Season One is coming to a remarkable end! Throughout this season, we’ve aimed to shine a spotlight on each one of our guests, to honor their journey and reveal the true essence of what it means to be an Empowered Owner.
In this episode of Empowered Owners, Chris Fredericks, president and CEO of Empowered Ventures, and Emily Bopp, Chief of Staff at Empowered Ventures, discuss what they learned from an incredible Season One.
Chris Fredericks: Welcome to Empowered Owners, the podcast that takes you inside Empowered Ventures. I’m your host, Chris Fredericks. In each episode, I’ll have a discussion with one of our employees to discover and highlight their distinct personalities, perspectives, and skills while also keeping you in the loop with exclusive news, updates on company performance, and a glimpse into the future plans of Empowered Ventures. This is an opportunity for me to learn more about our amazing employee owners and an opportunity for you to hear regularly from me and others from within Empowered Ventures. On this episode of Empowered Owners, I’m talking with Empowered Ventures Chief of Staff Emily Bopp about the latest EV news and updates. Without further ado, here’s my conversation with Emily. Hi, Emily. Welcome back to Empowered Owners. The EV update edition. How are you doing?
Emily Bopp: I’m doing great and welcome back to you as well. Here we are.
Chris Fredericks: Yeah, here we are. So what’s been on your mind lately in general? Personal work, anything?
Emily Bopp: Thanks for asking a lot. Actually, anyone who knows me well is probably sick of hearing this. So my 22 year old son is attempting to launch a professional golf career and my friends would ask me, how does one go about doing that? And I would say, it’s complicated. How deep do you want to go? You ask? That’s what’s been taking a lot of my mental space recently, but it’s super exciting. I’m really proud of them. I’m really jazzed. I know you got to meet him recently. I’m really jazzed for this kid’s life. It’s just so incredible to see your kids grow and become who they are and take chances and take risks.
Chris Fredericks: That’s awesome. And yeah, I’m glad you mentioned it. I met your son, but he’s really impressive and it’s so cool to hear someone taking a shot at their dreams and taking it really super, 100% seriously. And also being at this point where it’s not a slam dunk, almost no one becomes an actual full PGA Professional Tour player. And he has a shot, a real shot, and he’s going to go for it. And I wouldn’t be shocked at all if he makes it. But he also knows how hard this is, what he’s embarking on, and that there’s no guarantee at all. So it’s really interesting to be at that moment and like, full commitment with no certainty is a really interesting point to be.
Emily Bopp: It’s so true. And it reminds me of our conversations around strategy, how you can’t prove in advance that it’s going to happen, that it’s going to win. There’s no done deal about any of this, but a lot of very careful and strategic thinking, of course, because he has me for a mother. What’s going on in your neck of the world?
Chris Fredericks: Things have been a lot of fun. We have a lot going on at work, obviously, and all of it is really good. But we’re at EV, we’re about four years in from the decision to actually embark on this journey. Four years ago, this was an idea that hadn’t even taken any steps forward yet right around this time in 2019. I’m just excited with where we’re at and excited about the future and yeah, it’s just a fun place to be at this moment. I think maybe Pivoting, which thinking back to your son and his journey, the podcast actually is something that in a much lesser way, was like a commitment we made to do this thing and had no sense of whether it can work and whether it’ll actually succeed in terms of adding value and people wanting to hear and watch. And so here we are getting towards the end of what we’re going to call season one and we will share some more specifics around that, but it’s gone really well. Most of all, I’ve had a lot of fun with it, but we thought today might be a good to get together and just debrief on how it’s gone so far and also how we see this podcast thing evolving going forward.
Emily Bopp: Yes, we had no idea what we were getting ourselves into, so I got to know before we talk about what we’ve learned with this podcasting, I’ve got to know. You said that Tim Ferriss had to get himself drunk because he was so afraid for his first. And for anybody who doesn’t know, Tim Ferriss has tens of thousands of followers. His podcast is one of the most listened to podcasts now, but he was so afraid. So I got to know. Are you afraid?
Chris Fredericks: Definitely. That’s been one of the learnings this first season is. I’m definitely an introvert, so hosting a podcast is not in my circle of comfort, but it’s been so much fun and I’m far less nervous and afraid going into each episode. And we’ve gotten a lot of terrific advice from the folks who are supporting this and producing it for us to others. And one of the main pieces of advice has been to truly just relax and have fun with it and truly let it be a conversation and not try to control the conversation too specifically with an agenda and questions and let it be informal, let it be casual, just be me too has been really important advice. And I don’t know, that’s scary because just being me on a podcast and it seems not that exciting or interesting to me, but it’s not about me that’s ultimately where I land on it is this is truly about our people and Empowered Ventures and this employee ownership journey we’re on. If I let go of the me-ness of it that it’s me doing this and lean into the exciting journey we’re on, the people that we get to do it with and that they want to hear from each other and they want to hear from us about what’s happening at Empowered Ventures. I guess it’s something I’ve relaxed into and I’m actually starting to have some fun with it, which I think is pretty cool.
Emily Bopp: Yeah. Glad that you’re enjoying it more. I am enjoying getting to know all of our employee owners who have been guests. And the feedback that I’ve gotten is just that it’s such a unique and interesting way to get some color on these people who were linked arms with so tons of great feedback there. One piece of feedback that we got was that although people really enjoy both sections, hearing from a guest and hearing EV updates or some inside of EV, that it can just be a lot and kind of long. So you want to tell us a little bit about how we’re pivoting in season two?
Chris Fredericks: Sure. And we’ve even started this pivot kind of now in the middle or towards the end of season one, we’ve started chopping up the episodes into two different versions. One week, it’s going to continue to be an interview style discussion between myself and someone else within our Empowered Ventures group of companies and we’ll continue on that approach. And then there won’t be a second section that’s you joining or someone else joining to also talk about updates about Empowered Ventures, we’ll be going to an every week release schedule and that every other week will be more of an update from us. And just like this episode is a standalone update from us, what’s on our mind? What’s coming down the pike? Maybe announcements in the future as needed. So we think that every other week approach will create a more balanced set of episodes, a little bit shorter for each of them, and also give us space to do both to the fullest instead of trying to pack so much into one episode.
Emily Bopp: Well, and I love the standalone EV update one. I feel like we can just get really focused on some of those things. So fun. Quick, ask. For our listeners, we’ve been tossing around what do we call it? EV Update is so incredibly boring. So if you get inspired singing in the shower, whatever you do about what we should call the EV Update, please tell us. We’d love to hear from you on that. But yeah, I’m excited for season two to still continue to dive into folks’ lives so we can get to know each other better, but maybe with a little more intentionality. So I’ll start. I’ve learned, like you said, you’ve learned how to relax into the host mode. I think what I’ve learned is how to help us prepare for each episode in a way that can get to what’s really interesting and unique around a specific topic or theme for each person. So for our early guests, we know it was just willy nilly, but what we’re really excited about in season two is our just experience now of having done this to be able to shepherd those conversations a little more focused and a little more deeply. So I’m going to be reaching out to people and asking if they’d like to be a guest, but specifically around something that’s really important to them or we’ll get together and we’ll talk about those things. So I’m excited about that for season two.
Chris Fredericks: A couple of thoughts really quick. So I want to dive a little further into what you’re saying there. That’s another change we’re making for ourselves in terms of the approach to the episodes is for the interviews, we are going to come in with a little more intentionality around the two to three, maybe topics or themes that we want to focus on for that episode. Whereas before, maybe from the beginning it was a little bit more of just a general interview of a person covering a lot of their background and maybe their whole career even, and trying to touch on a lot of aspects of their life. We’re shifting intentionally to being more focused. So that’s what I think you’re alluding to with the preparation part. And then the other thing I thought I’d just throw in is we’re talking about season one, season two. So just to share specifically, we intend for this first batch, the season one, to go through December 5, I believe is going to be our last release of this first season. And then we’ll take a short break, a month and a half or so and then we’ll be back to releasing episodes. January 23, I believe is the intention. So just so everyone knows, that’s going to be a break we’re going to take and hopefully that’ll just help us have a full slate of fun stuff ready to go starting in early 2024.
Emily Bopp: Yes. And then seasons come and seasons go from there on out. I’m excited about taking a seasonal approach so that this can evolve to be something more awesome into its future. So I think we’re on the path. Thanks for giving us some insight into just where we are with the podcast and where we’re headed. This is really cool to talk about. It’s a really cool project. I’m glad you had the vision for it all that time ago.
Chris Fredericks: Thank you so much for helping this get off the ground and all the work you do for every episode you do a ton. So, yeah, I’m super grateful and yeah, looking forward to continuing to work on this with you for next season. So thank you. Thanks for joining.
Emily Bopp: Absolutely. Have a great day.
Chris Fredericks: See you next time. Well, that wraps up this episode of Empowered Owners. I’d like to thank Emily Bopp for joining me. Please give us feedback, suggest guests and topics for future episodes, and tell us how we can keep improving the show. To reach us, email [email protected]. Be sure to join us next time on Empowered Owners as we explore the lives and stories of the amazing employee owners of Empowered Ventures. If you haven’t already, follow our podcast on your favorite platform so you never miss an episode. Thank you for tuning in.