Long-time listeners to our show will recognize our next guest as he was a regular contributor for many years, sharing his entrepreneurial insights and opinions about our state’s start-up ecosystem. His latest project also explores these themes only this time in the form of a newly released novel. Mike Switzer interviews John Warner, a serial entrepreneur based in Greenville, SC and now author of the book, The Tuesday Code.
TRANSCRIPT:
Switzer: Hello and welcome to another edition of the South Carolina Business Review. This is Mike Switzer. Longtime listeners to our show will recognize our next guest as he was a regular contributor for many years, sharing his entrepreneurial insights and opinions about our state's style startup ecosystem. His latest project also explores these themes, only this time in the form of a newly released novel. John Warner is a serial entrepreneur based in Greenville, South Carolina, and now author of the book the Tuesday Code. John, welcome back. Hi, Mike, it's been quite a while now and I see you are now an author and penning some novels here. Tell us what's going on.
Warner: Over the past year, I wrote a novel called the Tuesday Code and it really relates to some of the things that you and I have talked about for a couple decades now. The novel set there's a national crisis and power and communication go out across the country. And I think we're all living in a time where there's a lot of turmoil and people are uncomfortable with things going on, aren't we?
Switzer: Well, and then there's AI. Do you have that factored into this book?
Warner: Absolutely.
Switzer: Ah.
Warner: And you know, technology is amoral, so there's parts of AI in this book that are nefarious and there's parts that are the solution. And all kind of depends on the people using it. And a group of people find themselves refuge in the Bensalem Motorworks plants. You know, they got to figure out how they're going to survive this, how they're going to work together. You recall that over the years, I had a conversation with Virginia Ulrich about the founding of the Governor's School for Arts and Humanities. She defined what was essential for the school. I mean, that was what it took for her to raise resources from the outside. She put together an outstanding faculty of out of the box thinkers. She made sure they had the resources they need. They all knew how they were accountable to one another. And then she was able to let go and let, them do their job. And the people in this plant in the midst of this crisis and trying to figure out how they're going to work together, but they come up with this same culture of trust where, you know, once they all agree on how they're going to survive, then they can start to let go and let each of them do what they do best. You know, I think that's true not only in a crisis like this, but across organizations, isn't it?
Switzer: So tell us what's. What was the inspiration for this novel? Just going to guess. Maybe, because of the world we're living in now and how it seems like the. An impending crisis might be on the horizon.
Warner: Well, I think there's a lot of change going on regardless, isn't there? I heard the president of Finland speak recently. He's a Furman graduate. He was talking about just all the change there is in the world. We're faced with change in a whole lot of ways. And you remember when the dot com bubble busted about 25 years ago, and that was a whole tsunami. So we're constantly in this change churn. You know, a lot of people have this impulse to kind of try to be in control, try to run things from the top, try to make the decisions, tell everybody what they need to do. And especially when things are changing very rapidly, that tends not to work very well. So I think the inspiration of the book was begin to lay out hope and a path for how we can all really respond to this turmoil that we're feeling. And one of the stories in the book is the person that starts the art academy there is a lady named Victoria Underwood. Virginia Uldrich. Victoria Underwood didn't take a lot to connect those together. And she said her grandmother told her, you know, Vicki, all you can do is control the square foot you stand on. You know, that's all we can all really do, is just control what we can control, build trust with the people around us. You know, I've got it, you know, which means I'm accountable for it, I'll deliver, and, you know, we can hold our community together that way. So that was really the inspiration of the book was to take some of these lessons you and I talked about, you know, over 20 years now, and really, you know, create a situation where we could put them together as a story, you know, with characters that live through this and ultimately prevail. It started, the novel starts pretty dark, but it ends with hope and a path. And these are still human beings at the end. Some of them are greedy, some of them are heroes. Teenagers are all still cynical. So they're human beings, but there's a path forward. And I think that's true for us in real life, too.
Switzer: Well, John, thank you so much for spending time with us again.
Warner: Thanks, Mike.
Switzer: John Warner is a serial entrepreneur and author in Greenville, South Carolina. And we will have a link to the book posted at our webpage so you can learn more. SouthCarolinaPublicRadio.org where you can hear this show again. And remember, you can hear us again wherever you find podcasts. With the South Carolina Business Review, this is Mike, Switzer.
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