Nick Mastronardi's guest appearances

Nick Mastronardi

Thinking Beyond: Conversations with Strategic Thinkers with Dr. David Flint

Creativity Loves Constraints

Thinking Beyond: Conversations with Strategic Thinkers

Bethany Douglas

Joey McGee

Rahsaan King

Brandi Plunkett

Christine Hollinden

Marci Corry

Coby Dixon

Matthew Hightower

Bethany Douglass

Bailey Mullens

Kirk Thompson

Jeff Haden

Jared Moore

Jose Quintana

Will Walker

OwlTail

How do communities capture the perspective, feedback, and voice from its residents? Old way: Go to a city hall meeting, wait your turn, and give feedback to the city council. Here's the new way: It's called PolcoWorking through the Air Force , Nick was detailed as an economic advisor to the White House. There, Nick noticed a problem that seemed odd — Communities didn’t have a clear understanding of the voice of their residents. Shouldn’t this process be as clear and transparent as possible? In 2015, Nick joined up with his friend from the Air Force (an ex Google employee), and set out to change the way that communities and residents interact. Nick and Polco are based in Middleton (Madison), Wisconsin.Nick details when they started, they didn’t know if their solution would be most relevant at the federal, state, or local level. But a city in Texas came forward with a pressing need, and became Polco’s first customer, they got answer. Now Polco works with hundreds of communities around the country. In 2019, Polco acquired National Research Center, raised a Series A round of funding, and grew to 27 employees. They had primed the pump to scale in 2020. Then, due to the market constraints of COVID-19, they found themselves confronted with an opportunity — and reprioritized their product development queue, re-worked all of their company marketing, sales efforts, customer success efforts, pricing, and funding plan. With this energy, Nick said that COVID-19 has accelerated where they thought they would be in 2–3 years to 2–3 weeks. Let’s go behind the scenes as Nick tells us how Polco is pivoting and leveling-up the feedback loop between communities and residents.As Nick talks about this pivot, I’ll share one of my favorite comments from the conversation. “Sometimes as entrepreneurs, you find yourself falling into the opportunity of the moment instead of thinking strategically about, ‘Where do we need to go?’”That’s a tremendous insight. It’s so easy in our daily work fall into the important and urgent category. Peter Drucker, in his book, “The Effective Executive,” talks about the vital balance we should all take heed of between the current moment and future opportunity. “Whether they like it or not, executives are forever bailing out the past. This is inevitable. Today is always the result of actions and decisions taken yesterday…Few organizations ever get going on their own good ideas. Everybody is much too busy on the tasks of yesterday... Yet it is the executive’s specific job — whether he works in government, in a business, or in an the institution — to commit today’s resources to the future…"We’re not saying that the current moment is unimportant. In fact, execution of a strategy is often where most of the drift in a company happens. But we’re saying that intentional time, resources, and energy should also be given to opportunities in the future. What does that look like for you personally? What does that look like for your company?

How do communities capture the perspective, feedback, and voice from its residents? Old way: Go to a city hall meeting, wait your turn, and give feedback to the city council. Here's the new way: It's called PolcoWorking through the Air Force , Nick was detailed as an economic advisor to the White House. There, Nick noticed a problem that seemed odd — Communities didn’t have a clear understanding of the voice of their residents. Shouldn’t this process be as clear and transparent as possible? In 2015, Nick joined up with his friend from the Air Force (an ex Google employee), and set out to change the way that communities and residents interact. Nick and Polco are based in Middleton (Madison), Wisconsin.Nick details when they started, they didn’t know if their solution would be most relevant at the federal, state, or local level. But a city in Texas came forward with a pressing need, and became Polco’s first customer, they got answer. Now Polco works with hundreds of communities around the country. In 2019, Polco acquired National Research Center, raised a Series A round of funding, and grew to 27 employees. They had primed the pump to scale in 2020. Then, due to the market constraints of COVID-19, they found themselves confronted with an opportunity — and reprioritized their product development queue, re-worked all of their company marketing, sales efforts, customer success efforts, pricing, and funding plan. With this energy, Nick said that COVID-19 has accelerated where they thought they would be in 2–3 years to 2–3 weeks. Let’s go behind the scenes as Nick tells us how Polco is pivoting and leveling-up the feedback loop between communities and residents.As Nick talks about this pivot, I’ll share one of my favorite comments from the conversation. <blockquote>“Sometimes as entrepreneurs, you find yourself falling into the opportunity of the moment instead of thinking strategically about, ‘Where do we need to go?’”</blockquote> That’s a tremendous insight. It’s so easy in our daily work fall into the important and urgent category. Peter Drucker, in his book, “The Effective Executive,” talks about the vital balance we should all take heed of between the current moment and future opportunity. <blockquote>“Whether they like it or not, executives are forever bailing out the past. This is inevitable. Today is always the result of actions and decisions taken yesterday… Few organizations ever get going on their own good ideas. Everybody is much too busy on the tasks of yesterday...  Yet it is the executive’s specific job — whether he works in government, in a business, or in an the institution — to commit today’s resources to the future…"</blockquote> We’re not saying that the current moment is unimportant. In fact, execution of a strategy is often where most of the drift in a company happens. But we’re saying that intentional time, resources, and energy should also be given to opportunities in the future. What does that look like for you personally? What does that look like for your company?

Capturing the Communities' Voice in COVID-19 - Nick Mastronardi, Co-Founder and CEO, Polco

David Flint is joined by Nick Mastronardi, founder of POLCO, an innovative company working at the intersection of technology and community. POLCO provides a platform for civic engagement that empowers municipalities to engage citizens by giving them a venue to express opinions and respond to pols on local issues. POLCO provides verified user profiles and rich data without compromising the privacy of citizen participants. Already expanding throughout the US, Nick and his team are using V-REEL to remain aware of and defend against eroding factors like new entrants in the online polling space. To learn more about POLCO, visit polco.us. To learn more about the V-REEL Framework, visit my website at drdavidflint.com or check out my book Think Beyond Value: Building Strategy to Win. (link book title to: http://bit.ly/TBVkindle)

David Flint is joined by Nick Mastronardi, founder of POLCO, an innovative company working at the intersection of technology and community. POLCO provides a platform for civic engagement that empowers municipalities to engage citizens by giving them a venue to express opinions and respond to pols on local issues. POLCO provides verified user profiles and rich data without compromising the privacy of citizen participants. Already expanding throughout the US, Nick and his team are using V-REEL to remain aware of and defend against eroding factors like new entrants in the online polling space. To learn more about POLCO, visit <a href="http://polco.us" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">polco.us</a>. To learn more about the V-REEL Framework, visit my website at <a href="http://drdavidflint.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">drdavidflint.com</a> or check out my book Think Beyond Value: Building Strategy to Win. (link book title to: <a href="http://bit.ly/TBVkindle" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://bit.ly/TBVkindle</a>)

#6: Nick Mastronardi: V-REEL Your Start-up for success

David Flint is joined by Nick Mastronardi, founder of POLCO, an innovative company working at the intersection of technology and community. POLCO provides a platform for civic engagement that empowers municipalities to engage citizens by giving them a venue to express opinions and respond to pols on local issues. POLCO provides verified user profiles and rich data without compromising the privacy of citizen participants. Already expanding throughout the US, Nick and his team are using V-REEL to remain aware of and defend against eroding factors like new entrants in the online polling space.   To learn more about POLCO, visit polco.us. To learn more about the V-REEL Framework, visit my website at drdavidflint.com or check out my book Think Beyond Value: Building Strategy to Win. (link book title to: http://bit.ly/TBVkindle)  https://archive.org/download/NickMastronardiwithDavidFlint/Nick%27s%20edit%20_mixdown.mp3

David Flint is joined by Nick Mastronardi, founder of POLCO, an innovative company working at the intersection of technology and community. POLCO provides a platform for civic engagement that empowers municipalities to engage citizens by giving them a venue to express opinions and respond to pols on local issues. POLCO provides verified user profiles and rich data without compromising the privacy of citizen participants. Already expanding throughout the US, Nick and his team are using V-REEL to remain aware of and defend against eroding factors like new entrants in the online polling space.  To learn more about POLCO, visit <a href="http://polco.us/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">polco.us</a>. To learn more about the V-REEL Framework, visit my website at <a href="http://drdavidflint.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">drdavidflint.com</a> or check out my book Think Beyond Value: Building Strategy to Win. (link book title to: <a href="https://eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fbit.ly%2FTBVkindle&amp;data=02%7C01%7C%7Cbb121c298a75457649e908d57880d325%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636547417043087285&amp;sdata=DTB69aiRXEXe2eOGETSPDeFVQB9tHkVtiNRg3rCQaHw%3D&amp;reserved=0" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">http://bit.ly/TBVkindle</a>) <a href="https://archive.org/download/NickMastronardiwithDavidFlint/Nick%27s%20edit%20_mixdown.mp3" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://archive.org/download/NickMastronardiwithDavidFlint/Nick%27s%20edit%20_mixdown.mp3</a>

#6: Nick Mastronardi: V-REEL Your Start-up for Success