Becoming a Curious Explorer: A Message From Steve Sonnenberg CEO

Recently I’ve been asked by other organisations to share my story, and I thought it might be nice to share that with a wider audience so people can get to know me and know my journey. I am many things: a dad, a husband, a basketball player and the CEO and co-founder of Awardco. My cousin Mike and I set out to sail uncharted seas to figure out a way to create a points system around Amazon. We wanted to create a new currency, a type of motivational currency that could be redeemed around the world. This is the story of that journey.

In the Beginning

Mike and I decided to take a small metaphorical boat into the waters of entrepreneurship. We didn’t take seed money. We decided only to spend what we could afford—and it’s been hard. That decision has forced us to be more disciplined in our choices but we are stronger because of it. Awardco is one of the fastest-growing companies in America. We are in control of our journey.

History is full of stories of explorers who have discovered new lands. Explorers are seekers who travel the unknown. Entrepreneurs are explorers too. They are curious, determined and tenacious. When Michael Dell was asked to name a single attribute that CEOs will need to succeed in the future, his response was “curiosity.” Even Albert Einstein admitted, “I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious.”

While I was reading a book called “The Future Leader” by Jacob Morgan, I came across a story about Sir Ernest Shackleton. Shackleton was an explorer and a great leader at the turn of the 20th century. In 1914 he organised an expedition to explore the Antarctic with the goal of crossing it from sea to sea, going about 2,000 total miles. To gather his crew he took out an ad in a newspaper that was blunt and honest:

“Men wanted for hazardous journey. Small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in case of success.”

Who in their right mind would sign up for THAT? It turns out that 28 curious, determined and tenacious men did. When I read that newspaper ad by Shackleton, I likened the ad to starting your own business. There is a lot of truth in Shackleton’s ad that resonates with being an entrepreneur today.

A Hard Setback

I’d like to share a personal story of my journey over the last 10 years. I have gone from bankruptcy to leading one of the fastest-growing companies in the country—and it hasn’t been easy.

In 2011 I was involved in a civil suit that had become so far-reaching that it had wrapped up another small company I had started. I was thirty years old, married and had four kids all under the age of five. All my assets were frozen and I had no money. I eventually settled from that suit after fighting it for a long time and I walked away from everything I had built. Ultimately, I had to file for bankruptcy and that was very hard for my family.

In the midst of this financially challenging time of my life, I decided to start Awardco. I borrowed $5,000 and I bought the domain name Awardco.com. I had a big idea and I needed a bold name. I set out to build a technology that would organise the world’s incentive spend with a platform where employees could recognise each other, earn points and redeem rewards all on one application. We wanted to make the best redemption experience possible with millions of choices, fast and free shipping and zero markups. The only way to do that in my mind was to partner with Amazon, display their products on Awardco and display the value in the form of points. No one, to my knowledge, had ever done this.

Into the Unknown

Like Shackleton, I needed help for my next voyage. My cousin Mike is a back-end developer. I was at the rock-bottom in my career, yet Mike was willing to go with me on this journey. He was excited but knew long, dark days were ahead.

Mike and I were able to carefully craft hundreds of millions of products to display on Awardco through some difficult development work. For the first time, organisations could now offer products from Amazon as rewards to their employees for all their recognition programmes.

This was going to change how the world recognises and rewards employees.

However, we had a big problem. I contacted Amazon and let them know what we were doing, and they balked at our plan. However, I did what I learned from Jeff Bezos, and I stayed stubborn on my vision but flexible on my approach. We were in uncharted territory, but I remained patient.

In the early mornings and late nights from 2011 to 2015, I sold Awardco to interested parties. I still had a day job, but I spent all my free time on Awardco. As orders would come in, we would capture all the order details and my wife would help fulfil orders. This model wasn’t scalable, but it worked.

Scaling Success

Then we got lucky. In 2015, Amazon Business was founded. By this time, I had developed a few relationships with people at Amazon Business in Seattle. At the end of 2016, I was invited to come to their HQ to present Awardco to a team of new Amazon Business employees.

Amazon Business LOVED what we were doing and doubled down on forming a partnership. Together we improved the experience for the customer. We were ready to scale.

However, we didn’t stop there! We integrated with all the Amazon warehouses worldwide in places like India, France, Germany, Japan, the UK, UAE, Brazil and more. This helped us to virtually eliminate customs and often reduce shipping to nearly zero.

A Bright Future

We now have over 2.5 million users in 140 different countries. We have signed up some of the largest brands in the world. We are one of the fastest-growing companies in the country. We’ve grown from 50 employees to nearly 200 in less than a year. We didn’t take a large round of funding, either, and we didn’t spend more than we had. We remained cash-flow neutral the whole time.

I share this story to prove it doesn’t matter the challenges you face. No matter what, you are never defeated. There will be moments you will doubt yourself. The rough times will come, but they have not come to stay. It’s easy to complain and it’s easy to point out your circumstances. It doesn’t matter how many failures you have made—and it doesn’t matter how many mistakes you have endured or defeats you’ve experienced. What matters is that you stay captain of your ship by staying patient and curious. Entrepreneurs, like the explorers of old, are curious explorers.

Curious Explorers

As the world continues to change, you must adapt; it’s the curious explorers who will be our future leaders.

So how do you stay or become a curious explorer? Let me suggest five ideas.

1. Take Quality Chances

I believe that optimism is essential for doing anything hard, like taking quality risks. That doesn't mean that you're blind or unrealistic—it means that you keep focused on eliminating your risks and modifying your strategy until it is a strategy about which you can be genuinely optimistic.

I started Awardco in 2011, and I didn’t go full-time until 2015. The risk was too significant, so for years, I worked on Awardco but I had another job to help pay the bills (so I had a clear mind). In 2015, I removed enough of my roadblocks to where I felt genuinely optimistic about taking a quality chance.

2. Be Okay to Fail and Be Wrong

Failure is the ultimate teacher. When I first started Awardco, it was going to be an embroidery shop. I had jobs where I created hats, polos and even custom embroidered golf bags. That wasn’t taking off as fast as I would have liked, so I added symbolic awards like plaques and trophies to my offerings. I was shocked to learn the discounts I would get from my suppliers, so I tried to create a “Costco Style '' membership where companies would pay me an annual membership fee and I would provide symbolic awards at wholesale prices. My third idea was to create the “Amazon Model,” but I needed a developer and that’s where Mike came in. You can see that I failed often, but I never stopped failing. I remained a curious explorer.

3. Value the Perspectives and Ideas of Other People

Leaders will have to rely on people with varied backgrounds and perspectives to make the best decisions. This means that in order to have a successful company, leaders must be open-minded to ideas that are not their own.

Candido Botelho Bracher, the CEO of Itau Unibanco, the largest financial conglomerate in the southern hemisphere, with assets over 400 billion and an employee base of over 100,000 people globally, said this in an interview with Jacob Morgan:

“As business transformations become much more frequent and necessary, the leader of the future must always be open to questioning ideas and assumptions from those who report to him or her or from third parties. Under these circumstances, the leader cannot be expected to always have all of the knowledge, information and answers. Increasingly leaders will have to reply on their people with varied backgrounds and perspectives to make the best decisions. This means that in order to have a successful company, leaders must be open-minded to ideas that are not their own.“