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🎙️ Interesting Humans Podcast
Ep. 73: From Dorm Room Idea to $1.3 Billion Raised for Schools | Chris Carneal
00:19:50
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- [00:01]
A
This is Interesting Humans Podcast. My name is Jeff Hopeck, your host, where we go past the highlight reel and into the moments that actually shape a life. The struggles, the mistakes, the pivots. Because the real lessons aren't found in success. They're found in everything it took to get there. Hey everyone, Jeff Hopeck here, host of Interesting Humans Podcast. Before we jump into today's episode, a quick note just for context. This conversation originally aired on another podcast I used to host called 20 Minute MBA, where I sat down with business leaders and entrepreneurs and asked the same four questions to uncover the lessons behind their success. As I've continued to build Interesting Humans Podcast, I've decided to bring some of those conversations over here as bonus episodes because great people and great stories deserve one home. Today's guest is Chris Carneel, who you may also recognize from his full length feature that happened right here on Interesting Humans Podcast. In this conversation, you'll hear a more focused look at his journey, his mindset, and the key lessons that have shaped his success. Let's get into it. Hey everyone, my name is Jeff Hopeck. I'm the host of Interesting Humans Podcast. And it's a podcast where I ask the exact same four questions to men and women out there that are just crushing it in the business world. They could be founders, presidents, CEOs, they could be consultants and managers and everything else in between. But the whole point is that the podcast is 20 minutes or less. It's four questions. And they're the four questions that I wish I knew in college and certainly when I graduated college. So what are the questions? First one is, how did you get to where you are? I want to hear the entire journey because we think it's like this straight line. It's not. And it's the farthest thing from it. Second question, what is the one single best piece of advice you ever got? And I keep these to one because it's real easy if you're asked that question to answer it with like a handful of things. But I want to know the one. And usually it's a pivotal piece that maybe changed the course that you were on. Third question, what is the absolute number one biggest mistake you ever made? Could be personal business, whatever. And lastly, what is the single legacy or life lesson that you want to pass on? Now, there's a cliche statement that says you don't want to miss this, folks, but I'm not saying that. I'm saying you can't afford to miss this. And, and I don't mean just financially now, seated with me here today is Chris Carneel, founder and CEO of Booster. And I'll be honest, I thought that was always a cute company that set up races in schools. Oh, no. Well, it's cute, but folks, Booster has raised to date over a billion dollars for schools with their innovative approach to fundraising. And seated with me here today is the man, Chris Carnell, who started the entire thing. Chris, question one. How in the world did you build this?
- [03:21]
B
Well, there's. That's a complicated, complex question, but let me get to it quickly. I'll tell you how we built it, how I started it, and then how we built and scaled it. Where we are now. Right now, we're the nation's largest elementary school fundraising company. We've raised about $1.3 billion. We work with 6,500 schools, which is 15% of America's elementary kids right now, which is awesome. This is our 25th school year, so it's taken two and a half decades to get to this point.
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A
Right.
- [03:51]
B
Started as a college student, literal college dorm room idea. I saw that schools were doing what they had done for 25, 30 years, which was selling a product, cookie dough, magazines, wrapping paper like Amazon and E Commerce was emerging and people don't need a kid to go to their door to buy wrapping paper that costs twice as much. What are they going to do, store it in their house? And so that I could just see that model was changing. When I was an elementary student, when I was a kid growing up in South Florida, I participated through my PE department as a kid in a fun run that the school hosted. And it was super fun. And then my dad, as the Booster club president, kind of made it a mini fundraiser. So I had that concept in my head from 15 years prior to. So when I one day was giving a baseball lesson, I played college baseball. And then I started my first business, which was getting one on one lessons. One of the kids I was tutoring wanted me to buy magazines and wrapping paper. And I just had this flashback to I did that, but I also did a fun run through the PE department. Yeah, that lesson ends. I call my dad and my dad encourages me. So, you know, the encouraging words of people, especially fathers or father figures, is huge. Hey, Kris, you got the energy, you could promote it. Schools need this. We had to run that on our own, get a ton of volunteers. It was so tough. You should see if schools would be interested in having you organize, promote, lead, communicate a fun run. So what we do now doesn't look too much like it. Did when I was a kid or even 25 years ago, but it's taken 25 years. So one, it starts with an idea. It starts with a big idea and it's an idea that I couldn't shake. Like I immediately thought, I can do this. I know it. I know I can deliver value to a client. I know like, and then the next 10 years was basically, how do I differentiate my value? How am I unique, how am I distinctive? And I really learned that from in person, one on one meetings. Like, what are you currently doing? I learned to ask big picture questions that would just kind of give me clues to what the problems I needed to solve were. And I just kind of read facial expressions. And whenever I saw, I still use the phrase, when I saw the eyebrow raise, I'm like, I got it. That's it. That's something they need that I can provide that they don't have. So we want to include every student. We want to do all the work for you. We're going to raise you twice as much money. We're going to handle the communication, the setup. Like, great. So I would just ask open ended questions. Tell me about your fundraising experience so far. Walk me through the last five years. What are the pain points? What doesn't work? And then when they listed what wouldn't work, I would say, well, I can do this, this and this sounds like this is the problem and I'll solve it for you. So you got to take delight in solving, building things, but solving problems for people. When you solve a problem, people will pay you to do it. And then the last. So that was the idea. Then there's a whole lot of open ended questions and curiosity. Client centricity. I've always been client centric. Like you write the paychecks, you're in charge, you're the CEO client. How can I serve you? What else can I do to serve you? Hey, I want to serve you again next year. What do I need to improve? So I got to have enough humility to say, I'm sure you like last year, but I want to keep you as a client for life. Tell me how I can improve. Tell me how I can improve. So you tune your ear to clients and they will build your product for you. You got to be willing to do it, to listen. But it starts with that. Curiosity starts with that.
- [07:04]
A
Were you a born entrepreneur?
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B
Yes. I didn't know it until probably high school, college, but looking back, I always started things. Always like taking risks. I always like selling things. To your original question, I just Want to make sure I'm clear. I don't think anyone fully pulls themselves up by their bootstraps or. And accomplishes anything singularly. Everyone has help. So how I built this is really how we built this. And we would be. My wife, of course, early on, team members, current team members. I did a good job recruiting a great team and then letting them run in their lanes. But we wouldn't be here without our 7,000 team members of the past 25 years and currently a thousand. So it took. It took all of us, for sure. I just happened to have the idea first, so cool.
- [07:52]
A
All right, question two. What's the best piece of advice, single piece of advice you ever got?
- [08:00]
B
So I'll hone in on the professional career, business advice. And it really goes back. It isn't profound, but it goes back. I had the idea of booster. I had run about four or five programs in my mind at the time. I'm a person of faith. I was a religion major. I went to grad school and seminary because I always had a passion that I wanted to change the world and make a difference. So for me, in my context, spiritually was, well, I'll work at a church. You know what? I'm kind of entrepreneurial. I want to start a church. I was going to move back to South Florida, where I'm from, and plant a church, because that's from my perspective, that's how I could use my gifts and change the world the most. Make a difference, human flourishing, love people, you know, encourage communities. That, from my context of where I was, that was the way I thought I could do that best. But I really enjoyed entrepreneurship, sales, competition, creating something out of nothing, the business world. So I thought, wrongly, so this was my bad philosophy at the time, that I had to choose between changing the world, making a difference, mission ministry, do good, or business growth, make money, use my gifts. I thought I had to choose. And I even heard language growing up, especially in, like, the faith community. Like, these people go into ministry, or they do this, and then everyone else just makes money. And now. And I could talk about this for a long time, but using your daily work as your mission, as your calling, as a place to create human flourishing in the world.
- [09:31]
A
Yeah.
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B
And I could do it every single day. So the best piece of advice was when I was a seminary student. Now, my mom was a college professor, my dad's an attorney. They have a combined 9 degrees. So like, you know, education, family. I all got multiple master's degrees, doctor degrees. So now here I am, and I'M contemplating dropping out of my master's program in grad school. My parents said, you don't want to pause educational momentum. You're in the zone. It only gets tougher if you have kids one day. Like, it's just tougher. You keep it going. I called, no joke. Over the course of a month, I called my 25 most influential people in my life and I said, this business is kind of going. It wasn't even a business. This idea is moving. Yeah, but I'm in grad school. What do you think I should do? The first 24 said, oh, you got to continue education. You got to finish it. And one person, my friend Keith, best advice ever got. He said, friend, you have business momentum. Follow that momentum. You could always go back to school. You might never recapture the magic you have right now. Clients are asking for your product. This is the early stage. Follow business momentum. That's the best advice ever received.
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A
Oh, my goodness.
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B
Everyone was telling me, go this way. But my gut. I was looking for one person. I was going to keep calling Jeff. I was going to call 50 people until someone said that I just needed a little. I was 23. One person confirmed what I thought. And friend of mine, Keith Nick, said, you had business momentum. Chase it.
- [11:06]
A
Wow.
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B
And then here we are.
- [11:08]
A
That's incredible. All right, now let's turn that on its head. What was the biggest mistake you ever made?
- [11:15]
B
Yep. So a lot of singular mistakes. Let me wrap it into a overall probably two decade series of mistakes I made all tied back, tethered to the same, we'll call it character flaw. I wasn't as holistic of a leader and I kept making mistakes in a certain category. And it's two sides of a coin, our gifts and strengths. Often there's something under on the other side of the coin that hinders us. I am a Myers Briggs ENFP. I'm an enneagram7. I love motivation, joy, fun things. The and I put on our program is putting on a fun run. I mean, it's literally the name of our program. The fun run. Fun run.
- [11:59]
A
Your emails fun run.
- [12:00]
B
It's fun run Confetti cannons. We have six virtues as a company. Our six virtues celebration. Like, I'm good at that stuff. I love that stuff. Let's create a party. Let's host events. Let's have a great time. That's our business. That's my DNA. That's what I love.
- [12:13]
A
Love it.
- [12:14]
B
The flip side of that is for too long, I would avoid conflict either with team members or with clients. Or with vendors. And I think the motive was like, let's work this out, let's figure it out. Let's find a compromise. Let's, you know. But what happened is too often I would delay hard conversations and it didn't help. It only delayed it. It ultimately was a lack of courage early on. Like not seeing what it could be. Probably an over optimistic, like I can win them over or woo them over. Let's just do that. It's okay. But. But I could have and should have. And it's still not naturally my DNA to be conflict first. And again, there's an appropriate respectful way to have conflict. But I would have run towards challenges numerous times. Hey, here's what I see coming. I just want to address this early. So too many conversations that I saw conflict I avoided and that didn't help. So every day now I pray for a heart of courage. I try to see things coming. I think about the best tactful way to have a conversation. And I try to lean forward as opposed to leaning away. Most of my big mistakes I could tie back to that. Now there's all kinds of business tactical mistakes that if I could go back again, I would do. But in the moment, you kind of only can work with the information you had. But most of the big mistakes were people mistakes and most of the people mistakes were me avoiding conflict early on.
- [13:37]
A
So awesome.
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B
All right, that's personality driven. So it's usually, usually people's mistakes are sometimes tied also to their giftedness. In some ways you create great moments. So I avoid bad moments. So for me to kind of see
- [13:52]
A
that wear the white hat all the time and not have the black hat on.
- [13:55]
B
Yeah. And someone has a different person, it might be the opposite. They might be so conflict. They don't create great moments or joyful moments or whatever. So you got to kind of know yourself. It's all about self awareness. Right.
- [14:04]
A
It's awesome. So life lesson, you got one to pass on to, whether it be other people in this building, younger generations, one life lesson. What's your favorite one?
- [14:17]
B
Depends on the age that's listening to this. But I. And this might even sound cliche and not. But this is it. This is. This is it. And it's not. There's not even Jeff a close second. Everything else is tactical and it's marry the right person and then prioritize your marriage. Someone hears this and maybe they had a marriage that didn't work out or they're not married. So I'm not trying to split the crowd here. I want to encourage everybody, but your life partner is your best business partner. And when I see entrepreneurs that for the long term make it, they feel a sense of support home and they are supportive at home so they can go fight the battles that always come. It's tough to win two front wars. So prioritizing marriage. And I'm certainly not a perfect husband. I've got a near perfect wife who's gracious and patient and forgiving and kind and encouraging and challenging and all that. But there's no way Booster would be here. I would be. If she hadn't seen the vision, supported the vision, sacrificed for the vision, helped with all kinds of things, encouraged me, challenged me, redirected me. I mean, she has been my biggest encourager. And this isn't a marriage podcast, but business wise, I would encourage everybody. I'm encouraging myself. This is self talk right here, man. When I, and I look back the last month, the last year, when I prioritized my marriage, that primary relationship, when everything in life is relationships, this is the one that matters most. So getting it right, the front end, the middle, and then continually nurturing and cultivating. Yeah, cultivating the most important relationship in life because that just fills me up, us up. That's the foundation for our family and ultimately for our company. So I don't want to alienate anybody hearing this, that like, my marriage is tough or just, hey, let's prioritize. The most important relationship. For me, the most important relationship in my life is my marriage. And that's probably true for many.
- [16:15]
A
Awesome. Give me, give me 30 seconds on your, your new book that is coming out soon.
- [16:19]
B
Sure. I just, just self published the Virtue Driven Business and it's a little bit of what we talked about. It's what I'm really passionate about. I don't think values. Everyone got really fired up about values. I think they've, they've served businesses well for the past 30 years. I think there's a whole nother level that businesses can get to. If the founder, CEO, entrepreneur, wants to use his or her business for the good of society and human flourishing, if they want to use and view business as something, as a tool to change the world and make a difference, then values aren't enough. Virtues are timeless. Virtues are aspirational, they're actionable. And virtues make you a holistic person in that if the business is promoting virtues, you look forward to coming to work and you look forward to going home. And you're a better person at work and you're a better person at Home or in your community. So the business should not have values that don't fit your everyday life.
- [17:21]
A
Give me an example.
- [17:22]
B
So our six virtues, gratitude, wisdom, care, courage, grit, and celebration, all of those can be applied to every category of my life. Every. And they make our business better. So I want to grow in wisdom. I want to teach my team to grow in wisdom. I want to equip them. We have a wisdom notebook. We have videos, we have podcasts. We're equipping them in wisdom so that they're better leaders, they're better listeners, they're more curious. Well, if you grow in wisdom as a business leader, you grow in wisdom as a son or daughter, a mother, father, a community member, a friend. Like, you want to be around wise people, from a men's group to a baseball team to your work. So, so they're more transcendent and holistic. So let's. I want to use my business platform internally for my culture to promote what I think are the six most important virtues that make humans thrive.
- [18:11]
A
Right?
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B
And if I, if my thousand team members thrive personally, that's going to produce business results and that's going to help them be the best that they can be.
- [18:20]
A
And the, the. So then the values are the boring things that we see on the walls.
- [18:25]
B
Great customer service, I love all that. I just don't know if they hit the heart. I don't know if they do enough. I think they are good, but not great. And I'm challenging American businesses to evolve. I have a couple friends, sovereigns Capital said, you know what, you're right. Let's shift to virtue. So if you haven't formed them, forget about values. Just jump the S curve. But if you have values, look at them on the wall. Do you believe them fully? Do they embody your people? Are they the absolute best human character traits that, that heroes and protagonists in every story embody? Well, let's be idealistic and aspirational. Let's pick those and let's drive them home. And there's a lot of ways in which we promote them and drive them home. Every team member gets a virtue box. We have a different icon per virtue, encouraging people to be the best of who they are. That helps the business and it helps them.
- [19:13]
A
So cool. How do people find you then?
- [19:16]
B
You can find me@kriscarnill.com that's got links to our company, Boosterthon. It's got links to a lot of events we do here called Virtue Voices Leadership event here in Atlanta. So chriscarneill.com Social's on. Everything attached to that. All right, great.
- [19:31]
A
Ask away in the comments like they always do. I'll feed them over to you. I'm sure there's gonna be plenty of questions. That was awesome, man. I want to shake your hand, man.
- [19:40]
B
Thanks.
- [19:41]
A
Thanks for your time.