PUSH Hospitality
This business started entirely by accident when a friend and first-time restauranteur approached me with his P&L wanting to make sense of the numbers. He was hemorrhaging money and couldn’t figure out why. We dug into the numbers and created processes to turn it around. In three months he was in the black. My business grew from that point forward and subsisted almost exclusively on client referrals.
I focused on helping owners make more data-driven business decisions. It affected all areas of their business, but especially their P&L management, branding, and marketing strategy. I had the opportunity to work with large and small restaurants, event centers, and bars as well as do pro-bono work with a local nonprofit organization.
My motivation in building this company was driven by my passion for Social Enterprise, or using business methods to solve social problems at scale. The Hospitality Industry is perhaps best known for having razor-thin margins, a labor-intensive business model, and a high susceptibility to failure. Current statistics show that 80% of restaurants fail in the first five years, an astounding 60% in the first year alone. Amongst independent restaurants those rates of failure are even greater. All of this culminates in an industry that destroys billions of dollars in economic value every year, compounding the labor issues that are at the heart of this industry. However, I'd come to learn that whenever the potential downfalls are so severe, the potential upside must be as promising in the other direction. My belief was, and still is, that the Hospitality Industry can help change the cycles of poverty in this country if we can curb the high rate of failure. If we can teach owners to make more data-driven decisions, we will produce more profitable businesses. In an industry based on meritocracy and largely run by non-educated workers, more profits equates to better wages, increased job opportunities and upward mobility.
This premise is at the core of what Social Enterprise is: maximize social impact alongside, not in lieu of, profits. What is good for the tens of millions of Hospitality Industry hourly workers can also be good for the owners of those businesses.
Deciding I could do more, in March of 2017 I decided to take my business in a new direction: transition my consulting methodologies into a technology (SaaS) company that can help owners and managers make more data-driven business decisions and understand why.
Restructuring the company would mean the ability to serve many more clients at a substantially lower cost to each of them, thereby exponentially multiplying the theoretical social impact our company could have while creating a business that could scale internationally. I moved our offices from Lincoln to Omaha where we joined The Startup Collaborative, a nonprofit tech accelerator.
Four months in, I realized that making a pivot this significant was essentially starting a new business from the ground-up. I've never been one to back away from a challenge, but I had recently married the love of my life and we wanted to start a family. We needed a steady paycheck, health insurance, something called a 401k.
It was tough to put this dream on hold, but I was fortunate enough to be offered an opportunity at Midland University to become Director of Marketing & Communications in August 2017.
And on May 1, 2018, my wife & I welcomed our daughter, Campbell Jean, into this world.
FIRST ENTREPRENEURIAL ENDEAVOR
Before starting PUSH, I founded a Social Enterprise in Chicago called Books for Chicago. The idea for the organization was based in part on a company called Better World Books, which collects & distributes textbooks across college campuses and uses the funds from the proceeds of their resale to fund literacy programs in Africa. While I believed that mission to be incredibly noble, I knew was keenly aware of the level of abject poverty that existed in my own backyard — quite literally, on the south-side of Chicago.
Books for Chicago was intended to help redistribute the amount of unneeded and unwanted textbooks at local colleges and universities and use the proceeds from their resale to fund impact storytelling campaigns about existing nonprofit organizations in Chicago. I had volunteered with several nonprofits serving the impoverished youth in the city while completing my undergrad and knew intimately the challenges they faced. While trying to build Books for Chicago I worked at Fairfield Elementary in the Englewood Neighborhood on Chicago's Southside, one of the city's most impoverished neighborhoods. I also bartended nights & weekends and did freelance marketing to help make ends meet. Work ethic has always been a strength of mine, but these almost two years took that lesson to a whole new level.
Ultimately, Books for Chicago was a failed endeavor resulting from a million mistakes mostly based around my own naïveté. The short story is that Social Enterprise as a business model is fairly new, and funding opportunities were limited at best. The long story is that no man is an island and trying to do everything yourself will almost certainly result in failure. Still, I firmly believe in never looking back in life with regrets, I am a better person because of those failures and continue to learn from those difficult lessons.
LIFELONG LEARNER
In 2016, I enrolled in HBX (recently re-branded to Harvard Business School Online) CORe, a certificate program through Harvard University's Graduate School of Business which combines the courses of Managerial Economics, Financial Accounting & Business Analytics. The program was both intensive and rewarding, and has been a catalyst in my decision to pursue an MBA in the future (UPDATE: Georgetown MBA ‘21). I've since completed two more courses through the HBX Program: HBX Finance & HBX Negotiation Mastery. All HBX courses are taught by their current HBS faculty and have played an integral role in expanding my business acumen.
Grace-oriented, not fear based
And other leadership experiences.
At Midland University I had the honor of building a new team from the ground-up. It has been simultaneously one of the most difficult and rewarding experiences of my life, but there is one guiding principle that governs everything we do: We are grace-oriented, not fear-based. In practical terms, being grace-oriented creates space for failure, mistakes, and shortcomings. We allow ourselves to be human and pull together to fill-in for one another. We don’t point fingers. We abhor the blame game. Fear stunts innovation. Which stunts growth. Which inhibits success.
This doesn’t mean that we don’t keep one another accountable. Or have consequences to missing goals, metrics, or initiatives. Grace doesn’t create a culture of laziness; instead, Grace fosters a culture where we are more than our work. Giving us the freedom to do our work even better.
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I was hired at The Lodge at Wilderness Ridge as a server & bartender back in 2006 and worked there during summer breaks & holiday vacations while completing my undergrad in Chicago. After college, I accepted a management position and eventually was promoted into a hybrid management & marketing role. I helped develop and curate all of the social media platforms for Wilderness Ridge; assisted in the redesign of the website and developed new marketing initiatives to drive revenue goals. Overseeing a staff of more than 60 part-time and full-time employees, I learned quickly how to build teams, empower individuals and cast a unifying vision.
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One of my proudest moments at Wilderness Ridge came from creating a partnership with the Food Bank of Lincoln that allowed our management staff time to volunteer one hour per week; created monthly food drives on-site; instituted a monthly brunch with proceeds benefiting the Food Bank, as well as allowed Wilderness Ridge to become the headline partner in their PB&J competition: an annual event which encourages local restaurants to interpret PB&J in a progressive culinary fashion to raise money to support the Food Bank.
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At PUSH Hospitality I directly led the management teams of six different clients on long-term projects, helping to develop their managerial skills, business acumen, and organizational leadership.
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As a volunteer for the Heartland Cancer Foundation in 2015-2016 I led a multimedia project fundraising campaign for the annual charity gala. The Heartland Cancer Foundation is a 501c3 nonprofit whose mission is to provide financial assistance to cancer patients within 200% of the poverty line in Southeast Nebraska.
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While building Books for Chicago, I worked with Chicago Public Schools at Fairfield Elementary School on Chicago's Southside in an innovative program that tutored elementary students on their reading skills by teaching the game of chess alongside their reading curriculum.
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I helped to lead an LGBTQ outreach program in Chicago that helped connect homeless LGTBQ youth to resources, warm meals, and a positive community.
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I have also volunteered with five churches in leadership roles over the past twelve years between Chicago & Nebraska.
GALLUP STRENGTHS FINDER
Learner
Futuristic
Ideation
Strategic
Achiever
