- I want to welcome you all to our Academy Talk:
"The Entrepreneurial Edge."
Tonight's talk is the third event in our year-long series
"Growing Our Creative Power."
This series aims to explore how specific investments
in the knowledge economy and our creative sectors
can make a brighter future for Wisconsin.
At the Wisconsin Academy, we're known for our programs
and publications that explore, explain,
and sustain Wisconsin thought and culture.
The work that we do and the events that we host,
like the one you're attending tonight, are all designed
to bring people together at the intersection of
the sciences, arts, and letters to inspire discovery,
illuminate creative work, and foster civil dialog
on important issues, which seems more important
now than ever.
Tonight, our speakers will discuss the role that creativity
and imagination play as a wellspring for the leading
of innovation, new ventures, and turning ideas into action.
We're very excited to here from three leaders
in this business from around the state.
Tryg Jacobson is the co-founder of Jake's Cafe,
a creative community and co-working space in Sheboygan.
Ben Richgruber is the executive director of the Eau Claire
Regional Art Center and leader in the Confluence Project,
an exciting new $45 million performing art center
in downtown Eau Claire.
Gregory St. Fort is the executive director of 100state,
a co-working community in Madison, and also founder of
the Let's Keep Building, which fights for social justice
through entrepreneurship.
Moderating this evening will be George Tzougros who,
since 1996, has served as executive director of
the Wisconsin Arts Board.
This state agency promotes and supports the arts in
education, stimulates community and economic development,
and serves as a resource for people of every
culture and heritage.
Tonight, Tryg, Ben, and Greg will give their presentations,
and then George will lead them in a discussion here
at the table.
And now please help me give a warm welcome
to George Tzougros.
[audience applauding]
- Good evening, everyone.
I am George Tzougros, the director of the
Wisconsin Arts Board.
I'm glad to be with you this evening.
And my time up here is going to be very short,
but I wanted to set a few terms out there for you
because we're going to throw them around, I think,
as the evening progresses, and you should know what it is
we're talking about.
So we're going to talk about these three things.
We're going to talk about imagination, creativity,
and innovation.
And I think it's really important that we know
what we mean when we say these things.
And the definition I'm going to give you comes from a book
that's called "Imagination First: Unlocking the Power
of Possibility."
It's something that the National Creativity Network
has used for these definitions.
"Imagination is the capacity to conceive of what is
"not yet present or manifest.
"Creativity is imagination applied."
So imagination at work, if you will, "to do or make
"something that flows from the prior capacity
"to conceive of the new.
"And innovation consists of further creative actions that
"advance the form, the depth, the reach, and the richness
"of that which has been brought into being."
So those three terms we're going to toss around a lot.
We often hear about innovation.
We rarely hear about the other two.
That's why I was so glad that Jane and the Academy
wanted to do this conversation because I think it's
important that we acknowledge imagination and creativity.
I also think it's important that we acknowledge that
imagination and creativity are not the sole purview
of the arts but of human expression.
So it can be science, it can be math,
it can be technology, and of course it can be the arts.
And we want to make sure that we put that out there for you.
And then, a couple of other terms,
and then I'm going to sit down.
The creative economy. You're going to hear that a lot.
What's the creative economy?
Well, let's just say and agree with one another this evening
that the global economy is the creative economy
because if you're going to produce a service,
if you're going to produce a product, if you're going to
change the world of social innovation,
you're going to need to have creativity.
So the creative economy is the global economy.
The creative industries, when we throw that term around,
it's all about the companies and nonprofit organizations
that flow from the aesthetic side, the cultural side,
the creative side.
So that doesn't have a nonprofit status as its only
place to be.
So, architects, advertising firms, nonprofit arts
organizations, artists and other creatives all find
themselves in what we might call the creative industries.
And then, we want to also put out there creative occupations
because there are people who work creatively in all kinds
of businesses, whether they're manufacturers
or they're employers of any other kind.
So a graphic designer who works in a manufacturing firm
is working in a creative occupation even though
that business may not be thought of as a creative business.
So those are the terms I wanted to put out there
on the table as our friends get up to start to talk.
And so I will cede the stage now to Tryg as he begins
the introduction of the speakers and giving you
a snapshot of themselves before we get into
the full panel conversation.
[audience applauding]
- Oh, thank our very much.
I had a little bit of an opportunity to talk with
a couple people before we got started, and I guess
I just want to get a little bit, a few hands, how many
people here are entrepreneurs or budding entrepreneurs?
Okay.
And how many people are trying to start fledgling
creative communities in old warehouses?
[audience laughing]
Okay, so we've got a little bit of both.
I'm going to tell you I was an ex-ad guy.
I'd been 30 years in the advertising business
and built up a really fascinating business
in Sheboygan, Wisconsin.
And I'd made the decision about seven years ago
I was going to retire.
I thought when I retired, which was in sort of
the tailwind of this horrible housing recession
or whatever you want to call it, that the agency would stay
where we were in Sheboygan, and I'd be able to collect rent
and make some money in these four big buildings that I had
and just live happily ever after.
Well, that didn't happen. They left.
So now I've got 20,000 square feet of space,
an old Baptist church, a Gothic house, a French provincial
house, and a kind of federal style building.
And there was tons of real estate downtown--
all empty buildings.
I mean, this was in 2009. It was horrible.
And so what are you going to do?
Well, I did what I tell my clients to do.
If you can't be first in a category, what do you do?
You create a new category that you can be first in.
So I thought, you know what, I like creative people
and this is sort of a creative, hip environment.
I think I'm going to start a creative community.
Well, you know, who had ever done that before? This is 2010.
Richard Florida's book was just written and he started
to talk about this stuff, but nobody was doing it.
I thought, well, we're going to start a creative community.
And so I thought, okay, what do we have to do now?
What do creative people want, you know?
Well, I recognized that what I needed to do
is I needed to cultivate an environment that would
be attractive to creative people.
People put value in that which they trust.
They put very little value in that which they don't.
So as an entrepreneur, one of the things you have to do
is you have to cultivate an environment of trust.
And so how do you do that?
An entrepreneur has to make a promise,
and then an entrepreneur has to keep that promise.
And the value of that trust, the value that that trust
that the entrepreneur creates is directly proportional
to the uniqueness and the meaningfulness of that promise
and how well they develop and keep a brand experience
around that promise using what I would call
sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell.
You know, a whole experience.
So, as an entrepreneur, what are you going to do to create
a very compelling experience that gets people excited,
that makes them want to come in to your community?
About 25 years ago, I was inspired by a book written
by Tom Chappell, and it was called The Soul of a Business.
And the first thing that he said a business had to have
was a statement of beliefs.
I thought, okay, I'm going to write a statement of beliefs
after I'm done crying over the fact that I'm going to
have to start this business all over again from nothing.
And I'm naming it after my father so I knew
that it could not fail.
But this was the statement of beliefs, and this is what
I knew we had to have in the way of a driving force
that would be made manifest in this promise
that I was going to work for the rest of my life keeping.
But it started in this statement of beliefs.
Here it is, bear with me and give me a little bit more
than a minute, Erin, because it's going to take longer
than that, but then I'll be quiet and we'll let
the rest of the speakers go, but this is important.
Here's the statement of beliefs that was the driving force
of the Jake's Cafe creative community.
"We believe that all human beings, regardless of race,
"color, or creed, religious or political beliefs,
"have inherent worth and are deserving of respect.
"We believe that the multidisciplinary creative
"and collaborative community at Jake's Cafe is unique
"and it's meaningful and that to sustain it we have to
"cultivate an environment of trust where people
"feel comfortable to ask questions and exchange ideas.
"We encourage our creative community members to use
"the four-way test when faced with difficult problems.
"Is it fair? Is it the truth?
"Is it beneficial to all concerned?
"Will it build goodwill and better friendships?
"We believe in a clean, organized, and safe
"and visually inspiring environment.
"We believe in decency and the avoidance of foul
"and coarse language.
"We believe in using our natural resources wisely
"and to be good stewards of our environment.
"We believe that we each have to have a responsibility
"to cultivate the best relationships possible
"with our coworkers, our customers, our owners,
"our agents, our suppliers, our community.
"We believe that different people bring different gifts
"to the equation and that we have to not criticize
"and complete but we have to complement and complete
"one another so that together we can make something
"much greater than we could make individually.
"We believe that we can all be financially successful
"by well-behaving in a socially responsible,
"environmentally sensitive, and respectful manner,
"and we believe that we have an individual and collective
"accountability to the values, missions, and destiny
"of the Jake's Cafe creative community."
Those were our beliefs.
Our promise was we were going to create an environment
in which you felt and you had permission and felt safe
to collaborate, to be creative, to express ideas,
and it didn't matter whether you were a filmmaker
or whether you're a speech pathologist.
We're going to bring all these people together.
So, today, it was just my wife and she was faking it
at the front desk as a receptionist trying to
figure out how we're going to get our first customer.
It was empty.
20,000 feet, 65 offices, six conference rooms,
two kitchens, two theaters.
And this was an agency in its time.
And, today, we have 65 people working in our building,
we have 44 businesses, 90% occupancy,
and 39 different genres of industry
represented in our building.
It is fabulously successful. [audience applauding]
So all I can say is that you got to start with
a strong statement of beliefs that make creative people
feel safe to be who they are, to create and to collaborate,
and then project a promise that you know you can keep
in a brand experience that incorporates as many
of the senses as possible.
Sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell.
If you log on to jakescafe.net, you'll see what I mean.
Thank you very much. Bye-bye.
[audience applauding]
- Hi, I'm Ben Richgruber,
executive director of the Eau Claire Regional Arts Council,
and I'm here to talk to you about the Confluence Project,
which is a project that we've got going on in Eau Claire
that is a public/private partnership to
redevelop our downtown.
So it's a little different in that it's not a startup
business that you got cranking out of your garage
and you want to grow and go from there.
But we really took an entrepreneurial view of
how we were doing what we were doing.
It goes back to about 2007 when Eau Claire County did
what was called Clear Vision Eau Claire,
and it was a community visioning process.
What do we want to be in 20 years from now?
And throughout that process, they came up with
six key performance areas, and something that was
very noticeable in three of those performance
areas were facilities.
Eau Claire doesn't have a lot of new stuff.
We've been riding a lot of old buildings for
quite some time.
So facilities kept coming up. And meant different things.
Convention center, arena, arts center, recreation.
What type of facilities were we talking about?
So I co-chaired a committee with a gentleman
from the university and our Visit Eau Claire
executive director, and we went out and had some
public forums and meetings and found out what do you
mean by facilities.
And it really was kind of a three-way split.
There was a group that said we need a convention center
in this town.
That's how we're going to grow.
We need a big building for people to come
and have their meetings.
Then people said we need a bigger building.
We need an arena.
We need a 10,000-seat something so we can bring
stuff in and throw big parties.
And then there were a group of people that said
we need a new arts center.
The State Theater is falling apart and the university's
arts facilities are falling apart.
And they were all pretty equal with support,
so we decided to move forward with the arts center.
It was something that we already had an infrastructure for.
We had many different arts groups and users.
The university has a strong arts and music program.
And we were at risk of losing a lot of that if
our facilities deteriorated and we couldn't fix them up,
there was going to be a problem.
So we really started looking at new arts facilities,
how we could make that work, and what we could do.
And because the university needed some new toys
and the community needed some new toys, we said, well,
what if we all get together in the same toy box and see
if we can do some really cool stuff?
And that, of course, brought a lot of questions
and a lot of concerns.
And I like that you mentioned trust so much because
that was a big issue with us.
And I think our project moved forward at the speed of trust.
And we really started exploring different ways
that we could do this.
It was totally new and different for all of us.
The university will pay three times as much for a building
if they don't have to deal with other people being there.
They can just own it and have it and do their thing.
And the community arts groups, herding cats, man.
Talk about personality [audience laughing]
You put a bunch of different community arts groups together
and it's going to take a long time to come around
to a decision and figure out what needs to be done.
But we did it.
We started marching forward one step at a time,
two steps, three steps, asking some questions,
okay that's not going to work, let's back up,
let's try it again.
And what we ended up with was sort of a three-phase
program or project.
The first is a mixed use development that just
opened up this last week.
That has about 100 apartments and about 400 students
living in it right in the middle of downtown Eau Claire.
This is on river front property that used to be
basically just abandoned.
We were a logging town in the 1800s,
so everybody turned their back on the river because
it was just work.
Logs floating, we didn't want to look at it.
And now we're finally turning around and facing
those rivers, so this was a big part of that.
So the students moved in this week.
Next to that is a public plaza that will complement
a new park that we've got across the river,
and we're going to put a foot bridge in.
We are going to put that foot bridge in between the two
to link them directly.
And next to that is a new performing arts center that is
a completely public/private pile of awesome,
and it will have three performance spaces in it.
It's going to have an art gallery, rehearsal studios,
workshop space for the community.
The theater department from the university is moving
into the building.
Visit Eau Claire, our visitor's bureau, is moving
into the building.
So we will have the most amazing, creative collisions
in the hallway, and that's the part that I'm
most excited about.
But to put this puzzle together, we really had to figure out
completely new ways of doing things.
We had to be very entrepreneurial in that sense.
How are we going to solve this problem?
Because it was completely different.
We went up to the Capitol and talked to the folks
at the State and said Hey, the University wants
to play along.
We can save you a whole bunch of money if you partner in this.
Okay. Are we going to own it?
No, you're not going to get to own the building.
Oh, okay.
So we just get to use it for free?
No. Okay. You gotta pay rent.
Well, the university, UW Systems doesn't believe
in paying rent.
They'll reimburse you for stuff.
They have lots of words to do things that they
just don't like to use.
We won't pay rent, but we'll reimburse you for costs.
Okay, great. So we had to come up with that.
So, basically, every office door we knocked on said,
no, we're not quite sure how to do that,
go to the next guy, see if he's got an idea.
So we had to have all these conversations and figure out
how it all worked and make this project come together.
There was a point in time where the university was going to
own a part of the building, the community was going to own
a part of the building, and we'd have a condo association
up top that would operate everything and that just got
to be a nightmare.
There's got to be an easier way.
So we just kept finding easier ways.
And now it is going to be a nonprofit.
The university is going to rent.
Don't tell them I used that word.
Space, there will be operating expenses that they will
help cover to use the space.
So a completely new way of thought for the university
to do what they do.
And then the community arts groups are going to be
in there and using that space and completely new ways
that we can interact with each other being in
the same building.
Like I said, the theater department is moving in.
So when it comes time to build sets and run shows
for all these local community theater groups,
they're now going to have this army of students that
want nothing more than to learn about the arts
and to do this type of work.
And then the asset of having the mixed use building
and all those students living right next door
was very deliberate.
Those apartments will be rented out to students
who have an affinity for the arts.
You might be an accounting major but you're in
the marching band, and you've got that passion in you.
And we want that live/learn community.
So now you've got all these creative students living
over here and this building that is their playground
right next door.
There will be maker space in there.
All of the university spaces by day, the scene shop,
the costume shop, prop shop, all those spaces by night
now become community spaces.
So by collaborating, we are now able to get
all of that space in one building, and we're getting it
for a fraction of the cost.
If any of us had to do this on our own,
we wouldn't be able to afford it.
But those partnerships and the trust that we've built
have allowed us to move forward with a much larger project.
And I'm very excited, as are our architects, who are sitting
in the room today, that just yesterday we started
moving dirt on the arts center.
And we'll be open for the 2018-'19 season.
So I will sell you season tickets tonight.
[audience laughing]
Credit cards are accepted.
And that's kind of our story.
It's a really cool, big thing,
and it's been very entrepreneurial in the way
that we approach what is normally just a giant civic
here's a thing.
So, thanks for having me.
[audience applauding]
- Hello, everyone.
My name is Gregory St. Ford.
I'm the CEO of Let's Keep Building and executive
director of 100state.
So I'm going to go through, focus on 100state
but kind of give context with Let's Keep Building.
It kind of connects from my entire story.
So I'm originally from, born in Brooklyn,
lived in New York my entire life.
I have a background in engineering.
Of course, I do not do engineering now. [chuckles]
So a lot of my experiences while I was younger in college
was based on that I did not know what I wanted to do
with my life.
I knew I needed a degree because my mom said
I needed to get a degree. [chuckles]
And that's pretty much what I went to school for
was for that purpose.
I knew I can pass, but I didn't know what my passion was.
While I was in school, I participated in a lot of
different extracurricular activities just trying to
figure out what I wanted to do.
So I ended up spending a lot of time doing a lot
of different college events.
You know, I got into fashion.
I got into web design.
And I was able to find my way.
This is me testing entrepreneurship without realizing it.
I got really good at social media when Myspace was
still a popular thing, and I was really able to build
a following from that to promote college events.
That's what I was, you know, I found out I was doing
just a way to meet people and not just be in school
doing engineering because I didn't really want to do it.
As I was participating a lot of these arts activities,
I was able to find a lot of traction in some fashion.
So I was able to meet some really great networks
while I was doing events in college and was able to get
into touch with a celebrity stylist and was able to organize
events for New York Fashion Week working with celebrities
and different people in New York.
This while I was also a full-time student and full-time job.
Just me still trying out different things.
My full-time job also unrelated.
I was an accountant.
[audience laughing]
So, talk about wearing multiple hats.
And while I was doing all these different projects,
I was working with my friends, and what we would do
after every meeting, we would just say, let's keep building.
And this was just kind of a self-encouragement
for ourselves, just to say, hey, we don't know what
the hell we're doing, but let's keep doing stuff.
Despite circumstances that we may have been going through,
despite trying to finish school or pay for school
at the same time, we just would say that as
a word of encouragement.
Of course, at some point within this story,
I taught myself web design, and letskeepbuilding.com
was available, so I created a company called
Let's Keep Building, which was based on that idea of
overcoming circumstance and still working on your idea
and becoming an entrepreneur.
Fast forward.
I moved to Madison in 2014,
and I carried over my company here when I moved here
and was able to find my way through to 100state.
And I became a member there maybe a few months
after I moved to Madison.
I ended up working with 100state in organizing a lot
of the events because of my background, which is really fun
in engaging the entrepreneur community in that way.
I already had a lot of experience doing that.
Fast forward. Became the executive director in June 2015.
So that's kind of why I'm here today.
So going backwards to the 100state story.
So 100state was founded in June 2013
by a bunch of former Epic employees
in their non-compete phase.
They wanted to work on different startup endeavors,
so they created a co-working space actually in a train cart.
Literally a train cart.
A bunch of guys just working on their ideas.
Actually, of course, eventually outgrew a train cart
and moved to actually the address 100 State above
Ian's Pizza, literally around a corner.
Fast forward, they outgrew that space
and moved to our current location, 30 West Mifflin,
and that's when I came into the picture.
So, 100state, in terms of what it is and what we do,
100state is a co-working community.
We have just over 300 members now.
Just been growing every year in the last three years now,
and we have a lot of really awesome success stories
in the tech sector as well as the nonprofit sector.
So we have companies like Redox,
which is in the health tech space and now has
30-some-odd employees and actually moved out of our space
because they didn't fit anymore and they were
drinking all of our coffee. [audience laughing]
So we had to get them out of there,
and they kind of graduated.
We had other success stories, like a company called
Export Abroad which does data analytics
for manufacturing companies.
They were actually at the first White House Demo Day
last year to meet the president.
They're a really awesome story of a guy from Rwanda
just working on his startup and just really, really
built it out.
We have another really awesome company called Mark-A-Moo,
which does image recognition software for clothing.
So take a picture of your clothing and you can see
where you can buy that piece, and they get
commission from that.
So these are really awesome stories of companies
that literally started at 100state and end up finding
their team at 100state.
So what makes 100state work is definitely people.
So we're pretty much a crowd source experience where
a lot of different people contribute by being a member
or being a sponsor, and each member adds value
to the community.
So when we have someone join in as a member, what we ask is,
well, we know what we can do for you, but what can you do
to contribute to the overall community because that has
an amplified effect.
So if you came to 100state right now, which there are people
still working right now, you'll see a lot of people
contribute in different ways, right?
We have tables in our space that was actually built
by one of our artists in residence.
So the actual furniture built by a member.
If you see a couch in this space, that's probably
a member's couch.
They moved away and said, hey, keep the couch.
A lot of our tables from our accountant,
hey, you guys need some tables.
Here's some tables that you can use.
The actual physical space is actually the contributions
of various community members.
And because of that, we have a collective ownership
of the space.
So we all care about it, and because of that,
we've been able to grow because what we've found out
is we see members giving tours through prospective members
about our space.
In fact, 80% of our members are referrals
from other members.
So a lot of what happens is just that everyone's
taken ownership of this community and really getting
involved from a member cooking pancakes to a member
hiring another person in his space because of
a business that they're working on.
So a lot of shared ideas, a lot of interaction.
We also work with the outer community
with a lot of different initiatives.
So an example, tomorrow we're working with The Cap Times,
which is a local publication in Madison, and we're doing
an event on creating a racially diverse leadership.
And we're going to have about 200-plus people there
learning about leadership and how we can have more diversity
in Madison from a leadership standpoint.
And these are different ways we just engage with community.
We work with various different sectors.
We've done brainstorms with the city.
We've done brainstorms with the homeless.
We've done a lot of everything just keeping people engaged
in what we do and leveraging to pull the town, I guess,
working ideas and make the city even greater.
So that's the quick version of it.
[audience applauding]
- So that's just amazing.
Don't you feel the energy coming off the three gentlemen
who've just spoken?
I'd like to bottle that up. I could use it.
So I wanted to start with a question about imagination.
So where does imagination enter into your work?
How do you keep it nurtured for yourselves,
and how do you nurture it with the people around you?
- Okay. I'll start.
So, imagination, I guess it comes from just kind of
understanding, I guess, what is...
From the problem-solving mentality, right?
Sometimes you may have limited resources
and the idea that I guess on my end is literally
working with different people with different perspectives
so they may be able to see something at a different angle
that you may not have thought of.
So someone who's an artist and someone who's a nonprofit,
runs a nonprofit organization, and someone who's
a developer, who's a programmer, when you put them in a room
in one place, you'd be surprised what cooks out of that.
And that's kind of what inspires me is being part
of that conversation with people.
My imagination comes from being in a room with people.
- I guess I can echo that.
A lot of the ideas that led to Confluence
and many of the other projects that happening in Eau Claire
right now were people, and not just your normal
silo of people.
We would all bounce ideas off of everyone else.
I mean, with Confluence you've got university folks,
you've got the local arts community developers
and funders and all these other people coming together to
say, we've got these problems, how do we solve them?
And beer. You know?
Happy hour. [audience laughing]
A lot of good napkins were drawn.
But it is and there is that social component too.
It can't just be like sit down, business,
here's the agenda, go.
Like, you've got to take that time to get to know each other
and relax, and that will help get those new ideas out
and then you can have a little bit more fun,
and then you're looser and more free to explore
those crazy ideas because there is no judgment.
I mean, once you hit that level of friendship and trust,
then you can do all of that stuff.
So, people, definitely people.
You know, get out of your office, go out of the cave
for a while, and just go talk to people and be inspired,
and that will sink in, and when you least expect it,
that idea will come popping out.
- For Jake's Cafe, we launched Jake's Cafe
with the statement of beliefs, but we also launched it
with a crazy ad.
It's like what happens when Lady Gaga dances
with Frank Lloyd Wright, you know?
And it's this idea of trying to take two totally different
creative disciplines and put them together in the same room
and see what happens.
It's like playing with chemicals when you're a kid
in the basement.
And so when we started Jake's Cafe,
people started wandering in.
They latched on to the statement of beliefs.
They liked it. They thought, I want to be part of that.
So we had two young filmmakers from Glenbeulah
called the Leclerc Brothers.
Amazing prodigy filmmakers.
They were like 16 and 18 years old.
And now they're in LA, shooting in Hollywood,
doing awesome stuff.
But at any rate, we used these two kids
and then a graphic designer and a writer and a few
other people in the cafe and we said,
we've got to find you guys a problem to solve
where you can really put your imagination to work.
And we thought, what can we do to fix Sheboygan County,
really put Sheboygan County on the map, and to jump start
this place so we can really get things started again?
Because people were being laid off, buildings were empty,
the business climate wasn't all that good back in 2010.
These two young men pulled together a copywriter,
a graphic designer, a web designer and a few other people
and they created a film called
The Promise of Sheboygan County.
And if you get a chance, look at it.
It's amazing. It's a beautiful done film.
It's just elegant.
These two kids went around and interviewed
every CEO in Sheboygan County from each city.
And they got really beautiful sound bites.
And then they also went and got really great B roll,
and they combined the B roll and the sound bites
and they put it all together into this
absolutely gorgeous film.
And they showed the film downtown Sheboygan
at the newly restored Sheboygan Theater
800 people from around the community came.
And the most beautiful thing was is it not only changed
the perception of what people thought about
Sheboygan County, it changed the way that people
in Sheboygan County thought about themselves.
And it gave them the confidence that they needed
to really turn this county around.
But that was imagination at work.
It was taking a problem and giving it to a group
of creative people and saying, all right, figure it out.
And that's what they did.
- The great result of that too was that
ultimately they showed that film in the hotel rooms
in the area.
So if you were coming in and you were staying in the hotel,
you got this thing on the TV that was telling you
all the great things about Sheboygan County.
So if you happened to be somebody who was traveling through
and might want to start a business or wanted to relocate
your family there, you had this thing that was playing
on the television, which is really cool.
- Yeah, beautifully done by two young men who
were making films in the attic of their barn
out in Glenbeulah.
And you see the film and you're like,
this looks like a Hollywood production.
- Nice.
- So when we talk about these things, we often
can talk about how wonderful because we have
the beauty of hindsight.
We can say all of this stuff really worked beautifully.
It's all great.
But what were the challenges that you faced along the way?
What would you say your biggest challenge was
in establishing the entity that you've got going now?
- Go ahead.
- I think originally a big challenge we had was,
I guess identifying the right resources and also
picking the target market.
That was really a challenge, right?
Because sometimes it may make sense to pick a niche group,
and then other times maybe not so much.
And we were having difficulty with identity because
in the beginning we were identified as, okay,
this is a place for former Epic employees to come in.
Because that's where it started.
Then it became this place where just
for specific tech startups.
Then it became this place where a bunch of
nonprofits came to.
And then, you know, then it became, well,
the space is also an art gallery, so only artists are here.
And we had difficulties with brand message with then
in turn hurt our ability to grow.
So it took us some time to figure out what is
the right message that makes sense for people to understand
what is actually happening here.
Because, essentially, it's all of these different things.
But that was a big challenge because if you can't
get that right, then, you know, there's economic
implications for that.
So once we were able to get that right, then we were able
to kind of become this self-sustaining entity.
- Yeah.
Whatever that is has to be invitational to everybody
that you want to come in.
- Until you get the invitation right,
people don't know whether they're welcome or not.
- Yep. - Yeah.
- Our many challenges...
We had--
It's obviously a big physical downtown
redevelopment project, and with that comes all kinds
of political excitement.
You've got tax dollars in there.
You've got all these different user groups
that are in there.
And Eau Claire has a history of not getting stuff right.
You do the study, it sits on the shelf for a long time
and no one really does it, or we try this and it failed.
So I was watching The Princess Bride a few months ago.
[audience laughing]
And I'm like this is our project.
Like, Wesley is carrying Buttercup into the Fire Swamp
to try and get away from Humperdinck and his crew, and
Buttercup is like, "Wesley, we'll never make it through."
And then Wesley says what basically became our
Confluence motto is, "Nonsense, you're only saying that
"because no one ever has."
Like, we can do this.
You just need to take your time and deal with it.
We ended up with two different referendums
because we had city funding that we were asking for
and county funding.
So the whole project there's like philanthropy, city,
county, state, and everybody is playing along.
So there was a group that, of course, the cave people,
Citizens Against Virtually Everything.
So they started a referendum in the city, and they said,
well, we should have a referendum to have more
referendums, is basically what it was.
So that was nonsense and ridiculous,
but it made us fine tune our message and it made us
prove that we knew what we were talking about.
Does this business model work?
Will the financials work?
Are the partners truly engaged?
Can everyone afford to do what they say they can do?
So it was a challenge but it also made us stronger.
And then the fun part of that is we had another group
start another referendum at the county level.
So the city level you had to vote no,
and the county level you had to vote yes.
[audience laughing] Yeah. Figure that one out.
So we had to get our message straight.
We had to organize two different referendum campaigns,
basically, political action stuff and really get
our story out there.
But in the end it made our project stronger.
What they thought would stop us and trip us up
gave us the data, gave us the confidence,
gave us the army of followers to do what we needed to do.
And in the end now, it's a much stronger project
because we had to go through that.
At the time, it was just horrible and life sucked
and there was more, that's when I switched from beer to gin.
[audience laughing]
But it really got us a much stronger project,
and I am even more confident in what we're doing now
than I was before.
So, yeah, definitely trouble in--
- I'm concerned that you're writing prescriptions
for everybody now.
From beer to gin. [laughing]
I'm afraid where we're going next.
Tryg, go ahead.
- Breakfast of champions.
- For the Jake's Cafe creative community,
there were three things.
And liken it to preparing the soil and then
also using insecticide and then the third thing is
trying to cultivate an inspiring and fun environment.
The first thing is cultivating the soil.
That was all about ensuring that the beliefs
and the statement of beliefs that we had developed
as an organization were going to be something
that we maintained.
So we had people that wanted to join the community.
We could sort of tell, either with respect to the discipline
they were in or the way they were, the way they
conducted themselves, not a good fit.
Sorry, we'd love to be able to take your rent,
but we can't bring you into the community.
And we'd have to figure out a way to do that.
That was a challenge.
To be able to glean who we were going
to bring into the community and who we weren't.
The second thing was these people are creatives
and they're entrepreneurs and they're trying to deal
with taxes and starting up an LLC
and where do you get an accountant and how are you going
to get health insurance?
All the things that are really roadblocks
and that make it very, very difficult for an
entrepreneur to get into this business.
And then, over time, we found it was exacerbated by the fact
that many of these people that were good, that did have
the entrepreneurial gumption to start a business,
were also very attractive candidates for local area
companies to sort of cherry-pick people from our cafe.
Hey, how would you like to have free health insurance
and have a job 8:00 to 5:00 and have your weekends free?
And so we would lose some of our entrepreneurs
to bigger area business.
The third thing that was a little bit of a challenge
is trying to constantly fine tune your community
as programming to the interest of the people in the cafe.
We started out with fun things like Thirsty Thursdays
and wine and cheese tastings and TED Talk films
and discussions and picnics and potlucks
and things to get people together.
And it continues to evolve.
Now we've brought in an art gallery, we've started
a little cafe and a restaurant in there.
But you have to constantly be working and showing
progress within the community.
The moment you stop, the moment you stop,
things start to get a little bit dead.
You lose the hunt.
People begin to start to migrate and wander and perhaps
look for other opportunities.
So the first thing is protect the soil.
Cultivate it. Maintain the values.
The second thing is do what you can to help these
individuals deal with taxes and LLCs and legal issues,
because if you don't and they don't get the help and support
from you as a leader in the community,
they're not going to stay in business.
And then the third thing is constantly be looking for ways
to enrich and create excitement in the overall brand
experience within the community.
- So you were talking about the business skills,
and I think that's a really interesting challenge because
one side of the brain being that entrepreneur and thinking
about the great idea may not also have the accounting
skills, the fundraising skills, whatever.
So in each of your instances, who plays that role?
It might be you.
Or you might be connected to some other folks who can help
play that role for you.
So, who is that for you guys?
- I guess on our end we work with various partners
in the community.
So you can't be an expert in everything.
So we focus on community-building and co-working,
and we'll find various partners, various law firms,
accounting firms, and so on, and they'll do office hours
or even doing workshops.
Different types of engagement.
Some of them actually work in our space.
So you could be sitting in a table and right across from you
is an accountant that you can ask a question to.
They just happen to be working in our space as part
of an ecosystem.
So that's kind of how we've been able to, I guess,
address those questions where we have an ecosystem where
if you're a member, there's someone, like right next to you.
We have a lot of internal communications
amongst members where there's this organic referral system
for those types of services.
And then we've, from an operational standpoint,
we made that part of our intake system.
When someone is on-boarded as a member,
right away here's a list of resources that you may
be able to access from within this space or from part
of the outer community.
So that's kind of how we've addressed that.
- Gotcha
- For us, moving through Confluence,
everybody kind of jumped on to their specialty.
Obviously, the university took care of the state funding,
the lead on that.
They were the recipient of the state funds.
When we had the referendums, the local arts groups
jumped up and said, this is us, man, we can tell our story.
And that really brought them all together.
The developers are working with the architects
and with the city on development agreements and easements
and all that fun stuff when you build giant buildings
that you need to deal with.
So everyone's kind of working on their specialties there.
On the flip side, once we open we expect to be that
resource for all of the local arts and individual creators
in the community.
We'll be able to leverage what we have in that building,
whether it's the maker space to give them tools to start
or marketing expertise or business and finance,
we want to be that for all of those artists
and musicians and any creative awesomeness.
- At Jake's Cafe, one of the things that we tried to do,
and we realized this early on, we recognized it was
very important at the beginning to have a very strong
creative core of right-brainers.
We quickly learned that an airplane with just one wing
would do a tailspin and crash into the ground.
So we had to balance that out.
We had to have some left-brainers.
So that's when we began to bring in accountants
and we brought in legal people, people that specialized
in patents.
We found an individual that happened to be a bookkeeper.
We looked for balance so that we had all of those
disciplines within the cafe so that when people want to
sit down and have a cup of coffee, they didn't have to pay
$200 for a legal consultation.
It could just be some friendly advice
and guiding some people in the right direction
so that they would exchange services.
Over time, the beauty of what was happening was that
we could have somebody come in from the outside,
maybe they had an idea for a soccer training method,
and they would meet with an intellectual property attorney.
And the intellectual property attorney said, you know what?
You're going to need a name,
and then you're going to need a logo.
And then, by the way, you're probably going
to need a brochure.
And then you might need a video.
Then you're probably going to need a little sound design.
You're going to need a voiceover.
All of these people were in the cafe.
So one project might come in, it would start with
an intellectual property attorney, and then
she would begin to route a project until it finally
hit maybe seven or eight people in the cafe.
Everybody made money.
It all started with one person.
So two things were important:
to balance the right wing and the left wing so that you had
a multitude of disciplines so that people could get
their problems solved without having to spend any money,
at least at the onset,
and the second was a kind of internal referral type of
process where you could get people to collaborate
and work on projects together and create
some very outstanding things that you just couldn't do
if you had to hire all of these things independently
on the outside.
So it's important to have balance in the community.
- Yeah.
Did you know that this is Global Entrepreneurship Week?
So the Kauffman Foundation and 160 countries
around the world are celebrating from November 14th
through the 20th Global Entrepreneurship Week.
So it's completely appropriate that we're doing this now.
35,000 events worldwide are taking place to
talk about entrepreneurship.
And I think it's interesting that we bring Kauffman up
into the conversation because Kauffman's got some things
to say about startups and entrepreneurship in places.
And, unfortunately for us, Wisconsin finds itself
at the bottom end of that list.
And so if you want to react to that, I think that's great.
And the other piece of that is,
from your perspective as entrepreneurs, what's missing?
What can't you get access to right now?
Or the people that are working around you,
what can't they get access to right now that would
be helpful to their work?
So, go ahead.
- Okay.
Yeah, it's always interesting when the Kauffman Foundation
put out that report.
What's interesting about it is there's a guy who works
for the Kauffman Foundation that works out of 100state.
[audience laughing]
He works remotely, so we have a lot of
remote employees that work there.
But, yeah, in terms of what's, I guess,
consistent in terms of a needs, maybe the most obvious,
but it's access to capital.
And for sure inclusion of all communities
into the entrepreneurship space.
And I think that's been, like, this...
It's kind of a little bit of both.
I don't want to weigh one above the other,
but if everyone isn't involved in it, then there's
going to be inherent problems with that from the social
standpoint and down to the gender standpoint where
there's certain gender gaps as well.
So if everyone isn't playing and involved in it,
Wisconsin's going to suffer from that.
So I think if we work on some of these other issues,
inherently entrepreneurship will do a lot better
because any city or state around the country
where they have the most inclusive environments,
I mean, there's economic benefits from that.
I mean, the studies have shown.
So that's from my vantage point.
I've seen that's the problem.
We've been working on various different initiatives
to improve upon that and see how we can work
with other partners on working that out with various events,
increasing programming, even working with other nonprofits
in creating technology because certain areas do not have
the technology to even create engagement for
entrepreneurship in the first place.
So if we can kind of work together as communities
and various cities across this state, that statistic
will improve, because who wants to be last, right?
- Nobody. Nobody.
- Our Confluence Project being what it is,
it's a little bit different type of hurdles and whatnot,
but our local legislators did see that we had a hard time
when we got to the state level with this new kind of cool
tool that everyone could use.
And at first there was some resistance from the folks
at the state like, well, if we give you money for this
project, everyone's going to want money for their projects.
And we said, awesome. [audience laughing]
If the state can give 30% of the funds and get 100%
use of the project, I think that's a pretty darn good deal.
And the same with everybody else.
So if you can put together this coalition,
yeah, you should be giving them some more money.
So our local legislators saw that it was difficult,
and they're in the process of trying to draft some language
so hopefully it can be easier for other groups,
other projects.
Not just arts centers but any sort of public/private
collaboration that you can do.
If you've got an idea and there are different people
that you can work with, try and knock down those barriers
between different types of organizations or entities
to just make an awesome project happen,
make something really cool come together.
So that's the Confluence side.
Another hat that I wear, because I said I'd bring it up,
a bunch of, there was a crew of us in Eau Claire
that purchased and renovated an old run-down hotel,
and we just opened up.
It's the Oxbow Hotel. Please come and visit.
It's a lovely place.
It tells the story of Eau Claire quite nicely.
But as we were developing that project, that was hard, man.
And I think information, you were kind of saying that too.
Just being able to access people to bounce
questions off of them and figure out how on Earth
do you do this.
None of us had renovated old buildings before
and there were plenty of people that had, so they could have
said, no, don't do that.
That's only going to be trouble.
But we're just moving a wall a few feet.
No, no you're not. It's bigger than that.
Like, there are all these little things that,
capital, we found enough.
We needed to do what we needed to do.
There was some grant dollars available because of
what we were doing and where we were doing it.
But just access to info of people that we needed to talk
to at the city level to support us with different
permits and documents that we needed, all the way down to
starting business and just everything we needed,
who we needed to talk to here and there.
So I think just access to information.
There are ways to streamline and make that better,
build coalitions and groups of people that can just talk.
Like you guys have everyday sitting,
Oh, I know a little bit about this.
I know a little bit about that.
Make those more available, even if you're not
in those buildings, to get out and at least know
where to find some of that info.
But we made it. We're open.
It's beautiful. Come on down.
[audience laughing]
- I've never worked for anybody.
In high school, I used to print posters
and make money doing that, and I'd come back in the summer
and pay for college just making stuff.
When I got out of college, I started
a glass etching business.
And then I ended up writing, and then I went
in the ad business.
I guess the point is that all through this,
this last 40 years of my life,
you'd think I'd know how to run a business, you know?
Because I've never really done anything else.
Five years ago, I woke up one night
and I had this horrible acid reflux.
I almost choked. I couldn't breathe.
I don't know if anybody has ever had it,
but acid reflux is a horrible thing.
And I went in to see the doctor about it.
He wanted to put me on this regime, and I just was not
into taking pills, especially Omeprazole
knowing what it might do.
So I started hunting around and I found this ginger recipe
and I started working on this real strong ginger tea recipe.
And, doggone it, that ginger tea wasn't amazing.
Holy cow.
My slogan for it, I'm manufacturing it.
Actually, it went on the market today.
It's called Jake's Ginger Tea.
It tastes like hell, feels like heaven.
[audience laughing]
And I've been messing with this for like three years.
And I thought, you know what, my New Year's resolution
on January 1, 2016, is I'm going to take this
thing to market.
I don't care what it is, but I'm going to take it to market.
I don't care what.
Holy cow.
It is not easy to take something as simple as a beverage,
it's nothing more than ginger and water, to market.
A thousand pages of just gobbledygook and stuff
and rules and regulations and bureaucracy
and calling people at the state level and arranging for
commercial kitchen use and getting certified and trained
and getting your ingredients sourced properly
and tracking all this stuff.
Holy cow, you know?
And on top of this, then you've got to figure out
what's an LLC?
QuickBooks?
How do I link QuickBooks to my Square account?
And that's got to be linked up to the bank.
And what about my credit card?
How am I going to make that work with my Mint account?
And you're messing with all this stuff, and meanwhile
you're trying to get through all of this other crazy stuff.
And then you're trying to deal with health insurance.
Holy cow, how am I going to get health insurance?
I've got to sell this ginger tea.
And I'm thinking, this is what people are going
through all the time.
It's really, really a lot of work, you know?
It's not easy.
And this is just ground up ginger and water
and I'm sticking it in a blue bottle and putting a cap on it.
And it took a year.
And I'd like to think that I'm reasonably
astute at trying to figure these things out.
So, George, I guess the thing is you look at Wisconsin,
or maybe you look at other states, we have
a tremendous amount of bureaucracy and roadblocks
getting in the way of just innocent creativity
that people just want to, they believe in something.
I believe in this ginger tea.
I'll tell you it's going to make you live longer.
It's going to reduce inflammation, get rid of
your headaches, it's going to get rid of everything.
I can't put that on the bottle.
I've been drinking this for three-and-a-half years,
I've not even had a headache or a common cold.
I'm in really good health.
I got lots of energy, you know?
But I can't stick it on the bottle because
there's a regulation that says you better not.
- You gotta get some for Paulie.
- You've got to do a test with like 100,000 people.
Where am I going to get that?
So, the point is, is that there's a lot of bureaucracy
and there's a lot of bookkeeping stuff and there's a lot of
business mumbo jumbo and it's exacerbated by a very
difficult health insurance system that people
who want to get into this business have to deal with.
So if Wisconsin's looking for a way
to stimulate entrepreneurship, I don't think
creativity is our problem.
I think everybody is born creative.
Everybody here is creative.
Everybody here can be an entrepreneur.
It's who's got the guts? Who's got the patience?
Who's got the endurance to overcome all of
these crazy roadblocks along the way?
I think, as a state, if we can figure out a program
like BizBox, and you just sign up to BizBox
and they take care of all the stuff for you,
now you just make your ginger tea and that's it.
Just make it, sell it, and deliver it.
Keep the promise.
We'd be far better off.
But we need something magic, like a BizBox.
[audience laughing]
- I'm going to push back one second on the notion
that we've got the creativity we need,
and only in this respect, what do we do with the fact
that our schools are actually draining creativity
out of them, which means our future entrepreneurs
are not going to have what they need to have an imagination
and creativity that will get us those entrepreneurs
for the next generation?
So, speak to that if you want.
Or leave it hanging out there for the crowd to speak to.
- I'll speak a moment on that.
Eau Claire has a couple of really great people
doing some really great things right now.
Justin Vernon is of Bon Iver fame,
and he decided rather than move off to Chicago or New York
or be where other Grammy winning musicians should be,
he wanted to stick with a little house in Fall Creek
right outside of Eau Claire.
So he's got a recording studio out there and brings
a lot of people in to do their stuff.
Another big community hero right now is Zach Halmstad,
who runs JAMF Software, and they just built their
world headquarters in Eau Claire, Wisconsin.
A few hundred people that they employ right downtown.
They actually, as soon as they heard about Confluence,
wanted to build their office on top of the mixed use
development because they wanted to be as close as
they could to everything that was happening there.
So Eau Claire is super proud of those two hometown guys.
One went to Memorial, one went to North.
And they're there.
They grew up, they had these very successful businesses,
and rather than take them somewhere else,
Zach's got a P.O. Box.
His first office was in Minneapolis because people
need to see that address to take him seriously.
But as soon as they did, he moved everything back
to Eau Claire.
It's like, ha ha, gotcha. [audience laughing]
So everybody's super proud of these guys,
and these guys, they had a very strong arts education.
Zach has actually a music degree, and he runs
a software company.
So you don't need the IT thing.
You need just the creative thinking part.
And Justin doesn't have a music degree,
but that's his job now is music.
But everybody in town loves these guys and wants
to just clone them and recreate them.
The thing that got them where they are
were those arts classes.
Taking band and orchestra and taking art and just
getting that inside of them so that when they were adults
and knew that they wanted to do whatever they wanted to do,
they already had it in them.
They didn't have to teach it,
they didn't have to train, it's there.
They've got the lever, pull it, here's an idea.
Like, they just had it.
So that does scare me that the education system
is changing so much, and it's what about this,
what about that, and the arts are here as a class instead of
being involved in every class.
There is creative stuff in math.
My accountants don't love it when I talk about that,
but it's totally true. [audience laughing]
We can make it work.
So, like, we do need to fight like hell to make sure
that that stays in the schools and across all subjects,
not as its own, well, here's art, but it needs to be
in everything so that the next generation of Justins
and Zachs have those skills just built in.
- I do want to make sure that we say thank you
to these gentlemen and...
[audience applauding]
And I especially want to say thank you to the Academy,
because it's not easy for the Academy to put together
these talks, and they've done a fabulous job.
And the fact that you guys came out tonight to hear it
is also really inspirational to all of us on the stage,
so thank you.
[audience applauding]