American Averagist: Recent Episodes
Zac Northup
Each episode of the American Averagist tells the story of Middle America through the words of "average" Americans. Averagists see opportunities where others don’t. They’re innovators who rely on common sense and real-world experience to turn disadvantages into advantages. They are exceptional without assuming they’re smarter or somehow superior to their neighbors. They’re individuals who most people want to call friends. In other words, they’re normal Americans living normal lives in positive ways.
In this episode of American Averagist, we explore the topic of secrets. I asked four people with high level security clearances about the values they bring to jobs that require them to keep national security secrets. I know each of these guests personally or professionally, and they’re legit. Politically, two lean left and two lean right. They each have unique stories, and all of them were born and raised in Middle America. Given the nature of their work, I’m going to use false names and identifiers, and in a couple cases I intentionally modified their voices to help keep their identities private. The stories we’ll hear aren’t about tracking terrorists, stealing other countries’ secrets, or anything like that. Instead, we’ll hear how people who grew up in the heartland live in a world with real secrets.
Do you keep secrets? Most people do. We talk with four people from Middle America to learn how normal people in ordinary places keep secrets.
Bob Schmied is the Operating Partner of Atomic Provisions, a small restaurant group located in and around Denver, Colorado. Fifteen years ago the chain's founder, Drew Shader, launched, "the nicest seedy bar in the not so best part of Denver," and grew it into a restaurant group that now features great dining venues such as the Denver Biscuit Company, Fat Sully's Pizza, the Atomic Cowboy Bar, and their newest concept, Frozen Gold Ice Cream. Both Bob and Drew have been great supporters of StandWatch Academy and were actually featured in Unwritten, the documentary about our entrepreneurship program that was aired on West Virginia Public Broadcasting in 2019.
Like every restaurant chain in America, Atomic Provisions hasn't gone unaffected by the COVID-19 pandemic, but due to the company's excellent management, they are weathering the storm better than most. Their crisis management plan has allowed them to stay open, and even though they were forced to furlough all 240 of their part-time workers, Bob, Drew, or one of the other senior managers calls each employee every two weeks to make sure they're okay or need anything. I would say that's uncommon. So far, of the 240 furloughed workers, Bob expects all but four to be willing to return to work at Atomic once the restrictions are lifted. That says a lot about the positive culture that's been a hallmark of Atomic Provisions' management style.
Bob took some time to speak with our students about how great management can help small businesses work their way through major storms.
When I first developed the concept for this episode, I was in something of a funk. I had just returned from a meeting where the discussion centered on some of the issues that young people in West Virginia face after they leave school each day. It’s no secret that drugs, poverty, and a whole host of other cultural factors impact our kids, but what concerned me most that day were the stories of parents and caregivers who were actively discouraging students from seeking better lives and self-improvement. This led me to the topic of wounds. More specifically, I wanted to know what we are doing to our kids that prevents them from even considering new opportunities and possibilities.
Now, even though one mission of 50 Pages is to document the culture our kids have to overcome in order to become successful entrepreneurs, I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to dedicate an entire episode to such a dark subject as wounds. To be honest, I wasn’t even sure I knew how to do it. But after one interview with the two young ladies featured in this episode, I realized that I may have been overestimating the power that negative cultural and environmental influences have on teenagers who have been toughened up by life’s circumstances.
Pepper McCorkmick and Rhiana Radcliff are students at Calhoun Gilmer Career Technical Center. Both are involved in the school’s fantastic culinary arts program. As you will hear, they have both faced different challenges that would shake even the strongest person. But these young ladies have a resiliency that has pulled them through difficult times. They carry scars from severe verbal and physical bullying, but still want to create a better life for themselves and the people in their communities. They’re smart, caring, funny, and I believe they can succeed in whatever they set their minds to.
Now, even though the podcast interview is about 30 minutes long, in real time, the three of us talked for a little over an hour in the school conference room. Pepper and Rhiana’s honesty, sense of humor, and strength even caused me to lower my guard and answer some of their questions about myself, and what motivates me to want to help students like them. I came away understanding that everyone can be wounded but only the best of us like Pepper and Rhiana move on.
In today’s world, most people believe that they are facing an infinite number of dangers and risks. Whether it’s a global pandemic, civil unrest, terrorism, war, joblessness, or any of the other crises we’ve faced as a nation over the last nine months, it seems like life has become a never-ending series of risky decisions. How we deal with this environment varies. When given a choice between something safe or something risky, which do you choose? Do you shy away from risks, or do you seek them out? How often can you see an opportunity that can only be realized by assuming a great deal of short-term risk? These are just a few of the questions that new entrepreneurs must ask themselves every day.
The fact is that entrepreneurship and risk go hand in hand, and how we deal with it depends on who we are, our life experiences, and our ability to handle the stress that goes along with stepping onto a path that leads to an uncertain future. The truth is, becoming a successful entrepreneur requires the adoption of risk and that requires a certain amount of courage, but courage without the risk of loss is just a word. Few people know this better than the four successful entrepreneurs who are featured in today’s episode of i3 Talk. They all have a common experience that only 7.6% of U.S. citizens can put on the professional resumes, and they all attribute their success in business, at least in part, to this this one chapter in their personal stories. So what do they have in common? They are all veterans of elite units in the U.S. military. All four have experienced levels of risk that few of us can even imagine. After they left the military, they leveraged that experience and the mental toughness it created, to build incredible businesses outside of the military. They each have amazing stories.
Featuring:
- Mike Durant
- Matt Griffin
- Tim Kennedy
- Alex West
Tyr Symank is the special projects manager for the phenomenally successful Black Rifle Coffee Company. BRCC is unique in several ways. First, its management team is comprised almost exclusively of current or former members of the special operations community. Second, since the COVID-19 pandemic hit, unlike other companies that have gone out of business, Black Rifle’s sales have increased 15%. Lastly, while experiencing triple-digit growth since 2014, it has given away literally tons of its product to members of the military deployed overseas, police and fire fighters here in the United States, and most recently, to health care workers on the front-lines of the pandemic.
Ideas are funny things. I’ve spent most of my life believing I was an idea guy. A person who sees things that others don’t. As I’ve grown older, I’m not so sure that’s true. It’s been said that in today’s world where billions of people are connected, the odds of one person having a truly unique idea are incredibly small. You see, in theory, all information is equally available to everyone who has an internet connection and a smartphone. So if two people are interested in the same subject and see the same information, it stands to reason that the likelihood of them both coming up with the same idea is pretty high. But even if someone else across the planet, or across town is thinking about the same new idea, that doesn’t mean both will act on it. In fact, most won’t. The risk is often too high, and the reward is speculative at best.
But that doesn’t stop the people who want to change the world with ideas. For these individuals, the pursuit of manifesting an original thought drives them forward. Most of the time, they fail usually because no one around them tells them that their brilliant idea is actually a really dumb idea. Sometimes though, new ideas succeed, and when they do in a big way, economies are reshaped, communities are transformed, and the world takes notice.
Many parts of Middle America are looking for ways to create idea economies that reproduce entrepreneurs like colleges and universities produce engineers, doctors, and lawyers on a large scale. But doing that assumes there’s a process for creating great ideas that can be packaged-up and repeated time and again. Identifying that process is the holy grail of entrepreneurship educators and business leaders alike. Especially in areas of the country that have lagged behind in the 21st century economy. Capturing innovation and using it as a tool for economic development is seen as THE key to Middle America’s future.
So, where do great ideas come from? Can they be mass produced, and how can bad ideas be killed off before some wayward entrepreneur loses his life savings building a business making things no one wants? That’s the story of ideas.
Kevin Combs has a passion for small town entrepreneurs. As a native West Virginian who grew up in Fayette County, he’s another expat who left the state, made it big and now wants to give back. In addition to being the Chief Executive Officer of a new company called Molecular Biologicals, Combs is the founding member of the Country Roads Angel Network which, as the name indicates, focuses on bringing start-up funding to small businesses and entrepreneurs in rural Appalachia, especially West Virginia.
Combs’ early career took him to Charlottesville, Virginia where he still lives today. But his mind and work with the angel network brings him back to West Virginia and his family’s farm in Elkins every month. My conversation with Combs was a meeting of the minds of sorts. He’s passionate, dedicated, and we share a vision for West Virginia’s future that builds on our culture and strengths. There’s no such thing as a roadblock to Kevin Combs. In his mind, grit and determination can conquer all. So in this episode of i3 Talk, we look at the one thing every entrepreneur needs to succeed.
Here's Kevin Combs' story of grit.
Matt Griffin’s company, Combat Flip Flops is a small business that has taken him and his team of former Army Rangers into the public’s eye more often than most businesses of similar size. Going by his preferred nickname, Griff, he’s been featured in multiple business publications, did a TED Talk about his experiences in Afghanistan, and even appeared on NBC’s Shark Tank where he ultimately received funding from Mark Cuban. He’s done all of this without buying-in to the go big or go home mentality that a lot of successful small business owners dream about; he still runs his company out of his house in Seattle, Washington and outsources nearly all his key business functions to trusted third party service providers. Griff believes in keeping his business as successful, profitable, and as flat as possible. A good lesson for any new start-up. He’s learned a lot of things that every new entrepreneur, or “innovation builder”, should consider as they launch a new business. Honestly, some of them are profound enough to write down on a sticky note to remember each day.