Digital media executive Louis Gump, with time spent at CNN, the Weather Channel, Cox Media, and more, talks about breaking early ground in the mobile space, the 5 main characteristics of an intrapreneur, not putting efficiency over optimization, the symbiotic relationship between intrapreneurs and entrepreneurs, the genesis of innovation, and more.

Hi, it's super nice to meet you.

Likewise, Stephanie. It's nice to meet you.

So where are you calling in from?

I am based in Atlanta, and I'm at my home

office right now, which got started during COVID. And it

seems to have been a second kind of work home since then, very

shortly after I started working at home or our son was taking

trumpet lessons. And I got on a work call. And all of a sudden,

I was upstairs at the time. And all of a sudden, this really

loud, middle school level trumpet playing started. And we

had to change that pretty fast. But that was a wake up call.

Oh, my gosh, I love it. I love it. Well, I'm

super excited to talk with you. I will say, while I'm excited, I

am not going to hold it against you, that you went to Duke. I'm

a Tar Heel. Just want to caution that listeners that you know you

had a subpar education. So there's gonna be some limits here.

Well, I do understand that. But on the

other hand, my wife and my dad and my mom and my brother and my

daughter now have been UNC students. And so we have a lot

of representation around here.

Okay. So the first thing I want to jump in

right away, is a really want you to talk to us about this idea of

intrapreneurship versus entrepreneurialship. I think

most people are pretty familiar with the latter. But this

intrapreneurship might be a little bit new. So talk to us a

little bit about that.

This is a really important distinction. And I

think it's sometimes under appreciated. You know,

entrepreneurship is critically important, and the value

generation and the genesis of new ideas. There's so much there

with entrepreneurship. And also in large companies, we find that

there's a lot of value creation and new ideas. And we have

focused so much in our society on entrepreneurship that

sometimes the value from within larger organizations kind of

lives in the shadows, it isn't that it's unknown, we see it all

the time, we, you know, when we're ordering online, and when

we're driving a car, you name it. There's all sorts of ways

that intrapreneurship affects us in our everyday lives. However,

what I'm finding, and what I've experienced is that

intrapreneurship is not simply derivative of entrepreneurship,

rather, they're cousins. And there are some distinct skill

sets that are required in intrapreneurship. To succeed.

Some of these are common with entrepreneurs, and some of them

are a little bit different. One of the distinguishing factors,

for example, is the size and complexity of the organizations

and the related skills that are required to navigate through.

For example, if you're an entrepreneur, and in general, I

think of that as someone who owns a company or has started a

company, or both, they tend to have a lot of control over what

they do and how they do it. If you're an entrepreneur, you're

are by definition inside a larger organization. And the

entrepreneur is someone who creates value through innovation

and growth within a larger organization. And so you have

other structures, you might have a larger brand, or you certainly

have a lot more people any one of whom can affect your ability

to move forward. So there are quite a few differences. But

both are very important.

So taking that just a little bit, are there can

you give me some real life examples of what

intrapreneurship looks like? Just to help further understand this?

One of the examples that comes to mind immediately,

is what our team experienced at the Weather Channel, starting in

2001. And what happened was that the Weather Channel TV network,

of course, was very well known as one of the most trusted

brands in our country. And then the desktop web was taking off.

And so weather.com was very popular. And then some of us who

were working on weather.com, including myself, we also knew

that wireless had some possibility, but we didn't know

where it was going to go and we said, hey, we think wireless is

going to be big someday. This was before we even called it

mobile. And then we start Did building a first generation of

apps with technologies like Java and brew and windows and

Symbian, and that kind of worked, and we had a business

model, and we started generating some new revenue. And then we

built some video products. And we were kind of pretty active

with that for a while, and then mobile web came back around. And

when the browsing experience came, then we really built the

user base, the size of that, and then we figured out how to

monetize it. And so over a period of years, and with the

assistance of a lot of people, some of whom were dedicated, and

some of whom are elsewhere in the organization. And in the

industry, we created something that ultimately was a primary

value driver of the business, if you get something more current,

let's say, I don't know, a prototypical example might be

Amazon, you know, started out selling books, and then they

started out selling a lot of things. If you look at where

they generate a lot of their value these days, look at AWS,

Amazon Web Services. And so companies that do this, well

just have the ability to serve customers in new ways. And

obviously give team members opportunities in the process.

So again, just drilling down a little bit

further. So who is the intrapreneurial? In those

scenarios? Is it you, because you are leading these teams? Is

it the boots on the ground coder, walk me through that one

level deeper.

In general, it's a person who has a leadership

role, a lot of different people, and a lot of different roles can

be intrapreneurs. And so that the thing I want to emphasize

here is that you could be by role the owner of a business

unit, you could kind of as the way things unfold, you could be

responsible for an initiative, officially, or you can just be

doing it because that's who you are. And that's what the

opportunity is. So there are a lot of different ways to do it.

And another thing I want to mention here is that as I did my

research, I started thinking this was primarily in the

corporate environment. And then I realized, while speaking with

some folks who are really talented builders, in the

nonprofit sector, that they identified with this, too, they

said, Hey, we've been building out new ways to serve, you know,

the people that we're focused on. And then I heard about this

in education. And you can go on from there. And so there's a

pretty broad playing field here. But the key is creating value

through innovation and growth. And if that's what you're doing,

you might be officially designated a leader, you might

create it, but over time, it becomes pretty clear.

Super cool. So walk us through one of the

things you said earlier was this skill set between an

entrepreneurial and intrapreneurial tend to be different?

Sure, so what I'd like to do is to start with the

top five characteristics of Intrapreneurs, some of which are

shared, and some of which are a little bit different, at least

in degree. The first one that I found it came up over and over

again, in fact, maybe in every single interview I did is

curiosity, an intrapreneur needs to be willing to explore needs

to be willing to go to places that people haven't gone to

before. In general, this comes from within, yeah, maybe you can

train it, but a lot of the times is just how you're wired. The

second one is action oriented. And this one is critically

important. Because it's one thing to be curious, but also to

you know, enjoy tinkering and playing around with things and

just for the discovery, nothing wrong with that. But if somebody

is going to be an intrapreneur, they need to be able to make

things happen, they need to be able to build, they need to be

able to engage other people. Which brings me to the third

characteristic. And this one is especially important for

intrapreneurs, the ability to build bridges. If you're an

entrepreneur, it helps if you can build bridges, it's a great

idea. But it's possible to have an idea and some funding and to

build it in a relatively small space, and then introduce it to

the world. And if your product or service is good enough, you

can really go to town with that. But if you're an intrapreneur,

it doesn't work that way. In general, what you're going to

see is that you have dozens, maybe even hundreds of people

that you rely on or could rely on within the organization, and

any one of them could stop you. Therefore, you're going to have

to be able to build bridges, not only in quantity, but also with

different types of people of people who are functionally in

different places people have, you know, introverts extroverts,

work closer work farther, you name it. And so someone who can

do that really well, sometimes inside the company and outside

the company, when you can do that, that makes a big

difference for a successful intrapreneur. Next, someone

who's risk tolerant, but this one is interesting. Also, a lot

of entrepreneurs are highly risk tolerant. They're like, Hey, I'm

gonna go do it. I can do this on my own. If it works, and I hope

it does. That's great. And if not, you know, I can live with

that. But someone who's an intrapreneur has to be risk

tolerant. But on the other hand, they often like having the

resources, the air cover of a larger organization, that is

something that's really valuable. So you can kind of hit

just the right spot. And what I find also is that some people at

different stages of their careers are interested in doing

one versus the other. So risk tolerance is not static, it can

change over time. And lastly, someone who's optimistic in

terms of the top five, someone who can and navigate through the

ups and downs that are inevitable and say, I think we

can do this, I have a vision, let's bring people together. But

it's not blind optimism. It's grounded optimism is someone

who's realistic, they understand what's possible. So if you have

those five characteristics, and then you understand that you're

in a larger organization, as opposed to having a lot more

control that when you can find some of the most successful intrapreneurs.

So you're chugging along in your career,

how do you know? Am I best suited to be an intrapreneur? Am

I better suited to be an entrepreneur? I mean, how do you

know?

Some of this is self knowledge. But some of it is

discovery the way you described it over time, I didn't set out

to be an intrapreneur. And at the same time, I didn't, I

didn't use wording like that, I just said, Hey, I'd like to go

help people build businesses. And I love to work with talented

teams. Turns out, those are two pretty good signs that you might

be fulfilled as an intrapreneur. Another one is the environment

you find yourself in, because you have to match someone who is

naturally wired to be an intrapreneur. With the right

timing, but you also have to find the right environment,

there is very little that's more frustrating to an intrapreneur

than someone who has a great idea. You can see it, you can

feel it, you can taste it. And then you're in an organization

which says now sorry, we're busy, we have other priorities,

no, we're not going to do that. Or you need to do that somewhere

else, or something along those lines. Opportunities can grow

out of that, but it doesn't really allow an intrapreneur to

flourish. So what I find is that when you have the self

knowledge, and then you find the right organization, that helps a

lot. And then here's one more that's critically important, a

great boss, you know, when you have someone who can be your

advocate, who can be your mentor, call up the department

over there that might be not quite available. They're nice

people, but they're just busy, and say, Hey, could you please

help my team member, as they're exploring this opportunity to go

into a new market, I would really appreciate it and it

would be good for the company. When that happens. Intrapreneurs

essentially get the green light to move ahead and they get the

support they need. One of the really great things about being

an intrapreneur is you've have access to resources. And this is

different from many entrepreneurs, because you can

go to the marketing department, you can go to strategic

planning, you can go to the research department, you can go

to HR, you can go to accounting, you name it, and they can give

you support. And so the person who is able to essentially bring

together people in what I think of as a round table to make

something happen, you're on the path to potential greatness.

Walk me through the genesis of the book, your

vision, and just a couple of highlights on the end product.

Sure. So I'll start with the goals, I have three

goals with this book to help people achieve more, build

stronger relationships, and increase personal fulfillment

through intrapreneurship. And so everything that I've done with

this book is related to that simple sentence. And the Genesis

book was about five years ago, I had been very fortunate to work

with some amazing companies like the Weather Channel and CNN, we

had a small company called news on that grew in a year from a

company without even a name to being one of the top five

providers of news and information on Roku. And we did

that with the partnership of a number of local broadcasting

companies. So as I did that, it became clear to me, Hey, where's

the resource for people who do this? Because I'm here to tell

you, Stephanie, our teams have had a lot of success. But we've

messed up plenty of things too. And some of the things that we

didn't get right, were easily avoidable. They were

predictable. I was like, where's the concise guide for that, but

I didn't find a book on this topic. So it looked like there

was a gap. And so for about five years, I was thinking about it.

And I the interest kept growing. In August of 2022. I left a Cox

media amazing company, in part of cox communications. And a

couple of months in, I thought, hey, maybe now is the time to

write that book, when is a better time to write the book?

And my answer was never. And I wanted it to be a practical

guide, not theoretical, and also not something that was really

narrative about my story. The important point is that there

are certain things that intrapreneurs can do to increase

their ability to be successful and happy. And so the first

three chapters are about essentially building the

foundation and understanding if you're the right person

personality type to do this, and if so, how you find an

opportunity in the right environment, and then the second

half is making it happen.

That is so exciting. Give us a teaser,

what are a couple things that oh gosh, in hindsight, that was

totally avoidable, etc, etc.

Sure. So a lot of them are with people. When

someone is driving change and all intrapreneurs are driving

change. That's just part of it as part of innovation. It's easy

to To be in a situation where you have some challenges with

other people, someone owns a certain department or area or

someone thinks that something works one way, which is fine for

what they've been doing in the past, but it might not work as

well for the future and that sort of thing. And it's easy to

get impatient, you know, intrapreneurs sometimes are a

little impatient, they want to get going, they want to make it

happen. But what can happen there, and I've done this far

too many times is, in my eagerness to get going, I failed

to listen well enough to the knowledge of someone else. And

then maybe, you know, in the spirit of candor, I was a little

too direct, as opposed to just trying to understand more. And

so I think active listening skills are critically important,

I talk about this some in the book, you're not a basketball

coach, you're in a meeting room, I say that literally in the

book, because I've tried several times, to draw from some of my

favorite, you know, basketball coaches, some of whom are really

amazing leaders. And, you know, if you go in there, and you say,

hey, I need you to do this, not that, and you step back on the

listening, that might work on the basketball court, but it

doesn't work. So in the meeting room, if you forget that, and I

have from time to time, you'll get a reminder really fast. On

the other hand, if you do take the time to listen and make sure

that the respect that is intended is received, then a

whole lot of really great things happen. Here's another one, I'm

going to use digital media for this example, because I've

experienced it but but there are lots of other examples in other

industries, where you have a technology that works for one

generation of services, but it doesn't work for the next. And

companies often try to be really efficient, instead of optimizing

for the next thing that's coming. And it is possible, for

example, to take a platform in a big company and say, Hey, we've

already paid for the platform, we don't want to pay more, we

don't want to train up new people. So let's just try to use

that for this new and innovative thing. Sometimes that works.

Sometimes it's brilliant, but sometimes it doesn't. And so

it's very important to understand what the goals are.

And then to assess an existing technology for future purpose,

not an existing technology for efficiency.

I want to shift gears ever so slightly if I

could, and talk a little bit about this idea of

intrapreneurial roles, training the next generation of leaders.

So I'd really love to hear you talk a little bit about the

thoughts around these intrapreneurial is really

training up that next generation leader.

Sure. So some of the findings in the book, for me

were pretty predictable, like intrapreneurs, create value

inside organizations. I've known it, I've seen it. But on the

other hand, one of the ones that I didn't see coming quite as

clearly until talking with a bunch of folks, is this

importance of intrapreneurship to the next generation of

leaders. As I was doing some research for this podcast, I saw

that Southwestern also focuses on training up the next

generation of leaders, I was really interested in that. And I

hope sometime to ask a bunch of questions about how y'all do it

too. But in this context, I heard story after story about

how a really talented person who already is wired naturally, to

be a successful intrapreneur is given an opportunity, they're

typically given an opportunity for one of two reasons. Either

the situation they're in brings about a need, they see it, and

with others, they move forward. And they address that need in

the process, some really cool things happen. The second one is

when a senior leader or a more senior leader within the

organization says you know, this person has a lot of promise, we

need to give them a good opportunity to expand their

skill set. Either one can work, there is a woman here in

Atlanta, and she's mentioned in the book, she was a legal team

member at Turner Broadcasting. And Turner bought a company and

they needed some people to help shepherd it through and turn it

into something that worked inside the company, essentially

to integrate it. And she was put on the integration team. And she

learned so much there that she told me I added value from a

legal perspective and with her legal expertise. But what really

happened is that she became a general manager through that

process. And by becoming a general manager, she became much

better as a legal leader and a much more valuable asset to the

company and ultimately was one of the most senior leaders of

that company. And she's now chief legal officer of a company

that I you know, the valuation has a whole bunch of zeros on

it. I found examples like that over and over and over again.

That is so exciting to hear. Part of what

I'm hearing you communicate is the last five to eight years.

What I feel like I've witnessed is to your point, folks are

really embracing that. Hey, my role now is to Look for those

that are wired a certain way and make sure that they have the

opportunities, or as a leader step into a mentor type of

relationship, what have been your observations around that?

I think that awareness has increased broadly

about the importance of training up the next generation of

leaders, I was fortunate enough kind of from early on, to work

with people who helped many others, including me to grow.

And so the environments that I was in, sometimes had people who

were what I would consider to be very enlightened and supportive

from the beginning. But in other places, you know, it was all

about just getting the job done. Like we don't have the time, we

don't have the budget, we have a job to do, let's go get that

next sale, let's go ship that next ocean container, let's

produce that next story, whatever it is. And you know,

there's a balance, the operational aspect of things I

think we all would agree is important. But I think you're

onto something there with this increased awareness, and

sometimes increased tools, and increased availability of

coaches and whatnot, I'm seeing much more consistent

availability of leadership training, and really big

opportunities for people to grow. From my perspective, if a

leader is focused on protecting their own their own job, like

it's understandable that we all have interest, but at the end of

the day, from my perspective, the primary focus of a leader

should be on contribution, not on self. If you focus on

contribution, then a lot of other good things tend to

happen, especially if you're an environment that's conducive to

that. And so I'm finding leaders who have said, Hey, I'm

allocating a certain amount of time to mentoring people. I'm

finding leaders who are saying, well, yeah, we have a limited

budget, but I want to let you go to this conference, because it

would be a really helpful thing for you, and on and on and on.

And do you see that shift for those who are

willing to make it or embrace it, contribute to what you what

else you talked about in the personal fulfillment?

100%, people often have some awareness of their

talents and their strengths. And I think a great boss, a great

manager will try to be aware of other people's strengths, and

then feed those. I also think for each of us as individuals,

if we have self awareness, and we can help show how we can

contribute, that kind of invites people to find ways to support

so I think it's a two way street. It's not just kind of

leadership somewhere else, it's also us. And if we have that

knowledge, and if we feed it, goodness knows there are a lot

of different ways to grow. And oh, by the way, some of them do

require dollars. Some of them require a trip or a training

program or an experience, but some of them are pretty simple

learning and conversation.

So I have a little bit of a serious

question. Obviously, you've had a tremendously successful career

to date. And now this book coming out, which I think it's

going to be just incredible for folks, do you ever wonder how

much better or how much more you could achieved if you had gone

to Carolina? This has been super, super interesting.

Anything else? We haven't talked about that you want to make?

Sure we do before I let you go?

So there were four takeaways that I had from the

book for your listeners. If they don't take anything else away,

and they're interested in the topic, then the first thing that

I found consistently, is that intrapreneurs push established

organizations to adapt. There's a great story from an

entrepreneur and intrapreneur named Quint Studer who says,

Look, sometimes intrapreneurs are viewed as disruptors, or you

know, their questions, hey, do they understand what our company

is about? But actually, the question ought to be, how can we

harness the value and perspective of these team

members, because often, they're seeing things that provide a lot

of value for the future. So in an organization that's really

healthy, and understands how to adapt, then they're going to

welcome the contributions of Intrapreneurs. Next, and we

already talked about it. So I'll mentioned it briefly here.

Intrapreneurs train the next generation of leaders just over

and over and over again, I saw that it's not the only place for

training the next generation, but as disproportionately large

next intrapreneurs create transformative growth

opportunities for entrepreneurs. And we haven't really talked

about this one here today. There's a whole lot to say about

it. But a short story is that I found in my own experience, and

through writing this book, it became clear to me great

intrapreneurs usually don't have all the capabilities they need

inside their company. And so they look outside and often

entrepreneurs are solving similar problems. And when that

happens, intrapreneurs can provide breakthrough

opportunities for entrepreneurs, and entrepreneurs can provide

the capabilities and the people power that intrapreneurs would

take years to develop. So it's symbiotic. And the last thing

that I would mention is that intrapreneurs drive a large

portion of the value creation within organization. Again, not

the only source, but a lot of it, especially the new value

creation. And, you know, there's a simple statement that I use to

summarize this intrapreneurs activate innovation.

It's a powerful statement.

Thank you.

Fascinating. Thank you so much for your time.

Just really appreciate you carving out some time to be with

us today.

Oh, it's completely my pleasure. Thanks for taking

the time, Stephanie. I've loved being here.