Collaboration and Authenticity in Nonprofit t Leadership
Transcript of the Interview with Joe Homs
Hugh Ballou: Greetings. Welcome to this edition of The Nonprofit Exchange. This guest today is a connection through the co-host, Russell David Dennis. And Russell, you met this guy a few years ago, right?
Russell Dennis: A few years ago, yes. They were doing an interesting project that helped you expand your mind. Since that time, he has gone light years ahead of that. Don’t let that youthful appearance that you’re about to see fool you. This man is loaded. He’s got lots of learning, brings lots of experience to the table. He’s doing things to help people be more authentic, and he is all about collaboration. That’s our language. I’ve got a bio here that’s just to brag him up, but I’ll let him tell you about himself. Go for it, young Joe Homes.
Joe Homes:  All right. So hi, everybody. My name is Joe. Last name is Homes. And, I’m now a partner at a company called Your Charisma Coach. And we teach people how to charismatically influence people to just kind of be a force for good in the world, to really connect and to share your own humanity with someone else and really to just again be a force for good in the world. We teach people through seminars, products, things like that.
For myself, I came up a backwards way in industry, in jobs or whatever. My first job was at a venture capital firm, which most people don’t start out with; they usually are successful entrepreneurs or something like that, and then they take all their money and invest there. I started there and was just the jack of all trades and worked my way up. I eventually became the entrepreneur in residence role. I got exposed to a lot of different companies, a lot of different industries, a lot of different things. Then I went to college, so I started doing that job when I was like 17. It was ridiculous. Then went to college, finished out that fund, and became a management consultant. Traveled around the world, did all kinds of stuff there. My job essentially ever since has been going into organizations, and make people act quickly, get in contact with them, know them, sometimes better than they know themselves, and help them fix problems and collaborate and do that kind of thing.
I met some friends a few years ago, and we were at a seminar together. All of us are doing our own different things. These other two gentlemen are very successful in their own right. We all decided to come together and create something amazing. I just joined this company as a new partner. We are just so happy to basically connect the world because we see, at least I see the world going in a couple of different ways. One is where technology, software is eating the world. That was my old world. I have a degree in computer science. Software is doing amazing, cool technological things.
The other way that the world I see is going is we are in a connection economy. We are in that place where you reach out on Facebook: Who is the best plumber in my neighborhood? You reach out to a connection that you met years ago, like I reached out to you Russell because I saw something go by on LinkedIn. I haven’t spoken to him in a while; let me see how I can connect. I ended up being here on your podcast. This is great, of course, but it’s just a wonderful thing where you can just go up and connect with people.
We saw those two things happening, where technology and psychology are diverging. We wanted to bring them back together and give people a chance to connect with their fellow human beings and show people how to do that. Charisma is a skill. It’s something you can learn. It’s something you can always get better at. It’s an interesting thing. I hope that suffices to say who I am and what I do.
Russell: It does to a degree, but man, there is so much more there that is phenomenal. You talk about the word “charisma.” A lot of people think that charisma, they look at a figure that is out there, that everybody kno