Tom: I think probably my, my first big client was that ag business out of Dow Chemical, Dow AgroSciences they’ve now through various spinoffs in mergers are now Corteva. You know, it’s the one I grew up on, our clients grew up with us. When I was serving them, they pulled us into India in the nineties, and I, you know, it was a fun conversation. I said, well, we’ve never done anything in India. And the client said, I don’t care.

I need help over there, talk to my HR person and hear my lawyers, go set up a company and figure out how to hire people down there, but I need you to do that work for me. I got a call from the CFO’s assistant when I was out there and they said you know, Bill wants to see you in the board room immediately.

I’m thinking we did something wrong and up by go. And, the first thing he said is we’re going to have a conversation and you cannot buy Dow stock. And I said, okay. And then I knew it wasn’t about me. And then he announced one of their acquisitions that they were going to do in the ag business, that they were acquiring a seed business.

And they said, I need you to go out there and tell me if this is a good deal or not. Can we integrate it? I’m going to send you out; they’re not going to know why you’re going. So it was that and, and, you know, and that was a fun project. So we’ve just done a lot of fun projects over time. 

Neutrogena was, was a really fun project. We did a strategy project for them, Brown Foreman. We work with them on their divestiture strategy of their wines business. You know, they make Jack Daniels and other liquor. But we help them with the strategy to divest their wines business. So over the years, we’ve just done some fun, really fun, challenging projects.

Trevor: So, how long do these types of engagements last, cause it sound like some of these you’re, you’re pretty involved with the company for a long period of time.

Tom: And we did work for Dow in the ag business for about twenty-five years, 25 of our 30 years. We’ve not been as engaged with them lately, since they merged with DuPont and spun off, three businesses that came out of that. We didn’t, we were less engaged with that and definitely not as close with the current management team, but so some of these have lasted, you know, decades. Estee, Lauder. We’ve been doing work for them for probably 15 years, just various projects and they trust us to do something, we do it, we exceed their expectations and this I’ve been owl. We need you to integrate our retail stores better, or we need you to help in the supply chain analytics, what have you. 

Trevor: Yeah. Well, I think it speaks to that earlier comment about once you develop that trust that just keep coming back and they know they can rely on you. I’m sure. 

Tom: Yeah. 

Trevor: And so maybe this doesn’t apply. Cause I think I saw on the Clarkson side that you’ve got a 21-year average of 97% satisfaction rating. So I was going to ask you if there were any projects that didn’t quite work out as planned, and if they informed your learning to this day.

Tom: It definitely happens. No one in our business can do transformational, the heavy lifting projects and not mess something up along the way, but the reason that our client satisfaction is so high and our net promoter scores so high is that if something doesn’t go right, we, you know, I personally, or my partners, the president of the consulting business, we will show up on site and we will say, we made a mistake here.

Here’s what we’re going to do to make it right. When we take that attitude, of a corrective action attitude, our clients embrace us for that. And they say, okay, let’s, let’s get to work. Thank you for acknowledging it. Let’s fix it.

Trevor: And has that always been the mindset or was that kind of a revelation somewhere along the way that you know, you can’t own up to this and that actually results in a better the relationship with the client?

Tom: We’ve had that since day one, we know we want to treat our clients well. we want to give them the white glove service. We know we want to treat our stewards well, in fact, we don’t call our employees “employees”, we call them stewards because we want them to have the mindset of service, you know, there to serve our clients or their colleagues.

 So we are constantly challenging ourselves to make sure we’re doing the right thing and setting right or wrong says, you know, if, and when we have, which we do. 

Trevor: Yeah. Well, I think that really resonates to me. And I wonder if you’ve got kind of an opinion or view as to why that is so hard in business or in life in general and why people are resistant to acknowledging the mistakes that they’ve made and kind of owning up to them and identifying the path forward. 

Tom: Well the most growth doesn’t come when things are going well, growth comes through hard times and if you can acknowledge the hard times, then you have an opportunity to grow, and you can learn from mistakes way more than you learn from doing the same right thing over again.

It’s more repetitive, less about learning and growth opportunities. So we’ve just had that mindset from the beginning. Let’s, let’s acknowledge what we’re doing. Well, let’s definitely acknowledge things we’re not doing well and let’s make a commitment to make those better. 

Trevor: Now you’ve mentioned quite a few kinds of a larger companies that you’ve worked with. Do you do much work kind of with startup and growth companies? 

Tom: We do, we definitely do. We, we worked with a small sort of biotech company out of Boston, helping them bring their vaccine to market. They are now no longer a small biotech. They are one of the leading COVID, you know, vaccine makers. So we, we definitely work with the emerging biotech’s.

We don’t work with us as many smaller CPG companies. They typically can’t afford a lot of outside services, but a lot of the emerging biotech’s will they’ve got big, big company needs. And they’ve got the resources generally to fund those big needs, whether it’s scaling up manufacturing, whether it’s putting in place, their supply chain, whether it’s their commercialization strategy.

Trevor: And are there any consistent problems that you see with these startup growth companies that as they’re getting formed, they’re kind of in the years prior to the point, they get to a size that are, that they can come work with you or the common issues that you see. 

Tom: So we see common issues by industry sector. So, you know, the emerging biotech’s, they are always trying to figure out how to commercialize their product. So that’s a common issue that. They try to figure out how best to optimize their relationships with their CROS or their CMOs. You know, their, their funding issues. We don’t really help them with funding per se, but that is a common issue. Setting up their base operational system is one, it could be laboratory management systems or other types of systems. So there’s a sort of business systems layer that, that they need help with so different, different things.

Trevor: Okay. I’m going to switch gears just a little bit and just to start off with and say, congratulations on the book. It’s the new book Amplifiers: How Great Leaders Magnify the Power of Teams, Increase the Impact of Organizations, and Turn Up the Volume on Positive Change. And I want to get to the content of the book here in a little bit, but can you talk a little bit about what prompted you to write this book? 

Tom: Well, so I publish my goals and objectives every year. So anyone in our company can look at my goals anytime they just walk into my office and I I’ll share it with them. But on there every year is publish my book, publish my book, publish my book. And we were approached by Wiley and they said we would like Tom to publish his book. 

And as I sat back, you know, never let a good pandemic go to waste. So I wasn’t on airplanes, so I sat in front of a computer and spoke into it mostly, but wrote and spoke. We had a lot of the material already noodling in my mind or in different pieces. So I was able to pull that we did some research. I spoke with some great leaders and understood their careers, and I was able to capture a lot of that into this. 

Trevor: So how, how was that experience? Cause, I mean, I think a lot of people have that vision of wanting to write a book or having these ideas in their head, but it takes a lot more to go from that to actually having this physical copy in your hand.

Tom: Exactly. Well, it was truly an adventure, for those who know me, I have few words generally, and I was a little bit intimidated by the fact that they needed 60,000 words. At one point I put down. You know, I had the, you know, the Edward Everett piece where, you know, he spoke for two hours before Abraham Lincoln’s two-minute Gettysburg address and you don’t know who Edward Everett is, but everyone obviously knows the Gettysburg address.

And that was 272 words and I’ve cut and pasted it in just to get more words in the. And ultimately I ended up with 80,000 words and we had to cut two chapters out. So we have two bonus chapters out there, one chapter on individual amplifiers and then one on corporate case studies. 

Trevor: Okay. I was going to ask if those are bonus chapters or the germ of a new book somewhere down the road.

Tom: No, they’re bonus chapters. And I do have a couple of books that have other lessons learned that I have noodling, but I don’t suspect I’ll do that. One of the things I learned, I thought that I thought there would be heavier editing. You know, as I grew up, I was one of those guys that had higher math sat scores than verbal.

Yeah, and I expected a bit more editing. So I, I, as I reread, there’s always the book you think you’re going to write the book you write and then the book you wish you wrote, right. And I’m in a little bit of that. I repeat some of the concepts quite a bit, but so be it, so does every business, but base 

Trevor: For sure, and you know, I have to say, I haven’t read it that I truly enjoyed it and I appreciate some of the concepts that were in there. And, but kind of again, before getting into that, I want to know kind of, was there any surprises for you, either about the process or about kind of talking to people in advance of the book or just kind of, I’m interested about that experience. What surprised you about it? 

Tom: What, what was interesting about it? I don’t know that it was a surprise so much as a nice byproduct of it was that when I was interviewing people, they always gave me someone else to interview. They said, oh, well, you need to talk to so-and-so that she would be perfect interview, you know?

And that’s how I was introduced to Ann Marie Campbell, who is the executive vice president for us stores and international operations at the Home Depot. And I got to know her through the experience writing the books. So I met some interesting new people along the way. 

Trevor: That’s great. Get to check one of your goals off the list. Get to meet new people, and now you have a book on your shelf that’s got your name on it. So in the book, you describe the importance of leadership and followership, and then particularly within the category of followers, you identify what you call amplifiers. And I wondered if you could kind of explain these concepts to our listeners or for anybody else who hasn’t had a chance yet to read the book.

Tom: So a lot of people think you’re either a leader or a follower, and I disagree with that. I think you’re a leader or a titled executive, you’re a follower or a subordinate, and where amplifiers come in they have strong leadership skills and strong followership skills. That combination produces an amplifier.

It’s a little like AC and DC current. If you want electricity you need both, and when you have more of both, you’ve got greater voltage through that output. And I, I don’t believe I’ve met any good leader who hasn’t been, hasn’t cut their teeth on good followership along the way. 

Trevor: Well, and I think that that’s critical because I don’t, I know leaders don’t just fall off the tree’s kind of ready to, to run their company they’ve, they’ve come there through a process and that process should be understood or something that can be understandable and repeated by others. 

Tom: That’s right. 

Trevor: So you talked about in the book that leadership is different than management or what you could call it, a title executive, and that followership is different than subordinates. Can you kind of highlight what those differences are, at a high level? 

Tom: Yeah, there, there are a lot of people who end up in an executive position or the top of the team who aren’t good leaders and it’s happened to many of us along the way where so-and-so gets promoted and the team rolls their eyes dreading that they’re going to have to now report to this person, right.

They may be a decent manager, and the way they get people to do their work is they bark orders, issue commands, micromanage, and that sort of thing. Leaders on the flip side, they use influence and persuasion to inspire people to do their jobs. It’s a different approach and you can tell how people styles by how followers follow. 

On the follower and subordinate of course they both need to do the work that their leader, manager wants them to do. Subordinates will perform the task, not think much about it, but they likely will get it done or they don’t get it done, they’re not going to have a job. So they’ll likely do what they’re told to do no more, no less and that’s that. Followers may I ask a question pack and say, are you, are you sure this is the best approach to do this? We’re trying to achieve this objective. How about we do it this way or that way? Or have you thought of…? 

A subordinate on a production line and the manufacturing line will carry out, you know, punch the product out on the manufacturing floor, a good follower, who has the same job on that manufacturing line may raise some opportunities to their supervisors and say, hey, you know, if we were to just stand in a different spot on the manufacturing line and do it right-handed, instead of left-handed, we’re going to get more output out of that, can we try that? You know, things like that, where they’ll bring ideas back and forth, it’s employees that have that level of intuition and initiative and independent, critical thinking that really help the job get done better.

Trevor: Yeah. And I thought it was an interesting point in the book. You know, that the subordinates aren’t necessarily, they’re not like a drag on the, on the business. There’s an actual role within companies for, for subordinates and people who are good at doing their job and are happy to do it, and you can rely on them, but to really kind of have that out-sized influence on the company, you need to kind of shift more from those subordinates into a followership, into a, and then amplifier role.

That’s right. 

So, do you think the principles outlined in your book applied differently for startup and growth companies as compared to a big multinational? Or is it something that can kind of apply across all sizes of companies? 

Tom: So both companies, startups and growth companies are different. They have different culture and DNA than large companies I’ve learned. Many people have grown up in these large companies and there is more incremental thinking, less desire to take risk. People are safer. They care what their peers and supervisors think of them, more so. In startup and growth companies. People have to wear a lot more hats and they’re not quite, you know, that because its startups are riskier, they’re more of a risk-taking environment.

So it’s interesting that leaders need more from those employees in the, in the startup and growth companies, then they do. So you tend to see more of the followership type behaviors in startup and growth. But it doesn’t mean that big companies don’t have great followers, and that great behavior.

It’s the, those companies in some of them they’re walking zombies. They don’t know they’re dead yet, but the market does right. take you know a Barnes and Noble, for example, or a Border’s books, probably a better example. Borders books didn’t know it was dead when it was still operating. That was a zombie company and now they really no longer exist.

Right. Barnes and noble most probably had more amplifiers. So they were able to adjust and adapt better than Borders. And, so they still exist. 

Trevor: Yeah. I mean, because a lot of our listeners and a lot of the companies that we work kind of fall on that startup and growth side of things. And so, as I was reading the book, I tended to think along those lines. I wondered, you know, as these companies are just forming and starting up, you know, how can they apply these principles and kind of think about developing leadership and amplifiers within their group.

You know, at a time when the company may just be focusing on filling a skillset or, you know, meeting that immediate need, because you can have the book talks a lot about putting systems in place to kind of grow and develop these leaders and amplifiers within the business. And I wondered if you have any thoughts on that.

Tom: It’s so for startup and growth companies, the challenge, of course they need skills, but they also likely have more work to do than they’ve got people to do it. And they need people who are our contribution seekers. It’s one of the traits that I have out there for amplifiers, and they are people who they may get their job done, or the work they’re getting their work done by three o’clock in the afternoon.

And instead of peacing out, they’re looking to contribute and help their colleagues. And it’s that those contributions seekers are those that will help grow and, and nurture and take on more tasks and more so if they’re just hiring for skills, they lose the ability to find those traits that startups need, which is all hands-on deck.

And they need you to do something you weren’t trained to do, but the company needs it. We don’t have other people who can get it done. So that sort of thing, where startups are forced to do more with less, and then that cuts across skill sets or the, you know, what people have been hired in to do.

Trevor: And so then does it become kind of being able to identify those amplifiers at the hiring basis? Because I don’t know, startup may not be as positioned to have those training programs in place. So they have to do a better job of hiring. 

Tom: If they’re, if they’re attuned to it, they can work that into their interviewing. You know, if they know that that’s the sort of employee that they want to hire for, they’re looking then for culture, attitude, you know, these amplifier skills, as well as their actual sort of day-to-day skills. There are a lot of people who know how to entered debits and credits or what happened, but there are a few that are true amplifiers that can take that job and create something greater for that.

The other trick for in an amplifiers interview, they’re the people that are interviewing them. And so part of the trick is if you’re a leader of one of these companies, to challenge

 yourself, am I. Do people follow me because I have the title or people following me because they believe in what I stand for and I have their best interest in mind and are aligned with my purpose, the purpose and vision of the entity, as well as the markets that they serve. And so I think that’s an important distinction. 

Trevor: Now you have a section in the book that discusses kind of a company’s total talent pool, which as I understand, it does not just, you know, the talent pool is not just the direct employees, but the total talent pool would be associated contingent talent, business partners, outside influencers, and kind of the need for business to identify amplifiers within that broader group as well.

And that kind of got me thinking about the role of investors with startup companies. And I wonder how important it is for young companies to find outside investment that serves not just as capital, but to come use the terms of the book as an amplifier for the business. Do you have thoughts of what that might look like?

Tom: Yeah. I think this applies to really all business partners, but, when young companies are raising capital, the capital itself is important, but what’s what I’ve found is more important is the team that comes with the capital. And it’s critical that, you know, most early-stage companies need more help and advice than that they can pay for. And if they can tap into investors, their investor network I call them aunts and uncles, in the business. You know, we have, have all asked Fred for advice one day or another. If we’ve been in the triangle for longer than a couple of years, we’ve bounced ideas off of him and he’s generous with his time to, to provide.

And so young companies that are smart recognize they don’t know all the answers and will go out and seek advice from these, these key constituents. And for bigger companies, why it’s important is that we’ve read a lot of, you know, labor issue laws for garment workers in different countries, or how different CPG companies treat the growers of coffee beans or what have you. And so understanding the people who are working for you, and are providing you, you know, your key suppliers or your key service partners are just as important as the companies themselves. 

If Enron’s auditors were doing a better job, they wouldn’t be in this, you know, they would’ve survived, right. They wouldn’t have gone under, but they got tripped up in their own greed along the way, and it was a bad result for all. 

Trevor: Right. And so has the framework that you’ve outlined in amplifiers been a consistent vision for you throughout your career? Or is this something that’s developed over time?

Tom: So I always thought followership got a bad rap and when I started learning, you know, we, we created a leadership experience program it’s about a year long program within Clarkston. And as we were going through thinking through that curriculum, we stumbled across this leadership trait of followership. And so we really explored what that was and there’s wonderful work that’s been done on that. Robert Kelly is sort has the Seminole piece on followership, but bookie road. And I want to say it was 1976 or 1972 or something. 

And when I looked at those concepts, cause we all know when we have them. There are those people that work for us that we can say three we should give them an hour presentation of what we want done, but we actually can get it done in three words or a wink and a nod, and they already know what we need right, or better yet they know that we’re getting ready to give a big pitch. And they say, we know you’re working on this, and this would be really helpful if you had this information as background going into your sales call, like your product pitch or what have you. They anticipate our needs before we even know we have them. 

Those employees are worth their weight in gold. And so we all know them and, and, you know, they get picked for the key teams. They get, you know, they’re the same people that executives rely on. And I was, I started wondering, well, why did they pick these same people? What is it about them? And in some cases they don’t want the pressure of making the decision, but, you know, which is a leadership trait that they need to work on, but they’ve got everything else that will bring it to bear.

And they want to be that behind-the-scenes adviser. They don’t want to be in the limelight. They get overwhelmed with that, but they’re the person behind the scenes that makes the trains run on time. And it’s that special employee within a company that it, again, they’re worth their weight in gold, and that’s really where the magic happens for great companies and the best companies know how to tap into that when they nurture those employees and, and, and develop their leadership capability, they then become amplifiers.

Trevor: Well, I mean, I think that’s an interesting point because we talk about having leadership training programs within big businesses, and we have schools for leadership training. You know, the book discusses the idea of really having similar training for followership and to kind of build up the amplifiers within your business. Are there companies out there that you see adopting that concept, or is it still something that’s kind of nascent at this point?

Tom: No, no one wants to go to the followership training. It’s just, its stigma, you know, there’s the stigma of being, you know, being labeled the follower versus being labeled the leader.

Yeah, you know, like Colin Powell, God rest his soul. Was he a leader or a follower? Yes. He was both. Yes. You know, he was a great leader, but he was also a great follower. And when you look and you learn and study his career, you see how he was both and what he learned from the leaders that he worked for along the way, made him a better leader himself. So as he was being an exemplary follower. He was also developing his leadership skills. 

Trevor: I tend to do a lot of work in branding and marketing and you know, maybe it’s just a nomenclature, it’s something we got to find a way to keep the concept of followership, but give it a new name to sound exciting.

Tom: I’m trying to do that with amplifiers. And the opposite of an amplifier is a, is a muffler, right. And no one wants to have employees that are mufflers. 

Trevor: I like it. There it is. This is the easy concepts, easy, easy way to understand. You don’t want to be a muffler company

Tom: be an amplifier. 

Trevor: So, you know, I wonder if you, you know, a lot of book relies kind of on your own experience and the conversations that you’ve had. I wondered if you could, if you had any kind of ready examples of where a company you’ve worked with had strong leaderships and strong amplifiers that really kind of made the difference or kind of the flip side where you saw. Either the lack of leadership that was supported by amplifiers and kind of provide that stop gap or, you know, something along those ways, what are some of the kinds of concrete illustrations from your own career?

Tom: Yeah, I saw I’ll start with a couple of negative examples in the book, in the bonus chapters, and referenced them a bit in the book, but Wells Fargo, for example. You know, they may open fraudulent accounts for a large number of their customers. And if they had more amplifiers in the business, more people would have challenged that business practice or Volkswagen when they were their engineering department, their entire engineering department, the majority, they knew what was going on when they were cheating the California air regulatory board in the emissions scandal or Boeing, you know, we just saw a couple of weeks ago, one of the pilots got criminally charged in the Boeing 737 max case. 

So there are companies that they, they they’ve culturally built, where they did not challenge. You know, we saw with Enron with Tyco. You know, the purchasing manager at Tyco who had to basically pay for the Toga party that Dennis Kozlowski. And I like, where is it? Where does that break down? Or, you know, people are afraid for their job, meaning, you know, it’s your job worth checking your integrity at the door? Probably not. 

You know, so there, there were a lot of negative examples and a lot of them hit the press, but there are far more underneath that haven’t yet hit the press. And you know, then there’s some, you know, some great companies on the positive side, you know, Benjamin Moore for example, is a wonderful company.

And you know, you don’t know the name of the CEO, Benjamin Moore because it’s not about him. You know, he puts his brand and his employees ahead of his own personal. And so you know, I highlight him in the book, Dan Coppins, because he’s one of those amplifiers you know, and there’s, so there’s quite a few excellent leaders that are out there.

And most of the time you don’t know who they are. 

And is that a key? 

I think, I think so. the leaders who self-promote and it’s all about them. They have a high self-interest, generally don’t have the greatest followers, you know, people don’t always follow them for the right reasons.

Trevor: Right? Yeah. And I mean, you talk about in the book, almost that charisma trap that some CEOs kind of fall into, and I wonder to that extent if, if that is a bigger risk for startup companies or not, since you have smaller teams and sometimes in the early years you really are dependent on just that, that drive or that motivation or that charisma of a, of a strong CEO.

Tom: Yeah. And I, I say that charisma is not necessarily a bad thing, but when you’re all sizzle and no steak, then it’s a bad thing or is in Texas the call it all hat, no cattle. So, you know, that’s the, that’s the sort of thing where if you, if you start to believe your own BS, then you’re in trouble and you’re the people who they may follow you for a bit, but then when they realize you’ve got no substance, they will chew, you’ll lose them quickly.

And when you lose, start to lose them, it will evaporate. 

Trevor: So a common thing throughout the book, what is the need to focus on diversity and inclusion in organizations, and I really, you know, personally appreciated kind of the chapter on corporate social justice change and how you provide a great concrete step in there as steps that companies can take. But I’m wondering if you have any thoughts as to why this day and age, where we’re still facing this lack of inclusion after the number of years, it seems to have been on that people’s radars. 

Tom: Yeah. So it’s definitely been on people’s radar for a long time, and in some cases it’s been self-centered. So we did a strategy project for a big cosmetic company, and they wanted to provide product and obtain more customers consumers in, in the Latin market.

So they wanted diversity in, you know, south American or whatever, but so as we push back, we said, put, you have nobody of that demographic on your executive team. Let’s get some additional talent onto your executive team, and they dismiss that recommendation. And in part, because that meant someone on the group would have to be, would be gone. You know, and what we thought was a captain obvious recommendation, you know, for them to enter the Latino market was not embraced. And so it’s requires tough choices, for companies. And if they want real change, they need to make, well, real change. 

And it’s not an overnight matter. They need a strategy generally. We need to make sure that we’re not. Tapping the same individuals. We have to make a conscious effort and we’ve got we all. We run our ideas seminar, which is a diversity equity and inclusion aspect of one of our strategy projects. And in there you write your trust at 10.

So if you’re at the 10 people that you trust most, and if you eliminate family members and have your trusted 10 how diverse is that group of your trust at 10? And we, as business leaders tend to pick the same people for some of the same projects, and we need to stop doing that and start providing more opportunity to others, not just for their great ideas, but because it helps develop them as future leaders and we gain their influence, but also it helps the organization for others to feel safe and start to contribute. 

Trevor: And I think he may have touched on this, but like if a company really is intent on making these changes, you know, part of me is, I don’t know if it’s cynical or just worried, that was all we experienced in 2020, you know, there were a lot of companies out there making, you know, good publicity about what they wanted to do and how they wanted to see change. But as a company really wants to make a fundamental change in how they approach diversity and inclusion, you know, what would you recommend, kind of those that first step is going to be for them?

Tom: I think companies need to look at different ways to spot talent. There’s an awful lot of bias in how we do performance reviews, how we identify people, how we spot talent. I, I love Billy Beans, the money ball approach, how we recruited out of the Oakland A’s. We use the same performance metric constructs that existed in 1975, we’re not going to spot the talent that we need to today. So we need to think about talent scouting within our organization differently and we also need to look at talent scouting and attraction outside of our organizations differently. 

And the companies that do that the best will end up with the most diverse workforces, and the theory goes, we’ll have the best results. And you know, companies are in the early innings of that quest, but there is definitely change occurring. And I suspect we’re going to increase. We’re going to raise the bar for all companies, as we start to get that. 

Trevor: I hope that’s right. I would love to see it. so the book is dedicated to, to Bobby Menges and the proceeds from the book go to support the I’m Not Done Yet foundation. And I wondered if you could tell us a little bit about Bobby and what it is that the foundation is trying to accomplish and why you decided to dedicate the book to them. 

Tom: Yeah. Thanks for that. So Bobby was my nephew. He died at 19. He experienced childhood cancer at the age of five or six. It went away, but he lived with that. It came back at nine and then came back when he was a freshman at Duke. He tried to get, you know, come back as a sophomore to had to take some time off, came back as a sophomore at Duke and then passed away.

So the I’m Not Done Yet Foundation, you know, he, he was bigger than life, you know, he knew he had cancer, so as a 16-year-old, in a raised over a hundred thousand dollars on in New York as a result, ran blood drives, was constantly involved. And he recognized the gap between kids with cancer and adults with cancer, that pediatric oncology. So it’s things like, you get a chemo treatment. Well, it kills your fertility, but insurance doesn’t cover that because that’s an, you know, insurance thinks it’s a nice to have, you know, so having family is nice to have, you know, like, 

So the I’m Not Done Yet Foundation supports those, those programs. To support adolescent and young adult cancer patients and their families. So it does that. So it makes big donations to Duke Oncology, up at NYU, the Winthrop and up in Cleveland at the Cleveland clinic and some other places where they’re really trying to create a support network with these organizations for adolescent young adult cancer patients. 

Trevor: Yeah. I, I really appreciate that. And from the little, I, you know, I’ve, I’ve worked with the company and, and, and have talked to them. I just encourage anybody out there. Not only to go by Tom’s book and support, I’m Not Done Yet Foundation through that, but, you know, look up the story online and find out more about it and find different ways to get involved with what the Foundation’s doing, what they’re still doing in Bobby’s memory. And I just encourage people to find ways to get involved, cause it really is a great organization. 

Tom: Yeah, thank you for that. 

Trevor: So we are the Founder Shares podcasts. So we got moved from a little bit heavier to a little bit lighter, but we are the founders shares podcasts. And I always like to ask my guests, if there was one piece of advice that you would give to somebody who was thinking about starting a business or, or wanting to start a business someday now, what’s that advice that you’d give?

Tom: I would say do it. There are a lot of people that will tell you that 20 reasons not to. But if, if you, are committed to hard work it’s not a nine to five job. Believe me you’re going to spend, if your business will be successful, you’re going to spend an awful lot of time at it. I would say don’t do it if you don’t love it. If you’re doing it just for the outcome, then I would not recommend doing it.

It’s got to be a labor of love. And if you do love it, then the chances of it being successful will be much, will be much better. And then I would say always be a student, you know, lifelong learners ended up doing much better. Founders rarely know it all. Generally they need a lot of help from a lot of smart people and my advice would be find the smart people and try to get them in your canoe with a paddle.

Trevor: That’s great advice. I appreciate you Tom, for taking the time out and talking to us. And again, encourage people to go out and check out the book Amplifiers, believe it’s available everywhere books. And I really hope people check it out and can learn from the wisdom that you share in it.

Tom: Great. Well, thank you for having me. 

Thanks so much, Tom.