Introduction
Chad Nuss is what you might call a serial entrepreneur. InsideOut, his fourth startup company, was founded in Sarasota in 2015 and made a home in St. Petersburg in 2016. Since his very first day in St. Pete, Nuss has been one of the city's biggest advocates and drivers of the city's burgeoning tech ecosystem. When Nuss sells InsideOut to customers like Google, T-Mobile or IBM, he sells St. Petersburg's live, work, play lifestyle, too.
Years in St. Pete
3.5 years
Organizations involved in
We help out with as many as we can. We have a team at InsideOut that finds new organizations to help out. We’ve been involved in the Police Athletic League, CASA, John’s Hopkins All Children’s Hospital. As we continue our evolution and growth, we’re looking for new ways to support our community.
What gets you out of bed every day?
The challenge of whether I’m going to fail or succeed in the same day. I’m never sure which one’s going to happen. As a small business owner, you wake up in the morning and sometimes you have cash flow challenges, sometimes you have business challenges, and sometimes you have the greatest successes like closing Google as a new account. So that’s the ups and downs of startup ownership, but it’s worth every minute.
Why St. Pete?
St. Pete is a community. St. Pete thrives with diversity. There are different people from all walks of life, from different businesses, to different types of artists, to different museums we have, it thrives off of being different. Everybody that’s here wants to be part of that community and so it allows us to hire great people. As with a community, it’s important to have diversity within your company, so St. Pete allows us to attract multiple types of talent from all walks of life in shape, size, color, creed or religion.
What is one habit that you keep?
Being positive and bringing good vibes to my team. Life can be stressful personally and professionally, and the best thing you can do as a leader is bring positivity to the people in front of you every day. It’s difficult because you just want to thrash out sometimes, but if you’re positive all of the time, you allow people to not stress and take your negativity internal. It’s actually really important to thrive that way.
Who are some people that influence you?
My business partner influences me every day, my wife influences me every day, my daughters influence me every day. Everybody at my company influences me every day. Maybe there’s too many people influencing me, but I thrive on the influence of others. I feel like if I’m able to interact more, I learn more about myself.
What is one piece of insight - a book, methodology, practice - that you would share with our readers?
Power of Habit, because if you can formulate the right habits of how you interact with others every day, for how you approach your day, if you can change your habit, you can change who you are. You can change an addiction problem, you can change a corporate philosophy, you can change how to transform a sales organization, you can change your community, if you can change the habits of people.
What is one thing you wish you knew about your work 3 years ago?
What I thought I knew about my work was that I thought I could do anything, and I can’t. I thought that three years ago with my company I could have done the operations, the finance, the HR, the sales, all of the different parts and pieces, and I tried as hard as possible to do that. I had the fortunate opportunity to have a business partner who knew how to do all of those things. So what I hoped and wished I would have done three years ago is focus on my strengths. Focus on what can make my company great without sacrificing my time on things I wasn’t so great at doing.
What’s next?
More hard work. Engaging my passion forward. I’m never done. This is my fourth startup, I want to personally grow in the City of St. Petersburg and I feel like I have a really great shot at personal growth and business growth in our great city.
