Ep. 20: Broom Ventures Founder Joe Musselman on Building Mission-Driven Companies and Power of Knowing What You Believe
In this episode, Darren Reinke chats with Joe Musselman, founder of Broom Ventures, The Honor Foundation, and the Honor For Life Foundation. Joe talks about being a shameless optimist and altruist, how a spinal injury during Navy SEAL BUD/S training led him to founding The Honor Foundation, why his venture’s mission statements were often reflections of his own, and why knowing what you believe is one of the most powerful tools you can leverage as a leader.
Broom Ventures is a venture capital firm that invests in the earliest stages of empathetic and mission-driven founders’ businesses, providing them with the resources they need to succeed. The Honor Foundation (THF) is a career transition program for U.S. Special Operations Forces that effectively translates their elite military service to the private sector and helps create the next generation of corporate and community leaders.
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SHOW NOTES
Why Joe Considers Himself a Shameless Optimist and Altruist [1:14]
How Optimism and Altruism Connect to the Navy [3:34]
Joe’s Spark for Starting the Honor Foundation [12:56]
How Joe Identifies and Builds Empathetic and Mission-Driven Founders [22:45]
The Framework Joe Uses to Deeply Connect With Others [30:18]
How Joe’s Framework Fosters Introspection and Creates Better Leaders [35:40]
Joe Shares a Specific Example on the Impact Broom Ventures Has Helped Achieve [41:28]
Joe’s Parting Advice: Know What You Believe [45:15]
SHOW LINKS
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PODCAST TRANSCRIPT
Darren Reinke: Welcome to The Savage Leader Podcast, where I interview leaders from all walks of life so that you can walk away with tips to apply to your life and your career. But this isn't your traditional leadership podcast because I believe that leadership tips come from successful entrepreneurs and business executives, of course. Still, they also come from unexpected places, like Navy SEALs, successful professional athletes, sports coaches, musicians, entertainers, and more. So let's dive right into today's episode; my hope is you walk away with something tangible that you can apply immediately to your life in your career. Today's guest on the savage leader podcast is Joe Musselman. Joe is the founder of broom ventures, a venture capital firm that imagines a world where empathetic mission oriented leaders when Joe has also committed himself to helping elite military Special Forces transition from the military to successful civilian careers. As part of this, he founded two nonprofits, the Honor Foundation and the honor for Life Foundation. Joe, thanks for coming on today.
Joe Musselman: Yeah, thank you, Darren, I'm very happy to be here.
Why Joe Considers Himself a Shameless Optimist and Altruist [1:14]
Darren Reinke: So Joe, something has really jumped out in terms of looking at your background is something you say loud and clear. As you talk about being a shameless optimist and altruist, what does that mean to you?
Joe Musselman: Well, opening question coming in hot. So, what does that mean to me? Well, first off, I think it's a lens of people that have been most inspiring to me throughout my life that have motivated me to do anything and everything that I've ever done. It seems they shared that same perspective. And I'm a big fan of connecting dots looking backwards. So most people on this podcast, and for the listeners who have not heard this, Steve Jobs gave an epic speech at Stanford has been one of the most watched commencement speeches of all time. And it even helped me write the commencement speech for my high school a couple of weeks ago, but it is about dots and connected and backwards, you can, the great thing about inspiring figures and characters is they all have a history. And if you're curious enough about them to read biographies, autobiographies, they have dots that can be connected backwards. And what I've noticed is they've had this unwavering, foolish idea that they can change the world. And it all seems to start with the unreasonable idea that optimism is much better than pessimism. And then throughout life, they get a taste of what the hyperreal world is like. But if they didn't build that lens of true passion, and altruism, and shameless optimism, during the foundation years of their life, basically what I call the zero to 20, they wouldn't have had enough in them to go at a very hyperreal world. So, when I talk about being passionate, and a shameless optimist and altruist, I truly mean that I was raised that way, I came from two parents who thought that way, who were in themselves, were foolish enough to tell me that there really isn't anything you can't do. And I was, you know, silly enough to kind of believe that in some senses, and I've done very little. But what I have done is seen something in my mind and then be passionate enough in and focused enough on the execution side, to bring those images in my brain into reality to help support some very important people to me in my life, and doing that at scale.
Darren Reinke: So take me back a little bit to Little Joe growing up, obviously, you've been heavily influenced by your parents, but I know you're part of your initial journey was joining the military, and how does that idea around optimism and altruism? How's that connect to Navy, the Navy, if at all? And just how did that come to fruition in your life?
How Optimism and Altruism Connect to the Navy [3:34]
Joe Musselman: Sure. Yeah. Great question, meaningful question. So if service is beneath you, then leadership has escaped you altogether. And so, something that I try to talk about a lot, and next year, I'm going to be visiting dozens and dozens and dozens of colleges across the country, to hopefully, impart on some younger folks how important serving others must be. And I say must be because our entire country depends on it. It depends on young people giving back. So growing up in a family, a service-oriented family, I was the 16th man in my family to serve in the military. Going all the way back to World War Two. I grew up seeing every uniform of every branch in every closet. You know, obviously holidays, were always fun with the marine on one side of the table and the Navy, man on the other side of the table. And the point is they never talked about the hardships. They talked about the camaraderie. They talked about the service to others, they remember fond memories, even those that were combat deploy, look back with incredible positivity and altruism for the world despite having seen the atrocities that happened in war. And it wasn't just the men, either. I wouldn't be doing anything of any importance at all of my life. If I didn't have the women in my life. Life that I had growing up, they were teachers, they were social workers. You know, they were doctors and nurses. It was just an amazing experience to grow up in. And I'm blessed to have had it. When I think about the service orientation of my family, and how that has impacted me from a very young age, everything was always done on behalf of others. There was a lack of self selfish talk growing up in my home, and it was mostly about sacrifice. I came from a very, you know, low, middle-class income home. I never wanted for anything because I always thought I was wealthy. I didn't know there were other things in the world that could gauge wealth. I gauged wealth as a kid as my dad was always there. My mom was always there. I had a sister who looked out for me. And I had, I had an extended family, an extended tribe that was big and loving and caring, and loud, and Italian and aggressive, and, but also conversationalists and storytellers. So that whole tribe influenced me to go into the service. And it was something that I always looked up to.
Darren Reinke: So, you've done so many things in your career. It's extraordinary. You talk about being in the Navy, and as a guest lecturer and as a board advisor and founding the Honor Foundation, which is obviously how we know each other starting human futures, launching Broom ventures, what's the thread that really connects all of those experiences because it's really remarkable in terms of the diversity of experiences you've had?
Joe Musselman: Yeah, in a, and I guess it's a short amount of time only for the reason that I was. Because of the first adventure into the Navy, it gave me a very different optic on time and sense of urgency. When you work with 1000s of Navy SEALs and special operators, you start to look at the world urgently, that change has to happen quickly, the things are going to happen with or without you impacting the direction, but with you can impact the direction. So working with the community to start off with going into the Navy, and then transitioning into founding and being the CEO of the Honor Foundation for about five to six years. The common thread is pretty simple. If you think about it, again, connecting dots looking backwards to look forward. I wanted to go to the Navy after college because I wanted to serve. When I left that Navy experience that, I argue with Navy SEALs all the time that they didn't join the service to go hunt down bad people in the world, or they didn't. They didn't join to go blow things up in a desert or do all the cool things of jumping out of planes. They chose to be a seal specifically because they have a spirit of service. That was the vehicle. So, the vehicle was to become a seal, but the spirit of service never leaves you. And I certainly had that stain on my soul going into the military, leaving the military it only amplified going into the next adventure, finding the Honor Foundation. Again, it was just an outlet into service. And then leaving the Honor Foundation and going on a listening tour that lasted nearly a full year of interviewing 100 entrepreneurs, I just duplicated what I did to find the Honor Foundation, which was interviewed 215 Navy SEALs across seven states over six months. And then I empathized with the community I tended to lead and love, then I moved on leaving the Honor Foundation to the exact same process tightened up some features of it. I'm a total want to be wannabe anthropologists, sociologists, no question about it. But the threat is pretty simple. And it's always been there. And if you look at the subtle differences, the mission of the Honor Foundation was actually my first why statement, my first mission statement, the mission statement of the Honor Foundation is to serve others with honor for life. So, their next mission is clear and continues to impact the world. That was the mission statement of the Honor Foundation. It was my why, then I moved on to the next great adventure and refined it a bit. And now it's to light fires. So, others may see. Again, both of those statements are almost identical. One is a bit sharper and prettier than the other, but at the same time, they mean the same things, you know, to light fires, meaning it's kind of a spin on the take from you know, the Hemingway quote of you know, education is not about filling buckets. It's about sliding fires. And for me, every experience that I have, no matter what it is, no matter who it is, I want to light a fire. And I want people to see things that they may not have seen before. My mother used to have to distill things down for me quite often. It's not that I wasn't smart, but I certainly wasn't smart. To pick things up right away. I needed to work at it, you know, really hard. So, she had to distill things down and then get creative in the way that she would teach it to me My mother was a teacher, and then I would understand, so it's the same thing. What I'm trying to do is, I can take complex ideas, break them down simply and then get them out to the world and hopefully, hopefully one fire gets lit where they may see something that they didn't see before. That's why it says may not can. I cannot make Darren see anything. I might be able to let fire where he makes See something that he didn't see before. So, I would say the thread all the way up into broom ventures in the world that we envision around empathy and mission oriented founders. I want people who lead with empathy, true empathy, I want them to win because they care. And it's a reflection of me, when I go after something, I'm doing it because I care about it. And if I care about something deep enough, I might be able to might be able to get some people to join me on the journey. That's how the Honor Foundation started out, or for life is the largest endowment ever raised on behalf of the Special Operations community. And we just received our anchor commitment from Joe and Taylor Lonsdale, that's very exciting. It's a million dollar gift. The reason why we're raising that endowment, again, is this community should not have to worry that there is a group of people and a grouping of dollars that are dedicated to supporting them. The ones that lit, there's $300 million available in philanthropy. For those that died in their families, there's $200 million available for those that are active duty service going throughout their career, there was a no pot of dollars dedicated for the ones that lit. So, the Honor Foundation honor for Life Foundation, is that endowment that will support the community in perpetuity, through the programs at the Honor Foundation. And then obviously, now we have broom ventures, which is the whole point of the firm, everyone listening, everyone who listens to this podcast, you know where the broom is in your house, you only get the broom, when there's a very specific job to be done. You get the broom, when you have to roll up your sleeves to get the specific job done. And then you have to put in the work to finish the job. That's how we had our fund my two partners and I, our Vice Chairman, the entire ecosystem. I wanted to attract partners and people in a virtuous network of empathy, mission oriented leaders to come underneath this umbrella this fund to truly sweet for farmers that when they need us when they need work, they get on the phone, and they call us because we're willing to do that work on their behalf. So, that's the thread it's, and it's a service thread. It's a lighting, fires, threaded doing work thread, all of these things light me up.
Joe’s Spark for Starting the Honor Foundation [12:56]
Darren Reinke: And there's so much richness to what you said and so beautiful, by the way, just so much that service and giving back to this remarkable community. Obviously, I've been had the honor and privilege to be able to serve them in some small capacity. But since so many great things you talked about your wise statement, your purpose and just how that's been a neat thread for you over time. And just also you talked about almost a sense of possibility the May or might in this sparking lighting fires, there's so much there around the sense of possibility. But I love to go back just because to the Honor Foundation, you talked about your why but just for people who don't know, like what is the Honor Foundation, and just how it evolved over time and just also talk about some of the wins that you've seen with the remarkable people who've come through the group.
Joe Musselman: Sure. Oh my gosh, the whole experience, what a blessing. So, I joined the Navy in 2009 2010. With every intention to become a Navy SEAL. No one in my family had served in special operations. But it was something that kind of felt the calling to do. I trained very hard, I overtrained to get there and then sustained a spine injury. About two years into the process. I had eight months of rehabilitation at the command in Coronado, California, where I underwent everything but the kitchen sink to get me back on my feet and as for the Navy to medically discharged retire me. I was pretty broke at the time. But what I did learn in transition was a big lesson. One, I could hear much better and see the world far clearer. When I was still I've always had this sense of urgency, and it took a backbreaking injury, to get me to be still. And for the rest of my life. I now understand stillness is the place to find most answers. But the stillness that I experienced did allow me to see a need. And I'm no different. I'm certainly not special when it comes to entrepreneurs, having an aha moment where they're like, wait a minute, there must be a better way. And when you get bugged and haunted by a question like that, and you have to solve it. I was the right mixture of vulnerability. I had shame about not making it through the program, healthy and deploying on behalf of our country. I felt embarrassed. I couldn't talk to my family. I wanted so badly to be a part of this community. That it was the perfect cocktail On behalf of the community that I meant to serve, to then leave and say, Wait a minute, like I'm not done yet, like, this isn't going to dictate my service. I'm not done yet. So, I wanted to create something alongside some of the best people in the world. When I think back to what I actually prayed about, it was pretty funny because I would always pray to be part of the most, I want to be part of an elite community of warfighters. I want to learn skill sets, that put me in that place, I want to be around the best community and camaraderie that is world-class, and people coming from all walks of life. I wasn't praying to go shoot terrorists in the face, necessarily. So, I got what I prayed for God gave me exactly what I asked for, the ability to serve alongside these men and women of this community, just in a different capacity. So, I looked at the Honor Foundation as my continued service to the community, and I took it just as seriously life or death. And if we didn't survive, some of them may not survive, too. So, the Honor Foundation is our nation's first career transition Institute. For the Navy SEAL in Special Operations community, we serve every branch of the military, when it comes to special operators in transition, we have a long way to go, we serve about two to 300 a year through a 12 to 15 week or so program. Think of it for those folks listening, think of it as an executive MBA, in career transition, that every transitioning service member all 700,000 or so a year experienced a transition from military to civilians that the civilian sector experienced every year, they all need this, I wanted to be a part of this community. So, I created something on behalf of this community, I think the general force can learn a lot from what we have created at a very high level for the soft, the special operation forces community, the soft community. But anyways, that that's what the Honor Foundation has turned into. And now it's being led by a much better man than I have to be at the helm. His name is Matt Stevens, he's the CEO, he's a former Navy SEAL 20 plus years in service, was it the SEAL team for 18 years that that nobody knows exists, but everybody knows it exists. He's doing a great job. He's built a team, he's expanded our campuses, he's done everything I could have dreamt the foundation to do, again, in a very short amount of time because we're moving with a sense of urgency. But that's what the Honor Foundation is.
Darren Reinke: I think that's what's really neat also in that story, is just the fact that you stayed with your purpose with your why. But the net result was, I would say, in a lot of ways you amplified your impact, you know, the impact you could have as an individual team member versus someone who's just made such a massive contribution to all the people who have come to the Honor Foundation.
Joe Musselman: Yeah, so you make a really great point, again, dots, looking backwards to look forwards, there was something about that experience that that led me to meet with top entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley. This is when I, I started to get the itch and the scratch to do one or two things, I was either going to become an entrepreneur, again, there are plenty of problems in the world that need to be solved. And I encourage people to choose entrepreneurship every time until they fail hard enough and learn enough to then go be an intrapreneur somewhere else. But we need more, the world needs more entrepreneurs. But I was either going to be an entrepreneur, or I wanted to get into venture capital. But I wanted to get into venture capital for one sole purpose. And that was to have significant means to support entrepreneurs that I already knew, and connected the dots on what makes them successful. I was given this sneak peek into this high performing community that then allowed me and granted me access to meet with some of the top entrepreneurs in the world, whether it was Brian, Nate and Joe at Airbnb, or whether it was there's just a There's a host of entrepreneurs that I interviewed 50 Going into 2019 it was made on listening tour into the entrepreneurship community. But 25 of those are of those entrepreneurs that I interviewed are already on inside of in and around, I should say unicorn status, somewhere between a half a billion to a billion plus now in valuation from when I interviewed them 18 months ago. And looking back to those interviews, there's very particular dots that they thinks they would say behaviors they would do the way that their team would speak about them the way that they thought about leadership truly beneath the surface, how they thought about leadership and the cultures they hope to bring into the world. There were some very consistent themes along that which then made me arrive at well, I want to be, you know, a servant leader to servant leaders. That's what the Honor Foundation was. And it ingrained in me. When people say hi, like, how did you go from being a nonprofit to no finance background and no investing background into becoming a finance person and investing person? Well, they're only looking at it in a very surface way, whether I am standing in front of a classroom of 40 operators, and I am dedicating all of my effort, energy and enthusiasm, passion, altruism, empathy towards 40 operators and their families for them to be a wild success. Or if I'm sitting in front of a portfolio of 40 companies, and I'm dedicating all my effort, energy, enthusiasm, passion, altruism, and empathy towards them and their businesses, the work is the same. It's just being a servant leader, it's being a listener. It's amazing how many people here but don't listen. And that's something that I wanted to be for them, was a fierce listener. And I wanted to produce results for them that they hadn't seen before and empower them. The Honor Foundation, if we are at full capacity, we will be impacting around 70,000 operators a year, that's the ideal the dream would be to impact 70,000 families a year. That's tremendous. And then, of course, you all the side effects that will trickle down as a result of helping those people become their best selves post service. Imagine 40 entrepreneurs, 140 entrepreneurs, 200 entrepreneurs, and the 10s of millions and potentially billions of lives, those entrepreneurs will impact. So, it was service led, the idea to go into venture was led by the idea of service. And secondly, it was driven by impact, scaling my own impact. That's what led me to choose VC. And of course, I finished the listening tour on February of 2020. So, I listened to from January, February of 2019. To February or so, 2020. I get back to my house. And I'm like, All right, I'm ready to go raise this fund. And then march COVID, completely takes everyone by surprise, I just was not going I was like no, I, I I'm gonna do this. If it has legs. If the idea has merit, then it will work despite the environment. And it worked despite the environment because everyone knows one thing, and that we all know this about TLC teams, leadership and culture are a result of every success in every business, and are also the cause of every failure of every business. And there was not a fund that focus just on this one thing. And so, that's what Broom Ventures is.
Darren Reinke: But I love that, just once again, amplifying your impact. So versus start a company, you start a fund that impacts, as you mentioned, not just the companies but the shareholders and the customers. Can you take me a little bit more into the broom ventures, I'd love to learn more, as you talk about empathetic mission oriented founders and helping them win, like, how do you go about identifying them? How do you go about developing them? And then how does that connect to the types of companies that you work with?
How Joe Identifies and Builds Empathetic and Mission-Driven Founders [22:45]
Joe Musselman: Identify, develop, and, and work? So, how do we work with those companies? So, the one thing I became really inspired by is, I don't want to say interrogation. That's the rough term for it. But what the term I do want to use, though, is a line of questioning that gets you to the answer that you're really looking for, without ever asking directly what you're looking for. That's tradecraft, that's hard to do. And working with the seal community, I became inspired by them. And I also became good at the process itself, trying to dig deep into these operators think about sitting in a room with, you know, 40, Navy SEALs, and you're trying to get their deepest, darkest vulnerabilities that might inhibit them from becoming their best self. That's not an easy process to jump into. So if I can help a Navy SEAL, dive into their biggest, deepest, deepest, darkest corners on the inside, then you know, you put me in front of a 26-year-old entrepreneur, you give me an hour, I'm going to figure something out. And what I would what I kept hearing from all of the founders is I had a very specific set of questions I would ask them, Darren 33, to be exact, and they would come off very conversationally, you wouldn't even know you were being asked them. What a conversation that turned into, you know, 25 minutes on a calendar invite that was sent to me by their EA, then turned into, you know, a three-hour conversation that more morphed into dinner that morphed into drinks that now it's 2am. And we're sitting there with Mr. or Mrs. Founder, and we're having a very deep, real conversation. And I call that going from mission, vision, values, principles, ethos, and at the end of the day, we were finally having the conversation about ethos, the unspoken spirit that's inside of them, manifested through conversation. That's what I'm digging for constantly with every conversation I have with founders to understand why they're doing what they're doing. Why are they doing it? I have to understand that deeply because most likely, it's from zero to 20 years, zero to 10 years of your life, I can trace back almost all of our founders and why they're doing what they're doing to the zero to 10. Believe it or not. So, you ask, How do I go about kind of selecting them? Well, first I'm I'm one of three, I have a wonderful team. The team has me and I have them. We really act as what I always refer to as the yin and the yang, I would be the yin Dan would be the Yang and Jeff is that that line in between, that is constantly in fluid motion with the yin and the yang, binding the two together, it's the best visual description I could have of our team. But together, we are very complete. If we're talking about teams, leadership and culture, who would we be if we assembled a poor team from the start? So, that, to me, is a big part of the story, how we select, they are very technical, Jeff has won every math competition in the United States, Japan, China, graduated from Yale won all these awards, Dan graduated from Princeton, you know, and I'm in charge of community of bringing our lens to the world and filtering in the entrepreneurs filtering in co-investors filtering in Venture Partners, and ensuring that the right people, this is what the Honor Foundation taught me, even you are a result of this, I didn't recruit you to the Honor Foundation. But someone I recruited, who then recruited someone else, recruited you to the Honor Foundation. And if I was not ruthless, and ruthlessly protective, and in some cases, you know, name called and finger pointed, as you know, I'm sure people thought I was very difficult to work with in the early years, I didn't care lives were on the line. And whoever the community that protects us without knowing us, risked their lives. For us, I needed to have that same type of energy and enthusiasm, and filter mechanism that anyone that I was going to put in front of them, needed to represent them in a sense. And I was that first line of defense, that's why our logo is a shield, a shield, by definition, means to protect. So, that was my, that was my job at the Honor Foundation was to make sure the right layer of people came in to then interact with the community. And you're a result of that. And now we're having a conversation years later, after that was triggered. It's the same thing with broom ventures, I am ruthless on behalf of our team on behalf of our entrepreneurs. This is also what I learned from the SEO community, people talk about, you know, time is the most valuable resource, I actually think that is completely incorrect. Time is not the most valuable resource at all. Because people waste time, they waste your time, and they just waste time in general hand over fist. What I think is the most valuable resources, what I actually have with you right now, which is attention, you can get someone's time, but to have their attention is something very different. And the seal community, when they're in our classroom, we have their attention for a short time. So, what do we need them to know? And what do they need to know from us? It's the same concept with inventors, entrepreneurs do not have attention to be wasted. It's their currency, especially since we invest seed to a, this is the earliest stages of building something. They don't have time or attention to waste. So, anyone I put in front of them, I want to make sure is the right person,
Darren Reinke: I guess incredibly powerful and important is the attention because it's not just the amount of time, it's the quality of that time it requires being present with those people. I mean, you could spend I could, we could spend an hour together versus we spent 10 intentional attentive moments, you're gonna have so much more depth in so much more connection as well.
Joe Musselman: 100% That's exactly right. That's exactly right.
Darren Reinke: There. That's interesting. You mentioned you talked about protection, protecting the fellows that are going to the Honor Foundation, protecting the entrepreneurs. It's almost like if I think about just business leadership in general, it's, it’s understanding what matters most. It's protecting our customers, our customers to make sure they have a world-class customer experience, protecting them to make sure we deliver the products and services that we promised to them. And we're upholding our own beliefs and values of our organization. It's so much the idea of protection, just I see that almost as something a threat also that just goes through leadership and just as strong organizational cultures as well.
Joe Musselman: That's very true. That's pretty true. Protection is a significant theme that runs up and down. I mean, I do everything from double opt in emails to you name it, the to protect the founders attention to make sure that we're doing everything we can that never takes. I think if it is a constant value add, I never want them to think that if we interact with broom ventures that we are looking to take away that we're only a value add and that takes time, a very long term perspective for sure to build a reputation around that and that's what we're doing and I think we're doing it Great job of it.
The Framework Joe Uses to Deeply Connect With Others [30:18]
Darren Reinke: So you mentioned something about just getting to the ethos over 40 is a 25-minute conversation that turns into dinner and drinks and then a to a much deeper conversation. If you don't mind sharing some tips and tricks, I mean, obviously, being present and attention is important. And you mentioned trade craft, but any thoughts and tips you can give to leaders in terms of how do you really deeply connect with someone? Because getting to someone's ethos? I mean, that's, that made me really think, by the way, in terms of zero to 10, and how that impacts your why I do what I do. But, you know, how do you do that? How do you actually connect to someone in such a deep way?
Joe Musselman: Yeah, sure. So, I've developed a very specific framework, and I can talk about it generally, for sure. And the framework is pretty simple. I mentioned earlier because it's still on my mind, obviously, how I could maybe have done it better, or said things differently. But there I gave an address to my old high school a couple of weeks ago, two weeks ago. And one thing the title of it, and I created a scholarship around this, which is tell me what you believe. We have plenty of academic scholarships, we have plenty of athletic scholarships. But why isn't there a scholarship for that one remarkable individual, who has this totally unreasonable, idealistic, but yet crystal clear view of the world at 18 years old, I expect that of young people now. If they're TEDx smarter, and better and faster than I was, then they should be able to stand up by the time they are 18 years old, and say, this is at least what I believe to be true in the world. And I'm crystal clear about this. And then I talked a bit about, you know, you have to learn how to disagree well, and then change your mind. These are two things that I think young people need to do as well, in addition to when we think about it, probably older people to disagree well and change your mind, especially if you're proven less, right. The reason why I started with what you what is it that you believe what you believe is kind of this overarching theme over the process that I've created around alignment, to get to drill down quite literally drill down to the ethos, and it's broken down into five things, vision, mission, values, principles, and ethos. You can't get to ethos, until you understand the first four. Think of this literally as drilling through an iceberg. And at the base of the iceberg is the ethos. And we know that from all the imagery we've seen of icebergs, it's the biggest at the bottom, the thing that matters most to all of us is deep inside of us. And you have to drill deep to figure out what's going on in the darkest spaces of our mind and heart and body, etc. So, it sounds something like this is telling me what is the world you imagine and hope to bring about with others? To me, that's the question that will help me understand the vision this person has for the world. When I want to ask about mission, what is it that gets you out of bed every single day? That's the mission question. Then you go down to values. If you were to talk to me, Darren, about your moral compass, your internal ethical, moral compass, how you think, act, feel and communicate into the world? How would you define that for me? How would you talk about it? That's a values question. Tell me about how you bring yourself into the world. When it comes to principles. Darren, you've had a long experience, in business and in life, your work life experience is really interesting to me what is universally true, according to you, to date about your work life experience, That's me trying to understand the principles is the leadership principles that you bring into the world at a tactical level to make decisions in the now in the present moment. And then when you get to ethos, it's finally in a business, I would ask the question like, how are things done around here? Think about that question. How are things done around here? That will lead into a conversation around things that are unspoken. The unspoken behaviors are what drive a culture and a culture is what manifests the ethos, how many times if you've gone to an about us page, and left knowing nothing about the company, every time, every time you go to an about us page, it's like a timeline or like, you know, Sue and Brian invented this on this date. And then here's the pathway. It's like, I don't know about you. For the listeners. If you want to go read a great ethos. The Navy SEAL community has something called a Navy SEAL ethos, and it's a couple of paragraphs, but I guarantee you that when you finish reading that ethos, you know exactly who the community is trying to recruit. And you also know exactly who the community is trying to filter out to not become part of the community. They know what they believe. When you know what you believe, the vision you see of the world is crystal clear. Why you get out of bed every single day is also crystal clear. Your values can be defined, you can talk about them like verbs that they're happening in action. Your principles are clear how you bring your leadership to every single moment of the day, and the ethos that lives deep inside of you. If you don't surface this often enough, you will be I guarantee you will be unfulfilled as a person, and your business will fail. You have to know what you believe.
Darren Reinke: And that's so profound and so important, whether it's as an individual leader, I spent so much time pausing reflecting on my values, my purpose, my why. But something those are hard questions and just made me think you're recruiting people are incredibly introspective, which I guess if they're going to have empathy for other people, which is ability to walk in their shoes is it starts with introspection and self awareness. But tell me how that process in terms of yields, the type of leaders and types of companies you want to send out in the world and be successful?
How Joe’s Framework Fosters Introspection and Creates Better Leaders [35:40]
Joe Musselman: How do I'm going to speak in terms of stuff startups? So how do startups and I'm speaking specifically, to the founder, CEO, not the founder, chairman, not the founder, s. VP, I want to speak specifically to the founder, CEO, there's something very unique about this role. One, your founder, that makes you incredibly unique to you started as the CEO, you still are the CEO. Now you're the founder, CEO, the founder, title, you'll never you'll never leave very few people coach founders into that in between moment of when they have to become leave the founder and become the CEO, where the founder now is kind of a title that's on the back of their T-shirt. And they'll always kind of have it there. But now they're looking forward. And they have to learn how to become a CEO. There's very few people out there that coach people into becoming the CEO making that transition that's very vulnerable for a founder, whether they admit it or not, the ones that admitted are the ones that succeed, the ones that do not are the ones that fail, we want to work with the founders that raised their hand and say, I'm a founder, now I want to become a CEO, I need your help. I want to be coached, I want to be the best leader I can for my people because I care about them, this organization is nothing without them. So, I have to be the best leader I can, I can be for them, we fall to the level of our training, not to the level of our ability. So, those that focus on training, and I want training, give it to me, give it to me, I want to learn more, I want to be better, I want to work with those founders. And so, when you talk about the deep process, most people have this in backwards. So, when I'm speaking directly to the founder CEO, one of the things we talked about is you would agree Darren, Mr. Founder, CEO, that you want to attract great teams leadership, and then end up and arrive at a great culture. Right? Of course, right? Everyone raises their hand. Yes, of course, to that question. The problem is, everyone knows the team's leadership and culture is the perfect equation teams plus great leadership equals the culture that everyone wants to be a part of. But that's kind of like talking about an end state, without all the symptoms that got you there. So, the way I talk about and coach into organizations, we have to get clear on vision, we have to be clear on mission, we have to understand our values, principles, ethos because that's how we will attract great teams, leadership, and culture. These are things that we attract, we attract great teams, into businesses, we attract great leaders into our organization, but not until we have the words coming from the founder, CEO down into the organization up down and all around until we know what to say about ourselves, we will not attract the right teams leadership and stay culture. And then that has to be curated again and again and again. So, when you ask about the process, it's so clear to me that when I went back and looked at the process that I interviewed one, when I interviewed the 50 founders, one out of 10 of those founders were crystal clear on what they believed one out of 10. As it turns out, that one out of 10 of those founders were also responsible for 90% of the revenue earned over an 18-month period. So for me, what I was trying to do is to quantify crystal clarity, if you know what you believe. It turns out, you make more money if you know what you believe, you build bigger, better companies that have more impact. So, I spend time at the earliest stage with founders, helping them their leadership teams and their organizations understand what they believe. So, they all have stories and narratives to share up into the values mission and vision of the company. And it's a surgical process, right. It takes a lot of time, and I wanted to be in a profession that allowed me and kind of gifted me with hard work the kind of entryway into these companies because we talk about them all the time as it's more than capital, like capital is the easy part for a venture capitalist to provide. It's the service element, the true syndicate element, the true co investor element that we want to bring to the table as a co investor. And as a sidecar organization, I'll be a sidecar all day, that works their ass off for both our CO investors and our entrepreneurs, we want to be the value add. But it's great. I mean, you talk about that process of mission, vision, values, principles and ethos, you start with the recruitment process, but then it's part of the development of the strategy. So, getting clear on all those things. But also, it sounds like it's also in terms of how you actually develop those leaders as well. So, it's a guide and a compass, and so many levels.
Darren Reinke: That's right. The six words are the end of every founder, I do not have the time when a founder says that they do not have the time to work on these types of things, despite the body of evidence that is available to them. Knowing the importance of ending with great team's leadership and culture. There are symptoms that come before that, that we have to put in play. I want to infect an organization with this thinking, they just have to be willing, at the very beginning, to think this way. Once I realize that, let's go, let's start the process.
Joe Shares a Specific Example on the Impact Broom Ventures Has Helped Achieve [41:28]
Darren Reinke: Can you share just maybe some information about one of the companies that you're working with in terms of in your portfolio? Just curious in terms of how that what the kind of work that you're working with just so people are more familiar with Broom ventures and what you're doing?
Joe Musselman: Oh, sure, sure. So one great example of a company that believes what we believe. And now it's showing on the books and the returns is a company called Tive Tive is you can visit their website, it's time dot co. And we invested in time at the precede, and they just are finishing a very exciting round right now. And when we met with Krenar, the founder CEO, I just left Boston working with the team for a full day. It was remarkable the executive team was in the morning, the sales team was in the evening, and leadership trickles down. And when we met with Krenar, it was again, February, March timeframe, where we just raised some initial capital, we wanted to put it to work. And we had a conversation with Krenar, he was in what appeared to be a very kind of small apartment. He was sweating through his shirt. And when I told this story for the executive team, he got very embarrassed. So printer, I'm sorry that I'm embarrassing you yet again. But he was sweating through a shirt. He didn't know how to handle everything just yet, because I doubt that he was used to taking these type of investor calls, not in the office, his wife is behind him, like holding a kid to other kids running around making noise. He's trying to stay focused. And I remember interrupting him and saying, Hey, man, like, look, we know what's going on in the world, relax, like we are advocates, we are here to serve you. There's nothing you could send this call that would be right or wrong. And from that point forward, you could tell that he got into it trust went through the roof. And, you know, we got to see a behind the scenes demo. And he walked us through the product as he sees it, which was, you know, it's unique to see a founder just kind of bring us in to the fold like that. And it was beautiful. He creates, he created a platform that monitors high value shipments around the world. And I can't tell you how beautiful the design was. And the platform was in the habit, the ease of use, and all of it for this little tracker, no bigger the size of your phone. And the way he talked about teams, leadership and culture, with answering all my questions about vision, mission values, principles, and ethos, and then how and what type of culture he wants to create. My two partners asked all the quiet questions, you know, that need to be asked, I asked all the quality questions that need to be asked. And together, he scored off the charts. And then we had a follow-on phone call and another one and another one. And now, you know a year later, we're at 8x. And so like there's a there's a gain, he's proving that founders that think and feel and communicate in this way, are going to bring something very special to the world. This is where the world is at and how they receive ideas like this. And we're very proud of printer and the entire team at PTI that's on their way from 50 to 150 to 1000 over the next three years headcount of employees. So, we want to be there when they scale because that's when culture dilutes when you start to rapidly scale and the pressure that the VC community puts on entrepreneurs and the pressure they put on themselves to grow scale faster, raise more money faster. More and more and more faster, any organization would become diluted if they had to go from zero to 1000 headcounts in three years if they don't have a steward of culture along the way. And that's what we're inventors hopes to be.
Joe’s Parting Advice: Know What You Believe [45:15]
Darren Reinke: Fantastic, great example. So, I know you're an incredibly busy guy. Any final thoughts? One point of wisdom that you could share with the audience? I mean, you've just been incredibly insightful in terms of talking about your process and, and what you look for organizations in your background, but any final piece of advice you'd have for us?
Joe Musselman: Sure. It's a pretty simple question that's very hard to answer. It's almost two parts is Socrates said it best. He said, Know thyself. If you're an individual, and you're an entrepreneur, speaking directly to founders and entrepreneurs, know yourself, and how do you know yourself? Well, you have to know what you believe. Step two. And step two, even for the most quant engineered mind, who maybe even disqualifies the qual as being important, you still have to know what you believe. And no one is going to buy your thing if you can't articulate and articulate it simply. And how do you articulate what you believe? I want to know about the world you imagine, I want to know why you get out of bed every single day, I want to know about your internal moral compass. I want to know what lessons in life are universally true to you, based on your work life experiences. And lastly, please explain to me, what's the unspoken Spirit inside of you, and how you want to manifest that into the world. That's how you get to what you believe. And then when you know what you believe you'll attract the right teams, leaders and cultures.
Darren Reinke: And that's great advice for startup CEOs, but also just even universally, in terms of just having more purpose, what you believe just is going to create so much more success. But I think even more importantly, so much more joy and happiness and fulfillment in your life and your career.
Joe Musselman: Yes, you know, this is true for the mom, you know, at home, the dad at home, with children trying to raise a family. I mean, this is all this is universally true stuff, which is why it's timeless. It's why we're still talking about it. It's why there's a body of work on leadership. It's always mattered to get to joy and fulfillment. I'm glad you use the word joy to that spirit. That's very true.
Darren Reinke: So Joe, where can people go to find out about Broom ventures everything you're up to, connect with you on social media all that?
Joe Musselman: Sure. I mean, if anyone would like to kind of follow what we're up to follow me on LinkedIn, I'm actually starting a content campaign this year, over the next month or so, get some of these ideas out to more people. So just follow me on LinkedIn. And secondly, we're launching a fairly big website effort. Again, being empathetic to our audience, meaning we want to launch a very founder-centric website. But to get the updates around that just go to Broom dot ventures, give us your first name, last name, email. And when we launched this website effort, everyone will know about it.
Darren Reinke: Perfect. Well, Joe, thanks so much for your time today. I really do appreciate it.
Joe Musselman: Yeah, thank you, Darren, I appreciate you very much. Thank you.
Darren Reinke: Thanks for listening to today's episode of The Savage Leader Podcast. My hope is you walk away with tactics that you can apply to become a better leader in your life and in your career. If you're looking for additional insight in tactics, be sure to check out my book titled The Savage Leader 13 Principles to Become a Better Leader From The Inside Out. Also, be sure to subscribe to the podcast and I would truly appreciate it if you would leave a review and also rate the podcast. Thanks and see you in the next episode.