Shownotes
It takes three to five years to create a sustainable business which is a long time to commit your life to something. If you don’t love what you’re doing, it can get very difficult to sustain it that is why understanding personal purpose should be tied to the kind of business that you’re going to do. Mike McCausland, CEO and founder of Leadership Institute for Entrepreneurs (LIFE), is focused on helping entrepreneurs all the way from what’s a good business idea through launch, growth, scaling, and exit, or what is called the entrepreneurship journey, from end to end. Mike also talks about another project they’re launching called local entrepreneurship ecosystems which are entrepreneurship networks or group endeavors trying to crack the code on how to cause economic engines to start growing and what ecosystems impact the whole community.
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Walking Through The Entrepreneurship Journey Successfully with Mike McCausland
We’re incredibly fortunate that we have Mike McCausland, Founder and CEO of Leadership Institute for Entrepreneurs. Mike, thanks for being on the show.
Thanks, Bob. I’m excited to be here.
Tell us a little bit about your business and who you serve.
The Leadership Institute for Entrepreneurs is really focused on helping entrepreneurs, all the way from what’s a good business idea through launch growth, scaling, exit, we call it the entrepreneurship journey from end to end. I’ve learned that 99% of the population has no understanding of their purpose. Understanding personal purpose should be tied to the kind of business that you’re going to do. If you don’t love what you’re doing, life can get very difficult in a business. Three to five years to create a sustainable business, that’s a long time to commit your life to something you don’t love doing.
We serve entrepreneurs on this end-to-end entrepreneurship journey. The other thing we’re doing and a lot more of is launching local entrepreneurship ecosystems. We live in Colorado Springs, I think is number nine. Denver’s number five, the Denver Boulder Corridor in entrepreneurship ecosystems in the US. Our market is international and so we’re launching ecosystems all over the world. We actually have seven this year. Kazakhstan, Afghanistan, Nepal, Indonesia, Kenya, Jordan and a relational ecosystem in Rome, Italy of a global network called Open.
I think about that. I would love to take and get an ecosystem in my area. How do they go about getting you to come?
It’s a lot of relational networks. We’ve been all over the world. I ran a nonprofit that was in 150 countries over fifteen years. We ended up shutting it down to move everything to for profit operations because we just believe it’s a better model. The relational aspect is how we figure out where to go and how to help people. Entrepreneurship ecosystems are a big focus worldwide. Some of the leading players in that space, Kauffman Foundation, which many are aware of, but Kauffman just does the United States. They’re in 180 cities. 1 Million Cups, maybe something you’re familiar with, that’s one of their programs or that they’ve produced. The Global Entrepreneurship Network works globally. The Endeavor Global Group is out there globally. The World Economic Forum is out there.
One of the big questions that people are trying to crack the code on is how do you create an entrepreneurship ecosystem and cause economic that engine to start growing? Every mayor in the world ever in every city is interested. Ecosystems are very local. You can’t do a US ecosystem. You can’t do a continental ecosystem. It’s very local. As an example of Colorado Springs, Denver and Boulder, almost three different ecosystems within 100 miles of each other. We go where we already have relational networks. There is some community that has the pieces but they’re just not connected and functional.
What journey did you go through to get to where you are now?
My background is I used to run nuclear power plants. I was a licensed reactor operator and a senior reactor operator, which focuses so much on integrated operations. In the control room you have 5,000 switches, dials, gauges, that all work together. I’m an operations person by heart, a visionary by love. I worked very well with visionaries because I’m a visionary, but I’m a very operational person by training.
Intimacy is the key to success.
It makes you unusual.
It is unusual and I know that. I’m always looking at how does it work? Lift up the hood, what really makes this thing work? It led to doing a lot of large scale culture transformation and change management projects. I worked in the power utility industry to transform sites that had 1,000 people. I came from a union mentality to a competitive environment because the power utility was deregulating. I did companies up to 20,000 people, I did companies around the world. I’ve always had a heart to help people. We ended up going worldwide and doing a humanitarian organization. I like to say we found 1,000 ways not to help people.
I think we did everything wrong, but we finally landed on two things that were really sustainable. One was disaster preparedness and response, which is like business continuity of operations. The other was job creation and business development. We ended up doing about 3,000 businesses in 40 countries, achieved to 73% sustainability rate, but all micro small business. We learned that that doesn’t transform communities and societies. We went looking for a different a model that we could do fast grow, scalable businesses. That’s where I ended up going to MIT, getting to train their materials on a systematic approach to entrepreneurship. I’m a certified MITx Entrepreneurship Knowledge Partner. We get to use their logo when we’re doing training. That’s what brought us to ecosystems because we learned that the entrepreneurship journey has some core skill sets. The MIT approach is one of them.
I’m scaling up the Rockefeller Habits as an operational core competency or some of the training by Rockies Venture Club up in Denver as core competencies for understanding business valuation and equity and capital raise. The entrepreneurship journey had all these pieces to it, and I’m a very holistic thinker as well. That’s where we evolved the entrepreneurship journey process. It led to the ecosystem because the entrepreneur is the core foundation of the ecosystem. You can have individual entrepreneurs who are very successful, but not an ecosystem.
The ecosystem impacts the whole community. Referencing from our humanitarian days, we were always looking at how do we transform a whole community in the development process? How do we create sustainable solutions? How do we bring people out of poverty to allow them to have access to the things that you and I take for granted like healthcare, education and a good job? We know a number one need in the world is a good job. The entrepreneurship ecosystem is the foundation of that.
I think about Nepal or Afghanistan as a poster child. Perhaps there’s a language barrier. How do you go into a location like that and what’s the baseline that you start with? What’s the receivable for those guys?
In Afghanistan, it would be very different. Nepal would be very different than Nairobi. Kenya would be very different than Amman, Jordan. Each one is a little different of where we’re launching. What we look for as a template is what kind of a network already exists and who’s on the ground. We always work to empower locals. We never want them to be reliant upon us. It’s all about sustainability and the local ecosystem. You begin to look at things that are core like rule of law, contract negotiation and legal framework. If you don’t have some of these core things, you can’t build a community of collaboration, trust and cooperation. There are some key components upfront.
Entrepreneurship Journey: If you don’t have some of the core things, you can’t build a community of collaboration, trust, and cooperation.
Language barrier is not necessarily a problem. The business language of the world in many cases is English. There are people everywhere that do speak English. If we need translation, we can get that. We’ll translate into Russian and Kazakhstan, we’ll translate it into Indonesian when we’re in Indonesia. The translation is not an issue. The value that we bring to the community is the training, certifying trainers so they can carry on the ground there without our support.
Our goal is to not only launch the ecosystem but move it forward. Just like a business startup, you can go to a class, but then how do you implement? We’ve done a lot of network development all over the world. This is our fifth global decentralized viral growth network. It always must be sustainable locally or you can’t build globally. We create framework, language, and structure for the local capability. The framework, language and structure are the same all over the world, that’s why everybody can connect and play together.
When I say language, I don’t mean local language. I mean language, like what does entrepreneur mean and what are the components of doing a business startup. If we learn those common terms and we all have the same language of discussing business all over the world, we can plug and play a global network.
On the framework establishment, what are the components of the framework?
The framework that we’ve used, a fairly common knowledge tool is the Business Model Canvas. We took the Business Model Canvas and modified it. We have a modified Business Model Canvas as the framework for all the components of not just launching and growing a business, but even other things. We added to it. The whole front-end component of who are you and what are your gifts, skills, talents, purpose and destiny. We call it Identity Driven Entrepreneurship. You launch a business that you love and it’s in line with who you are. Many people get to the top of the success ball wall and find out we hate what we’re doing. We added that Identity Driven piece to the Business Model Canvas.
We also added a whole component on operations. Just figuring out what kind of business you want to launch, is it viable, sustainable, profitable and scalable before you spend any money or commit your life to it? We teach that in the class. Once you launch, you have a whole different set of problems. We took all of that and there’s a lot of information there in the whole journey, and put it into a canvas that has ten blocks, like the typical Business Model Canvas. That framework gives a simplified overview of the end to end journey. When we start digging down into the actual blocks of the canvas, they can get very deep and have a lot of detail. You need to pull back and see that whole framework to keep everything in context. If you have that framework and everybody has that framework, we understand how to work together and how to contextualize.
There are many pieces that have to fit together in an integrated fashion for the entrepreneurship journey to be successful.
What we very commonly find, both in entrepreneurship and in the ecosystem, is that a lot of people have a lot of pieces but they don’t know how they fit together. That’s very true in business. You could find somebody who’s an expert in marketing, an expert in podcasts, an expert in financials, but there’s many pieces that have to be fit together in an integrated fashion for the entrepreneurship journey to be successful. The same thing is true relative to an entrepreneurship ecosystem. We created a model that’s based on Daniel Isenberg’s work at Babson College. That is to look at six domains in the entrepreneurship ecosystem: leadership and policy, culture, finance, the markets, the human capital, and the support services.
Different people could be good in leadership or in policy or in governance. Some could be good in finances, some could be good in understanding markets and market access. Some people could be good in training, in human capital development like universities, or like what we do with the Leadership Institute for Entrepreneurs. There are other people that provide support services like incubators, accelerators and fractional CFO, professional support services like marketing. How do you connect all of those?
How do you create flow of talent and resources across that whole system? When you get the flow going, that’s where everybody starts benefiting. We can start taking the entrepreneurs which are the core of the ecosystem and helping them get the answers and the support they need at every stage of the entrepreneurship group journey. What’s a good business idea, to how do I launch, to how do I grow, to how do I scale and to how do exit? In different systems, I need different kinds of help.
It’s interesting when you look at personality types, some folks are visionary. I can see it, I just can’t do the details. Other folks are buried in the detail; they can’t see the vision. I’d rather become somewhat enamored with the notion of understanding your exit before entry. If you have the end point in mind, then it makes the journey a little more purposeful.
It’s true not just with your company, it’s true with you personally. That’s where 99% of the population breaks down. Less than 1% understand their purpose. Mark Twain, the two greatest days of your life, the two most important days of your life, the day you’re born and the day you find out why. Investors, the first question they ask is, “What’s your exit strategy?” We should be asking entrepreneurs, “What were you created to do?” before we go build and spend money and spend three to five years of our life
I have a friend that’s in one of the agencies and said we have a bunch of PhDs creating solutions and now they’re in search of a problem. I was just on the wheat harvest here the past couple of days and watching the dance. When the hoppers are full, you’ve got to stop the combine. When the combine doesn’t continue to operate, then you’re delayed in the field. How do you keep the dance going amidst all of the machinery and then what’s the point?
There's nothing worse than the right solution to the wrong problem.
There’s nothing worse than the right solution to the wrong problem.
In any of the countries, you have a network from your previous experience in all the nonprofits. Is there a champion in the local country? I think we want to bring you folks in to create this infrastructure. How does that process start or occur?
When you asked if there’s a champion, yes. We’re always looking for who’s on the ground. You can go all over the world, you can land anywhere in the world, there’s only a handful of people that get stuff done. There are two kinds of people in that mix. One is catalytic visionaries that cast the vision and people respond. The other are operational architects that actually implement the vision. There are two types of people and typically we look for where are those wed together, where do we see both of them? Ideally, it’s a group that’s already functioning.
Like in Nepal, the Great Commission Companies. There’s a group there that just had been working together for five or six years. There’s about 30 organizations trying to figure out how to work together, bless the community, creates sustainable income, and really be a blessing. That’s a great group to work with. They’re hosting our event in Nepal. It’s being funded by the Maclellan Foundation and then being facilitated by the Leadership Institute for Entrepreneurs.
Entrepreneurship Journey: There’s usually a handful of people that make things happen and that’s what you’re looking for.
When your team arrives in the country, how many members are on your team when you arrive?
It varies, typically two to three. As the launch events are not that complex, they’re three days. Day one is an entrepreneurship ecosystem discussion. We run through the playbook that the Kauffman Foundation has built. Why are entrepreneurs important? What is an entrepreneurship ecosystem? How do we create an ecosystem? How do we get started? It’s really geared towards what we would call ecosystem builders. Anybody can be a builder, but who cares enough to want to do that for their community? We do two days of the Disciplined Entrepreneurship training, which is the MIT systematic approach. Not only do we provide a very practical training methodology, systematic approach to entrepreneurship for businesses, and we’re looking at 80 to 100 participants in that training, but we also give them tools to take that training with our videos and facilitation manual. We turn right around and train the next day locally with the facilitation manual and the videos.
We have a small team but the events are not that complex. The challenge is walking it out and implementing it. That’s why the support after the event is almost more important. Whenever you start a team project, you want to get that team as excited as possible. There’s a valley coming when you launch, it’s the same thing in entrepreneurship. It’s very up and down emotionally.
It starts as a sprint and ends up being a marathon. I think about the disparate skill sets in 80 people. I think about you guys coming in with the MIT process. How did MIT arrive at this process?
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