- PNC is proud to support "Business Forward", where community leaders discuss the issues confronting business in Central Illinois.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) - Welcome to "Business Forward".

I'm your host, Matt George.

And joining me tonight, Chuck Weaver, friend, former senator, local businessman, entrepreneur, family man, and mentor to many.

So welcome, Chuck.

- Thank you.

- That's a lot of titles.

(Matt laughing) - I like that family man part.

- That family man.

- Buddy, 'cause that's what it's all about.

- It is, and let's go right into that piece, because really when I think of you and your family and I go out to your home, every time I pull up, I think about your dad, and your mom.

But Bob and Virginia Weaver were legends.

- Thank you.

- I mean, you could tell story after story about 'em.

- Mm-hmm, you bet, thanks.

I didn't know you were gonna enter or start that way, but when I pull on that farm, I think about 'em too.

- I bet.

- I drive around just different parts of the farm and say, "Boy, I remember when Dad said this here and Mom said that there, and I got whipped over under that tree right there," so, (laughing) yeah.

(Matt laughing) But thank you, I was a blessed kid, great family.

- Well, your dad got into the chicken business, but he was a farmer and was smart.

And he actually, one of the neatest things for me was going into his office, and when I was in that fundraising mode, he would talk business.

He didn't wanna know what a typical donor would wanna know, he wanted to know what your labor was, he wanted to know things, how you were running the business.

That if he was gonna give you some money.

- I like that, mm-hmm.

- That it was gonna be well used, I always thought that was cool.

- Yeah, great.

- And you walk into his office and there's a picture of Colonel Sanders.

So I thought that was fun.

But your wife, Laurie, is doing some great things in this community, but you also have three great kids.

- Thank you, Travis and Annie and Jesse, and so on, so.

- Mm-hmm, thanks.

- Well, thanks for coming on, very active family.

One of my favorite authors of all time is John Maxwell.

He's written thousand books it seems like, and I've read 'em all.

And he talks about leadership and he talks about mentorship.

And one of the things that I read was, "We all need someone to help us in our pursuit of intentional growth, and the right mentor helps you take massive leaps forward."

- Wow, that's good.

- It's pretty strong.

So when I look at you and think of you, I look at you as a mentor.

I don't look at you as a businessman or a, I do look at you as a family man.

But I was young, I was 29 years old and.

- [Chuck] Is that right, when you and I?

- 29.

'53.

- Yeah, met at Panera Bread.

(Matt laughing) I think was probably what was going on then.

- It was at Panera Bread.

And that really started my mentor journey.

And I remember you saying something, Chuck, that I'll never forget, you said, "This is not advice, this is we're gonna talk through your leadership journey and what that's gonna look like."

And I truly, I'll be honest with you, I've said it many times before, you know this, but I'm a CEO because of that mentorship, that I wouldn't have been there without it.

So I've always appreciated that about you.

- Oh, well, it's an honor, 'cause you made a difference in this community, glad to be a little part of it.

- Yeah, so when you look at mentorship, how do you look at it?

What's the angle you take at it?

- So you've got my mind going down about three thoughts already.

I wanna say two of 'em really quick.

I don't ever wanna give advice, 'cause the person's story is this big and I know that much.

So I'm always gonna ask questions, I don't wanna give advice.

Second thing is, I was mentoring a young lady this morning, and I told her, "Go read John Maxwell books."

- Are you serious?

- So, yeah.

And I don't always say that, but this morning, just coincidentally, I did.

- That is great.

What was the other one?

- Third one was just about topic generally, and driving up here today, I was trying to think about what would be the key message I'd wanna give.

Probably two things, one of 'em is, I always start with people.

I give 'em a book on purpose, mission, vision, what are the three big questions?

What's your purpose?

What's your mission?

What's your vision?

Because I don't wanna, I'm helping people think about what they can do in a political environment, I don't want them going into a political environment unless it's clear on what their personal mission is about what they should be accomplishing with their time on earth.

So I start with that.

And then the second thought is, just trying to help people how to think, and I talk about solitude a lot.

- Yeah, we'll go into that word, that's an interesting word, solitude.

So what's your definition of solitude?

- If a person walked up to me on the street and said, "Chuck, I hear you mentor a lot of young people," and I think, right now, probably over 100 people I'm mentoring about on a quarterly basis, I'll tell 'em, "Solitude."

Because how do you figure out the one thing that you do that changes 10 things or 15 things?

And I think the biggest gap probably in our society right now is people don't slow down to think.

And with my mentees, I ask 'em when I'm talking about this topic, how often are you solving a problem in the shower?

And everybody gets a look on their face, like, "I do solve problems (laughing) in the shower."

(Matt laughing) It's 'cause the only time your phone's not ringing, your kids aren't yelling, you're standing still, you're in a relaxed mode.

And so I do a day of solitude every month.

I'm very intentional about it.

There's times when I will take a longer period of time.

A few years ago, I did a month in Colorado when I was thinking about getting outta the Senate and deciding what I wanted to do next, and just shutting down.

So that'd be the first thing I'd tell 'em, solitude.

The second thing that goes with that, doesn't do any good to think about what you need to do unless you have self-discipline.

So you start with solitude to figure out what to do, then self-discipline, make sure you accomplish it.

- And you truly believe you can always improve self-discipline, right?

- Oh, absolutely, mm-hmm.

- I mean, it's something that I work on all the time.

And I think part of that too, is trying to break bad habits.

And I think that's hard, because you wanna get up at the same time, I do, I wanna get up at 5:40 every day, I wanna start my routine, I like that cadence every day, but when I'm off, I'm off.

So I have to try to figure out how to get back and break those habits of staying up and watching the Cubs game, or whatever it may be, right?

- Right, right, mm-hmm.

- So over the years, have you ever thought about how many people that you've mentored?

Do you track that?

- I did a list about three or four years ago, and I just tried to think, I had 113 people on that list.

And the reason I was doing that was 'cause I was thinking about what I wanted to do next, and it's this project I'm doing right now, I call it RS50, and what did I learn from that 113 people as I look back and thought about what had happened in their lives?

And I tried to adjust that for the process I'm doing now.

- So I wanna just kinda tell you a quick story.

And I don't know if you recall it like this, and I kinda don't, it doesn't matter because this is how I recall it, so it's just kinda funny.

So you would say, "Matt, meet at," I think it was 6:45, we'd go meet at Panera, and we would sit there, it was every Tuesday.

And I would walk out and I'd see this guy walk in, I'd go, "Man, I saw that guy last Tuesday."

I wasn't picking up on it, and I'm in thinking mode and you're having me think differently.

And we kept seeing each other, seeing each other.

And then I switched times, then I was at 7:30, and then I saw a different person.

And it was interesting because I asked you once, I said, "I'm here for three hours, you're here for three hours changing lives."

So you got an award one year at the Association of Fundraising Professionals.

- Right, that was an honor.

- And you walk up, and instead of giving a speech, patting yourself on the back or saying, "Thanks, this is," whatever, you said, "I challenge all of you in this room, and I challenge all of you to mentor someone, to care about someone, to take someone under your wing and make them a better leader."

And you had our table stand up, and it happened to be Larry Tim, it was all the guys who walked by me at Panera.

- Oh wow, was it a coincidence they were there together or what?

(Matt laughing) I'm serious.

- No, you invited 'em all.

- Oh, is that what it was?

Okay, yeah, yeah.

- I mean, this was probably, I don't know, 12 years ago, something like that.

- Larry's in prison now.

(Matt laughing) No, I'm teasing.

(laughing) Larry's turned out great.

- Larry's great.

But you had young life.

And you look around, and I'll never forget that story, because what you did is you made, or had a hand in preparing young CEOs to take on this community, and that's what you did.

And so I took it as a challenge, I haven't had as many as you, I'm 21, I think, people that I've mentored.

- Wow, good for you.

- And some of 'em last forever.

And they become friends too, like you and I, but there's always that mentorship piece, you never forget that mentee-mentorship piece.

- So one of the things I was thinking about yesterday coming in here is, "Why aren't people doing it?"

'Cause I've got a lot of friends with a lot of talent and they aren't mentoring.

I think it's fear, and people think, "How could I bring value?"

(laughing) If you're old, you bring value.

I mean, you and I have had so many.

- You're wise.

- Absolutely, or still dumb, but we're getting smarter about it, right?

- Yeah, but you're talking about failures too.

- Absolutely.

- I mean, we've failed 1,000 times.

- Yep, and that's where their good stories come from, are the failures.

But if anybody's listening today, I would tell them, if you see somebody that's younger and say, "Hey, if you ever wanna sit down and talk, I got some thoughts."

The people I mentor now, their job is to come with three questions, I've found that more than likely what I wanna work on in their life is what they wanna work on in their life.

So instead of me saying it, I say, "What's on your mind?"

And there's three questions.

Occasionally, I'll say, "I don't know where to go with that, let's think it through together."

In fact, I sat down with a young lady one time and we developed a process we called becoming bulletproof, that I probably repeat once a week, but it was a 21-year-old woman that was troubled with the fact that what she was trying to accomplish wasn't happening.

And I said, "Well, it might be about how you're doing it.

Let's figure out the right way to do it."

So sometimes I get mentored by the people I'm mentoring.

- Yeah, I think that's the fun part of being a mentor.

- Aw, I learn every day.

- It's 'cause you can learn.

- Absolutely.

- You can learn, and yeah, you're right, I don't understand why some of my friends don't take that.

It's like the most fulfilling part of my day.

- We all think about writing a book, you've written one, you're working on your second now, is that right?

- Yeah, yeah.

- I don't know that I'll ever write one, but I think trying to write one brings a lot of clarity.

But if I was writing a book today, it would be on get clarity of stolen mental models.

- Wow, I had to think about that for a minute.

- And so this woman I was with this morning, I told her that concept and she looked at me just like you did, was like, "What the heck does get clarity of stolen mental models?"

I told her a four-step process for how you help persuade somebody on something.

And it's good, I said, "I stole that," later, I said, "I stole that, that wasn't my idea.

But I've talked about it enough, I probably have as much clarity as the guy I heard say it the first time, so gain clarity of stolen mental models."

So by the time you're our age, hopefully you've read a lot, everything I read, I try to say, "What's the key point here?"

And I try to write that down as a mental model, and then how do I get clarity on it?

- Yeah, I do the same thing, so whether it's.

- Tell me about that.

- Well, Ray Dalio or Lencioni.

I mean, there's parts of books that I don't care about, but I'll go back and reread 10 times the part that I do the care about.

- They key part.

- And I journal, I still do.

I journal and I'll sit there and I'll say, "I have to really dissect that piece of it."

Sometimes it may turn into a topic on this show, sometimes I'll write about it, or sometimes I'll talk to a mentor about it.

But it's interesting because the way I read, I still like old-school books, I don't read on a computer or anything.

- Yeah, good.

- But my books, they're highlighted, I got Post-it notes everywhere.

- Right, I'm the same way.

- I've seen your yellow pads and your cards.

- Yeah, yeah.

- So just to kind of touch on this, and because I get asked all the time about mentorship and people don't know how to ask for a mentor or don't know how to get a mentor.

What do you say to people if they ask you, "Chuck, how do I get a mentor?"

- Yeah, help is the most important word in the English language.

You wanna fundraise, you wanna put a business together, use the word help, "I need your help."

People do not say no when you say, "I need your help."

- Hmm.

- And if you're a young person wanting help, you go to an old guy and you say, "I need some help, would you mind?"

People don't say no.

- Yeah, they really don't, that's a good way of putting it.

- Pretty simple, yeah.

- Now, let's say you're somebody younger and you're looking for a mentor, do you go to somebody that you think that that person, like you don't wanna be a banker and go to a bank person, right, necessarily?

I mean, that's what.

- Maybe, but maybe, sure.

- Maybe, but maybe you wanna expand your thoughts too, and so I get that question too, because they don't know how to go outside of their little realm of where they work.

It's interesting.

- Yeah, this is really a segue.

Are you watching this quarterback show that's on?

- I'm not.

- Aw, it is fantastic.

- Is it?

- But these great quarterbacks, they have coaches.

- Oh yeah.

- On every part of their life, right?

- Yeah, yeah.

- I mean, Kirk, help me out.

- Kurt Warner?

- No.

- [Matt] Oh, Cousins?

- Yeah, Kirk Cousins.

I mean, he's got the psychologist he's sitting down with, they show the conversation with him, and plus all the other people.

I tell people, "You need to think about mentors for different parts of your life.

Who's helping you spiritually?

Who's helping you as a father?

Who's helping you in your business, right?

Who's helping you if it's a political career?"

Because I can't help people in some areas of their life, but I might be able to help 'em in others.

So figure out the area you wanna work on and then ask around who's smart in it.

- Yeah, so in our process as mentor and mentee, the most important habit I got into was holding myself more accountable for everything that I do.

- Great, mm-hmm.

- I like that.

- All right, let's change gears.

I'm gonna come back to mentorship at the end, 'cause I wanna ask you if you have mentors, but I wanna end with that.

Let's change gears.

You work with a lot of startup companies.

And when we start talking about that, obviously know what a startup company is, but what's your role in working with a startup company?

'Cause there's a lot of different roles.

- So there's three things our startup community has to have in Peoria, and I think we're very good at two of 'em and I think we're very poor at one of 'em.

So people say, "How do we get new businesses here?

Get businesses started here?"

You've gotta have the idea.

Really, there's no shortage of ideas, that's easy to come by, believe it or not.

Now, whether they're great or not, or whether they're just a single, you don't know.

You gotta have financing, and you can raise money in the city of Peoria if you go through the right processes and get acquainted to the right people, and this is a town that people will help finance ideas.

And the third one is, you need to know how to manage the idea.

That is what we're poor at in this community.

You go to Silicon Valley, you have all these people that have started companies, and now when you need to start a company, you can figure out, "Who are the five guys that know something about it?"

We don't have that here, that's where we're weak.

So as myself, that's where I try to fill the gap, is how to help people manage their idea better.

And I, go ahead.

- How do you do that?

Give me an example of, because I believe you, I mean, I feel like I have 1,000 ideas.

Not all of 'em are good, but if you push me to have a business idea by Friday at noon, I'd give you one, right?

But there's a lot of people like that, the financing piece is a whole nother piece.

But then that piece that you're talking about.

- Management piece.

- That is the beating that's hard.

- Right, so that's about getting the right people in the room with you.

So I didn't plan on going there today on this, but it's, I think, an interesting kind of summary of what I'm trying to do with people as they're starting a company.

I had a guy that approached me about an idea, and I thought it was terrible.

And I told him, I said, "I'm sorry, I'm just not interested in," I didn't wanna tell him how terrible (laughing) I thought the idea was.

I go to dinner that night, and Annie's mother-in-law, she said, "What'd you do today?"

I told her about this idea, she goes, "I want one of those."

(Matt laughing) And I thought, (laughing) "Maybe it's not a bad idea after all," but I still didn't like it myself.

I called the guy the next day, I said, "You are at ground zero, and I'm willing to work with you, but I'm gonna help bring you management and I'm gonna help bring you fundraising, I'm gonna help you understand where your idea's going to work.

And I'm willing to go ahead, but we are gonna own this 50/50."

And he didn't have any problem with that, 'cause he knew he had the idea, but he didn't have all the other parts.

And I said, "And then as we raise money, we'll dilute equally.

So as you go out to raise dollars, we'll go to 49, 48 together.

And this was really fun, I haven't done it many times, but I called five business owners I knew and I said, "I need your smartest guy for online marketing for one, I need your smartest design guy."

And they said, "Well, why are you doing this?"

I said, "Well, I've got this guy with an idea, and here's where I wanna bring you value, Mr. Business Owner.

I want 10 hours of your person that you're gonna give me, and they will watch a decision made on a startup whether it's a go or a no-go."

And they all gave me, "Yes."

And so Bump Box, great online company, they gave me their person in charge of online marketing.

Now, that person's worth a lot of money to get 10 hours of their time, I got it for free for this guy.

So three steps, the 10 hours is basically three two-hour meetings and a four-hour homework project for the person helping us.

And the first meeting is we're gonna brainstorm all the problems of this idea, then we're going to decide what do we need to know about the solutions?

So what's a go, no-go on whether or not this kills the business or not?

And then I gave these young people homework on going and studying the five most critical areas.

And then they came back at the third meeting, and they're presenting what they figured out about this idea.

This is the great part.

An hour in, this guy said, "This idea doesn't work, does it?"

And everybody said, "Nope."

- Wow.

- And I said, "Hold on, it works in Japan."

Because what we learned, it was about recycling, Japan does totally different recycling than every place else in the world.

"This might work in Japan, so don't feel like your idea is dead, but you're gonna find somebody else other than me if it's about Japan."

But I tell people, "I'm doing you a favor if we figure out why your idea won't work in 10 weeks, because otherwise you spend five years in your mom's basement working on something that's not gonna work."

So we try to get to a conclusion, and I'm not always right, yeah.

- (sighing) That's a process too.

- Fun process.

- It is a fun process.

The other piece too, that's interesting is, think about the dollars saved.

- Yeah, absolutely.

- And the mind time saved.

I mean, that's interesting.

- So I do something like that with about every deal I get into now.

I negotiate what I'm gonna get, it's never 50%, that was rare.

I usually want three to five, 3% to 5%.

And I will then, after we negotiate it, I'm gonna spend six weeks mentoring them.

And if I walk away, they got good free advice.

If I want in, then I exercise my option to get in.

But I go through that process for that six weeks of, "What do we need to understand?

What are the key points?"

Mainly what I'm looking at is whether or not that entrepreneur's flexible to learn.

That's the biggest problem with entrepreneurs, they get an idea and they won't pivot off of the original idea when sometimes they need to.

- Yeah, I was in a.

- I hope this isn't (laughing) too boring.

- No, this is awesome.

- Good.

- Because it reminds me, I was involved with something with Kevin Harrington on "Shark Tank".

And it was a unbelievable idea.

He had funding, he had this.

His problem was him.

So I think it's interesting too, is in this process, you can also identify who's not the CEO of the company, and sometimes it's the founder or slash.

- Yeah, that's that third part of management, you gotta find the right person to run it.

It may not be the founder.

- And that.

- Some of 'em can't give that up, and that's a problem for 'em.

- [Matt] This guy didn't give it up.

- And where's he now?

- He failed.

- (laughing) Absolutely.

- But you're talking millions.

- Yeah, that's hard, mm-hmm.

- And the idea was brilliant.

And so I think that you're right.

I mean, so one of the shows that I do watch all the time is "Shark Tank", because I think it's interesting, not just the business model, but how they present the model.

And you can almost tell who's a leader or who's not.

- Right, by the language.

- By whether they're gonna do it or not.

- And style, yeah.

- Interesting, so how many people in a year or month come up to you and pitch an idea to you?

Does it happen a lot?

- Literally, I got a text an hour and a half ago.

At breakfast, some lady grabbed me and said, "Hey, I just gave somebody your name."

I wouldn't think every two or three weeks wouldn't be outta the picture.

And I watched my dad and my mom, they would try to help anybody they could, and so my goal is to try to help, but sometimes you just don't have the ability.

But almost always, I will spend at least a breakfast with 'em, helping 'em think.

And hopefully you give 'em good guidance.

- Yeah, I mean, that's the empathy piece, I mean, it is, it's you caring.

I wasn't even gonna go here, but I just thought of something, because I think it's important to startups is being organized too.

And you have a system and so.

- [Chuck] I got pad, paper.

- You got pads.

- You got your pad there, but I had.

- How do you, as busy as you are in a day, how do you get through that list to knock stuff off so it doesn't carry on to the procrastination of the next day?

How do you do that?

- I guess the key is, you've gotta put things into different buckets and how you do 'em.

If I'm sitting with someone, like this lady this morning, she said, "Hey, I want you to call this guy.

Hey, I'm gonna have this guy call you."

I said, "No, I want you to put me on a text with him."

That's the way I like to manage that, because now I've got it, now she knows I did my job, so I honor the person that sent 'em to me, and we'll start doing a followup on that.

I try to get it off my plate immediately.

I mean, if I'm sitting with somebody, an idea comes up.

I had a guy this morning that I was sitting with, I said, "Hey, let me text them real quick while we're sitting here."

You gotta get it off your plate.

I write everything down.

- [Matt] I know you do.

- That's on my plate to do.

And when I watch people, I'm talking to 'em and they're not taking notes, I'm thinking, "I'm probably wasting my energy here."

(Matt laughing) Because you gotta, our brains are not wired to remember things.

- [Matt] That's right.

- You remember things when you bump into 'em, not randomly, you're walking down the street and you go, "Oh gosh, I need to remember to X, Y, Z," it's usually you saw the dry cleaner, goes, "I better stop in."

So I've got a system I use for how I track stuff.

- All right, last question.

Mentors, for you, don't count Bob and Virginia Weaver, they're forever mentors, but who does Chuck Weaver go to now for advice?

- Right, I've got two different ways I do that.

I have virtual mentors that don't even know I exist.

Jack Welch is a guy I think of that was GE, one of the greatest, yeah, CEOs ever.

If I'm in a tough spot, I think what would Jack Welch do right now?

And you put yourself in those shoes.

Norman Brinker, who has a Peoria.

He was a restaurant guy and I was a restaurant guy, and I think, "What would Norman Brinker do right now?"

- Interesting.

- So that's one part.

And it's enough just to get your brain backed up.

It could be, "What would Mayor Maloof have done?

What would Mayor Ardis have done?

What would Mayor Ali do if they were in this situation?"

Think of good leaders and how you would deal with that.

- All right, well.

- The other part though, is I circle myself with good people.

So you go ahead, yeah.

- You do do that.

No, you do do that.

- Yeah, yeah.

- Well, I appreciate you coming on.

- Aw, what an honor.

- Mentor and friend, thank you so much.

I'm Matt George, and this is another episode of "Business Forward".

(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music) - Thank you for tuning in to "Business Forward", brought to you by PNC.