002: Living the Startup Life with Steve Boerner and David Gritz

002-Steve-Boerner-David-Gritz-LIVETHEFUEL

Since this only our 2nd startup show, I decided to mix things up and go out live and in person. So no home studio for this episode, we’re mobile! We are live and onsite with Steve Boerner and David Gritz in their Hatch House Ventures, Bethlehem, PA location. So yes, not one, but two co-hosts for this episode. To my right and next to me is Steve Boerner and to his right is David Gritz.

We review different successful morning routines. Steve discusses his visual practice vs David discussing his spreadsheet style that clicks better with his own processes. You can’t just picture yourself in a Lamborghini and it just happens, you own one. This goal setting takes daily practice that builds to annual success. Steve highly recommends the physical documentation process of your goals.

Today’s Startup Co-Host(s)

David I met through what else, our love of networking professionally. David Gritz is an entrepreneur, real estate investor, public speaker, and marketing expert. He serves as the vice-President of Hatch House Ventures. David joined the company after leaving an influential corporate position in the IT space. In the past three years that he has worked for Hatch House Ventures, he has bought, sold, and rented out over 15 properties with revenues nearing $1M annually. His mandate is to search and acquire future Hatch House locations. He has also helped run a successful Kickstarter campaign for a high impact exercise mat called Perfect Burpee. That same Kickstarter project was how we first worked together. He wanted to run a fitness gala to promote his startup Kickstarter. I love the Kickstarter campaigns and I never thought I’d actually get involved in one. It just so happened that they had already run a gala event up in Boston and then they needed to run one here in the Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania. Since then we’ve been helping each out through mutual projects, networking events, and even helping to further motivate me to launch this Podcast.

Steve Boerner serves as the President and founder of Hatch House Ventures. He founded the company in November 2014, taking him around seven months to plan and execute. Steve is a serial entrepreneur who knows how to get and sustain success. He left the corporate world in 2013 after working for four years at Fortune 500 company. He also runs a consulting company called Gen-Y Consultants, which focuses on helping individuals and businesses market to millennials. Steve also works as an Adjunct Professor of Practice at the Horn School of Entrepreneurship at the University of Delaware.

Steve Boerner and David Gritz together run this exciting startup support project known as Hatch House Ventures. Did you know you can actually live among other startups to grow your community, networking, and overall supportive surroundings to launch a more successful business. We are working together, hit it off right and working together to support and promote their startup community.

As you can see, these two gentlemen are truly committed to taking their Virtual Incubator Network nationwide. As usual, this is a great insightful conversation packed with content and great ideas you can translate into your life to FUEL your internal fire.

Tune in and enjoy your dose of LIVETHEFUEL.

In this episode you’ll hear:

[01: 02] Everything you need to know about David Gritz and Steve Boerner.

[02:50] What excited them about LIVETHEFUEL and launching a podcast.

[04:44] Morning routines that they are pretty sure will help them stay consistent.

[08:02] What is unarrested power. How can it fuel your internal life?

[08:35] How you can manifest your vision. What these two gentlemen do to balance the health, business, and lifestyle concept.

[10:14] Tony Schwartz’s book: The Power of Full Engagement: Managing Energy, Not Time, Is the Key to High Performance and Personal Renewal

[14:30] How they have managed to work together and achieve success despite their differences in mindset and skillset.

[17:02] More about Hatch House Ventures and the achievements so far.

[18: 47] Struggles of being entrepreneurs in the traditional collegiate, rigid system.

[22:23] The number of companies that Hatch House is working with so far.

[23: 35] Why maintaining life balance during the startup phase is so important to battle stress.

[24: 25] Hatch House attracts a healthier, cooking from home atmosphere with different ethnic influences.

[27: 18] It’s emotional when people come and go, moving on with their journeys.

[29:25 ] Too much dependency on social media, kills numerous skills, chivalry is all but dead!

[36:20 ] A new book, Hello I’m Lost?

 

And Much, Much More

“We are the average of the five people we spend the most time with”, Jim Rohn

As someone who has been a serial entrepreneur, Steve Boerner is someone who is definitely trying to make a mark in this newer generation of startups. During our session, we moved from the morning routines right into the power of manifesting your future success.

You are truly the product of the five people you spend the most time with. Jim Rohn was a powerful mentor and this is just one of his famous quotes that we discussed.

The three of us get into some major differences between them that they’ve learned to use as a way to feed off of each others strengths vs weaknesses. Part of this lesson that we discuss also centers around how we all need to adapt to different learners. As professionals and even personally in our relationships we must recognize how people learn from us differently. A popular method to study is recognizing individuals differences with the VAK or Visual, Auditory, and Kinesthetic Learning Styles.

Use social media to your advantage. Control how you exist online and in business by pushing your own controlled content out over your own social media channels. Make sure you exist in the right way. LinkedIn is a great professional platform for just that, whether you’re an individual professional, a small business, or a major company.

Currently Hatch House has a network of 4 locations that are startup accelerators and incubators, as they do overlap right now. They do admit that they seem their niche in the industry pushing them more towards the accelerator business model. Bethlehem’s flagship location is one of the few locations that has the live in component. Not all Hatch Houses support the community residential model. This Lehigh Valley based location receives applications from all over the world for people to come stay here and work here for 12 months. The network here helps provide resources for professional networking, funding sources, and more.

Startup Hatch House Ventures LIVETHEFUEL

They’ve since scaled their model into a licensing model to partner with higher education institutions so that these larger institutions can plug into the Hatch House resources while plugging in a working startup support model to their own campus offerings.

Open your circle of influence with Hatch House. A different spin on networking and growing your international connections from within a safe community of like-minded professionals. “It’s the only thing, nothing exists without that”.

For our startup residents, we look at their businesses to help them with their numbers, planning for employee growth, helping coach them on better hiring practices. They encourage collision within the house and online virtually between their Hatch House communities.

If you’re doing this right, everyone should have the best practices, be building lists, the best books, the best podcasts, the best network connections to fall back on and more.

Next steps are entrepreneurship courses, new services for the University customers, and a new book coming soon! Final notes from Steve and David. David leaves us with one core word, which is “Discipline”. Applying discipline in business, refine things into a process, you’ll get a more predictable outcome. Health can be improved through discipline through nutrition, exercise and the lifestyle you build within your network. Steve leaves us with the value of building “Habits”. We’re programmed to build habits. Your startup work must involve creating bulletproof consistency without even thinking about it. But it takes daily commitment to ensuring those tasks and activities build into those successful habits.

 

Links and resources

 

People Mentioned

 

Finally, I have a small request:

Since this is my brand new show, I’ve got zero clout in the world right now. It takes a lot of work to bring something like this to fruition. Currently, my biggest asset is reviews and ratings on iTunes. When iTunes sees that this show is getting good reviews and ratings, it moves us up in importance to the “New & Noteworthy” section. A brand new show can get lots of traction from this!

So, if you wouldn’t mind, I will welcome positive reviews and ratings from you guys, love the 5 stars! Also, if you think it’s valuable; kindly share this page on Facebook or Twitter. It would mean a ton of gratitude to me as well.

If you want to be part of the growing community, please join the The FUEL Tank group on Facebook where we Fuel Your Health, Business and Lifestyle as a community.

Thanks so much, and I’m looking forward to hearing your comments about this show below.

Scott

LIVETHEFUEL is an online audio podcast hosted by myself of course. Part of my goal(s) is to help share the stories, lessons, and knowledge attained from the struggles and life successes of my co-hosts aka guests. These are highly active people from all walks of life, including the people from the fitness profession like coaches and gym owners. We’ll also be focusing on startups, entrepreneurs, Internet marketers, along with all of our diverse health professionals and some fellow adrenaline junkies along the way. These people not only standout in their professions, they also have the confidence to live life with more adventure and take the necessary risks with rewards to build an epic lifestyle!

The primary goal of these episodes is to FUEL your internal fire while helping you realize that LIFE IS SHORT! I also share practical steps and tools, including strategies, smartphone apps, audiobooks, websites, stories and training courses that will support you in every step you make to improve your life. So go after your dreams and conquer that next, supposedly, unattainable goal!

About the author, Scott

Host of the LIVETHEFUEL Podcast | Public Speaker | Sales & Marketing Professional | Coach | Traveler | Consultant | Health Educator | Former Firefighter