Eric Dinger - Entrepreneur

Eric Dinger  is an entrepreneur.  He is currently the CEO of Landoption.  Eric discusses the importance of understanding the way Jesus lived and how that impacts the workplace.  Creating an environment where people want to work and maximize the strengths and gifts of each employee.

 If you want to be encouraged and equipped to live your life of faith more effectively in the workplace, the Skillful at Work Podcast is for you. 

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:04

Welcome to the Skillful Work Podcast, where we explore living out our faith in the workplace. I am your host, Dr. Kurt Beck, a professor of management and a leadership coach. Join me in my next conversation as I talk with Christians skillfully living out their faith at work for examples, resources, and practical tips that will encourage and equip us to honor God at work. Today we're talking with Eric Dinger, CEO of Land Option. Eric, tell us a little about yourself.

SPEAKER_01 0:33

Well, hey, Kurt, thanks for having me on. I'm a lifelong entrepreneur, been building businesses since I was in college, and uh live just south of Lincoln, Nebraska. Have three kids, a busy life coaching baseball, and trying to build a company and trying to build a family and all that goes with it. So a little bit about me, I guess, is that uh I run hard and try to make a lot happen and live a big, happy, fun, full life.

SPEAKER_00 1:01

So tell us about being an entrepreneur and how that led you to land option.

SPEAKER_01 1:05

Sure. Well, along the way, uh a couple of companies, maybe some of your listeners may have heard of. I had a company called Powderhook. And Powderhook was trying to be the Airbnb of the outdoors or the VRBO of the outdoors, where you could rent a place on our platform to hunt or fish for the day. And in that process, we worked with and talked with hundreds of landowners who we were trying to get to allow people to come hunt or fish on their land through our platform. And we pretty constantly ran into trust barriers to the point where it took a long time and it was really expensive to get a landowner to be interested in listing their property on Powder Hook. And we ended up pivoting away from that business model and building something else with Powder Hook. But then I helped start another company called Arbor Day Carbon. And Arbor Day Carbon was investing in forestry projects, forestry carbon projects throughout the world, throughout the United States. And we got to kind of the bottom of the barrel of the projects that we wanted to invest in, and we wanted to continue to invest. And so we decided to try and build our own forests, uh, Arbor Day Carbon forestry project. And I again found myself in the same loop with landowners where I was in rural Georgia meeting with farmers who didn't know me and didn't trust me. And again, that nasty problem of man, it's going to take a long time to get people excited about this idea and build the trust that's needed to make a commitment like this. And it became so expensive to recruit landowners that we decided to move away from doing that project on our own. And so the idea of land option really comes from those two parts of my background in that it's difficult for people who want to pay landowners to do different things. It's difficult for them to build relationships and difficult for them to deploy their capital efficiently with landowners because it takes a lot of time to build trust and it takes landowners a while to evaluate whether somebody is really worthy of that trust and whether their idea is actually a good thing for their business, whether that's a farm or ranch or just an absentee landowner, even. And so the idea for land option really comes from those experiences and wanting to just focus on that problem. How can we make it easier for landowners to know what their options look like, to evaluate them against each other rather than just listen to the person who shows up at the farm gate with a new idea? We want to put landowners in a position to work with people they already trust, like their agronomist or their farm manager, but then put those agronomists and farm managers in a position where they know all of the options available to their landowner customers or their farmer customers, so that together they can make the decision about these programs or these additional revenue opportunities between themselves and do what's best uh for their operations, respectively. So that's what we're working on. It's a technology platform that uh agronomists and land managers use to learn about and find the programs that make the most sense and then to help their customers get enrolled in it.

SPEAKER_00 4:09

Very exciting. It sounds like true entrepreneurship where you try an idea and you you learn from it, and then you come back and try it again and learn from it. So that's that's very, very interesting. So, where did that entrepreneurship spirit well within you? Did you take any classes in college or how did that come about?

SPEAKER_01 4:25

Well, my dad often says that I'm a person who has always had more balls than brains. So that's probably the root of it. I actually didn't set out to be an entrepreneur. Uh I wanted to go to medical school. I wanted to be a doctor. And uh I told you, I know, Kurt, you went to Concordia in in Nebraska. I went to Concordia in Moorhead, Minnesota to, you know, study med uh pre-med biology and chemistry. And and uh through a lot of life circumstances we can get into if you want, but uh ended up transferring to Nebraska and one day called my dad, same dad, and said, I don't think I want to be a doctor anymore. I think I want to be in business because I don't want to limit my earning potential, which is a pain in the butt, 20-year-old kid way of saying chemistry and I don't really have chemistry. And I don't like memorizing the covalence of one electron versus another. I much prefer working with people. And so I said, I'm gonna switch to business so that it doesn't learn limit my earning potential. And I have a very loving dad, but his exact words were, I believe, oh God, you're an idiot. Um, but you know, in getting into the business world, it felt very natural to me. My sister and I, when I was, I think we were maybe 10, 11, 12, something like that, uh, growing up in Redfield, South Dakota, uh, we actually had a pheasant cleaning business where people that were in Redfield, the Pheasant Hunt, would pay us a couple bucks to clean and pack their birds for them. And so going all the way back, I think to my earliest memories, really, I, you know, picking up cans at the softball tournament with my cousins to buy pizza on my eighth birthday, you know, just always been a fairly enterprising person. And I think, you know, my gifts are that I don't feel fear in the way that other people do. One of my team members at Land Option says that I don't have anxiety, and I really don't. I just I have a strong faith about what I was designed to do, and I think that is to try and solve hard problems and take risks. And thankfully I married a person who gives our family the stability that we need to make ends meet and have insurance and things like that, and it affords me the ability to try and take on hard things and make the most of my gifts.

SPEAKER_00 6:42

Oh, absolutely. Uh, one of the goals of the Skillful at Work Podcast is to encourage and equip Christians to live skillfully in the workplace, sharing their experiences and practical tips. Uh, Eric, as a uh Christian in the marketplace, tell us about your experiences of living out your faith at work.

SPEAKER_01 6:58

Well, I think it's a it's a really cool premise for a podcast, first Kurt. I had uh an interaction the other day uh with two of my team members. We were uh at a bar after a long day's uh collaborating, working, and one of my team members said, You're my favorite Christian. And I asked him why, and he said, Well, because you've never really beat me over the head with your message as a Christian, but everything you do really sings that. And, you know, I think evangelism is one of the great tools we were given as Christians to go and spread the word. But I think one of the ways that, or I guess the way that I've always done that is to try and be the kind of person that others would follow. And I do that by trying to better understand the way Jesus lived and you know, imperfectly and with certain failings. Um, but trying to make that my aim and looking up at that as sort of the the leader for me as a leader of other men and women. I just try to act as much like that as I can as often as I can, and and hopefully through the way I behave, people can see my faith.

SPEAKER_00 8:08

Fascinating, right? Powerful conversation from someone. Uh, tell us a little bit more uh about maybe specifically some things that you do that would be uh example of leading others.

SPEAKER_01 8:19

I'll tell you a story about this. Would have been in my first ever company, my real company, I guess, pheasant cleaning and hand picking up don't necessarily fit that bill. But uh I started a company in college, it's called Thought District, and I had the fortune, I guess, of being young and hardworking and the kind of person that other young and hungry people wanted to come work for. And I got to the point in that business where the best and brightest graduates at the University of Nebraska's J School, which is where the advertising kids go to school, marketing kids go to school, Thought District was a marketing company. I got to where most years we were getting getting kind of the pick of the litter out of the J School. We were getting the best and brightest kids, and that felt awesome. But the the rub was that they would come to Thought District and really learn the business of marketing and advertising at Thought District. And about the time that they were really hitting their stride and getting good, they'd get picked off by bigger, better agencies that could pay them more and that could offer them the chance to work on brands and things that they really wanted to work on. And I really resented the owners of those companies that would recruit almost as if we were their bench. You know, it was like we're gonna call you up to the big leagues. Because in that business, like so many service businesses, your asset is your people. And so when when you have good, strong people who know what they're doing and know how to fit with the team and they fit the culture, when people recruit your team members away, it feels very much like they're taking from your balance sheet, they're taking from you personally. And I was really resentful of that. So much so that I called one of them one time and chewed him out. We played uh on the church league basketball team together, and I just really resented the fact that he was constantly recruiting my team members, and I was, you know, passing them passing him in the ball and making him look good at night in the church league games. And that conversation compelled me to really try and think about the problem of recruiting good people and keeping them differently. And it was about that time that my wife and I kind of rediscovered, well, girlfriend at the time, uh, rediscovered our faith. I in college and soon after college had kind of strayed away from the way I grew up. And my wife and I's girlfriend and I's third date was we went to church together, and we've been going to church together ever since. And I don't know whether to ascribe this to a newfound faith or if it was just smart leadership or or what, but since that conversation with this gentleman, also based in Lincoln, I've really tried rather than to lead people to what I want from them in their business career, to try and be a platform and a person through which they can grow into what they want from their career. And so much so that we started recruiting those same kinds of kids out of the J School in Lincoln using the fact that we were a stepping stone in their advertising career as part of our selling point, that we acknowledge that this isn't the end-all be-all for you, but that if you want to have a great career in advertising at one of the big agencies on the coast or in Denver or even the bigger agencies in Lincoln, this is a great way to get in and learn your learn your earn your stripes, build your portfolio, is what we would say in that industry. And and I've really tried to adopt that way of thinking about leadership since, and that is that I don't even say people who work for me, I say people I work with. Because in my heart I believe that if I lead the kind of life that they want to emulate, and I can facilitate them getting where they want to go in their lives, they'll stay. And when I am and my businesses are no longer the vehicle to get them where they want to go in their lives, I have consistently since then helped them get their next thing, or you know, been a reference, or even made phone calls if they're moving out of town or something to try and get those people to where they wanted to be. And I guess that way of leadership where you're really trying to serve your people, where you're not all high and mighty and they work for you, and that really has become my style. And it's hard as you read about Jesus, it's hard to imagine that he wouldn't have done it the same way, where it's you know, he was a servant leader, he was a person who really tried to see the best in other people and get it out of them. And that's that's very much how I've led my life as a leader.

SPEAKER_00 12:59

Well, I love to hear that. And I was waiting for you to say the word servant leader because it's that's what you were describing. And uh, I love how you made the connection that that's really how Jesus led as a one who really grew his followers, right? That those disciples, he uh actually worked on growing them for their fit for their purpose. You made the phrase you want to be a uh people who want to work for you want to be a person that want people want to work for you. What other than being the servant leader, are there some specific things you do at at Land Option that would maybe be a place someone would would want to work for you or work with you, as you would say?

SPEAKER_01 13:34

Yeah. Well, Kurt, I I have some questions for you too about how to incorporate more of my faith explicitly in my work, but implicitly I'll answer your question and then I want to ask you a couple. But so in Luke, there's a verse, Luke 12, I think paraphrase it's to those whom much is given, much is expected. And I think that as men and women who live in the Midwest in 2025, you know, say what you will about any tumultuous times politically or geopolitically. I mean, we are so so fortunate to live where we live and to live right now. And I I just I really believe that that gift was given to us and not earned by us. And to me, what that means is that as an individual, I feel the thing that drives me is generally I I like to solve problems that matter to me. But what I'm really trying to do with my life is maximize the strengths and abilities that I was given and didn't earn. And so as a leader, I try to inject that into my team by being as clear as I can about what needs to be done, but then by giving as much agency as possible to talented people to allow them to really use their gifts too. And I would say that's been a growth curve for me too, and still is, where early in my career it was kind of my way or the highway. And if it wasn't something I liked or wanted it done my way, you know, it didn't work. And both because it's a better way to lead and because it's a better way to live, I've really tried, especially with land option option, to hire and bring onto the team the most talented people I could find and then set them up to have as much agency over using their strengths and gifts as possible in doing their job. And that doesn't, I think sometimes leaders say uh stay out of their way. I don't think it means stay out of their way. I think it's collaborate with them, but also like really give them room to make decisions and really give them room to execute and grow. And what that's created for me over the years is you know, many of the people that I've worked with, whether that they've had huge success working with me or or where wherever they've moved, they've it seems adopted some of this high-agency thinking where a great deal of the people that I've worked with over the years have gone on to really successful careers in lots of places throughout the country. And I'm really proud of the fact that even if they don't know or wouldn't think to me as a person who helped them discover that in themselves, the evidence is there that giving people the autonomy to fail and giving them the ability to really use their gifts has been enriching for their lives and careers. So here's my question for you. Go ahead, go ahead. So I don't ever say as a leader, I'm I don't quote the Bible, I don't reference Jesus in stand up. There are no crosses, you know, in my screen that you see here. Uh there is some awesome artwork. But but how how would you advise a leader? How would you, based on all the guests you've had, how would you advise a leader to lean more into the explicit sort of evangelism of their faith and nephews?

SPEAKER_00 17:08

Well, Eric, one of the things I keep hearing as I as I talk with people just like yourself who are out in the marketplace is this idea of consistency. So, like as you've already mentioned, it's it's be who you are in Christ. And and people know that. I mean, you're you're not ashamed of it. Uh you don't go around beating people up on the head about it, but even your person you referenced, they knew you were a Christian. So I think that's important that they know that. And how that comes across is um up to each individual person. But I think a lot of it is this power that the of being a Christian and not being afraid of that. But you're not You're not you don't have the Bible on your desk, you're not quoting verses every day. Uh and I'm not sure that that's necessary. But I do think that when people find that they're in a place of conflict or difficulty or trouble that the person like yourself that's in a position as a servant leader, they're willing to then come to you and say, Hey, Eric, I'm I'm struggling, I'm having this personal problem. And and they're they they know that they can come to you because you've created this environment that you are a yes, you're a follower of Christ, yes, you're a hard worker, yes, you're concerned about their growth. But then there's also the time when it can be they can say, Hey, I'm I'm you know, my dog died, my my parents are are in in difficult trouble, or you know, whatever it it is, they feel like you're a person they can come to. And that's that where that's where I think a lot of the evangelism takes place because then you've built trust and that person's willing to come to you, and eventually that could lead to the opening up of the discussion to say, uh, you know, I'm a follower of of Jesus, and here's what Jesus said, and here's what he's done for me, and maybe that's something you'd want to consider in your life. And just boom, there there it is, right there, right? So it wasn't like you beat somebody up over the head. You're not the guy standing down down in on O Street with the cross and you know yelling at people that they have to get saved. But that's I think the most effective way that I've heard it from a lot of a lot of different people. Appreciate that. So you mentioned this issue of kind of developing trust, and that kind of goes with one of our other questions I like to ask, and that is uh I like I uh I'm a I love the book of Proverbs, and Proverbs 11, verse 1 says that God is disgusted by unethical or uh unethical business practices, basically. And so how do you go about in your business developing trust, being showing honesty and integrity? How how do you do that in your line of work?

SPEAKER_01 19:23

There's a buzzword that comes to mind when you say that authenticity. So some of my friends, some of whom you've had on the podcast, would probably tell you that I am pathologically unable to be authentic. I just am so deeply uncomplicated that I just am me. And so because I can't hide who I am and I can't shape shift into a different person in different rooms, it makes the decisions that I make in my personal life when the doors are closed or or you know, when people aren't looking, it makes that really important. And you know, the people have said you are who you are when people you you are who you really are when people aren't looking. And I think the way that I think about your question is I am who I am, I'm an open book, I am really happy to to be wrong, I'm really happy to be right, but I I really am the person that I project myself to be, and I really try hard to make sure that's true all the time. And the result of that is I don't have to pretend to be things I'm not. I don't find myself in situations where I'm out of my depth or I don't really have moral clarity very often. And so maybe how I build trust is I try, I genuinely try, I definitely fail, but I genuinely try to be the kind of person worthy of someone else's trust. And to me, the insight that really has guided my life is in order for me to be the kind of person other people will trust, I have to first trust myself. And to me, that means making the kinds of decisions worthy of my own trust when people aren't looking. And when when I'm in stress or when I have things that go horribly wrong, how how do I maintain trust in who I am then? And I, you know, I've been through, we can talk about it if you want, but I've been through some stuff just like everybody else has been. And and I think maintaining that sense of authenticity of really who I am, if I say I'm a Christian, am I a Christian when it's hard or am I just a Christian when it's convenient? I think that's how I think about the answer to your question is I I don't view business decisions as different than life decisions. I don't view the way that I carry myself. my family's not here as different than the way that I carry myself at a conference. It's just trying to be one version of myself and make that as good as I can.

SPEAKER_00 22:09

And do you pe do you feel like people perceive that or see that in you on a pretty quickly and as you're dealing with business transactions?

SPEAKER_01 22:17

I think so. Yeah. I mean my life is so full of people that I've I've built just really long-term relationships with, you know, through several different companies, through, you know, several different states of living in different places. And I I I maintain really strong relationships across all of those. I think in part because people know what they get from me. And there, you know, there are idiosyncrasies that I'm sure people could do without. And there's also those same things are probably reasons that people remember me and want to chat every now and then and will pick up the phone when I call. So I don't I don't know. It seems like maybe this is a dumb way to say it, but it it doesn't feel like when I was thinking about the premise of your show is how to lead or how to be a Christian man at work. It feels like almost a false premise to begin with because I just don't I kind of reject the idea that I should just be anything other than that.Anywhere I go. When I coach, when I drive the horse trailer, like I try I'm not saying I'm perfect because I'm certainly not, but it seems like there should just be kind of one way of being yourself. And if you really trust yourself to be that then that's probably plenty enough for your team or for your church group or for your spouse or for your kids or for your coach you know the team you coach or whatever it may be.

SPEAKER_00 23:40

Actually you you just hit a home run on the basic premise of the show and that is to talk with people who are just living out their day but they're living it as a person of of faith and so that by being that Christian in the marketplace you are making a difference. You are having people that are working for you that know that you're a person that's authentic because they they know what they're going to get which is the definition of being authentic right so I mean it's just that's why we wanted to do this so that we could talk with people who are it's it's not something that you turn on and turn off. It's something you are and so when you're in the workplace you are that and when you're at home you it's you're that same same person of faith.

SPEAKER_01 24:20

So how do you think about when I think about my faith I think of Jesus as like friend and mentor and I don't have a lot of dogmatic ways of expressing that it's sort of like an always on voice in your head or a consistent dialogue. Even even prayer it's sort of like um I'm not I you know we pray every day but it's not like I'm ever really not in prayer.

SPEAKER_00 24:48

It's like I just am always trying to express God's gifts through the way I use my life how how different from others that you've had on is that is that no I think that's that's in the same bell ballpark of what we're all talking about with the people that so far that have been that we've interviewed uh and uh it's this it's this idea of how do I follow Jesus in 2025? So I do that it's not something that I do that's like I you know going to church on Sunday. I try to dismiss that whole point of view that a lot of people see their faith as something they put up in a nice little box and it's something they celebrate on Sunday and then they don't live it out the rest of the week. I I love having conversations with with uh people like you and others who are how do I be Jesus today? How do I be more like Jesus today? How do I what would Jesus do in this case? I mean I know that was a silly phrase back in the 80s but the idea is it's it's like where we're supposed to be in prayer all the time because right we have the Spirit living within us. So we're we're actually living it out day by day. And I think just like Jesus did when he was on earth he had to deal with with day-to-day stuff and yet he still continued his mission and I think he's given us gifts and talents abilities and interests you know you're in your field and I I will never interact with most of the people that you interact with. So it's great because then you're you're interacting with those people. You're you know the pastor of your church may not interact with a lot of the people you deal with but you are Christ to them just like the pastor is the you know is an example of Christ for us when we go and and those kinds of things. So I think that's it's really kind of looking at uh the idea of how do we serve others and I think that sounds like what you're doing. I think that's a very common theme. How do we how do we live like Christ would want us to live on a day-to-day basis when I'm here when I'm at work when I'm in the grocery store kind of thing and I think that's that's something I all everybody I've talked with so far I don't say struggles with but that they're they're they're aware of it.

SPEAKER_01 26:48

Hey let me just uh uh I appreciate your time so much let me just wrap up with this what are you reading or listening to anything in particular any books you've been reading lately or podcasts or well yeah uh my wife would laughingly tell you that I'm reading all the time so I work in somewhat of the climate change meets ag meets forestry space um our customers are helping their landowners and farmers understand how we say it is to better balance the needs of people and nature and my background is in both conservation and then insustainability which are in my mind two sides of the same coin. And so lately what I've been reading about I read a lot about kind of the top thinking in that space and I've been struggling with you know how would how would God how would Jesus think about our work because essentially we are fighting for God's creation and God's people and the needs of creation outside of people nature if you will go largely unrepresented and people need to eat you know we we've got to have good healthy strong farms and farm families in order to feed the world and we can't farm every single acre or we decimate the ecosystems on which that farm depends. And so a lot of that work has come to light and be become more mainstream because of climate change. And for me the climate change message has always felt a little short or a little partisan maybe of God's higher calling to protect the natural world and to take care of the earth. But I haven't been able to articulate it very well that I think the climate is changing, but I also think that there's lots of other things that happen like hey we're killing all the insects and so there's no pheasants in Nebraska and you know we take out every tree line so there's fewer turkeys and there's lots of things that aren't necessarily climate change that go into the justification of my life's work. And then trying to figure out how to articulate that in a way that includes my faith doesn't necessarily beat somebody over the head with my faith or climate change. And so I read a lot about kind of the intersection of those things right now. A lot of research reports and things like that.

SPEAKER_00 29:26

That's a deep question particularly when you start to integrate this idea of stewardship and and uh God's call for us to to care for the earth as he gave it to us.

unknown 29:36

Right.

SPEAKER_00 29:37

Eric I'm so grateful for your time I appreciate that. Join us next time on the Skillful at Work Podcast as we interview Christians about living wisely in the workplace and serving as the salt and light at work. If you want to be encouraged and equipped to live your life of faith more effectively in the workplace the Skillful at Work Podcast is for you