In episode 54 of the Get Hired podcast, I speak with Jon Olson, a board advisor and cybersecurity legal specialist who discusses the changing roles of boards of directors today, having served on a board that made an exit through a strategic sale. Jon offers his experience as a private board member and his experience with a board appointment and how he landed the position on the board, a topic of great interest to Westgate clients today. I hope you enjoy the show.

Welcome, Jon to the Get Hired Up podcast!

Jon Olson

Oh, thanks so much. It's a pleasure to be here this morning.

Maureen Farmer

The pleasure is all mine. 

Jon Olson

So, I'm going to read Jo's bio, and then we're going to get into some really interesting questions and answers. So, Jon Olson joined Blackbaud as Senior Vice President and General Counsel in September 2008. And maybe John, you can tell us a little bit about Blackbaud after I finish the bio. Jon is responsible for Blackbaud's legal activities, including negotiating transactions, managing corporate governance activities, and legal compliance. Before joining the company, he was an attorney with Alcatel-Lucent. Prior to joining Alcatel-Lucent, Jon was employed in legal positions with MCI, Unisys, and in private practice. He received his BS from Georgetown University, his JD from Dickinson School of Law and his MBA from Seton Hall University (most relevant for today's conversation). Jon has been the corporate secretary to Blackbaud's board of directors for 15 years, and has served on a private company board, is a member of MUSC (Medical University of South Carolina), Hollings Cancer Center Citizens Advisory Council, and is on the board at the Charleston Symphony and Charleston Jazz boards. Jon joins us today from Charleston, South Carolina. So again, welcome, Jon!

Maureen Farmer

What specific type of technology solutions just to give us an example?

Jon Olson

Oh, absolutely. Well, it started out back in 1981, Blackbaud, has been around for over 40 years, which is Wow, I did not know that. You know, it's distinctive for a software technology company. Right. Many of them don't last that long. So we started out in the early 1980s. And the company has grown. It started out as a financial accounting and ultimately fundraising software for nonprofits. But now it touches upon every aspect of technologies that nonprofits could use, including analytic software, and a whole variety of fundraising software, donation software, and the like. Along with that our technology has changed over those years back in the 1980s, which was before I joined, but it was actually the software, it was actually sold along with a computer a dedicated terminal, because not everyone had a PC at that time. But then as PCs became more ubiquitous, we then sold our software through through floppy disks, and then through CDs, and of late we've become a software as a service company. So it's really subscription software. So just as our technology has changed with the times our offerings have changed with the times as the nonprofit industry has changed with the time. So it's been quite the quite the growth curve for the companies and much of that over the last 15 years that I've been there.

Maureen Farmer

Well that was really interesting. I didn't know that. So, it's a publicly traded company. How many employees do you have?

Jon Olson

We have just over 3000 employees, the company actually started up in the New York area on Long Island, and then moved down to Charleston in the late 80s. It was a founder owned and operated company until the late 90s When it was purchased by private equity and then became a public company in 2004. And has been a public company since then.

Maureen Farmer

Well, thank you for sharing that with me. And today we're going to talk about the role of lawyers on board. So let's jump right in. So is it rare? Or isn't it rare for lawyers to be on corporate boards today?

Jon Olson

Right? That's a great question. And it's interesting to see the evolution of this over over the years. It used to be commonplace for lawyers to be on corporate boards in the 60s and 70s. Oftentimes, it was the lawyer who provided primary legal advice to the company who was on the board. But ultimately, that situation is filled with potential conflicts of interest. So as corporate governance ideals formed and matured over the last 40 years, it became increasingly rare for lawyers to be on the board at all, because of that concern about conflicts of interest. And the pendulum has actually even swung further away from that, from having lawyers on the boards at all, which to my thinking is an overcorrection because the skill set that lawyers bring is so so critical.

Maureen Farmer

So, can you give us an example of what types of perceived conflict would arise from that decision?

Jon Olson

Sure, well really is it comes from from the hats that a counselor wears visa vie a board right, so if a board relies on legal advice from an attorney, there's an implicit attorney client relationship. But if that attorney is the board member, then it gets blurry, essential relationship can create problems for that attorney board member because their fiduciary duties that come from Being a board member, and they may come into conflict with some of the ethical duties of the attorney relationship. And apart from the ethical dilemma that may have it also may affect potential malpractice coverage if that would ever come into play. So it clearly is a best practice. And I think any governance expert would suggest that it is best practice to keep a separation from being an attorney for a board and attorney being on a board. But again, that doesn't mean the legal skill set should be given short shrift when assessing board candidates.

Maureen Farmer

So, a lawyer could serve a board in an advisory capacity but not in a fiduciary capacity is what you're saying.

Jon Olson

Yeah, I think yeah. So, be careful about those conflicts of interest. The boards do seek outside counsel advice, both from external counsel and of course, from many cases from the General Counsel inside the company as well. So they have access to legal advice, but it comes from a place outside of the board governance structure.

Maureen Farmer

So, how do boards benefit from having an attorney or a lawyer on the board?

Jon Olson

Or I think there's a variety of ways Maureen. And first of all, I think there's been an evolution in the in the notion of what a law degree is all about, in my opinion, a law degree and legal experience have broader application than merely the practice of law. In law schools themselves, much like an MBA, promote a certain analytical method of approaching problems and in particular business problems. Apart from the general characteristics, one would hope with being a lawyer and passing the bar being conscientious and hardworking, and trained and analytical. Lawyers are trained to ask the right questions, evaluate alternatives, and communicate effectively. And in particular, assess decisions strategically, which of course, in the law, practice is in furtherance of the client's needs. But also those exact same skill sets are so critical for a board. And while lawyers don't have necessarily a monopoly on any of those things, there are many professions that bring those skills. I think lawyers are it's a unique package coming out of their experience from law school and from the practice of law.

Maureen Farmer

He talked about it being sort of a backstage...having a backstage pass to some of the...

Jon Olson

Yeah, I think I think that's right. The Backstage Pass is kind of a concept that came up in a actually a movie. It's kind of a it's a bit of a potboiler of a movie, I don't know if you've seen it. It's called the devil's advocate with Al Pacino and Keanu Reeves. And I won't go into the details of the plot. But the net of it is, is that Al Pacino was the partner of lead partner of a large law firm. And he actually is the devil. And so at one point, Keanu Reeves said, Hey, why did you come back as a lawyer, you could have been any number of things that people want to be a law, Rockstar, astronaut, you know, politician, a world leader, and opportunists of will, as a lawyer, I get a backstage pass. And I thought about that, of course, in the context of the movie, it's all the truth of the plot. But in real life, it's the truth. I mean, the lawyers see things from behind and get a, get a get a diversity of experience, enabling all the things that businesses do, so that that rather than having a siloed perspective, it's an extremely broad based perspective on how to accomplish business aims strategically. And one thing I do want to mention, too, I, by my earlier comments, I don't mean to suggest at all that lawyers have a monopoly on ethics, but same time, because of their training and their experience. They understand the reputational damage to businesses by unethical behavior or non compliant behavior. This is especially important...

Maureen Farmer

And risks as well. So, risks that have nothing to do with ethical behavior. They have nothing to do with malicious intent. But they are out of control of the organization in that particular point in time, like data breaches and things like that.

Jon Olson

Yes, very much so. So you know, it's interesting, I mean, risk management has become so in the forefront for boards these days. And one of the factors that I've noticed is that compared to 20, and even 30 years ago, risks accelerate so much more quickly. And I think there's a variety of reasons for that. One is the interconnected technology so that data breaches happen in suddenly, and the repercussions can last for years. Likewise, social media, something that may happen to damage your company's reputation can proliferate and multiply over the internet in a way that never could happen. When we were in a newspaper based society, or even a TV based society when there was just nightly news and Morning News. On top of that, you have a world where there's more regulatory scrutiny than ever. I know, in about 25 years ago, Thomas Friedman wrote the book, the world is flat at the time at the fall of the Iron Curtain, and it looked like global trade was expanding, I regret to say that it's becoming a little less flat these days with the things maybe rebound papers, and apart from that, more regulatory scrutiny than ever.

Maureen Farmer

But despite that, Jon, despite that, on my kitchen table, today, there are three letters from organizations that have disclosed a data breach. Yes. And one of them is a national retail brochure here in Canada, and we've received three this Last week to last week. Yeah. So despite the regulatory rigor, we're still facing these data breaches.

Jon Olson

Oh, it really is. I have to say Maureen, I actually think data security and data privacy is sort of the problem for our age, it's going to be with us. It's sort of a generational problem that will be with us for until some new technology supplants the concern. But, you know, what could that be quantum computing and 15 years from now, but in the meantime, we're dealing with data issues on a nearly daily basis. And I think it's starting to dawn on folks what a sea change it is in our society. I mean, I remember when I started practicing law in 1988, my firm wasn't even net worth much less the rest of the world there was no there was no Internet, there was it was rudimentary email, when we needed to change files between one part of the firm and the other, we had to put it on disk and walk it over sneakernet, as they called it. So it's such a sea change. And I mean, there's a tremendous amount of value that's come to our society from that from that telecommunications and internet working revolution. But at the same time, you know, as with anything in the new in the world, there are there are parallels with it, too. But you're right. I mean, I think that's going to continue. And obviously it creates a I don't think there's a single industry that I can think of that isn't fundamentally changed by our network world.

Maureen Farmer

Absolutely. I would love to know a little bit more about your experience with your you mentioned that you were a director on a private board. And obviously, I won't ask you to disclose the company. But can you give us a sense of, you know, length of time you were on the board, what your role was some of the issues that may have come up as a result of your work on the board?

Jon Olson

Yeah, I think that's a great question and actually touches upon many of the same themes that we've been talking about earlier about what the what the role of a lawyer is on the board. So first of all, just a little bit of background about me, I mean, having being the corporate secretary and the general counsel of Blackrock for 15 years, and obviously advising the board not being on the board. But in this case, advising the board, I actually become a student of governance, I really I find it fascinating, interesting to see how governance contributes to better decision making. So that's that's a that's sort of an interest of mine, generally. But and I am on some nonprofit boards, but to turn to the to the private company board, it was really fascinating.

Maureen Farmer

And because this is a topic of tremendous interest to our listeners, how did the board find you? Or how did you find the board? How did you get recruited to that board...

Jon Olson

So obviously, I have been in the technology industry for 30 years doing legal work. And this company was looking to mature its governance profile. And I happen to meet them through a mutual connection. And, you know, while they, while they had a board, it was a founder, again, a founder operated company, it was the board acted primarily as an advisory board to the founder. And so the thought is that as the company wanted to mature, and expand its business, and not only in terms of size, but in terms of markets and products, we wanted to bring new skill sets. And actually, you know, from a governance perspective, that's exactly what you want to do with the board, right? You want to use that board to help build the strategy of the company. So in any case, through a mutual connection, and again, I was in the telecom industry, and this was a technology company. So it wasn't a huge leap, I was asked to join this board. And I did and I served on it for five years. And it was a key time because as I mentioned that the reason they were building this board was to try and expand the strategic maturity and the profile of the company. And then that occurred, and at the end of the five year period, the company actually was sold to a larger company. So I was able to be there at a very exciting time for that company as it matured, and then ultimately achieved its full maturity through a through an exit strategy to have a sale to a larger company.

Maureen Farmer

So, you had equity in the company, and that was your compensation?

Jon Olson

Yes, that's correct. Yeah, that's exactly right. And I know, the listeners will probably be interested in you know, especially in this particular podcast about, about making those connections, you know, how did I mean those connections? If I look back, I mean, those connections literally 2020, some years ago that I made the connection. So a little bit hazy in my memory, but, but I think what it is, you know, it's like so many things in life holding yourself out there, right. It's being it's being visible in your industry. It's being willing, I think, I think actually, the initial connection that I had with the company was I was asked to do legal work on the side for them, just, you know, just help them out with a few, you know, general, things like looking at their standard agreement general providing some general comments, things that were very much in my wheelhouse. So in that context, I was actually acting sort of as a as an ad hoc outside counsel, but really not Not, not deep in detailed legal work, but just it did create a connection. And I guess they figured I had some value to add happily. And so they also felt that I had some value to add beyond giving just ad hoc legal advice, and that's what led to the invitation. But I think fun In the mental disposition, really how it happened, it's you know, willingness to do something like that to go out of your comfort zone, to meet new people try new things and just hold yourself out there and also get engaged in industry fora, and industry events and trade shows, that's an A great way to get to know folks. And you never know what doors will open. Also to I'm happy to say that one of the nicest things about this, even though I'm off the board, even though the company doesn't exist anymore, really one of the best things to come out of it wasn't just the board experience. But it was a deep friendship with the founder and my colleagues in the company and on the board. So that's obviously a key factor as well.

Maureen Farmer

There's a lot of discussion today in business literature around founder led companies, and that oftentimes, when it's time to exit either up to IPO or to a strategic buyer, that is there's tremendous reluctance of that founder to let go, did you have that extra? Do you have that experience? Or did you have that experience with that person?

Jon Olson

No, he was actually he was the perfect founder, right? He wrapped the company up in a, you know, in a nice bow, and he put it in a box, and it was very organized, and he handed it off to the company that bought it. And it went very well. And actually, it was, it's one of those acquisitions don't always work out. I mean, the statistics, of course, are that you know, something like 50% of them don't achieve the avowed aims of the of the merger. You know, I don't know how accurate that is. 

Maureen Farmer

We had somebody on the podcast a few weeks ago, David Acharya, he's an independent sponsor, private equity company, sponsor in New York City. And he vehemently disagrees with that number. And he said that the valuation of these companies, and what it's producing in terms of enterprise value and IRR is off the charts in a positive way. Because I had some of those statistics as well that I had, I had quoted from McKinsey from Harvard Business Review from, you know, a couple of other very credible sources. And he disagreed with that. And he's been in the industry for more than 30 years as both an investment banker and an operator. Yeah, so it's interesting. But having said that, we all know we've all heard of this narrative where the company just doesn't produce what they intended to do. And I'm sure your experience in some of these larger publicly traded companies, you've seen your share of acquisitions that maybe didn't work out right.

Jon Olson

To his point and I think it's a good one. And he sees, of course, I did listen to that podcast. So thanks for reminding me on that. Oh, I think it does raise a very good point. And I guess what I would say to that is that, sometimes you have to take a long view, right? And sometimes, and then in some case, the value doesn't appear till till later, because there oftentimes can be a bit of an integration, integration phase sometimes can be can be painful. Also, too, I found and this supports his point, that sometimes the value of an integration doesn't manifest itself until several years later. And sometimes it's for reasons you don't fully expect. I mean, I've seen situations where a companies I've been involved with have bought a company for a reason a, and then reason a turned out to be okay, or maybe not quite what they wanted. But then there was nothing within that company. That turned into reason B that was wildly successful. So you just don't know. And I guess like anything else in life, once you make the decision, you just have to make the best of it and take the long view and go with all the twists and turns, certainly something worth a doctoral thesis on podcast for sure.

Maureen Farmer

Yes, I have somebody coming onto the podcast, in the future who is doing a PhD on this very topic.

Jon Olson

It's a fascinating topic, it really is. I think the main thing too, and this comes out and when talking about that topic is a lot of in some companies just better at it than others. And a lot of it has to do with the discipline that you put around it. And the in the feedback loop that you that you give, I mean, there's no perfect in the world with any business decision, whether you like it or whether you open a new product line or open a new product or expand into a new geography, it needs to be done with with discipline and a feedback loop. So things kind of get off the rails, you can get it back on the road. But getting back to the private company, and I think it highlights the theme here about lawyers on boards. Once I got on the board, I did not give them legal advice anymore. I was very careful to keep that hat separate. I recommended them to outside counsel that I knew who was who or quality outside counsel that could help them and whatever issue was coming up. But I was very careful not to provide legal advice in the context of the board. And then also along with that, while I was careful not to give legal advice. I did make sure that the company had a strong focus on compliance and being organized in the way it approached its business from a legal perspective. And that actually pays dividends I have to tell you because when it came time for the company to go on to its next incarnation of you know, being shopped around and then ultimately purchased, you know, if a company has its act together, so to speak from a compliance perspective and you know, has all its documents lined up and it's easy to give that information. I think there is a sort of purchasing premium But you know, as opposed to a discount if it's if it's a total mess. So I think there's an area where we're having a lawyer on the board can, without giving legal advice can can give that sort of sense of culture. And the sense of, you know, organization around around compliance issues.

Maureen Farmer

...compliance and standard operating procedures. Yes, having those documentations adds tremendous value. That's the research I've done is that having that that that type of infrastructure adds tremendous value, along with the efficacy of the senior management team, that's kind of the Warren Buffett approach to investing is making sure that there's a solid senior management team in those seeds. And you know, that that rigor, yeah, around the human capital.

Jon Olson

Yeah, I've been very fortunate at that private company, and actually, throughout my career, and, you know, to be working with management teams that are that are interested in doing the business the right way, doing the right things, which is, which is great. You know, if that's, that's important. And Frank, frankly, table stakes, right? I mean, I've always been favored to work with really ethical quality executives throughout my entire career.

Maureen Farmer

Yeah, it all comes down to understanding what you want, what you don't want, and what your values are as the way I look at it very much, so very much. So what do you think, in your experience, and in your, from your point of view, and, and background? What should a board and let's be clear here about the boards we're talking about today, although they will be applicable across the, the gamut. But if we're looking at a privately held board, or a publicly traded board, for that matter, what do you think those boards should be looking for in a non Executive Director?

Jon Olson

Generally, you want your board to be a broad based fountain of experiences that are that are relevant to the strategy of the company. Right. So and, you know, that's, I guess that's a little bit of motherhood and apple pie, right. But it's, but it's important. And I mean, it's important to have, right that it's variety. It's a variety of backgrounds of how people approach issues, a variety of skill sets, obviously, there are certain core skill sets, they're going to be relevant for nearly every company. Right. And I mean, obviously, one of them is finance. I mean, every every public board is required to have an audit committee. So obviously, having financial acumen is necessary. In the same way, I would suggest in this in this world of incredible regulatory complexity, that the legal background legal skill set, a compliance background is de rigueur as well, of late obviously, with, again, an Internet work world that has come upon us in the last 30 years and will continue to be with us having having I guess you'd call it cyber security, or cyber Tech experience, I think is relevant to nearly every board. And obviously, the skill sets that are relevant to the company's industry or business. Certainly, if you were a pharmaceutical manufacturer, you want to have a good a good array of folks on the board that had that background. Obviously, in our business, we want people with really good sales, marketing, SEO, software Tech experience, and we have that, so So but I guess more than anything else, the key is to be thoughtful about it. So best practices for nominating and governance committees to really think through that on a regular basis, and create A skills matrix of things that have the skills that a company will need. And also look around corners to see well, okay, here's a skill set that perhaps we don't need today. But we're going to need in the future, I would imagine, if you were on a board of a car company, obviously you want some car manufacturing experience on your board. But increasingly, you're gonna want someone who has experience in perhaps electric vehicles, or electrification or electric energy. Similarly, for us, you know, we've got plenty of software experience, we also want to have on our board people who are experienced in, in the SAS world, and there's going to be changes in the future that we can't yet predict. So it's important for that skill set matrix to be dynamic and not static. That's one of the key jobs of the board generally, of a nominating and Governance Committee in particular.

I have found in my career that lawyers are well suited to lead discussions and reach decisions and judgments. Again, lawyers don't have a monopoly on those type of skill sets. But I do I do find that type of deep analytical thinking prevalent in the folks that I've worked over my 30 plus year career. And you know, while it may annoy some people in some contexts, lawyers are trained to have a healthily challenging mindset, which I think is actually one of the most important things to have on board. You want to have that you want to have someone who can ask the probing and challenging questions, but obviously do so in a healthy way. Right? I mean, there's no sense in having conflict creates its own its own drama that takes away from the mission, right. The key is to is to challenge but in a constructive and healthy way. Obviously, lawyers are trained to analyze large amounts of data and when material, again, not a monopoly on that skill set. But for anyone who's gone through law school and has read the hundreds and hundreds of pages of Supreme Court decisions in their common law classes knows what I'm talking about, I guess more than anything else, that the key is about what value to add to the board. Right. And that is, I think, in this in this world of increasing complexity, I mean, I, it's both with my general counsel hat and board member hat. And frankly, just as a member of society hat, the pace and level of complexity that I'm seeing with respect to the vectors that are coming in and making decisions in this day and age, and of course, now it's been that's been accelerated to by having a largely or a more remote workforce, and all the buffeting of our society by the pandemic. And of course, the all the geopolitical changes and supply chain issues that have come up of late, I think it's really, really important to have a deep fundamental understanding of compliance on a board as well as finance, it's just as important as finance. And again, you know, I think the pendulum has swung the other way, because I think there's a misconception of attorneys as being sort of the cops or, you know, Department of No, or, you know, just talk about compliance. That's one of the negatives, right, some people risk aversion, or diversion. And my perspective is, is that, you know, I mean, you know, waking up in the morning is risk getting out of bed. You know, think about it, you need to be an enabler. That's the key thing, to me, my conception of an attorney, whether it be general counsel, staff, attorney, outside counsel, or an attorney mindset on a board, is to be that of an enabler and not have like, Oh, you shouldn't do that. I mean, think about, for instance, if you know if and I wasn't involved at all in the formation of Uber, but I can imagine, when the founders of Uber came to their outside counsel to pitch this idea, and say, Hey, we want to go into a heavily regulated business, that's largely a monopoly. And most municipalities using an unproven technology with a fleet of independent contractors to interface directly and frequently with the general public lawyers probably would have blanched and said, maybe don't do that.

But the fact of the matter is, you need to take risks in society, in order to make it a better society, and to do things. And so somebody was brave. Somebody was brave. Now, I've heard anecdotally and again, I have no personal knowledge, as I know, I know, Uber had, at one point in time some compliance issues. And I can't comment on those because I don't know anything about them, other than to suggest that it does highlight the importance of compliance as the company grows. But I will say I give them incredible credit for transforming an industry and being brave and doing it. And I think...kudos to lawyers that decided, yeah, we're not going to be...to try and do something new.

Maureen Farmer

Yeah, it's about mitigating the risk as well, not avoiding it altogether. And, you know, when I look at Uber, I think, my goodness, that's a technology I don't think I could do without today, now that I'm traveling again. It's brilliant. It's absolutely, absolutely brilliant.

Jon Olson

It's one of those technologies that I think of, and I mean, there's some things and maybe it's me that I just I still marvel at, you know. I think we take it too much for granted sometimes. I mean, I grew up in the 60s, and I marveled at this moonshot, you know, in 1969, when I was six years old, I for sure, thought I was going to get there. I'm not giving up that hope. But the thing is that, whether it made it to the moon or not, there are these incredible miracles that are happening through technology every day. And I think we sometimes take them for granted. I find the whole Uber concept fascinating GPS, it is my life I frankly, I'm amazed by Shazam, it can take zillions of songs in the world, it can pick out a song when I play about five seconds of it...

Maureen Farmer

Yeah, remarkable. Yeah. And things like even things like one of my guilty pleasures is is is just Spotify. I'm a huge music fan. And I love almost every genre. And now I can create a playlist that transcends all of those genres, you know, and carry that with me when I traveled or go to the cottage, or share or share with my friends.

Jon Olson

Yes, yes. It's your own radio station, right? Like it is. Maureen FM or something.

Maureen Farmer

Yeah. And actually, this podcast is is syndicated on Spotify as well. So that's another sort of fascinating, it is wonderful. It is, you know. And speaking of syndication of podcasts, we're coming close to the end of our time together today, Jon, and I would love to ask a question of you. When you think about your experience and education and career and all the wonderful things that you have been able to accomplish in your career. What has surprised you most?

Jon Olson

Wow, that's a really great question. What has surprised me most through my career? Well, I guess there's there's a couple of things. I mean, one, one, you know, sort of sort of personal and that is that, you know, when you look at the career going forward, everything seems so uncertain as to what the next step is going to be and where it's all going to lead. But looking back over the last three decades, there actually is sort of a consistent theme that goes through it as as twisting and turning is that is right. At different decision points in my career, I made decisions that were true to me. And it led me to some really great places working with some wonderful folks.

Maureen Farmer

So when you say true to you, so can you explain that?

Jon Olson

Well, sure, sure. I mean, so for me, and I mean, you know, essentially everyone's conception of what it means to be a lawyer is different, right? So some people believe that, you know, once you graduate from law school, you must be in a courtroom, or you must be at at the appellate level in front of the Supreme Court or what have you. And so, but it's a journey, really. So for me, I started out in private practice. And while I was fortunate to work and to create firms, you know, I always liked the interplay between law and business. And I felt I wanted to be able to really understand a client really deeply and look around corners. And so I thought about at the time, I was living in New Jersey, and I thought about what industries would I want to go to and I turned to tech, and at the time, that was before computer law was cool, right? I mean, that I worked for a company, Unisys corporation that was a leader in mainframe technology. I mean, those were those large things like how 2001, you know, with the tape, through tape faces going through, and it was, you know, that compare that I mean, I probably have more power on my phone right now than they might have been some of those mainframes. Anyway, that was the decision point. Right. I didn't know where that was going to lead. But I think I think so the surprise is that, you know, things will always happen, like you expect, and they're not going to happen in a linear way. But you have to have faith at some level that the, you know, that you're always you, and you have to make the decisions that are true to yourself. Oh, yeah, you have to honor that for sure. And if you do, and if you feel that you're off track on that front, you have to get back on track. I think that's number one.

Maureen Farmer

So was it an interest in technology?

Jon Olson

You know, I think it goes back I think I mentioned earlier, I thought I was going to be an astronaut and go to the moon. So while most of my friends in high school actually are in the technology business, and I veered off into law, I think that's me veering back a little bit towards technology, which has always fascinated me. I think that's me. And then on a more general sense, what surprised me? I think it has been that incredible acceleration of complexity in our society, do you think at some point it would reach, you know, a degree of stability or, or okay, it's gonna be like this for the next decade, but instead, new things, and new opportunities, new technologies, and new trends happen all the time. So that's, that's been a bit of a surprise.

Maureen Farmer

And the human enablement of that as well. I mean, for all of the, you know, the talk of cybersecurity and data breaches, you think of the benefits that technology has brought to humanity, you can't deny that.

Jon Olson

Oh, without doubt. I mean, I'm a I mean, I have great faith. I mean, I know there's lots and lots of issues in the world and lots of problems. And Lord knows lawyers have to deal with them a lot, both in terms of the compliance side on the front end, and the aftermath when things don't go as planned. But, you know, again, I have great faith, ultimately, in our society to a solve those problems, invent new ways of growing and helping our society. I see it every day. And I think of the business I'm in, right. I mean, our company at Blackbaud is such a special company, because really, the technology we develop is employed to the benefit of the world, right. I mean, we're, you know, I'm not suggesting that we're, you know, our clients are the ones that are doing all the great work, but the fact that we can help enable that. So it's a it's a real honor.

Maureen Farmer

Oh, that's lovely, Jon, thank you for sharing that. And I guess the last question I have for you is around restaurants. We are compiling an annual list of wonderful restaurants. And I'd love to get one or two of your top.

Jon Olson

Yeah, sure, I'd be happy to. And you know, I think, you know, learning to one or two I like as you mentioned at the top of the show, I'm in Charleston, South Carolina. And it is one of the premier restaurant and foodie towns in the entire nation. And so we have so many to choose from. And I guess it really depends on the mood you're in at any given time. But let me just say there's one that stands out for me for a couple of reasons. One because of the outstanding food and one because of a personal connection. And that's Zero George. I'm in downtown Charleston on George Street right at the beginning of George Street hence the zero George it's a it's a absolutely outstanding restaurant that has a tasting menu that changes seasonally and it's it's absolutely exquisite. They pair it with wines if you if you choose to do so that are done in just a remarkable way. They also if you're interested this they also have a caviar bar. So there's there's other options. Every meal I've had their has been superlative. And then on top of that the personal connection is that I got married there. During the pandemic, my wife and I actually got married outside their courtyard, and it was a an unforgettable experience.

Maureen Farmer

That's lovely. Thank you for sharing that.

Jon Olson

That would be my number one choice but I have to you know, we could be here we're gonna do a podcast on restaurants. I'm gonna stop at Zero George. But I do want to just mention generally, if anyone visits Charleston and visits any restaurant here, they will enjoy it.

Maureen Farmer

I'm looking forward to it. It's on the top of my list now.

Jon Olson

Excellent. Well, I look forward to hosting you here Maureen. 

Maureen Farmer

Absolutely! So John, thank you so much for joining the Get Hired Up podcast. And oh, how do people reach you? What's the best way for people to reach you?

Jon Olson

Yeah, the best way for folks to get me would be through reaching out and connecting with me on LinkedIn. And I look forward to connecting with anyone who's interested in continuing this discussion.

Maureen Farmer

That's wonderful. John, thank you so much for joining the podcast and hopefully we'll get to do it again.

Jon Olson

Oh, thanks so much, Maureen. Really appreciate it!