[NOTE: This is the first of three blog posts. To view the webinar interview of March 2, 2022, upon which this series of blog posts is based, please CLICK HERE.]
Blockbuster Video from 1 to 7,000 stores. Boston Market from 12 to 1,600 stores. Einstein Bros Bagels opened 600 stores in three years. Getting to scale. This is Scott Beck’s track record. On March 2, 2022, I interviewed Scott Beck on “The Entrepreneurial Spirit.” Scott talked about his entrepreneurial journey and what led to the creation of his current venture, Gloo. Also part of the interview was Rick Rusaw, Executive Networks, Gloo, who talked about the role of the entrepreneurial spirit as a pastor, the development of a church network and his role at Gloo.
Scott Beck, CEO & Founder, Gloo, has a unique entrepreneurial track record. He served in key executive roles at Blockbuster, Boston Market, and Einstein Bagel Corp. He was a founding investor and board member of Ancestry.com; a partner and investor in over 50 venture technology companies; a partner and vice chairman of Pacific Dental Services; and a board member and advisor to many not-for-profit enterprises over the past 30 years in the education, amateur sport, and family ecosystems.
In 1993, after his initial successes, he set up a family office to manage his funds, make strategic investments and to donate to various causes. He and his wife, Theresa, have been trying to live “an integrated life in both the business and ministry space for the last 35-40 years.” Faith and calling have always been at the core of their motivation. In addition, Scott noted that, “we have had full-time ministry people on staff helping various Christian initiatives as part of our family office.”
Rick Rusaw, Networks Executive, Gloo, previously served as the Lead Pastor at LifeBridge Christian Church in Longmont, Colorado for over 25 years. He is the co-founder of the Externally Focused Network and the co-author of three books: Externally Focused Church, Externally Focused Life, and Externally Focused Quest. Rick has been an innovative pastor during his entire ministry. He advises churches to ask themselves this provocative question, as he always asks himself: “If your church disappeared would anyone care?” In other words, churches that don’t serve and connect with the community will soon be irrelevant.
Churches need to consistently pursue innovation. Rick Rusaw laments that, “Churches tend to be laggards when it comes to innovation.” This may come from looking inward too much and not having a pulse on the burning issues of the community. Rick Rusaw, who grew up in a non-Christian home, advises that, “We ought to be real people with a real faith in a real world.”
He has launched a succession of innovative ventures within a church context. In Bolder, CO, 90% of the mentors in the public school system were from his church. They launched “America’s Kids Belong” which provided stable foster care; 22 states asked their church to help. They provided support and job skills for single moms, childcare and transport. Rick Rusaw always asks, “how do we utilize innovation skills to help address issues relevant to Christians?”
This led Rick Rusaw and Scott Beck to connect regarding the challenges of magnifying Kingdom impact by helping churches be better resourced. The innovative spirit, combined with a desire to have a marketplace impact, led to the creation of Gloo, and the ability of Scott Beck, founder, to get people such as Rick Rusaw on board. Scott Beck was puzzled that churches were not collaborating to get to scale on various tech-related initiatives.
He realized that churches collectively attract billions of dollars in donations and spend billions of dollars on various services—and yet little of what they do benefits from economies of scale. Even though there are denominational networks, churches are largely still run as independent mom & pop operations. Despite the high profile of megachurches, the vast majority are 200 people or less with a lean staff.
The solution is to have a collective effort to get to scale. How to do this? Who could lead it? This would require someone with the expertise, vision, connections and resources to make it happen. That’s the story of Scott Beck who founded the online platform called “Gloo” and assembled a team of people, such as Rick Rusaw.
Gloo, in a nutshell, helps ministry organizations with online outreach to serve their communities more effectively through a massive online platform (thus far, over 15 million connections). The second blog post in this series will cover the entrepreneurial track record of Scott Beck and the third one will describe Gloo and the global faith ecosystem.