Weekly Impact by Lay of The Land

everybody.

This is Jim Havlund, Lay of the Land Weekly Impact.

We are still working through the Smart 50 for 2025.

And today's conversation is with Shane Bigelow from Champ Title.

You may have heard his episode of the larger Lay of the Land podcast.

But today we would go over more of the specifics of how he operates the business, how he's
found the right people.

And he really leans into

finding the right people to really embrace the high growth, fast action, leaning forward
type of mentality they've got to grow as fast as they've grown.

They've very, fast.

um also have a little bit about, in the schools, little bit on blockchain and how they're
using blockchain in that uh solution, which I was glad to learn about.

ah But the crux of today's conversation really is all about the very modern way of
thinking about

who belongs in each seat, being very specific about what is in a seat, what it means to
be, to have a role in the business and being intentional about what you need in that seat,

what you need in that seat, what you need in your company, and then finding the absolute
right people, what we call hell yes, he references some of his experiences in much larger

markets and in large organizations and trying to get to there and something they're
leveraging at Champ Title as well.

So enjoy my conversation with Shane Bigelow

Welcome to Lay of the Land Weekly Impact.

This is still our 2025 Smart 50 edition series.

And we are talking to the honorees of the Smart 50 this year and asking them basically why
they should be considered smart.

So Shane, welcome to the show.

Why don't we open up with a little short version of your story.

So you weren't always the founder and leader of Champ Titles.

What happened before then?

Well, you know, I think my career is a function of uh finding really smart people to work
with who are uh incredibly gifted and candidly quite a bit smarter than me.

uh prior to this, was...

It's not hard, Tim.

I have a pretty low bar for people to jump over to be smarter than me.

That's pretty easy.

uh

ah Before this, I was on Wall Street.

Before that, a couple of tech companies, uh three specifically, two of which uh I helped
to, uh one I helped to found and two we sold.

Well, Shane, you come up in my conversations being formerly the sponsor of Lay of the Land
and a fan.

Is that your show was, I think show 36.

So it was like quite a few shows ago.

But, you know, I think that there I've heard in grumblings in Cleveland about how, hey, we
were going to try to do this Blockland thing and that didn't go so good.

um And I always ran it back to gosh, it weren't a lot of business models that made sense
on the block chain.

But yours did.

You just you know, it wasn't.

you know, certainly execution matters a lot, but it was actually the right solution for a
problem that we've had for a long time.

And that's, that's how I talk about it.

Do you see it the same way?

think, I mean, maybe a little different.

Blockland was the second largest blockchain conference in the country.

It did that two years in a row.

And it was a nonprofit that candidly, we tried to turn over to the city, and the city
didn't want it.

So, you know, I don't think it's a failure of the conference or the interest in it.

In fact, if you look at the if you look at the economic

impact that the companies that were associated with it had.

And you look at the value of things like crypto at the time versus today, you could say
that there hasn't been a bigger miss in Cleveland in the past 10 years than not getting on

that train.

Right.

let me me frame it a different way.

So, I certainly, I mean, I would break down business models.

We don't want to argue about this today, but the breakdown, different between making money
on crypto and building business models that are

blockchain dependent.

I think, I mean, this conference was great.

I attended the conference and I met amazing people doing amazing things.

But during tech week this last year, uh people were kind of embarrassed, like, oh, we
never really turned into a uh magical hub of blockchain businesses.

Well, nowhere did, There hasn't really been an explosion of massively successful
businesses in the blockchain.

universe.

I said, for things that made natural sense, managing smart contracts that were always done
in a pretty dumb way.

So answer that, also tell me a little bit more about Champ titles and what they do.

Because I've alluded to this and we haven't told anybody why that matters.

Yeah.

So I mean, your first, I think what people realized about

blockchain and crypto is, know, crypto is just an application on blockchain, right?

But there are a lot of really interesting blockchain applications.

And I would argue that uh the success of blockchain uh is not consistent with what you
said.

So, you know, do you use Venmo?

Every single transaction is on blockchain.

Oh nice.

Okay.

Got it.

So my point is that people are using it every single day.

Without really knowing it.

Without knowing

right.

And which is, which, is the same as a, as a database, right?

Like, I mean, how many people use Oracle every day, but have no idea they're using Oracle?

Like Larry Ellison isn't the second wealthiest guy in the world, because it doesn't work,
right?

It's just, it was just a quiet application in the background that everybody happens to
use.

I think.

blockchain is now so prevalent in so many places, people don't know that it's there, but
there were a...

successful businesses that have deployed it.

In our case, what we saw was that, you know, if you're trying to show the provenance of an
asset and you're doing that at a government layer, which is the most crucial layer for

showing ownership in this country is that the government reflects that you own your house,
your car.

Once they acknowledge it, you're in a whole other set of law.

That's right.

What's the most cryptographically secure way to make sure that there's a record of that?

Well, it's using Blockchain

so that's why we use it as a relatively small part of our solution, but an important part.

part.

Yeah.

Well, and I think that's, I I recognize that from the very beginning for y'all that this
was a, escrow was one of those places where there was no going to be, you know, it's a

clear place where having it on the chain mattered, where it would be a low cost, but high
reliability way of solving that problem.

Like who owns this?

Right.

And what, and whether what conditions with that ownership change.

And so, um, so one of the questions I've asked everybody is, uh, um, is what makes champ
title unique or smart and what's, and, and, and you, and I guess, um, how would you frame

that, that, that answer?

Like what, makes you a smart business?

I mean, I think it's the, you know, we now serve 35 million people across the country and
we've done that on the backs of an amazing.

and a set of amazing brains here that we've assembled at Champ.

know, Champ uh is really hard place to get a job.

It's a hard place even to keep a job.

And we're proud of that.

And that's because the challenge that we put in front of our folks is very, very
difficult.

uh

Like I said conveniently Down to every single one of them.

They're all smarter than me and smaller smarter than the first handful of employees that
uh

you know, we keep adding better and better talent uh with every new hire.

So the smartness of it is how do you manage 35 million people uh and their needs and now
and growing will grow quite a bit more than that uh in the next uh next year here.

How do you do that with an efficient workforce and how do you do it in Cleveland?

And I think we've managed to show that we

That's brilliant.

uh Well, that's my next question is kind of what lessons have you learned in this this arc
uh about leadership and what and what's important about leadership?

If I say what's your leadership nuggets, what would you tell me?

hire the smartest people I possibly can, and then let them do their job and get out of
their way.

Right.

I think all too often, you know, uh, we, we try to think that we somehow can improve on
people who are experts in something that, uh, you know, arguably I may not know very much

about.

so hire the smartest people who possibly can and let them run.

you know, second is you've got to, in our case, we're growing so fast.

We don't have the luxury of hiring people that we have spent a lot time training Hmm
adults in the room and that doesn't matter your age that matters your level of

sophistication and being able to handle particular jobs, right?

That's it.

I think hiring people that are capable of doing a job without you having to train them is
not a typical path for uh

of folks.

so.

And so we're in the market for finding those experts that are looking for their next
challenge and looking for something that's a bit more exciting than maybe what we're doing

now.

That's true.

How many folks are you are in the team now?

We keep it fairly confidential, low triple digits.

OK, very good.

Well, that's fantastic.

mean, think even in your answer, I hear one of the themes that I've heard is I've talked
to

dozens of other folks in this group, that notion of humility and self-awareness that, I
don't have to know all of this stuff.

I've got to be good at finding the right people that know this stuff and figuring it You
still have to be a good consumer of humans, being able to shop well for the right types of

humans.

Are there any unlocks for you there?

what, how do you discern that this person is going to be self-reliant when we hire them?

You know, we do a lot of psychological analysis, cognitive testing, we do a lot of
comparison.

work relative to the, the, the best performers we have.

But I think the, um, and that's, you know, sort of, I don't know if that's standard, but I
think it's largely standard with, companies like us.

think the hard part, um, in our world is, is finding people that are accustomed to high
growth environments.

that's not.

as common in this geographic area.

so finding people that can adjust to that pace is where we spend a lot of time, really
challenging folks in the process.

Are you ready for what this looks like?

It's a, you know, when people say it's not a marathon or it's not a sprint, it's a
marathon.

It's like, we're sprinting marathon.

Yeah, we're full speed ahead, you forever.

Every day and it's really long.

Is it a matter of training people to work in a high growth environment or are you picking
people that yearn for that?

We're picking people that yearn and understand it.

Okay, got it.

yeah.

So I think there are people here just like when I compare models for entrepreneurship, I
worked in Seattle for quite a while, in Chicago, in the Triangle in North Carolina, is

that notion of, are we

offering the opportunities that our high growth people are going to go for, right?

Do I have to go somewhere else to go get a real high growth opportunity?

I think that's, you know, certainly for me, when I, when I point to your, to your, your
organizations, like, like this is an opportunity to be really big and important and, fast

where you can still afford the house.

is a great place.

We've been very fortunate to be able

people and build here because Cleveland has a low cost of living, uh wonderfully educated
workforce.

ah

know, diverse populations, we can get different opinions which is important to the way we
grow our business.

ah

And I think it's got a hardworking grit to it that is difficult to find in some other
geographies that might be more accustomed to young companies, but they don't have the grit

that is needed to get through, you know, these periods where it's hard to grow a company
at this pace.

Well stated.

right.

Well, so I want to lean into a little bit of the way you're handling finding people.

Because I think from my perspective, I've worked with a couple hundred companies where
I've

help them establish, I call it the hell yes people.

You gotta figure out who your hell yes people are and find ways of getting there.

And I try to convince them that interviews aren't the best way to make it happen.

That there is a lot of tools out there that are much better at that.

Is that something you came upon as far as Champ or did you bring that to this situation
from your previous experiences?

No, again from my previous experiences.

I worked for Wall Street.

for a long time and did investing for another uh company on Wall Street for a while.

so in all of those cases, there was a lot of psychological profiling and trying to
understand the cognitive function and how the pace at which people can consume

information.

And

you know, that it's, it's, it's not a litmus test that you hire a certain exact type of
personality or cognitive pace.

The litmus test is, it the right pace and, and personality for the role?

And, and so marrying a solid role description to that personality and really, really
trying to get behind how that person will interact with the team.

has allowed us to grow a good bit faster.

And there are, you know, any number of tools that are available for those.

Everybody's got their favorite, but we did a lot of that on Wall Street because it's you
know, sort of a higher stress environment than most.

And, and you need people that can, you know, battle through on a day when, know, like I
look at the stock market today, if you're working on Wall Street today, you're, you're,

you're, going through one of those hard days.

So, you know, buckle down.

Yeah.

There's a lot going on that'll import.

But I think that's, I mean, certainly from my perspective, and you know, I think that's a
very

advanced understanding of what it is to find the right people, the right people, right
seat model is you've got to do a good job of modeling your seats.

You've got to group an even better job of modeling people in those seats and getting to
the right both tech and science behind doing that is the only way to do it in a high

growth efficient manner.

I still find so many people, you know, in

arguably large companies are successful doing it wrong and not wondering why they have to
fire so many people or people leave it in a big hurry.

All right.

So any other like uh earned wisdom.

So, you know, obviously you're being recognized for this award.

And so we think you got some things figured out.

Is there something about how you you execute your day or I think about setting your
long-term strategy that you think you could you could share with

uh Shane Bigelow, 20 years younger.

Well, you know, this award is is much more about the company than than me.

In fact, there has very little to do with me.

don't exist in a vacuum chain.

Someone's got to initiate and keep it together.

Yeah, but once it's initiated, how much am I responsible for?

I'm not quite sure.

think the team is responsible for quite a bit more.

I think the ethos that we create here that, if you ask 20 years in

what I wish I knew, you know, it was about 24 years ago when I first heard this phrase and
it changed my world that day.

It was when John Chambers, I was working at Cisco and John Chambers came in and you he had
given some audacious goals to the sales team a year prior.

And he candidly mentioned he didn't think that we'd get there.

And then the team did.

And he said, yeah, I just, I just realized that we have this, this effort here at the, at
comp, at the company where we just treat no as a stumbling block on the way to yes.

And having that mentality and trying to surround.

me over the years with those, people like that, it's, kind of like your hell yes people.

uh You know, it's how do you, how do you build that across your team and how do you find
people that have that same sort of uh attitude around you?

You'll hear no all the time, but how do you treat it as a something black on the way to
yes.

I steal that from John Chambers nearly every day.

day.

I love that.

obviously you're at a stage now with this company that, and it's not your first rodeo, but

they're, you know, having a culture of that level of accomplishment is not easier
automatic as well.

So you must be doing something.

What are you doing, do you think, to maintain kind of alignment on your long term goals?

Because if you're hiring the right people and setting them a direction, you got to make
sure they're aligned to where they're going.

Well, you got to pay people correctly.

And I think, you know, it's.

it's lost on a good bit of folks.

We see this in the interview process lost on a good bit of folks, the value of equity in
this region.

uh And so the folks that value equity, you know, they've done well because of that.

And so um

I think...

you know, at the end of the day, people take a job because it's, it's, it's fulfilling in
some way.

And that fulfillment, you know, for some people can come as a function of the challenge.

It can come up as a function of the work or make it, it can come as a function of the
capital that's provided to them or all are some combination thereof.

And so for each person, it's calibrating for, you know, what are they looking for the
most?

Because at the end of the day, everybody takes a job.

In my view, they take a job for fulfillment.

But that definition of fulfillment is different.

So you have to match what can you provide at your company with what they want to be
fulfilled in their role.

And, uh and that's a, that's probably a thing that's easier to do.

When we were 20 or 50 people gets a little harder when you start getting into, you know,
bigger and bigger numbers.

But we, try to do that and keep that part of our core ethos.

you know as a

It's about making sure that everyone that's a leader understands that's what we're doing,
right?

That it isn't just a matter of plugging people in as a widget, that no, let's get a bunch
of really highly tuned, intricate parts to this machine and make sure we're giving them

the care and feeding that they need to be successful, right?

So the last question is about mentors.

mean, a lot of people who, from my perspective, experience,

when they're successful is because they've had mentors for the right stages of the game.

Anyone you want to shout out for having helped you along the way that has, you mentioned
John Chambers, that's a great one.

Yeah, I guarantee John doesn't think he was a mentor to me.

He doesn't remember me.

But certainly watching his style of leadership up close because he was very hands on, even
I was in my mid-20s.

So I was pretty low, low level, but he was very hands on with everybody.

Certainly watching the way he led was impactful on me.

A lot of the folks at Cisco were incredibly impactful.

was a great crew and a great time there.

ah

And so I think that company has done a great job of building amazing leaders.

I look at the colleagues I had five years ago, and most of them are in the C-suite
somewhere, and that's pretty amazing.

Yeah, we say that everyone should be a leader building leaders building leaders.

I think from being in the triangle, being very aware of folks from Cisco, that there was a
pipeline.

hey, you're not just here to turn a crank, you're here to eventually lead someday.

And that was part of the culture.

And I think your ability to recognize a nugget when you're in your 20s, that's a good
reflection on you as well.

Yeah, I think that, you you look at patterns and you look at say private equity in the way
that, you know, Goldman and Morgan Stanley and JP Morgan are the, the birthing ground of

some of the great private equity professionals or hedge fund professionals.

You know, I think Cisco is the birthing ground of a lot of amazing tech leadership.

And I was just fortunate enough to be there for a short period of time and learn from
them.

But uh

other other mentors such religious guys

focus a lot of my time on God and try to be a better human and I'm pretty bad at that.

So hopefully I can get better.

uh But you know, other, other than, other than those two things, I don't suppose there's a
lot that pops into my mind uh right now.

Yeah.

Shane, thanks for the time today, man.

Really appreciate it and congratulations on the award.

Thanks, Jim.

Really appreciate it.

Bye now.

Thanks.

Bye bye.