Mayor Scott Fadness – Mayor of Fishers, Indiana; Developing businesses and a community from focusing on entrepreneurship; Leading by core values; Building on a community.
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Segment 1: (Length :05:00) – General Updates; Introduction to Mayor Scott Fadness and his background to becoming the Mayor of Fishers, Indiana; Winning over a population with a sense of purpose.
Mayor’s finer points:
“I always had a passion to be a part of something bigger than myself. I always had a drive to be involved in something that I felt had a sense of purpose.“
“I was going to go be a professor, but I didn’t want to write papers for the rest of my life so I ended up getting a master’s in Public Affairs.”
A city manager job was a kind of job that you could have instant gratification because you’re constantly doing things that have real impact for the residents that you’re serving.”
“I became city manager at 28 and at 31 I became the first mayor of our city, which is about 90,000 people. We grow at about 1,000 new homes a year so we’re a fast growing community.”
“First of all, you have to be authentic and organic more than anything else. People can tell when you’re not and insults the intelligence of people when you’re not anything but that.”
“It’s all about scalability. How can you stay authentic and organic with your message while at the same time broaden it to a greater reach of people?”
“I went into over 120 living rooms in my community and just had conversations with residents. During my campaign, I don’t think I was home for a stretch of maybe 55 days in a row. I was out constantly talking with people and meeting where they are at.”
Segment 2: (Length :07:00) – Talking with Mayor Scott Fadness; Developing businesses and a community from focusing on entrepreneurship;
Mayor’s finer points:
“It’s all about scalability. If you’re growing your entrepreneurial company today, whether you are talking about working in a large corporate environment or growing a city, it goes back to figuring out what your story is and aspirations are, and then being able to scale in a way that still draws people back to your core values or core interests.”
“Whether you’re 90,000 people or 1M people, I think the fundamentals are still there. You just use different tools to get the job done.”
Segment 3: (Length :07:00) – Core Values & Entrepreneurship
Mayor’s Core Values:
- Fiscal responsibility
- Need for purpose, meaningful work and desire to make a difference (runs as hard as he can each day, and ends each day knowing he did all he can to serve his community).
- Family
Mayor’s finer points:
“For our city to be viable for the long term we have to be smart, vibrant and entrepreneurial. I don’t mean we all have to go out and start businesses. It’s more of a values system on how you tackle and approach problems.”
“We really wanted to do things differently. We didn’t go around looking at what everyone else is doing and then try to figure out how to incrementally improve that. Instead we looked at the issues we had, the resources we had and we just got creative solving one problem after another.”
“We co-founded our co-working space with the largest now in Indiana with 550 members.”
“It’s really more about how do you approach these problems. Whether you’re talking about recruiting companies to your city, to how you plan your parks or all the way to tough issues like crime and mental health, if you use the same value system it’s amazing the creativity and innovation you get from the people around you.”
“People are used to politicians bs-ing and they are so jaded by my profession that you have to actually say what your vision is and then start executing that vision before they start to buy into the fact that you are for real.”
Segment 4: (Length :04:00) – Building on a community; The power of bringing a community together.
On Community:
Realizing the power of community – How to bring people together for a cause:
- Knowing the most important elements of building a community.
- Bridging generational gaps to collaborate.
- Executing on initiatives to achieve end goals.
Mayor’s finer points:
“When you talk about generational divide, those are things that I had to deal with internally as well as externally. I still think it goes back to demonstrating that you have a purpose, you have a vision and you have the capabilities to execute.”
“When people believe in you, the age thing becomes a moot point. It really becomes about substance.”
“I think there are skillsets and values that transcend generations.”
“We made it very evident in our first meetings that we were going to do something of substance and do something that was systemic. So we made everyone understand that our values were such that we had to be something that actually moved the needle.”
“Everyone get humble and have an honest conversation about what’s important. Then get executing.”
Segment 5: (Length :03:00) – Hustler Thought of the Day:
“A successful entrepreneur never stops learning. You can’t innovate without being completely humble. You can’t innovate without a degree of humility.”
– Mayor Scott Fadness for Business.com & The Hustle Sold Separately
Mayor’s finer points:
“Today, you have to innovate in perpetuity.“
“I’m naturally curious about everything and so I find it all interesting. I find the journey and the pursuit for a solution exhilarating. If you can distill that in the people around you, you’ll never look for a true finish line, you just enjoy running. That’s the definition of success to me.”
GENERAL NOTES:
Mayor Scott Fadness – Mayor – Fishers, Indiana
- Born and raised on farm in Southeast North Dakota and had planned to be a farmer, but it was taken (like many family farms).
- Desire to help people: decided to study political science, masters in public affairs (Indiana University).
- Wanted to be part of something larger than himself, met a city manager and learned about that role. Liked that the city manager role would allow him to help others in an immediate way.
- Career with City of Fishers: started as intern, worked as budget director, deputy town manager of operations (overseeing day-to-day operations of public works, engineering, fleet management, recreation).
- Became Fishers Town Manager 2011-2014. Became Fishers Mayor 2014.
- Untraditional approach to economic development for City of Fishers.
- Most cities grow via manufacturing and attracting large companies.
- Fishers is developing businesses: provides incentives to attract and develop entrepreneurs and emerging businesses.
- Co-founded incubator and coworking space: Launch Fishers.
- Provides master leases to companies who have outgrown Launch Fishers and are looking for their first office space.
- Developing a mix of companies in Fishers (large and emerging):
- Leads by core values:
- Fiscal responsibility
- Need for purpose, meaningful work and desire to make a difference (runs as hard as he can each day, and ends each day knowing he did all he can to serve his community).
- Family
- Response to community need:
- Developed the Mental Health Task Force in response to mental health crises.
- While riding with a police officer, Mayor Fadness learned that calls from someone in a mental health crises comes in once/shift. These are people at risk to doing harm to themselves or others. This realization sparked an effort to unite the police force, schools, health systems, churches and other organizations to create an action plan.
- Mayor Fadness’ thoughts on mental health and the community: http://www.indystar.com/story/opinion/readers/2015/12/20/fishers-begins-address-mental-health-challenge/77582070/
- Developed the Mental Health Task Force in response to mental health crises.
