Matt: [00:00:00] From the Crossroads of America in the Hoosier State of Indiana. This is Get IN, the podcast focused on the unfolding stories in extraordinary innovations happening right now in the Heartland. I’m Matt Hunckler, CEO at Powderkeg, and I’ll be one of your hosts for today’s conversation. I’m joined in studio by co-host Christopher “Toph” Day, CEO at Elevate Ventures, and Nate Spangle, head of community at Powderkeg.

Today’s guest is Brodie Meyer, who is the CEO. of your co. 

Brodie: He grinded tooth and nail and I got to see that. And then I saw my dad come in and grind tooth and nails, and I think that really influenced me. Like you get rewarded for the hard work you put in.

Matt: Brodie Meyer is the CEO of yco, a platform for two, a communication for OnDesk employees. In today’s show, we’re gonna talk about why starting with the problem is [00:01:00] essential for entrepreneurs. One powerful strategy from athletics that is essential for all founders and leaders, and maintaining personal relationships while growing your early stage startup and so much more.

You’re gonna love this conversation with Brodie Meyer. Brodie, thanks for being here, man. Thanks for having me, dude. Excited. Appreciate it. Excited to chat with you about what you’re doing with your co. But first I just wanted to get a little bit of context for how you grew up. Did you grow up in the Midwest?

Brodie: Yes. Grew up in the Midwest. Grew up in south of Chicago, pale Sights, Illinois. Came to Indiana for college. Nice. Yeah. Butler. 

Matt: Butler. Cool. And you played some sports, 

Brodie: right? I did. I played, I wrestled, I played baseball my whole life and then ended up playing baseball in college. 

Matt: Nice. What’d you learn playing team sports that you think maybe applies to how you’re doing leadership today?

Brodie: Yeah. One team, it’s actually something we talk about a lot. Within our business is we have four pillars. We got marketing sales. Product support, and everyone’s got different things [00:02:00] going on day in and day out, but we really like to talk about, okay how can we be one team at the end of the day?

There’s one goal in mind. I love that. Yeah. Another thing from sports though that I’ve really realized especially in sales is be present, be in the moment. Be where your feet are. I think you perform the most when you’re, where your feet are and when you’re in this moment. And that helps with sales a lot.

Matt: Helps me. Yeah, absolutely. 

Toph: That’s an interesting comment and I’m gonna make one more comment before, but I wanna go, I wanna rewind to what your home life was like growing up high school. Like what it was, like, what you thought about was entrepreneurship, talked about all those kind of fun things, but talk about beating your feet.

I’ve never heard that said, I love that concept and you know what flashed through my mind? Two things. Number one, have you ever noticed that athletes move around really slow? Like people who are really fast. Like especially professional athletes or even like D one athletes. And you were a D one athlete.

Why do you guys move around so slow when you’re actually really fast and coordinated and talented, 

Brodie: Conserving energy, being present, being in the moment? Is it so a hundred percent? That’s what I learned. I, [00:03:00] it was all, all over the place as a child and like I’ve learned through the years to be able to perform at the peak you possibly can.

You need to be in the present moment. I used to do a lot of yoga. I still do yoga. But that really helps. And like meditation and things that help calm you down that you can go to when your brain starts to go crazy. How can I be relaxed? How can I be calm and be here right now? 

Matt: You mentioned when you were a little kid, did you have a lot of that entrepreneurial 

Brodie: energy when you were a kid?

A lot of energy. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All the time. What was your first business? First business or moneymaking idea? Moneymaking idea. Moneymaking idea. I think I was really into e-commerce and I was trying to sell like baseball cards. Nice. Terrible. But it’s something trying not, yeah.

Matt: How old were you 

Toph: when you tried 

Matt: that 

Brodie: for the first time? Early, very young. Like 10. It had to be. Yeah. Maybe 12. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That’s so fun. I always had entrepreneurial in influences on me that I didn’t recognize until I got a little older. I am the first Meyer to ever graduate college.

Wow. Congrats. Thank you. Thank you. That’s awesome. And I like to say, we’re from a family of grinders, family of. Blue [00:04:00] collar workers and my grandfather started a printing business in Chicago. Yeah, a small print shop. And they, he grinded tooth and nail and I got to see that. And then I saw my dad come in and grind tooth and nails.

And I think that really influenced me. Like you get rewarded for the hard work you put in. So I had some entrepreneurial influences 

Matt: as well. Were there other things that you saw up close in that printing business that you still use today? 

Brodie: Chaos. Yeah. And embracing the chaos. Yeah. And understanding, business is tough.

You gotta keep a level head and I, yeah. Did you work inside of the 

Toph: business? I did, yeah. What’d you do? What was your first job there? 

Brodie: Plant floor stuff, boxing, collating. My dad would bring home stuff and we would collate and put things in boxes and Yeah. Yeah. Around the table. I remember, family dinners and everyone being around the 

Matt: table and classic family pastime.

This is awesome. Yes. Collating, yes. I love that. That’s awesome. Tell me a little bit about how you came up with the idea for your co 

Brodie: Yeah. That stems directly from. The family business. The biggest, not the biggest, [00:05:00] but one of the biggest problems that we’ve always seen is the front office.

Being able to communicate with the plant floor, blue collar, non desk staff and vice versa is really difficult. We tried to help them implement Slack. We use Slack or they’re their, they’re a Microsoft shop. So teams, we tried all that. Never worked. And diving deeper into the problem, we realized.

These folks are not always given a company email. We thought maybe it was just like our family shop. They’re not given emails, but it’s very consistent across the board in manufacturing, construction transportation. They may not pay for data plans, they may not pay for they may not have internet access.

So we built them a communication platform on top of something that doesn’t need any of those. It doesn’t need, 

Toph: SM didn’t add another app. They had to go download and 

Brodie: use and go look at you. Got it. Yeah. So Yoko’s built on sms, it’s a SMS based communication and intranet platform doesn’t require downloads.

Internet access, passwords, not another app. And so [00:06:00] implementation was really quick worked there. It’s like the light bulb went off. Yeah. And We started scaling it to other businesses. What are some use 

Toph: cases? So like when the print shop first put that into use, what was the first thing they’re like, if we can solve this first thing, it’d be huge.

Brodie: Yeah. Literally just back and forth communication with the employees on like days off. Like someone, there’s always emergencies going on and in a business, everyone’s people, right? Everyone’s got people problems. So them being able to, the employees being able to just digitally communicate with the front office and the managers really easily, that was like, The biggest use case we saw initially, and then, the more you use it, the more use cases occur.

So it’s used very creatively across the board. That’s 

Matt: really cool. What, when you’re discovering the problem, what did you learn from the people on the floor about why they weren’t using Slack and why they wouldn’t use teams? What were some of those kind of barriers for them to adopt? The technology that obviously in the tech space is everywhere.

Brodie: Super resistant to putting something their employer wants them to put on their phone. 

Matt: Big [00:07:00] brother, big sister, right? Yeah. Yeah. Makes 

Brodie: sense. It’s a huge one. That’s interesting. Yeah. And that’s probably the biggest one, which is funny, but it’s like it’s real. Yeah. People don’t wanna put things on their phone.

Especially something that their employers, having them put on tips, especially in those industries. Yeah. In more traditionally white collared office spaces, like you’re putting the app on your phone. Yeah, you’re putting a thing on it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that was a big key learning.

There also Yeah. I guess that’s the biggest thing. Yeah. Yeah. That makes 

Matt: sense. Yeah. When, how did you, tell me about the moment you realized that your company your family company wasn’t the only company that had this problem. How did you discover that there was a bigger 

Brodie: market than that?

Oh, started just reaching out to people that I knew previously that have some sort of involvement with manufacturing and Got in front of hr, got in front of their owners, presidents IT folks, and started having conversations and everything that I was saying was resonating with them. And I was like You probably have the same problem that, that they do.

So let’s try out [00:08:00] this solution. And so it was really a natural evolvement of that sale, that sales motion. And then we just kept on repeating it. That’s great. 

Matt: What were some of those things that you learned in those early sales? Did the, did every single one of them close or did you have some nos where you’re kinda like, oh I, if I had just done this, I probably 

Brodie: would’ve gotten that one.

Keep it simple. And really try to uncover the actual pain point that, that. Company is facing because we’re such a broad product, right? I said it’s used for a lot of different use cases. But not everyone has that use case front of mind. Like we have people using it for employee referrals.

And you don’t think SMS can be used for employee referrals and can actually help you. Find new employees. If I’m talking about that and someone isn’t really thinking that it doesn’t really resonate with them. So it’s really more about understanding the underlying problem, what a lack of communication was causing in that business, and then being able to really approach that sale.

Talking about that, how we can solve it for that outcome with the 

Matt: tool. Yeah. That makes sense. Talk, talk to me a little bit about the outcomes for the business. What have you seen [00:09:00] for some of your customers who have implemented. 

Brodie: Yoko. Yeah. So from something, the benefits that Yoko provides that actually ties to like business outcomes, financial outcomes, we’ve seen increased employee engagement Nice.

With within the business increased workforce productivity. And we’ve also seen a decrease in legal risk in the business. There’s a few things that it’s really helped with a decrease in legal risk is Like within those facilities, typically a manager or an HR person gives out their cell phone number.

And you have a, there’s an opportunity there for like sexual harassment. Yep. And if you don’t have to give out your phone number, now you’re just utilizing the, your phone number. That’s huge. Yeah. That’s a big one. Another one is we automatically document and store all messages even on terminated staff.

So if there’s ever any legal argument or anything which there have been, sure people can go back and they can look at this is what actually was said to the employee and this was what was said back. So you reduce a little like data loss risk as 

Toph: well. In massive time. Just the [00:10:00] discovery process of that without your solution is so disruptive and takes so much time of attorneys and managers and the CEO and the HR folks, and that’s, yeah.

A 

Brodie: hundred percent. Yep. Yeah. We, they some folks put their legal counsel in Yoko so that if anything happens, they can just go back and look. 

Matt: Yeah. Yeah. That’s great. I want to talk more about where you’re going with your co. But first want to rewind a little bit because all of us here sitting at the table have business failures and I know it’s not always a up and to the right trajectory.

Can you talk a little bit about your own business career and some of the failures or challenges you faced getting to Yoko? 

Brodie: Yeah my brother and I, my brothers are cto brilliant guy, studied computer engineering in college and very good at computer science. We both always built things together.

It’s a good combo. Yeah, he’s great. We started a company called Fuse Me, and it was for in-person career fairs and. Honestly, it’s like a solu. We took a solution and tried to plug it into a problem versus the other way around. Which is [00:11:00] really what we learned here.

Do not do that. Come start with the problem first. 

Matt: Start with the problem. Yes. It’s a hard lesson to learn. 

Brodie: Yes. But we took this this technology we had that allowed a phone to touch another phone and it would just transfer information. You’re the resume 

Nate: guy. Yeah. You’re the, ah I’ve heard about this Butler grad who was the like what, sharing resumes at career fairs by tapping your 

Toph: phone.

That, that’s awesome that Nate remembers this. That’s awesome. Yes. I had heard about, 

Nate: and someone had told me that I needed to meet the resume guy. Now I. Putting a face. Now you met to a memory. There we 

Brodie: go. A destiny. I’m the resume guy. ex resume guy. ex resume guy. Yeah. We actually, we found a little bit of what we thought.

We never really experienced product market fit. We definitely have now, we never did before, so we thought we had it. What made you think that people, we had a lot of users, people were using it. Yeah. At the career fair, we made some, a little bit of cash. Yeah. In. We would sell it to businesses and try to attach it to their talent acquisition platform.

And they got us going with understanding hr. So all of this was really it’s all positive, right? We were talking a little bit before, like [00:12:00] the failure. Sure. It sucked. And we definitely what was the nail in the coffin was Covid o. When Covid came around there’s no more need for.

In-person, face-to-face career fairs. It was all online and our product was rendered useless. But we learned a lot. Yeah. We learned a lot 

Matt: from that. What were some of the other things you learned beyond the start with the problem? 

Brodie: Start with the problem. Go after a massive market. And do something you really know because we’re really, ultimately we’re building for ourselves.

Yeah. Like we. Totally are very passionate about this problem because we’re solving it for the family business. We’re solving it for business owners. We have a customer in New York sixth generation family business. And it’s I feel so connected with her because she’s always been in a family business setting.

Sixth, sixth generation. Yes. What’s the business? It’s called Hicks Nurseries. Yes. Yeah. And we, I sold directly to the owner and. She loves the product. And that was a little, a long sales process. She was very inquisitive about the product before implementing.

But I [00:13:00] think we really changed everything there. So it was pretty, pretty cool. And to hear her feedback and to know that we’re helping these small and, mid-size bus, mid-size businesses is really exciting. 

Toph: What’s the average number of employees? Like where do you, what’s the entry point?

Like they’ve gotta have two or 20 or 10, or what’s your range of your ideal customer profile? 

Brodie: You can have two, but I don’t recommend using our solution. Then 20 is probably the minimum, yeah. Where you actually start to see all the benefits. 

Toph: That’s interesting because as you grow your company when everybody’s growing a company, you meet these really crazy inflection points where everything changes, right?

In 20, 25, 50. A hundred. Where all systems and processes break down, you gotta rebuild things. 

Brodie: Exactly. 

Matt: Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. You mentioned before, make sure you’ve got a big enough market. Talk to me a little bit about the TAM or total addressable market for the business you have now with 

Brodie: Yoko.

Yeah, so 80% of the global workforce is this NDEs blue collar workforce. Wow. So it’s [00:14:00] just huge. Yeah. And it’s. Really exciting because wow, we can never stop growing. That’s, that’s what we think our addressable market right now, we sell only to the US and Canada. And we try to target our four main industries.

We target our construction, manufacturing, transportation, and warehousing and agriculture or farming. We have outliers. We’re starting to get into more like healthcare. There’s some health centers that use us as well in. So it is ever growing it feels but those are the main ones we target across all 

Matt: of those.

What are the common problems that you’re seeing just across the board that’s like consistently, you can start a sales conversation by asking a question about this one pain point that most blue collar centric 

Brodie: businesses have. Have you ever heard of this question? What email?

That’s that’s how we start. What email? They don’t, people try to send out emails. Yeah. And they, everyone feels that pain. I see that 

Matt: today. True. 

Brodie: I do too. Yeah. [00:15:00] But really that’s a, it’s a great conversation starter cuz people feel that pain. They’ve heard that, yeah. What email?

And they hear it on a consistent basis over and over again. Cuz they try to, they do try to email their employees. So it really is a base at the base level communication. And then we. We provide value, more value than just being able to communicate by showing them the outcomes they 

Matt: can. Awesome.

So you raised some capital for this business. Did you go about that differently than you did with Fuse Me? 

Brodie: Yeah. We went to people that we thought could be really strategic to the business and it was pretty successful in raising capital so far enough that we need, we’re, we also try to be really capital efficient, smart We really don’t have much waste.

That’s great, if any. And that’s how we want to continue to grow this business. As we keep going, we definitely do wanna raise more money, but being really capital efficient. Yeah, that 

Matt: makes a ton of sense. Yeah. What are some of those value add investors? How have they added value to the business or even to you as an entrepreneur, as you’ve navigated these early 

Brodie: stages?

Call, text, email anytime I have [00:16:00] questions. 

Matt: Yeah. Any specific ones that you remember that you’d feel comfortable sharing here on the show? 

Brodie: Yeah, I think Mike Kelly would be cool with me Yeah. Sharing his name. Yeah. Over at 

Matt: Developer Town, do you feel comfortable sharing any of the questions you’ve asked him?

Brodie: Yeah, I can’t even, everything Yeah. That if I didn’t have, if we didn’t have that guy, yeah. 

Matt: US two. Yeah. Yes. Mike. Mike Kelly’s the man. Oh, he’s 

Brodie: amazing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, he’s actually gonna go down to, I think he’s going on, so by Southwest, he’s gonna go to Marcus pitch. That’s great. Oh, what let’s talk 

Nate: about that then.

So what are you doing this weekend? 

Brodie: Yeah, so we got nominated top five future of work technologies, technology companies, or softwares. And we’re going down by Southwest. We’re going down there to pitch on Sunday. In front of. Yeah. 

Matt: You ready to roll? Yeah. Get your pitch down.

Yeah, I’m pumped. Nice. I’m ready. How long are those pitches? Three minutes or something? Three 

Brodie: minutes. Six minutes of questions After three and six. Yeah. Oh wow. 

Matt: That’s great. Yeah. That’s 

Brodie: really great. So 

Nate: then, besides capital like when you’re evaluating the decision on whether to go down there and pitch or not, [00:17:00] obviously, raising money is great, but what are the other benefits that pitching your company in South by Southwest Pitch Competition or any of these pitch competitions?

What are the benefits that can bring for a company? 

Brodie: Yeah. Some benefits are, our employees are super pumped. They feel like they’re part of something, bigger, and it has made us feel that way as well. You focus in on the day-to-day so much, it’s nice to pull back and be recognized.

So it’s been great. For our brand. We’ve had a little bit more brand presence as well, and it’s get, it’s lending some like trust from our customers or people in the pipeline. Okay, this is a vetted entity. 

Nate: Absolutely. And I think about why when we reached out to bring you on the podcast, like it was definitely prompted, like you were on our list of, companies to, to get featured on there, but it’s oh they’re gonna pitch it South by Southwest.

We need to make sure he’s on ASAP and then get him on the, get him on the show. 

Brodie: Thank you. This is a direct case study of that. Yeah. Thanks for having 

Matt: me. I appreciate that. Quick break from our normal programming. I have Erica Schwer, COO from Elevate Ventures here in the studio today.

Erica, thanks for being here. Yeah, thanks for having me. And you’re gonna tell us a little bit about this Rally innovation [00:18:00] conference that’s coming up? Yep. So it’s the largest cross-sector innovation conference in the world. We’re gonna feature six innovation studios, so think hard tech software, sports tech, agon, food, healthcare, and entrepreneurship’s gonna kinda be our catchall.

I love that. Tell me what is, who’s it for? Yeah, it’s for innovators, entrepreneurs, investors, honestly, anybody probably listening to this podcast. And it’s gonna be a multi-day thing that’s happening multi-day in downtown Indianapolis. Yep. People coming in from all over the country and maybe even all over the world to be here.

That’s our hope. Yep. And the dates are actually August 29th to the 31st. Perfect. And if people want to find out more information about speakers, tickets, things like that, where can they go? Yeah, so they just go to rally innovation.com and sign up for communications, and they can also get their tickets. I love it.

You heard it here, rally innovation.com. We’ll see you there. Tell me a little bit about the non-business side of life right now, because one of the things that’s interesting is as you scale as an entrepreneur the to-do to-do list is never done and it never stops growing. How are you handling some of the [00:19:00] balance with I think you mentioned previously recent.

Recently married. Yes. Is that right? Yeah. Yeah. So with your wife, my wife, Carly, yes. Yeah. Yeah. How are you navigating that as you scale, 

Brodie: Communication? Communication? 

Nate: Do 

Brodie: you have a family Yoko set up? Yeah, we don’t we have a Meyer Bros. Yoko I got, it’s my brother Ben, and then my brother Nolan he works at the print shop and he’s always telling us from the employee side of things too, What’s going wrong?

What should we change? Oh. That’s it’s great product 

Nate: feedback. Priceless. Yeah. Yeah. Super. And super, a good place of where you’re like thinking about demoing new products or ing new features. You just put it in the family business. See if it works immediately. If it doesn’t, 

Brodie: yeah.

Immediately every new feature goes to them and then we see what happens. Yeah. Yeah. That’s like 

Nate: a, that’s great to have that testing ground, cause usually, if you don’t have that prime customer, then it’s like you’re shopping it around trying to find someone who’s okay with you testing, trying, like being in the laboratory a little bit.

So I, that definitely seems like a priceless 

Brodie: testing ground. No, it’s amazing. I gotta give a shout out to my dad, my aunt, my uncle, [00:20:00] my brother all the, shop employees at m and g. My grandparents were starting a thing like it, we wouldn’t exist, honestly. That’s amazing. We wouldn’t be around, we wouldn’t be alive if we didn’t have them.

But also this business, Yoko would not be right, right around. Yeah. Huge opportunity and a big shout out to my wife. Yeah. She is very forgiving and yeah, we just have to communicate, like you said, as we scale, things are hectic. Yeah. 

Matt: Have there been things as you’ve communicated with your wife which I imagine she was around for the.

Fuse me days. Yeah. Too, at least in part, maybe. Yeah. What are some of the things that you’ve learned just in relationship of how to manage that as you’re balancing this other relationship with your business, which usually has dozens, if not hundreds of relationships tied to that business as well.

Brodie: There you have to understand the reality is that, many, most businesses fail. And being able to have that conversation upfront is super important. You never know what’s gonna happen and it, but [00:21:00] thankfully we see these milestones and we continue to hit these milestones and it looks like we’re in a really good position to con continue to move, but there’s always that chance.

Sure. 

Toph: I wanna talk about that business failure for a second. So it used to be frowned upon if somebody starts a business and that fails oh gosh, Such and such, tried the business and it failed and it was frowned upon and I think it became more accepted, on the coast.

And I think I’ve seen a definite shift in the middle quarter where it’s yeah, okay there’s gonna be failure. And what’s the percentage we talked about earlier on the previous market, 94% I think. 94%. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Toph: Yeah. And failed before series A. And so that’s your thread and needle. But the other thing I like to point out when people bring this up oh, failure risk averse or failure.

If you go to work for a large company, a Fortune 100 or a 200 or 500 company, there’s equally the amount of risk there because if there’s a big downturn in the economy and a layoff or whatever, you have no say so or no visibility whatsoever into what might be three months away. Yeah. And like in, in a [00:22:00] startup, at least you’re sitting, if not in the front row, the first cart or two of the roller coaster, and there’s a lot of visibility into being in control of your own destiny.

How do you think about 

Brodie: that? It, makes a lot of sense. It. We are seeing, we’ve had a lot of friends, myself and my brother get laid off right now in the tech industry. And we have, we’ll have a bad day and we’ll look at each other and laugh and say, you know what, we still have jobs.

There you go. Yeah. So it really it feels good to be in, in control of your own destiny. At least it does to, to myself and Ben. Yeah. 

Nate: So we have listeners out there that are probably thinking about starting a business or wanting to go all in on an endeavor. Do You have a couple pieces of advice for the listener out there that may wanna start their own business and want the courage to, to go out there and do it.

What, you’re doing it right now. What’s the, what’s your secret? Your secret. 

Brodie: Yeah. Make sure it’s a problem. You go, you’re going after solving a problem and solving a problem that you’re passionate about. And bonus point, if many people have it, I really think if you can solve a [00:23:00] problem, Any problem at all.

You can have a business, especially with like software enabled businesses. If you have any problem, you can solve a business. It’s where it gets really interesting as if you can actually scale that business and you have the massive market to scale into. Yeah. But either way, you can.

You can have a lifestyle business, right? If you don’t have the massive market to scale into. And so I think, 

Toph: which by the way, lifestyle doesn’t necessarily mean small, right? Yeah. It just means control of your destiny at every step, right? So you could still have a massive a hundred million dollar plus or even billion dollar business someday in a lifestyle business.

It just meant you maintain. Pretty nice lifestyle. It’s million dollar business, but they exist. Yeah. 

Matt: They definitely do. Yeah. A lot of those generational family businesses Yeah. Do that kind of scale. 

Nate: I’m just, I’m curious then, like where do you define like a lifestyle business versus a, a.

a business. I don’t know what like the opposite of that would be, 

Matt: but I’m, I think there’s no difference. A venture scale is different. It’s different. It’s a different model. 

Toph: It’s, I think it come lifestyle businesses come down and I’ve been involved in some [00:24:00] conversations where people took this term lifestyle to be a negative thing.

Matt: It’s used derogatorily by a lot of people and it’s not, 

Toph: no, it’s, to me, it’s simply, and I had to look up the definition at one point in time, but really to me, lifestyle comes down to Control of what you’re gonna do every single day, or no con or not having control. A hundred percent control, period, full stop versus some level of not a hundred percent control.

I, one of my brothers who’s a middle-aged male told me a few years ago, he’s you know what, to, I think I always wanna start. And he’s been very successful in massive household names. And he’s a guy, I think I wanna start a lifestyle business. It’s cuz he wants control of his day.

Nate: That is interesting. I always thought a lifestyle business was a business that turned off enough money to afford the life for you to live. That’s when I thought of lifestyle business. That’s what I thought. I was like, oh, he makes enough money to, for you to live and, be happy.

Wow. That’s, this is a learning factor for the listeners there, 

Matt: It just I think of that as the category that’s not. Venture scale because venture scale, that’s not venture money. That’s different now. Now you’ve got [00:25:00] a board you report to. You’re a gerbil will. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. You step on that, gerb will, and you’re running fast.

You’re 

Toph: running fast. You gotta run faster. Yep. Which can be exhilarating. I love both. I think both are 

Matt: awesome. Both are awesome. Yeah. Ha. Both have pros and cons. Yeah. Brodie, tell me a little bit about what you’ve learned from other entrepreneurs, whether they’re people you know, personally or even read about in books or documentaries.

I’m not sure if you’re into kind of studying the history of entrepreneurship, but I’m curious who’s inspired you and have you tried to take some of those lessons and apply ’em to Yoko? 

Brodie: Yeah definitely interested on a more, on a closer Something close to the heart.

I have other folks that I’m very interested in researching and following the history of business. But I remember asking my grandfather, he’s still with us. My grandfather’s the one that started that printing company, MG Graphics. He I was talking about him about risk one day. And he.

It’s like Brodie Life’s a risk. I remember that just stuck with me. I was like, life is Ari. We’re risking every single day no matter what you do. Lifestyle, business, high tech enabled SaaS business. That’s right. [00:26:00] Whatever you’re doing, like you, life is a risk. So why not, jump off. Besides my grandfather, that’s just something that always rattles around, sticks with me.

I was very obsessed with the PayPal Mafia growing up. That was like, for those 

Matt: who don’t know, tell us who the PayPal Mafia are. 

Brodie: It’s like Peter Teal, Keith Raboy Elon Musk. These are the 

Matt: people who found, basically built PayPal. They built PayPal, 

Brodie: David Sachs, and they all went on to build these other billion dollar ventures.

And it, it was always interesting to me, how can you put so much Just incredible people in one business. And it, so I’ve always been very intrigued by them. My brother and I, I’ve always built things with Ben. And so we’ve always watched Elon and Kimball Musk. Anything that they were doing. Yeah. 

Matt: What have you learned from watching them, him? 

Brodie: What have we learned from watching them? A lot of it’s just been like YouTube videos, like going, being able to go after your dream, not just like I do like lifestyle businesses. I’m a big fan and we serve a [00:27:00] lot of SMBs and mid-market people, and those folks are very happy.

Everyone has a different path. I have always been intrigued in building a big business and being in the high growth SaaS business. Not to say that a lifestyle business can’t be big, but being in that high growth tech mindset, I like, I want to continue to push and get on that hamster wheel, move fast.

I do like that. Yeah. Yeah. It’s exhilarating. Yeah, it’s exhilarating. And I’d say that those are people that have inspired me, that is something you can do. And you, you can follow them all on Twitter and you can see what they’re currently still doing today, and pick up tedd bets here and there.

Yeah, 

Matt: absolutely. Yeah. We might need to link up some of some of your faves in the show notes. That’d be great. That’d be fun. One of the 

Toph: tidbits my son has picked up from this guy named Elon is the school. Doesn’t matter. Oh, great. So I’m struggling with that in his eighth and ninth grade year. Understandable.

Okay. I understand. But that’s your job right now is to get good grades in school. 

Matt: Tell us a little bit about what’s next for your code. Brodie you’re going on the road to south by then. What? 

Brodie: [00:28:00] Yeah. We really have a strong focus on our customers, so I think every day being super close to them and learning more from them.

And we have a large product roadmap of a lot of things we can continuously add to this product. So continued growth on the product. Continue to grow our sales team, our marketing team, and really try to capture that massive market. I love it. If 

Nate: the community’s looking to support Yoko or wants to plug in with y’all, is there something the community can do to.

To help support you guys? 

Brodie: Yeah. You could follow our LinkedIn page. Yoko, you can, if you’re a manufacturer, you gotta have a majority blue collar workforce. Reach out about pricing and a demo. Yeah, always looking for more customers. 

Matt: Yeah, absolutely love it. Got time for the lightning round.

I think it might be 

Nate: time for the lightning round. All right. Brodie, we’ve got three questions for you. Rattle ’em off. This is a quick paste. Ready? So outside of the amazing entrepreneurs, what is Indiana known for? 

Brodie: Basketball. 

Nate: Boom. Nice basketball. Got it. What is one [00:29:00] hidden gem in Indiana?

Brodie: Butler basketball, stadium Hinkle Fieldhouse 

Nate: That’s a great answer. You’re gonna make a lot of people happy out there. Yep. And who is someone that we need to keep on our radar? Someone who’s doing big 

Brodie: things. Benjamin Meyer, my brother. Yes. Love that. I love that. 

Matt: Brodie, thanks for being on the show today.

Congrats on all the success with Yoko. Yeah, great job. Good luck. Let it wrap, baby. 

Brodie: Thank you. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. You 

Matt: got from this has been get in a powderkeg production in partnership with Elevate Ventures, and we wanna hear from you. If you have suggestions for a guest or segment, reach out to Matt or Nate on LinkedIn or on email to discover top tier tech companies outside of Silicon Valley in hubs like Indiana.

Check out our newsletter@powderkeg.com slash newsletter and to apply for membership to the powderkeg executive community, check out powderkeg.com/premium. We’ll catch you next time and [00:30:00] next week as we continue to help the world get in. Since you just listened to this podcast, you might be thinking about starting one for your company.

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