New group ‘calls’ Corridor leaders to action

From left, Linn County Commissioner Stacey Walker, Jessica Boyle, Daniel Tardy, Jordan Montgomery and Brad Axdahl gather at the first CALL meeting Aug. 3 in Cedar Rapids. PHOTO CHRISTINE HAWES

By Christine Hawes
news@corridorbusiness.com

After Iowa City’s new business networking group, BLICC, saw immediate success, its founders decided to spread the entrepre­neurial love to Cedar Rapids.

That’s how the Business League of Iowa’s Creative Corridor indirectly gave birth to the Corridor Area Leaders Live (CALL). Now sharing some members with BLICC, and attracting new ones from Cedar Rapids, CALL threw its first lunch­time professional development gathering Aug. 3 at Popoli Ristorante.

“Our theme is really ‘bragging’ on our community and the great things hap­pening in Cedar Rapids,” said Jordan Montgomery, a financial representative at Northwestern Mutual who is lead­ing the group along with Linn County Commissioner Stacey Walker and Jessi­ca Boyle, development officer at North­western Mutual.

“We’re bringing together high-level community leaders who are committed to community involvement and professional development,” Mr. Walker said.

CALL welcomed about 80 business men and women of all ages to its debut meeting, with several coming from Iowa City. They included Richard Bohrn of Heartland Payment Systems.

“It’s a little overwhelming, but I love it,” he said after the Popoli gathering. “I like to seek out people I don’t know. And these are rock-solid, quality people.”

The group’s goal is to offer inspiration and professional development support to entrepreneurs throughout the Corridor, especially in the Cedar Rapids area.

The guest speakers for CALL’s first meet­ing epitomized the group’s main goals.

Goal-setting and conquering fear topped the agenda for Brad Axdahl, co-founder of the business consulting firm Katalyst Systems Impact. Mr. Ax­dahl described the CALL audience as “full of achievers.”

“Fear is the achiever’s word for risk,” he said, “and risk is basically the likelihood of the possibility of a negative outcome.” He offered a four-point system for effec­tively confronting risk:

• Define the worst possible scenario
• Identify what you can do to prevent it
• Prepare with a strategy to recover in case it does happen
• Figure out if there’s a benefit in partial success, or a cost to doing nothing

“If there’s a decision you have that you’re delaying, that you’ve worried about, try this exercise,” he told the group.

Collaboration and sharing emerged as the themes for Daniel Tardy, founder of StaynGrow, Inc. Mr. Tardy said businesses like Uber and Airbnb illustrate how essen­tial the concept of sharing has become to commerce and the economy.

“We share clothing, homes, bikes … we’re really breaking down some walls,” he said. “None of this would be possible without connection.”

Mr. Tardy said the idea of connecting through a sense of community is at the heart of his business, which creates sus­tainable and food-growing landscapes on residential lawns, then shares its produce with local restaurants.

“We can empower ourselves to design the future we want to live in, through our ideas and our choices,” he said. “We need to ask ourselves, ‘what are we birthing here in Iowa? What are we creating here?’”

While most of the group who attend­ed were businesspeople, Mr. Walker was among several government officials who also attended and have been supportive of the group, including Jeff Pomeranz, Cedar Rapids’ city manager.

Some of the business people who at­tended were there for altruistic reasons – such as Ms. Boyle, who is involved with the Junior League of Cedar Rapids and sees CALL as a great way to further her community volunteerism. She hopes to help attract more women to the group.

Others see the new group as a poten­tially powerful community force. Anthony Reynolds, of North Wealth Management, described CALL as filling Cedar Rapids’ longstanding need for a group that “at­tracts emerging leaders.”

“And I’m proud to count myself as part of this group,” he said.

More than anything, CALL’s melding of a social event with professional devel­opment and networking impressed those who attended.

“It’s important that we’re out in the community,” said Tyler Thompson of Van Meter Inc., which had at least five employees attending. “This is a great opportunity to connect with other busi­nesses we work with, or that we could work with in the future.”

The group’s next meeting is in early Oc­tober at The Early Bird Coffee Café in Ce­dar Rapids. For more information, contact Mr. Walker at stawalke@gmail.com.