After graduating from DePaul in 2020 with a bachelor’s in communication, Landon Campbell created the popular “inTheir20s” podcast to share advice with fellow twenty-somethings. On the show, he interviews top business leaders and influencers to explore what they did in their 20s. His notable past guests include Steve Wozniak, Miami Mayor Francis Suarez, Ev Williams, Dr. Meg Jay, Guy Kawasaki, and Kat Cole.
In this Q&A, we sat down with Landon to hear his story from being a DePaul student, having his own podcast, speaking at TEDxWrigleyville, to now being a General Manager at Drive Capital. Read on to learn more.
Your podcast inTheir20s has become a big hit. What are some lessons you’ve learned from turning your passion/creative pursuits into a business?
It’s so important to have a long-term vision and big goals, but you do have to focus on the day-to day. You have to focus on the short-term miles. A lot of people say they want to do the big things. And then when the going gets tough, they get lazy and give up.
For the podcast, I didn’t know exactly who I’d be interviewing. I didn’t know I’d be interviewing Steve Wozniak or really any other big people. I didn’t start interviewing billionaires, I started interviewing my college professors. I started interviewing people I worked with and local community leaders, and then it grew from there.
So, yes, you can strive to build a future multi-billion-dollar company, but what are you doing today? What are you doing tomorrow? Next week? The short-term milestones will get you there.
Other lessons I’ve learned: consistency is super important and so is providing value to others. Like what can you do for others first before you expect to get other things from other people?
Access to information is a huge principle of mine. I’ve done cool things, but I’ve never wanted to gate keep that. Anybody can do what I do and have done. And yeah, I’ll do it a little different, but you might do it a little different too.
In your TEDx talk “Re-Think Your 20s,” you mention three things that aren’t spoken about enough: Building Identity Capital, Prioritizing Mental Wellness and Focusing on Growth and not Status. How have these things impacted you personally?
Building identity capital to me means doing a lot of stuff. In our twenties, we don’t always need to have the answers for what we want to do for the rest of our lives, but it’s so important during these years to just try new things. If you like something, keep doing it. If you don’t like something, stop doing it. Take note about what you didn’t like about it and then put that to the next thing. All that to say, you should be willing to take risks and try new things– and that’s not just something for people in their twenties.
The second point of prioritizing mental wellness means talking to more people and finding opportunities to meditate and find peace. There’s a common misconception of meditation where you have to sit still. People meditate in different ways. For example, I like to swim in the morning, I like to work out, I like to go on walks, even finding time to call my mom is a form of meditation for me.
And for my last point, I’ve gotten further in life from taking on roles and doing things that have allowed me to grow. So, I think about it as focusing more on what you’re doing vs. the title you have while doing it. As long as you’re growing, that’s what matters.
Looking back on your time at DePaul, what professors or experiences greatly contributed to your entrepreneurial journey?
Professors Ron Culp and Don Ingle had a great impact on me because they both offered great experiential learning opportunities.
It’s great to have a vibrant in-classroom experience, but for me, with really bad ADHD, it’s tough to sit in one place for an hour and a half. It was great with those professors because they had wonderful connections with big PR companies in the city of Chicago, and they would often have those individuals coming into the class. Even better, we would be able to visit their offices and I would be able to see the day-to-day. It was always fun to get out of the classroom and see real work– what a working environment looked like.
I worked on projects for a lot of these companies as well, where it was high stakes, and it didn’t feel like just a little midterm assignment. We got to work on some really cool assignments that these companies would sometimes implement in their offices.
I was also involved in student government— I was the Vice President of the entire student body. I was expected to lead, and I learned a lot dealing with different people and finding ways to collaborate and work together. You’re working with a very diverse group of people– and diversity to me is not just skin tone, it’s different backgrounds and perspectives.
So, in what I do now as an investor, asking great questions is really important. Listening is very important. Having great emotional intelligence is a very important skill. Those are the three skills that have allowed me to stand out because there are a lot of other investors that don’t do them so well.
If you could go back to your freshman year, what would you tell yourself?
There were moments during that time where I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do, and I wish I would have put less pressure on myself. I’ve always had an entrepreneurial spirit. I launched a small little thing in middle school I remember. I was the lemonade stand kid. And, yeah, I think freshman year I could have launched a big company. So I would say, don’t put so much pressure on yourself when you’re young, but at the same time, don’t feel like your age as a young person should hold you back from pursuing or launching big entrepreneurial ideas.
I think that a lot of people think that you’ve got to hit a certain age before you approach venture capitalists. But I mean, I’ve met a few founders that are literally 17, 18, raising millions of dollars. So yeah, that could’ve been me. Age is just a number. Experience equals experience, not age.
What’s next for you?
I want to contribute to the future of the Chicago startup ecosystem. We’re getting on the ground floor of some early, early companies. I’m super involved with the companies that we invest in, and I want to help maximize their success. In the future, I want very large startups in Chicago. We don’t have any – specifically — 10-billion-dollar companies here, and if I can be someone that contributes to that in startups, that’d be great. I want the future public companies to be massive. That’s going to lead to more jobs in Chicago.
Landon Campbell is a Podcaster and General Manager at Drive Capital based in Chicago, IL. He’s the Co-Founder and Host of two popular podcasts: inTheir20s and Venturing in VC.