 Chicago Innovations Award. She is also a proud member of The Chicago Innovation Awards Women’s Cohort and a graduate of the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Business Program. On this episode, we discussed what improv has to do with the corporate world, how her first client set her on the path to make a leap into entrepreneurship, and her advice for anyone trying to manage their time wisely. FInally, we discussed why she is most proud in her career of successfully coercing over 12,000 professionals to chicken dance.
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Learning to Lead a Unicorn
Wes Schroll is a serial entrepreneur who started his first company at 14-years old. After two small start up ventures, he wrote a business plan for what would one day become Fetch Rewards during his sophomore year at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In March of 2021, Fetch closed its Series D round of financing with $220 Million led by SoftBank. Fetch is a bonafide “Unicorn” with a valuation of over $1 Billion. On this episode, we discuss some of the lessons Wes has learned along the way, how it felt for him to realize the Fetch Rewards app has more daily users than there are residents of New York City, and his trouble with productivity advice. Finally, Wes shares his approach to hiring leaders in his organization and why the two most important things he looks for are how well they understand the product and whether or not they can give and receive feedback.
The Best Advice Show of 2021
Happy holidays! As we prepare to enter the new year, we thought it would be a good time to pull together some of the best advice that we received from our podcast guests in the past year. This episode includes the advice that our guests from our most downloaded episodes shared with our audience. The guests include a New York Times best-selling author, a Broadway producer, a Fortune 500 C-suite member, and more!
Reflecting on Time Well Spent
As we approach the new year, we wanted to share a short reflection on the time we’ve spent with you as listeners since we first launched the Learn to Lead Podcast only twenty-one months ago. Host Matt Confer encourages you to think a little about time passing using a short anecdote about great movies, time travel, and the moon landing (trust us!). We are incredibly grateful to get to share the airwaves with you and look forward to sharing new and exciting lessons from our guests in 2022.