AI's Not Replacing You. But Someone Who Knows How to Use It Will | Gabe Cooper

And my people though I was crazy.

And I'm like, "I have to push everybody in the pool, even people

that don't wanna go in the pool."

It's education by force

- Gabe Cooper: Yeah.

In a way.

I love that.

I love that.

And people are like, "But I don't wanna do it and I'm not gonna

do it." And I'm trying to explain.

I'm like, " Look, you're not gonna get replaced by AI necessarily,

but you're definitely gonna get replaced by somebody who knows AI.

And if you leave Virtuous because of this, you're gonna go to work somewhere that

you're gonna face the same problem, and they're not gonna be as generous as me.

So

For your own career, I need you to get in the pool because it's not

just a Virtuous problem, it's a forever problem for your career.

So that's how we're trying to address this, but it's, gosh, it's so much change.

Yeah.

It is so hard.

Intro Band: Lean in closer. This is your time.

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Mike & Scott gonna crack that crowd.

What's your story? (Hey!) Turn it up, let's go!

Every voice. Every scar.

Every road. What's your story?

Mike and Scott.

Let's talk.

Here we are, another one.

Mike Lindstrom, my man, Scott Leese, What's Your Story?

Do you remember Jeremy Beer?

Yeah, of course.

The professor?

Yes.

Yeah.

But for Jeremy Beer, we wouldn't be here today

with this guest, by the way.

Really?

I don't think I knew that.

Yeah, Jeremy Beer.

I asked Jeremy.

We have lunch once a month.

Got a referral.

Yeah.

So we, Jeremy and I have lunch once a month.

It's part of our deal.

And I always ask him at the very end, " Who is amazing that I

need to meet?" I literally asked that question just like that.

He goes, "I got a list." So this gentleman came up and I'm like, "Okay,

we gotta get ahold of each other."

So we've been playing tag for the last, month on this one.

So Phoenix based, founder, CEO.

You love that.

You gonna have to

- Scott Leese: I love that.

You're, he's a GTA actually.

I, I, I already started down that angle off camera, started

talking about work and stuff.

Okay.

I figured you're gonna angle it that way.

So anytime we get a founder or a CEO, we're gonna go down those, but

we're gonna get to know the story.

So Gabe Cooper, without further ado, Gabe Cooper did come us, come

through us through Jeremy Beer, who was on the show many episodes from

AmPhil so we're gonna get into that.

So as we s welcome to the show, Gabe.

Yeah, thanks.

Yeah.

So we always start off every show.

You can see the name of the show right there, what's your story?

So we give like the abbreviated version before we start getting to all our notes.

Yeah, yeah.

So take us where you want us to go.

So Gabe, what is your story?

Mr. Founder and CEO of Virtuous?

Yeah, absolutely.

I'll blaze through it.

So start with personal.

So personal thumbnail is born in West Texas.

Moved out here to Arizona when I was a kid.

Married my high school sweetheart and have been here ever since.

So been with my now wife over 30 years and we have five amazing kids.

Wow.

Oldest just got married.

Youngest is like a 12-year-old girl and I am wrapped around her finger.

But amazing.

Professional.

I started my career as a software developer right here in the air park

near where we're sitting actually.

And always had the entrepreneurial itch.

So first company I started was actually a record label.

Completely disconnected from software, but

- Scott Leese: Wow, that's cool.

Loved music and figured out that it's really

hard to make money in music.

So I say it was a company, but really I just lost money and didn't make any money.

Great.

Passion project.

Yeah.

[laughing] Yeah, that's exactly right.

And several years later started a software agency with a couple of buddies, two

brilliant co-founders and scaled that up.

So half of our customers were like big media companies like Red Bull or Cinemax.

And then the other half were big nonprofits.

And so I'll circle back to this, but my passion in life is generosity.

And so this is really where it started is working with these amazing nonprofits,

building custom software for them.

Fast forward a couple years and we decided to start a mobile apps company.

If you do the way back machine in 2008, like Apple launches their app

store, you guys probably remember this and everything's an app

all of a sudden out of the blue.

And so we jumped on that train and built some mobile apps for

sports, primarily the sport of golf.

So first mobile app was called Golf Shot and it ended up being one of Apple

and Google's top revenue generating apps globally for a couple of years.

And then we followed that and partnered with Paul Azinger and Tiger Woods to do

some instructional and golf swing analysis and then jumped into baseball and did

an app with Jason and Jeremy Giambi, which was a hoot filming with them.

So it's a different story for a different day, but that was great.

Did that for a couple years and ended up selling that company.

Realized that consumer mobile was like riding a bull at the rodeo.

Like it's just, it's super entertaining for a minute, but then not fun.

Got eight seconds and then you gotta get off.

Exactly.

[laughing] Yeah, that's exactly right.

After our eight seconds, we were out.

But following that, it kinda leads me to my company I'm at now, which is

Virtuous, which back at my agency when I developed a love for generosity,

I realized a couple of things.

I realized number one, generosity has a power to change the world.

These nonprofits are doing amazing work in the world.

More than that, when people give their money and time to charities,

something changes inside them.

They get a little less selfish, a little less consumeristic,

more focused on their neighbor.

I though that was amazing.

Also, these nonprofits were using horrible legacy software that was

like a roadblock to them generating more generosity in the world.

And I hated that.

So started this company 12 years ago, Virtuous.

It's, the easiest shorthand is like HubSpot for nonprofits.

If you're familiar with HubSpot, it's like CRM and marketing and online giving,

all of these tools to help nonprofits build more personal relationships

with their donors effectively.

Gotcha.

So have been scaling that over the last few years

just for context and scale.

We're at about 180 folks on the team, growing really quick.

We just hit our fifth year in a row being on Inc's 5,000 list.

And so continue to grow and scale really fast.

Closed a hundred million dollar series C about two years ago, which in Arizona

scale, that's like a decent scale, right?

Yeah, yeah.

But it's just been a huge blessing.

For me, it's a blessing because I get to do the thing I love and I'm

passionate about generosity and my work are like the same thing every day.

So it's just, it's magical.

Yeah.

Wow.

You mentioned generosity three or four times in the introduction.

Is there, what's the person or the, the moment that really

crystallized the mission for you?

Yeah.

I've traced that back over time.

It's a great question.

One is my folks.

I have these amazing parents who are always very generous.

We were like the house where people were always invited and

they were always very generous.

So I had that in my DNA early.

Mm-hmm.

But I met a couple of folks like mid-career, like late 20s

that were just ridiculously generous.

And I never seen anything like that.

Oh yeah, it's not weird to give away like 90% of your money or,

[laughing]

It's not weird to drive around and just stick

cash in people's mailboxes.

Like that's what you do because none of it's coming with you.

So why not

- Scott Leese: Wow.

…bless everybody around you in these crazy, extravagant ways?

And I think something clicked in me at that point where I'm

like, yeah, that's unbelievable.

It's it seems in a world that's like super consumeristic, very polarized.

We all seem to hate each other these days.

Yeah, sure.

Like generosity seems to be the antidote to so much of what's

got people wrapped around the axle.

Yeah.

Generosity, compassion, empathy.

And that's, it's unique in the entrepreneurial world.

Yeah.

These are terms that don't get thrown around very often

- Gabe Cooper: Yeah.

In my experience.

They're antonyms, not synonyms.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

In tech.

For sure.

That's a big one.

So what was the, what about growing up?

When you, what'd you wanna when you grew up?

Take us a little bit back.

'Cause we like to go back to, we like to go back to like what influences, but you

had those things in your mind - Yeah.

What you envisioned as a child.

What were some of those?

Yeah.

It's like any kid.

It's all over the map.

The town I was born in West Texas is called Andrews.

It's outside of Odessa.

So if you've seen like Landman or Friday Night Lights, like that's where I grew up.

And the imagination for like what's out there in the world, it's like you, there's

no imagination for that kind of stuff.

So as a kid, I, I saw Indiana Jones and I wanted to be an archeologist,

[laughing] It's that kind of thing.

I think, once I got into high school, I was good in math and

science and knew probably that's my career would end up there.

But in the back of my head, I though I could also be a rockstar,

I could play music for a living and

- Mike Lindstrom: Do you have a, do you play an instrument?

Yeah.

I played in bands for years and I'm not terribly good.

And it's really hard to make money at that.

So it's a bad combo.

But those were, yeah, somewhere between archeologist and rock star, just I

think, but I think those are probably

- Mike Lindstrom: Yeah.

If you were to survey 100 men my age, that's probably

number one and two on the list.

Yeah.

But when you graduate college, now fast-forward, now you're graduating

college, st- stuff's getting real.

You're like - It's getting real.

Okay now what?

Yeah.

What were you thinking at that point?

Yeah.

So - What am I gonna do?

Probably a couple things.

At that point, I was already dating my wife and she's so sweet.

But she's also seeing me do music and wanting to be

Indiana Jones and a rockstar.

And she's like, " You could have a job too, right?

Because we're gonna get married." So my major was MIS, and I realized

I love computers and there was a job for computers in the world.

And so I started working as a software developer just because it's a way

to have a job and pay the mortgage.

What I learned though is a couple things.

Number one, I loved building software.

I love building stuff.

I didn't realize it at the time, but it's a passion.

And I loved entrepreneurship.

Like I loved being able to create something and build something on my own.

And at the time, if you think that was like the first dot com boom and bust.

And so there was this thing in the air where if you knew how to build software,

you could make something and make a living out of it and that was like in

all of our imagination at the time.

Yeah.

You mentioned that your first company the record label, you shut down.

Yeah.

So there's, I'm gonna screw the quote up, but there's a quote about

entrepreneurship that's like most people make it because they just never quit.

Yeah.

Everybody has had all these moments where like I should quit or I'm,

I wonder if I should quit or whatever.

All these second guessing

- Gabe Cooper: Oh my gosh.

…moments and all this kind of stuff.

How do you actually know when to pull the trigger and be like, "This

isn't it." You didn't shut down your entrepreneurial journey, but you're

like, "This company, this is not it."

Yeah.

How do you decide, decipher between am I just quitting?

Should I press on?

Versus no, now is the time like to pull the plug?

Yeah.

Let me start with the first part of what you said, which is the endurance part.

Yeah.

I think that is the number one quality of a great entrepreneur.

It's not, are you a visionary?

Are you inspirational?

Are you smart?

I don't even think it's like, do you have an end market that will support this?

I think the biggest thing is like you just don't quit.

Yeah.

Like I got into in my mid - 40s, my midlife crisis

was like starting to do endurance sports, so running a long way.

And that's the best thing I've ever had to equate to the entrepreneurial journey

is like you've run 20 miles, you're in the middle of the mountain somewhere,

everything in you just says quit, right?

But then you just keep putting one foot in front of the other for

no other reason than can I do it?

Yeah.

Just in the pain cave.

Like that is entrepreneurship.

So I, all of my other businesses have been successful, not because I'm terribly

smart or I had a terribly good idea.

It's just because I didn't quit, really.

That one is like, it was so painfully obvious.

Like I'm using all of my money to do stuff and then I'm looking at the stuff I'm

producing and it is making zero dollars and it objectively sucks [laughing]

compared to everything else out there.

[laughing] I'm like, and I'm like, there's no light at the end of the tunnel.

Like I can't even see a glimmer of anything.

And I think in those moments, yeah, you gotta

- Scott Leese: So would you tell somebody that could still see a light at the

end of the tunnel or a glimmer, as long as you can see that light, press on?

I would… ah, yeah.

I, I would say press on way further than you think you can.

When everything tells you to stop, like

- Scott Leese: Yeah.

It's probably still a couple miles past that.

Yeah.

And so it has to be uncomfortable.

And that's what.

And most en - you talk to most great entrepreneurs and

there's story after story of

- Scott Leese: Yeah.

It should've failed 20 times and I just kept showing up.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You said something important there.

You said, "All of my money," and I was getting no.

So it's one thing when you put your money in and you start to see people getting

excited and it's other people's money.

But that's a big jump off when I know for me, it's my wife.

Yeah.

She's like, a lot of our money is going into this.

Yes.

Where's the return?

So how much does the, your college sweetheart weigh into

some of your business decisions when it comes to those times?

It's huge.

I do think I'm fortunate to be married to somebody that will put up with

this kind of entrepreneurial behavior, but it's also a great counterbalance

to be more disciplined, right?

So probably a better example is when we started our software development agency,

I was working at a normal job during the day, and then nights and weekends,

I was trying to build out this agency.

Well, I had a, I think we had two kids at the time, and a mortgage.

And my wife had quit to stay home with the kids.

Wow.

And that creates, like… and there's no venture

capital to start an agency.

You just gotta, pull yourself up by your bootstraps, right?

And so I do think something about the, the constraints of that.

And then honestly, being married to somebody and having a mortgage is as

bad as it sounds, it creates constraints and in a level of endurance and

effort that sometimes you don't see.

I've met folks in Silicon Valley that, get a startup funded,

pre-product, pre-revenue.

Somebody gives them a check for a couple million dollars and they're not

married and they don't have kids, and they know if they run this thing into

the ground, they can just do it again.

Yeah.

And there's a different level of intensity and

focus when you got mouths to feed,

It's a different level of accountability

- Gabe Cooper: Yes.

I think.

Yeah.

Who do you.

I've said that as a coach.

The.

See, people ask me what's the most difficult person to work with?

And I see young people with no purpose, no marriage, no kids, no mortgage.

Yeah.

What about you?

When you're doing, in business, who is really difficult for you?

What's that challenging individual person for you on the other side?

- Or even in, within your company?

Yeah.

I one of our values at Virtuous is we don't hire anybody who's a big deal.

And people will say, it seems like you have a lot of smart people working here.

They're a big deal." And I'm like, "Yeah, but they don't act like a big deal."

And I think probably all of us have had to work with people at some point

in our career that think they're a big deal and act like they're a big deal.

For me, that is the one thing, like walking into a room, assuming you're

right, assuming you're better, assuming people need to wait on your hand and foot.

That is the one thing that I just do not tolerate.

I'll tolerate a bunch of other stuff, but that one's hard for me.

Yeah.

Any other pet peeves outside of that, in- inside of your company or in business?

I think there's this.

And you both have probably seen this before, but there's probably two

binary, but maybe two kinds of people.

One is you give them instruction, and you walk away, and they start rolling,

and they start rolling faster and faster.

They're spinning up more and more.

They're thinking about everything.

And you come back a week later and you realize they've been working 70

hours a week deep in this thing because they're committed to getting it done.

There's another person that you can come tell the same thing to, and

they're a little bit passionate when you're there, but they spin down, down,

they start watching YouTube videos.

[laughing] you come back a week later, and they're like, "Yeah, I don't know."

It's like And I'm always looking for.

I call it, the chip on your shoulder.

Mm-hmm.

Who has a chip on their shoulder?

Yeah.

Something to prove, and so when you walk away, their ramp

rate is up and not down, right?

And we're always trying to hire that.

I don't quite know how to interview for it yet.

Yeah.

I know it when I see it, after 30 days, but yeah.

Chip on a shoulder.

Sound familiar?

Yeah.

[laughing]

I've always had a chip on my shoulder.

In,

[laughing]

In, in fact, one of the ways that I would try to screen for that in

interviews is I'd ask people, "What's the hardest thing that you've been through or

give me some moment that you got passed over where you should have got something

you deserved and you didn't get it?

Like, how did you respond?

What.

How do you think about it?

Does it still bother you?

Tell me a time from 20 years ago that you're still thinking of that

you got skipped and still pisses you off." Question, questions like that.

That's a great question.

I was thinking about your decision to study MIS - and

that you're a software developer.

And I know you have kids.

I have.

My oldest is leaving to go to university in a couple weeks.

That's great.

My youngest is a rising junior.

And my brother is a software developer.

And my kids were, they're always like "What should I study?" And my brother is

like, "Don't study software engineering."

Yes.

Don't go get a computer science major." Agree or disagree?

Agree.

I. In fact, I agree so much.

My oldest son could have chosen recently between working at Sunt Construction

and big construction company or taking a job as a software developer.

He called me and asked, I'm like, "Don't take a job as a software developer.

Go to work at the

- Scott Leese: Tell everybody why.

Why is a software development job not necessarily the smartest thing right now?

It's.

In November, there's a. Anthropic launched Opus

- Scott Leese: Yep.

In November.

It completely changed how we build the digital products fundamentally.

It was already changing, but that was, like, the seminal moment for most

people, which means, the idea of being a software developer or a designer

or a product manager, kind of the trifecta you would have in any team,

all of those got reduced to, zero.

Anybody can write code now.

Yeah.

And people say," you still need a good software developer

with their hands on the steering wheel. "That's kind of true, but

you don't need as many of them.

And AI is as bad today as it will ever be.

Mm-hmm.

And six months from now, you probably don't need somebody

with their hands on the wheel anymore

- Mike Lindstrom: Yeah.

The same way you did.

Yeah.

Which has put the whole industry, on its head.

And if you're going into the industry now, you gotta know that your job will change

probably 10 times in the next two years.

And your only skills will be, are you really smart and will you outwork people?

Are you incredibly curious?

Are you a good people person?

Do you have taste?

It's these, first principle kind of things that will make you successful.

It's no longer about, do I know how to code?

It's, very secondary.

Do you feel the burden of responsibility of having a

team of nearly 200 and watching software developers and AI just

gobble up all these different roles?

Yes.

And you watch these other companies, XYZ

company lays off 30,000 people.

Yes.

It's like, do you feel the responsibility of I have

200 people employed underneath me, and every day, I'm watching one or

two of them's role maybe start to be less necessary, let's just say.

Yeah.

And what am I supposed to do with that?

Should I just lay everybody off because that's in the

best interest of the company?

Or no, these are people that have helped me get here.

How do I redeploy them as a resource into the company?

What is.

I know CEOs - the ones that are generous, compassionate, have

empathy, they're thinking about that.

The ones that don't have those characteristics are just, slash

30,000 of you gone, profits went up.

Yeah.

Send out an email in the morning.

Yeah.

Yeah.

No communication.

Yeah, 30,000 people fired, not even over Zoom, over email.

Yes.

So h- how do you reconcile that burden of responsibility?

That terrifies me as an entrepreneur.

Oh, it's horrible.

It's a huge moral dilemma because I have, a sort of a fiscal responsibility

- Scott Leese: Yeah.

To my investors, but I have a responsibility to my customers.

These nonprofits that I serve deserve the best.

And so they're trusting me to deliver the best.

My investors are trusting me to deliver outsized returns, right?

And so I have to marry that with, I have, the people that work for me I've

been friends with a decade, right?

It's horrible.

Yeah.

Now, there's a couple of things.

Number one, sometimes you do just have to make that decision.

There's no way around to making that decision.

The couple of sort of maxims that have been helpful for me is if you get your

team, your current team, let's say my 180 folks, if you can get every one of

those people operating with the power of three to five X their current powers,

then I don't have to lay them off.

Now all of a sudden, I have the power of a 300-person company, a 500 person company.

Yeah.

So I'm not increasing headcount, but if I can supercharge all of

them, so what does that mean?

For us, it meant we ran an AI Olympics so I made everybody on my

team build an AI agent from scratch

- Scott Leese: That's great.

Or build an application with Claude Code.

Yeah.

And my people though I was crazy.

And I'm like, "I have to push everybody in the pool, even people

that don't wanna go in the pool."

It's education by force

- Gabe Cooper: Yeah.

In a way.

I love that.

I love that.

And people are like, "But I don't wanna do it and I'm not gonna

do it." And I'm trying to explain.

I'm like, " Look, you're not gonna get replaced by AI necessarily,

but you're definitely gonna get replaced by somebody who knows AI.

And if you leave Virtuous because of this, you're gonna go to work somewhere that

you're gonna face the same problem, and they're not gonna be as generous as me.

Yeah.

For your own career, I need you to get in the pool because

it's not just a Virtuous problem, it's a forever problem for your career, right?

So that's how we're trying to address this, but it's, gosh, it's so much change.

Yeah.

It is so hard.

It's a great idea.

I love that idea.

Yeah.

I'm gonna take that one, give that to my clients.

No, seriously.

That's a great tool.

It's amazing.

We have a, whatever, 170 AI agents running wild across our organization right now.

So who won?

And

You don't need to name the name, but what was the thing that won?

Oh yeah.

So we put up bounties, prizes, gave like five grand, three grand, like

cash for like winners, had them judged by the executive team, gave all these

like one-off prizes for creativity, put real cash on the line, had a big thing.

Talk about a spiff!

It was so much fun.

Yeah, it's a big spit.

It's a big spit.

I hope I don't get this wrong, but I think I read that you

said this will be your last company.

100%.

Or last company or last startup.

I can't remember how you phrased it.

100%.

Is.

Okay, so I got the quote right.

So is this stuff that we're talking about, the burden of

that part of the reason for that?

Or is it just, "No, I've done this a few times and I wanna spend the

rest of my days doing other things."

Yeah.

There's - 'Cause most entrepreneurs have a

hard time shutting off the entrepreneurial part of their brain,

There's a couple of reasons, and I think, for people

that have been entrepreneurs, you'll resonate with some of them.

One is that the thing I'm doing now aligns my purpose in life with

the thing I get to do for a living.

There's only very few people in the world that get to do something like that.

Yeah.

Anything I do after this will be less than that, right?

So that.

Number two, it takes.

It always takes longer and costs more to build a business than you think.

I'm 50 years old.

You give your blood for a decade

- Scott Leese: Yeah.

…to build something great, at least, right?

And, I would have to go into that eyes wide open, building

something from new, from scratch.

As you get older, your brain just gets less plastic.

I have a lot of scar tissue and muscle memory pattern recognition, wisdom.

But my brain isn't as quick as it was when I was 25.

It's just not, right?

But the, the last one is the thing you said, which is, so I was talking to a

guy yesterday, he's like, "I would love to live in precedented times." And I'm

like, "Yeah, I could stand to live in a. For a few years of precedented times."

And I think this is, as a business, we've now gone through COVID.

I had all of my money in Silicon Valley Bank when that collapsed.

That was a horrible day playing pickleball and all my money went away.

We went through.

It's just been, like, one thing after another, and now AI

completely reshapes the industry.

I built the business in 2008 during that financial crisis.

Yeah.

I was in.

And when the dot com boom

- Scott Leese: The dot com boom.

You're in that special category that I am, which is, if you're born in 1977

to 1985, you've gone through, like

- Gabe Cooper: Yeah.

A half dozen or more absolutely catastrophic

events that should have,

- Gabe Cooper: Yeah.

Knocked us all off for good.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So the TLDR is, I'm done with black swans.

I don't know if I can deal with another black swan after this one.

Yeah.

Yeah.

What was the biggest setback?

I didn't know about the bank thing.

I that

- Gabe Cooper: Yeah.

That had to be one of them, but what all time setback that

you've learned from that never goes away.

It shaped character for you.

Yeah.

That one was funny because, I'm playing pickleball with a beer in my hand and

I find out all my money goes away.

And it's just like there's nothing I can do.

And so I panicked for a minute.

I called my investors.

They also had most of their money in Silicon Valley

I can't imagine.

Like, I'm just gonna

- Scott Leese: it was a brutal day.

I remember that day.

It was a brutal day.

And so I'm like, "Well, I just. I'm gonna finish my beer. Keep

playing pickleball." Like, I don't.

I don't know.

It was an existential crisis, and then it wasn't.

There's this, clarity of, there's nothing I can do, and worrying about it is

not going to make my life any better.

And so I'm just gonna move on.

But we've made several other mistakes along the way.

We make product mistakes all the time.

We build something that we think our customers will need, and they

don't, and they don't care, right?

And

- Scott Leese: That's the mistake, building something you think your customers need.

Yes.

Rather than know that they need

- Gabe Cooper: Yes.

And/or ask for, right?

Yes.

And so this is the hard part, and you, because you've been in this too

- Scott Leese: Yeah.

Yeah.

Where it's like any great product is half, listening to customers

and building exactly what they say.

The other half is imagining a world that doesn't yet exist.

This is what Steve Jobs did.

You imagine this world that your customers have never thought of before,

and you build into this new reality that has never existed in the world.

But that part of it is, it's, pure imagination.

There's no way to validate.

And everybody's like, "Yeah, you can validate." And, for some

of this stuff, you just can't.

You just kinda gotta, jump off the cliff a little bit.

Yeah.

And half the time you jump off the right cliff and half the

time you jump off the wrong cliff.

Yeah.

But you just kinda gotta do it.

Yeah.

And every time you're praying, just don't die.

Just don't die.

Just don't die.

That's the best startup advice somebody can give you.

Don't die.

That's the best.

Yes.

[laughing] Just don't die.

What about, proudest moment in your business career?

There are so many.

Probably, for me, there's a couple of letters we've gotten from employees,

without going into the detail, that are something to the effect of, " I

was stuck in this career or this area, hard to provide for my family.

It.

Like my outlook was bleak professionally.

I came here, not just I'm making a market wage, but I've had people

pour into me, care about me, tell me I'm smart enough to be.

To do something big in the world."

Yeah.

And in some cases, I've had.

Well, one case, this is one of the people that wrote the letter, but I

had an in- individual contributor come in and get promoted all the way up

to my chief customer officer running my biggest organization, right?

It's like those sort of stories of just the lives impacted of

people that you get to do life with every day is pretty special.

Yeah.

That's great.

I was reading on the, a little bit about, teaching a class in faith and work.

Oh, yeah.

Can you tell us about that?

Yeah.

So it's, that's great.

Yeah, I go to, church out in Gilbert, I'm a Christian faith-wise.

Mm-hmm.

And for me, there's always been a connection with, this idea that, most

people that have a faith background, they live all of their life, th - it's

not, they're, whatever their faith is usually, a get out of hell card

that gets them to heaven or whatever.

But it doesn't, change how they live.

And so a lot of that is around, if you can, build something that shows

God's character more important, that you build something that's

a way to love your neighbor.

So every day when we're building software, we're like, " How does this make the world

less crappy, and how does it make people, easier for people to love their neighbor?"

Yep.

And in a way, you're able to bring this idea of God's kingdom here.

Show what it looks like to actually love your neighbor, but

do it in the context of work.

So that's a lot of my faith and work talk revolves around that.

Yeah.

So the, the culture of the company, everyone's bought into that?

They know that's great.

Culturally, they are bought into it, meaning, the idea that we're

building a p - a company that makes the world a better place, that helps

people love their neighbor, you have to be bought into that that's our culture.

The faith part of it is, our company is incredibly diverse.

I love hiring people that don't think like me.

Yeah.

It's great.

Yeah.

So not all of our company thinks like me comes from the same faith

background, same political persuasion.

I love a bunch of different ideas.

Yeah.

I think that's important.

I, I did a meeting one time.

It was actually in the nonprofit world and it was a for-profit company.

It was the first time I'd ever had this happen in my life.

This was in 2015.

And we're this big boardroom, big, beautiful boardroom in Scottsdale

and the CEO starts off with prayer.

Yeah.

And totally random people in the room like didn't know everybody.

Yeah.

Didn't know anybody's faith.

Everyone like literally grabs your hand and starts doing a prayer.

And he didn't even ask for.

It's his home.

It's his company.

Yeah.

It's his place.

And Catholic, so I was cool that hey, in the name of the Father, Son of the Holy

Spirit, grab hands and let's do a prayer.

Yeah.

But there's people in that room, but his company, that's the way.

Like you

- Gabe Cooper: Yeah.

If you're gonna work at that company, that's the way.

Yeah.

So it's refreshing to hear that you may have this, this

beacon of light and hope and passion of what you have in your life, but

you're welcoming diversity because to me, that's the only way you really

grow is getting people around you that don't think like you, right?

Yeah.

For me, that is.

Now I have friends that do the, the exactly what you described.

I think that can work too.

You can build a company with a particular like faith bent or political bent.

For me, like my faith is massively important to me.

Also, as part of that, like I want people that don't think like me to

be able to see my faith in action.

Mm-hmm.

And I think if I'm caught up in some sort of like echo chamber with

only people that think like me, never challenging me on my ideas, and it's not

just faith or political, but like just ideas and business, ideas for how to work,

idea for what a good life looks like.

If I don't have people around me like challenging me or pushing

me, like I'm gonna get like worse and more and more narrow

- Mike Lindstrom: Yeah.

And less like resilient.

Yeah.

Let me take the baton then and run with

- Gabe Cooper: Okay.

With this.

Because I was cyber stalking you on

Yeah.

LinkedIn, for example.

And one thing that CEOs have been doing for the last few years is

really telling their story and putting their brand out there.

Yeah.

And growing the size of their network and their audience

for a lot of different reasons.

One of which is to soften the market and draw in leads and make it a

little easier for your sales team.

Yeah.

You are a digital ghost,

[laughing]

I would say, on LinkedIn.

[laughing]

Someone who has completely neglected the art of

telling their story on LinkedIn and growing the size of their network.

Why?

Yes.

Number one.

And am I the first person, I can't be the first person who challenged

you on this to get out there and do something different about it?

Probably two reasons.

One is that I mean, I'm, LinkedIn is the only social media I'm on.

Like I'm not on the other ones.

And part of that is I'm not a huge fan of what social media does to people in terms

of how they view themselves, how they view their neighbors, what it does to kids.

Totally fair.

But you can avoid it altogether or you can participate in changing it

- Gabe Cooper: Yes.

For a different purpose,

Right?

I agree.

And I deal with that every day.

But on LinkedIn, it's part of it's like, it's hard when you're like trying to run

a business every day to be like the most pithy thing to say on LinkedIn right now.

It's like hard to find the time and bandwidth to do it.

And also I don't, this is gonna sound horrible because I have friends that

are really good at the thing you're talking about who I love and respect.

Who also run their own business.

Who also run their own businesses and have

time, make time to do it.

And it's valuable and their sales team loves it.

- Scott Leese: Yeah.

It, that is a thing.

Part of me just, and this is me personally like the cult of

personality around like the company exists because the CEO is this

incredibly bright and compelling figure who's out front all the time.

And most people that work for him or her realize that they're messing

around on social media half the day and people way smarter than them

are actually doing all the work.

Part of that cult of personality thing with, especially in tech,

it like rubs me the wrong way some days, if that makes sense.

Yeah.

And so I'd rather platform other people on my team so I could point

to two or three other people on my team.

There you go.

So you should go to your chief revenue officer, chief customer officer, whatever.

My CEO, my CAIO, like

- Scott Leese: Yeah.

My chief AI officer's out there every single day.

Yeah.

It's great.

Like I'd rather platform others.

Now, if my CRO was sitting right here, he'd be high-fiving you'd

be saying like, "Yeah, get off your butt and post to LinkedIn."

Yeah, because he wants, he wants to be easier to sell.

That's why I'm asking the question.

I got my CEO hat or CRO hat on right now.

Yeah.

For sure.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So it's all that because of your faith

that anchors that that belief.

There's that.

It's part of it.

Part of it's just like having aversion to all of the, I'm having to post

like even this week, this is gonna sound horrible, you guys, but I'm

posting about our Inc. 5,000 thing.

I'm writing a new book.

I'm gonna be on this other podcast that's like things that

are a big deal, big deal, right?

And I'll have to say things like I feel humbled and honored that.

And there's just something like cringey about all of that to me.

I, I agree with you.

That's one of my

- Gabe Cooper: I don't know.

That's one of my phrases at least like

because I'm still so humbled.

Because when people say that, what they're really saying is, "I know I'm

badass, but I can't really acknowledge it in one way." But there's another

humble part genuinely that's "No, my faith is because I'm who I am faith.

Like I'm really humbled by the fact that you voted for me or you made this great."

Yeah.

But they get lost.

Sometimes people, oh, look at me.

He's up there.

He's the big, bad CEO.

He's the founder.

Yeah.

He's humbled.

Come on.

We know how great you are and all you do.

I'm humbled

- Mike Lindstrom: It's tough!

…enough that I've been personally given this

award for the 50 year in a row.

Or the humble brag part of it, right?

Yeah.

I could be like, I might be wrong about all this.

And so I'm sure my faith plays into it somehow.

Sure.

I could be wrong.

You could be like so right about all of it and I just need to get over it and do it.

Yeah.

It just depends, I think, what the goal and the

outcome is that you're looking for.

- Gabe Cooper: Yeah.

And if I was coaching you about this, I would say the goal and

the outcome for you is, has nothing to do with your own personal benefit.

You're not trying to boost your own ego.

Yeah.

You're not trying to flamboyantly say how amazing you are.

Yeah.

Your goal and benefit is to amplify the brand of your company.

And in amplifying the brand and other people around you

- Gabe Cooper: Yeah.

You make their jobs easier, which allows you

to help your customers more

- Gabe Cooper: Yeah.

And impact more people.

Yeah.

So I would argue that by not participating, you're holding the

gift of all of that back a little bit.

I think that is

- Scott Leese: That's one argument.

Yeah.

I think it's a great argument.

It is, especially in the world of

- Gabe Cooper: And I can't argue with it.

And Jeremy brought this up too.

He, Jeremy doesn't love social media.

Mm-hmm.

Jeremy Beer, our friend who's been on another

- Scott Leese: Not many people do.

I don't know anybody that actually loves it.

Loves it.

Yeah.

I don't love it.

We know a girl named Julie Zander

- Scott Leese: That means to an end.

Julie Zander loves social media.

She's.

Am I right?

Yeah.

She loves social media.

But from, I think most people, it's like, what

is the reason I'm doing this?

Yeah.

Yeah.

And as long as I have a compelling goal or

outcome or reason to do it

- Gabe Cooper: Yeah.

I don't have to love it, but I'm going to do it.

And I'm gonna try to participate in creating a different narrative

than the one that maybe exists that repels so many other people.

Yeah.

I 100% agree.

And if that goal changes for me, if this is the last company

that you have, whatever, as soon as you're done, delete your account.

Shut it down.

Disappear on a

- Gabe Cooper: Yeah.

Beach forever.

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

It's fascinating.

I just listened to, Christopher Nolan.

He was talking about, he has a flip phone.

He has a flip phone.

And he doesn't even have it with him all the time, I don't think.

And they asked him the question.

They said, "What's the toughest thing about not having a smartphone?"

I was blown away by the answer.

He goes, "The smart…" He goes, "The toughest part for me is QR codes."

[laughing]

That was the answer.

You can't pull up the menu.

You can't pull up QR codes.

I go to a restaurant.

I can't use co - Q - so I have a new phone that I'm getting

that that I only use for QR

Codes.

It's his menu phone.

I'm like, oh my God, I never even thought of that.

So I get it.

The love-hate relationship with it, but I'm curious about the whole nonprofit

thing because when Jeremy was on here, he chose that space when he built landfill.

And he's, he has faith in all the things that he brings to the organization.

What's it like to reside in that space?

'Cause we all know nonprofits and everyone's making a ton of money.

And if you are making a ton of money as a nonprofit, people are asking questions.

Mm-hmm.

So this concept of generosity, contribution, which is

a si - one of the six human needs, sitting in that space, that's sometimes

tough because what if you're wildly successful and you're wildly profitable?

Mm-hmm.

And then you look at your faith and then you look at the

world of contribution and generosity.

Yep.

Where do you draw the line?

Yeah, yeah.

It's great.

One of the things is just data points here.

A lot of people think nonprofits don't have money.

I think the sector does like, what, 1.7 trillion dollars this year or

last year's 617 billion dollars went into nonprofits through donations.

I think in Arizona, it employs more people than retail or construction.

So it's a big sector.

And some of these organizations have a billion dollars in revenue.

So they're like real companies.

They have real IT teams with real budgets and they need real software.

So that is, because sometimes people think about it and it's like you're

taking the last two pennies of the poor

- Mike Lindstrom: Yeah.

Soup kitchen.

I'm like, that's not exactly it, right?

And so that is important.

Number two, we are, we go our whole team in net new generosity.

So our mission as a company is to create $10 billion in net

new generosity in the world.

Wow.

So we measure how you were doing before and how you're doing now.

We've created almost $2 billion in net new generosity through our customers

have after going live with Virtuous.

So we measure and goal the team on that because I don't want it, I don't

want anybody to ever get it flipped that we're in this for ourselves.

Now, we're a for-profit.

So yes, I have to deliver returns, but I should be able to look back and

say, "I delivered this return, but I delivered this much generosity."

And I wanna look back and say, "We built a culture so that it, our employees

became more generous people." So when people at the company or I get some

sort of financial return as a result of our work, I want to know that I

was also generous with that money.

And that's part of what we created as a culture.

That's great.

Results driven.

Yeah.

I love that.

I love that.

Well, we like, we'll do a little rapid fire before we wrap up.

We like to do a little rapid fire.

Random q- quick questions.

We don't script these, so we just kinda go with the flow.

Biggest things that, biggest thing that you've learned from being a dad, things

your kids taught you will be what?

Oh, gosh.

I, I didn't think I was selfish till I had kids.

It turns out I'm really selfish and you don't know how till you have kids.

You think that you can mold a kid into like your image.

Like they're going to be just like me if I say the right things at parenting.

They're all completely and totally different people and

you have so little control.

And you have five.

And I have five.

Yeah.

And for me, when it took me a while to learn this, if I just love the heck

out of them and spend time with them playing, messing around, and they feel

safe, that will create a way better outcome than just about anything else.

But that's a,

- Mike Lindstrom: Yeah.

It's taken me 20 years to learn that.

Yeah.

Are you a meeting guy with your employees?

What kind of meetings do you run?

With my meeting?

Yeah.

I am, I've kind of gone founder mode.

So founder mode is this, get really in the weeds.

So right now, I have 11 direct reports.

Mm-hmm.

And I do one-on-ones with all of them weekly.

Oh.

That's 11 hours.

That 25% of a normal

- Gabe Cooper: 25% of my day.

That impressive.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's impressive.

No.

Is that sustainable forever?

Right.

Probably not.

Probably not, but

- Scott Leese: There's a season for it, maybe.

Yeah.

And I would say here's the difference is, I won't do readout meetings.

You're gonna send me

- Scott Leese: Yeah.

The readout stuff pre-meeting.

The meeting is gonna be, like, you gotta show your work and we're gonna

get, we're gonna solve whatever big problem you have together.

And I'm not interested in re- readouts.

I'm interested in

- Scott Leese: You want me to read my bullet points that I just emailed you?

Work with you.

Like,

-  Scott Leese: yeah.

Let's solve the problem together during this time so we

walk away having done something.

Yeah.

Biggest difference between closing a nonprofit deal and a for-profit deal?

That's a great question.

Non-profits are.

It's, I think it's probably the highest trust-based

vertical - of vertical software.

So people.

That you don't have the same market dynamics of sort of

capitalistic pressure to perform.

That means that there's a lot more.

I, I want to feel safe and sustainable.

And to do that, I do what my peers do.

Right?

I need for this prospect to hear from other customers

And partners that it's okay.

It's m much more elevated in the nonprofit sector than it is in for-profit sector.

Great answer.

Yeah.

That's a good one.

Most inspiring book for you?

I mean, there's the faith-based obvious,

like, Bible and all the CS.

I have the CS Lewis books tattooed all up my arm right here.

And so I love those books.

But there's this super obscure one.

Y - I'm sure you guys haven't read it, but I would read it.

It's called The Emerald Mile.

Okay.

So it's about.

It's these guys that pull up, it's the mid - 80s, middle of the night.

They get out of, a truck at the Grand Canyon in the middle of

the night and s- stick these wooden dory boats in the water.

And it's in the middle of El Nino and the water's, you're, like, crushing it.

And you realize

- Scott Leese: I know this book.

You know this book?

Yes.

I don't.

I know this book.

Keep going.

I 100% know this book.

It's unbelievable.

Yes.

So it stops there, and then it rewinds to, the Spanish getting to the Grand

Canyon in, I don't know, 16 whatever.

And it's like this history of America through the lens of the Grand Canyon,

and the book ends with catching up with these guys on the Colorado

- Yeah.

Trying to

- Mike Lindstrom: Huh.

…set the fastest no time going down to Colorado.

That's what it is.

I know this book.

Th- this is an example of how life is so strange.

I went to Majorca a couple weeks ago.

Yeah.

And I stayed at this friend of ours from high school's, apartment.

And that book is on his coffee table, the Emerald Mile.

And I remember looking at the cover, and it's like the guys on the raft

Yeah.

Canoe or whatever the kind of boat it is, right?

Yeah.

And it's like the story of these guys trying to, navigate all this.

Never heard of it before that.

Yeah.

Have not read it.

And you said the Emerald Mile, and I'm thinking, " Why did I know that?"

That's so crazy.

That's what it is.

We're just talking about this.

Yeah.

All the things we learned from being on this side of the couch.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So that book has appeared in my life twice in the last month now.

Well, see,

That's a sign.

You gotta read it.

That's a God wink.

Yeah.

That's a God wink.

All right, last question and then we'll wrap up, before you promote.

Quote you live by.

Oh, I don't know that I have a good quote to live by.

Or some mantra, something you live by, or

something you teach your kids.

If I ask your kids, "What's dad say all the time?"

What's dad's favorite phrase?

S- stop doing that.

Yeah.

I don't know.

We get real real.

Knock it off.

We're getting real.

We're all like adrenaline junkies.

Yeah.

And so I, they, because they feel pretty safe with me, they text me

pictures of, I put a jet ski in a neighborhood pool or a cop pulled me

over because I was wakeboarding down the canal getting pulled by a quad.

It's that, every day.

So yeah, it probably is my kids.

It's like, " Please stop.

You're going to die." It's the thing I say most.

That's great.

That's a horrible answer.

I'm sure I have better ones.

Oh, you know what is?

Teddy Roosevelt, who I love Teddy Roosevelt, said it's some, the

paraphrase here, but I would rather burn out than rust out.

Oh, that's good.

It's like Neil, it's almost like Neil Young.

That's good.

Yeah.

Yeah.

The, better to burn out.

Better burn out than fade away.

Than fade away.

Yeah.

That's right.

That's good.

It's that same concept.

All right.

So we always, have guests, tell us about what're working.

You said something about a book.

Where can we find you?

If you know a nonprofit who needs help fundraising,

virtuous.org is our website.

Yeah.

You can check us out.

It's great.

If you're interested in the future of philanthropy in this country and

how things are changing, we have a new book called N of 1 Philanthropy.

So in medicine, N of 1 is like a study of one.

It's the idea that every patient's an individual.

Same in fundraising.

For fundraising to be effective, you have to realize every donor is an individual

with individual passions and needs.

Yep.

And so AI, changes the game there and makes In

of One fundraising possible.

So we have a book coming out in October.

It's great.

So check it out.

N of 1 Philanthropy available where all fine books are sold.

Love it.

That's great.

I appreciate you coming on, especially for someone who

has that belief about self-promotion.

You're on our podcast.

Yeah, I know.

But you're here to talk about

- Gabe Cooper: You guys got me here.

No, I appreciate that.

And thanks to Jeremy, our mutual friend for bringing us together.

So thanks for having, for coming on the show and telling us your

story and all those things that are going great at Virtuous.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Appreciate it.

Thank you guys.

It's been a ton of fun.

Yeah, absolutely.

Thanks everybody for joining us on another episode of

What's Your Story with Mike and Scott.

I'm Scott Leese.

This is my good friend, Mike Lindstrom.

Thanks to our guest for joining us today.

Make sure you follow them on all the social platforms.

Make sure you follow us on all the social platforms as well.

And check out whatsourstorypod.com for future episodes, past episodes,

upcoming events, along with, a way to follow our newsletter.

Big shout out to our friends at NectarFlow who host us here in studio,

and we will see you next time on What's Your Story with Mike and Scott.