Dave: Hey everyone, Dave here with another episode of the Philly Tech Connect podcast. Every week we bring you an episode with a Philadelphia entrepreneur to learn about their history and their journey. Today we’re bringing to you Brian Fitzpatrick. Brian’s the CEO and Chairman of Credible, a regulatory software company for the CBD cannabis industry. He’s led software and related platforms for over 25 years. The majority of his career has been spent building financial and regulatory tech companies and advancing them to successful exits. He specializes in cloud software, machine learning, robotic process automation, blockchain—a lot of good stuff here. Brian, how are you doing today?
Brian: Doing great, how are you, Dave? Good to be on.
Dave: I’m doing well, thanks so much for joining us to share some wisdom. I have a lot of people that I’ve been talking to who are a little newer in their journey, so this is giving me an opportunity to change up the questions a little bit. But firstly, as someone who’s been in the Philly tech scene for decades, honestly, tell us about your impressions of it and how maybe you’ve seen it change or not change over time.
Brian: Well, I’ve seen a lot of changes in the Philly tech scene, and I’ve really seen it come from basically non-existent to one that’s evolving very well. I mean, I still think we have some more work to do in the Philly tech scene, but I think it’s very positive from what I can see. What I’ve seen is when there was really not a lot of funding, not a lot of venture firms out there, to these angel groups starting to grow up and more venture firms and private equity firms being based out of the area. But more importantly, what I’m seeing is a growing ecosystem. I think the tech scene has been steadily growing with a pretty good diverse range of startups. I’ve gotten the opportunity to meet a lot of the CEOs and founders of those companies and really talk about how they’re recruiting, how they feel about the talent pool, how they feel about the Philly scene in general, and it’s very positive. But like anything else, it’s evolving, and it’s a lot stronger over the last 25 years from when I first saw it start to grow in its nascent roots.
Dave: That’s awesome, I love that optimism. I’ve been in Philly for only about six years or so and only really recently started to connect in the tech scene here, and I am feeling a lot of those tailwinds as well. Just the general motivation and ambition from the crowd. I hope 25 years from now I’ll be able to say similar things to what you said now, that they’ve made a lot of progress over the years. With respect to—you know, you’re the CEO and Chairman of Credible, but even just going back before that, I kind of looked at your LinkedIn profile. There are a number of times where you were CEO, president, etc. You’re a leader, you’ve been in a number of leadership positions. Not a lot of people really get to that level. Give us some advice, if you may, about being an effective leader.
Brian: Sure. My leadership journey has been an amazing one. I think I became a CEO at 32 years old, and I’ve been a CEO ever since. When I first became a CEO, I didn’t even know what I didn’t know. There was a lot of on-the-job learning. From a leadership perspective, it was important for me to really surround myself with people who had been there and done that. It’s one thing that I always tell people—seek wisdom. When you get on an airplane, you see the pilot there, you want to see a little gray hair. You want to see that this pilot, if they have to land on the Hudson, you’re going to live, right? It’s like anything else—if you seek that wisdom from others who have been there. I had that opportunity to be around a lot of really good leaders very early on, and the thing that I noticed, which I’ve emulated in my own leadership style, is humility in leadership. I’ve never been that guy who’s going to bang my fist on the desk and say it’s because I said so, that’s why we’re doing it. That authoritative method doesn’t work real well, and it never has for me. I’ve never tried it, but I’ve seen it used in various companies I was in.
So, from a leadership perspective, I think it’s really important to be out there in front as a good example, but you also have to lead from behind. You need to really allow your people to feel like they’re in an environment where they can speak up. I encourage my folks in my company to challenge me. Just because I’m the CEO doesn’t mean I can’t be challenged. If there’s another way of doing things, if there’s a different way that you want to voice your concern or your opinion, I want to hear it. Because what happens is if you’re this leader where it’s your way or the highway or the only way, you don’t foster good ideas, you don’t foster innovation, and nobody really is able to take ownership as part of their company. It’s all about you. So never make a company about you. I think that’s the greatest thing in leadership that I have really found. I’ve had the opportunity to work with great team members and really build great companies, which I don’t do alone. It’s been through a group of great people working together in a very good culture.
Dave: I love that. A lot of things that you mentioned about being an effective leader—you mentioned humility, surrounding yourself with great people, leading by example—they seem to me as things that are just timeless qualities that would have benefited somebody 100 years ago. Do you feel that way, or are there ways in which the way you’re leading a company now, the expectations of being a leader, feel different than 32-year-old Brian and what the approach was back then?
Brian: I do feel a difference. I think the biggest thing that I’ve really learned as I’ve gotten older is you sort of compartmentalize when you’re younger. Like, you’re a 31- or 32-year-old CEO, so you’re supposed to be this way, you’re supposed to act a certain way. When the reality of the situation is, you just need to be who you are to all people. Your leadership style in business shouldn’t be any different than my leadership style as a dad, or with my friends, or the people I’m around. You have one self, and that one self needs to be unique and authentic. I’ve always believed that you should try to find a way to make things and people better than you found them. If you really focus on that, I think it’s very helpful.
Back when I was sort of emerging, I was growing up in this scene where we were coming out of a different kind of era and age where you had to be authoritative. I’ve had bosses that really scared me—they were intimidating. Although I learned a lot from them and learned how to be prepared because you never wanted to go in front of any of these folks unprepared, it really taught me that I needed a different style. Your style in business should be the way you are all the time, because it’s about authenticity, being real, and being a good person before anything else. If you’re a good person, then you’re going to be a good leader, you’re going to be a good manager, and you’re going to be a good co-worker or team member. I think that’s the important thing—there’s no putting on CEO pants and then taking them off. Everybody’s scared of me during the day and I’m intimidating during the day, but then I’m nicer when I get home. No, it has nothing to do with it. It’s really about being who you are, authentic, and leaving people better than you found them.
Dave: It’s good to know that you don’t necessarily have to be someone you’re not to be a role, to be an effective leader. It should be a lot easier to just be yourself. Let’s shift gears a little bit and talk about some failures. I’d be surprised if in the decades of a body of work that you produced, there weren’t some times or some projects or whatever they may be that just didn’t go the way you expected. Whether we want to call them a failure or not is debatable because we can argue we learn from everything we do. Nevertheless, let’s say something that didn’t go as expected. Do you have anything in mind you can share with us?
Brian: Well, how much time do you have? That’s the question, right? Listen, failure is a big part of life, right? The key thing about failure is you’re not going to win everything, and you’re going to make a series of mistakes. It’s really what you learn from those things that really helps to make you a success over time. So yes, I have had several things that did not work the way that I thought they would. I have many examples of that in business. I really view entrepreneurship and business as an evolution, not a revolution. Whenever you look at these people and you see these big success stories, what you don’t hear is everything that they’ve been through and falling along the way through that evolution. What I would say has made me successful in my career is not just about what I’ve done right, but it’s everything I’ve done wrong. I started my first business when I was in second grade, so I’ve been starting businesses and watching and learning all along. Fortunately, I haven’t had any business failures where the business just went under. I’ve led every one of these startups to the point where they’ve had a successful exit, but lots of little failures along the way to get there. I can tell you, one of the companies I had was three or four days away from going out of business and getting a bank loan called and literally just shutting down the whole business. But it was what I was able to do to recover from that. It’s like I tell people all the time, it’s not how big you mess up, it’s really how you recover and what you learn from that. I mean, I can spend all afternoon giving you examples of failures, but all of them helped to get me where I am today.
Dave: There’s something that you said there I have to also inquire a little bit more. It wasn’t a planned question, but you mentioned that the first business you started was in second grade. I kind of want to know what it is.
Brian: Yeah, well, I grew up in the late 70s. When I was a kid in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, the ice cream man used to come around. It was the Jack and Jill ice cream man. Myself and another friend, another fellow second grader, we used to watch what kids would buy from the ice cream man. Much to our surprise, they didn’t buy as much ice cream; they bought candy. We used to write down what they would buy, what kind of candy, and we realized that we could actually sell the candy cheaper than the ice cream man, and we knew exactly what candy to buy because we sat for weeks writing down what kids would buy. So we got my friend’s mom to take us to this wholesale candy store with literally socks full of quarters that we would earn doing different things and chores. Cleaning my sister’s car, for example. We had that money and now we knew what people were buying. We literally opened up a little candy store behind his house. We made a little shelter. The lesson I learned there was to learn what the market wants and needs and is willing to pay for. That was a very early lesson in second grade. We learned that just by watching what people were buying. Then we had a price strategy. That business quickly got shut down when the ice cream man, who used to wear an eye patch, had tattoos all over his arm, and was missing three fingers on one hand, came around and literally pointed in our face. He actually sought us out in the backyard and told us he was going to call the police and shut us down. Well, that literally scared the bejesus out of us. That was the end of our business, but we learned that young to watch what people wanted and needed and what they were willing to pay for.
Dave: I guess that may be one exception to all businesses led to successful exits then, I guess. But it was led to an exit nevertheless.
Brian: It was an exit on our terms. We ran. We just took off.
Dave: Very cool. Brian, it sounds like you’ve already shared a number of pieces of advice that you kind of learned along the way, but if you could sit 32-year-old, first-time CEO Brian Fitzpatrick down and share some wisdom with him, what might you say?
Brian: You know, it’s always an interesting question because you learn along the way, but I think the one thing is take a pause. That would be my greatest advice to my younger self because I tended to be more reactive as a leader before, and I was not as introspective as I should have been. Later on in life, I learned to hit the pause or the mute button on myself because a lot of times what happens is when you’re in a situation in business, you see something going on, you think you know this, you think you’ve got this figured out, and you talk too soon and open your mouth. Instead, as I’ve gotten older, I’ve become much more introspective and I’ve observed a lot more than I used to. So I listen more, I understand more about what’s going on, and I’m less reactive to things. That has reduced a lot of the stress in me, and it’s also created a better working environment with my people because it has given me the opportunity to truly understand where they’re coming from, even if I don’t agree with them. To understand, as Stephen Covey once said as one of the seven lessons, to seek first to understand before being understood. When I was young, I think part of my struggle at 32 years old was that I was insecure. I was a CEO at 32, all my other counterparts were much older than me, and I felt like I needed to have the answers. The fact of the matter is, I didn’t need to have all the answers. I needed to really sit back and think more and take a pause. That would be the way I think I would describe it as I look back at how I was at 32 versus how I am at 55.
Dave: Brian, for people that want to reach out, hear some more words of wisdom, get in touch, how should they do so?
Brian: Yeah, so I’m at brian@credible.com. I actually spend a lot of time lecturing in universities today because I’m a big believer in giving back. The youth today, whether they’re Millennials or whether they’re Gen Z, they are our future. They’re our future leaders. So I’m a very big believer in mentoring future leaders. I’m always willing to give advice and help out if I can, so I’m at brian@credible.com.
Dave: Thanks so much. I’m sure there are a number of people in our community that would benefit greatly from hitting you up on that. I appreciate your time today, Brian, and sharing everything you’ve learned over the last several decades of being a Philadelphia entrepreneur.
Brian: Thank you, Dave. It’s great to be on the show and great to see what you’re doing for Philly entrepreneurs.