[00:00:00] Souphak Kienitz: You are listening to conversations with Chanda where leadership gets real and personal. This is where we cut through the noise to confront the issues shaping our world from power and justice to the heart of community change hosted by Chanda Smith Baker.
[00:00:20] Chanda Smith Baker: Steve, welcome to Conversations with Chanda. I'm super amped to talk to you on this. Very exciting week for you.
[00:00:27] Steve Grove: Thanks, Chanda. Excited to be here. Really pleasure to get to chat with you.
[00:00:31] Chanda Smith Baker: Good deal. So your book came out this week? It did, yeah. And it looks like you have been all over the place, maybe even in Northfield last night for, yeah,
[00:00:42] Steve Grove: my hometown.
Did a little bit of a hometown swing over at the Grand Theater there. It was really fun.
[00:00:47] Chanda Smith Baker: Yeah. A thing that you may not know about my family is that my grandmother was born in Norville. No
[00:00:54] Steve Grove: kidding. I didn't know that at all.
[00:00:57] Chanda Smith Baker: Wow. Yeah, they owned a dry cleaner there. I don't have much history about it, but I have like this affinity to that place and I, a real commitment to get to know it is just part of my own.
Family history and, and understanding. So I definitely was, I don't know why I didn't know that about you, but I did not know.
[00:01:16] Steve Grove: Yeah. Well Kyle's Colleges and Contentment, that's kind of the motto, but it's also a community has gone through a lot of change, like a lot of Minnesota has. It's a great place to grow up.
College town, of course. Um, but then with a lot of immigration issues that our whole state and country are facing, Northfield seen a huge influx of Hispanic immigrants working at the cereal plant and elsewhere. That's actually a part of how I got my start in journalism was writing about some of those issues that you had a community of, uh, of Latinos who were living in the trailer park, kind of at the edge of town, who really weren't integrated very, very well with the rest of the community because they were there to work.
And frankly, Norville didn't have kind of the structure to, to embrace these newcomers. And so the first kind of series of pieces I wrote this way back in my early twenties at the Northfield News was about that tension and how it was being ameliorated. And I think it's an ongoing process even here 20 years later.
[00:02:06] Chanda Smith Baker: For sure. One thing that stood out to me right away is sort of this story of, um, reinvention.
[00:02:13] Steve Grove: Mm-hmm.
[00:02:14] Chanda Smith Baker: Can you say more about that?
[00:02:17] Steve Grove: Yeah, well the book is called How I Found Myself in the Midwest, and it's about my journey of, you know, having grown up here, like you mentioned, but then also leaving and spending most of my career in Silicon Valley and then coming back seven years ago and not just coming back to Minnesota, which it has its moments of reinvention, but also leaving my job at Google where I worked for 12 years in YouTube and moving into state government, and then now local news.
Look, I think all your listeners, every human in the world has their moments of reinvention. That's not unique to me, but I felt like having left Minnesota and come back, there was a boomerang story there that I think resonates with a lot of Minnesotans who do the same, but leaving tech and going to government at a moment when the role of technology in society is shifting so rapidly and frankly, the role of government is shifting and.
Andre, I'd say some pretty considerable threats in terms of people's trust of government and its ability to function effectively was kind of rich with a lot of topics to explore and uh, the book kind of tracks, I guess my own personal reinvention of moving from tech into government. But then also I think the state's reinvention, frankly, from a place that has been exceptional for so many reasons that we can talk about, but is also rife with some paradoxes that we can also talk about.
And Minnesota is kind of a main character in the story, if you will, in that regard. It's both. A memo, more of my own reinvention, I suppose, at, at this point in my life, but also our state's attempts to do the same.
[00:03:38] Chanda Smith Baker: I think that when I think about reinvention, if I look at sort of Google government media, I wouldn't have saw the through line, but I understand it better now.
[00:03:51] Steve Grove: Mm-hmm.
[00:03:52] Chanda Smith Baker: And if I just sit on reinvention for a while, I think that c. Pushed a lot of people to think differently about their lives and how they wanted to be in proximity to either people or things that they had imagined in their their lives. How did that particular moment, if at all, was what was the driver?
Was it a family driver of reinvention? Was it like a dream that was sitting dormant? If you could define maybe those inflection points, because there are many people sitting. There, and it is a common question that I get around reinvention.
[00:04:30] Steve Grove: Well, I think that for me, the decision that Mary and I my wife, made to move from the valley, you know, back to Minnesota, was a big one for us, obviously, and sparked in part by just family considerations.
We had twins, Luke and Violet, who are now eight, but at the time were just one. We had been through a five year long journey with IVF to have them that had been. Challenging as anyone with the fertility journey will know and felt very lucky, but also quite deliberate about our experience once we were finally able to achieve this dream of building a family and fought a lot about where we wanted to raise them, um, but also had a feeling having worked at Google for a dozen years and marry even longer than that, that while it was a tremendous company that had all these impacts on the world and had to kind of a global footprint and.
Most of the time I was there was still in kind of this utopia phase of the internet where everything that that Google and YouTube were able to do felt like upside and power to the people had started to feel a little bit more like a, a culture and technology that was in the bubble, right? And that big tech and Silicon Valley didn't quite understand the rest of the country that their technologies were influencing.
And as we looked at Minnesota, a place that. Certainly isn't Silicon Valley, but has its own momentum in the tech industry. We thought, gosh, you know, this actually is a place with some opportunity professionally too, and thought, you know, let's take a moment to reinvent ourselves. Let's take an experiment and go, go move to Minnesota.
She left Google as as before I even did, and started her own venture capital firm, which we can talk about. And then for me, I stayed with Google and then when I got here, transitioned into government. For me that was a, I dunno, I hadn't planned on it, but I knew Governor Wallace from having volunteered in his campaign way back when he was a school teacher and felt.
You know, this might be a chance to give back or connect with my community in a way that feels more real and rooted than I felt at Google, which I just felt kind of further from my roots and a little bit less tangible impact in. And um, the book gets into that and sort of how I made that shift personally.
And, you know, it was a humbling experience for sure, but I learned a lot.
[00:06:24] Chanda Smith Baker: Mm-hmm. Is the book in
[00:06:25] Steve Grove: part, like a love story to a place? Yeah, it is a little bit. It's, I do love Minnesota. I think there's a lot to love about it. It is not a pollyannic sort of, everything here is great kind of Garrison, Keeler.
We're all above average kind of book though. There's a lot in the book about the paradoxes we face. You talk about them a lot on your podcast, right? And as a white man leading deep through a period of time that included the pandemic and George Floyd, that's something I grappled with, not only as the leader of that agency, but as a, as a person.
And you know, I think in particular, the inequality, the pandemic exposed, and then even more so, the murder of George Floyd and all the Followed were ones that obviously we're all grappling with still today. But then in that more precise moment of urgency, we had to navigate pretty quickly to get money to rebuild the corridors that were hit and, and I guess for me, at a personal level, figuring out am I the kind of leader that understands these issues?
What, where do I need to grow? Personally, I did a lot of work there with colleagues and others that helped, I think me grow. You and I worked together on some projects at that time that I learned from you in and so. I dunno. It's a pretty honest reflection on what you learn in these moments of crisis. I would argue that places and people learn a lot more in the tough times than you do when things are easy and it doesn't try to dodge those things.
'cause I think clumsy conversations, which I think we've all had more of in the last five years in this state, are important. So yeah, it's a love letter in Minnesota in a certain way, I hope people outside the state who read it will say, Hey, there's actually something pretty interesting happening there and there's, it's a place worth being.
It's not flyover country. And at the same time, I think any honest love letter is, is honest. Right. And, uh, shares where growth is needed too. So. Mm-hmm. I enjoyed that process of exploration and writing it.
[00:08:02] Chanda Smith Baker: Yeah. Before we sort of jump into your role in government leading deed, I think sort of these multiple realities that this place holds, you talk about it in the book in terms of the charitable elements, the generosity of the people in this state.
The number of things that we've stood up to be more generous and those things are very true. We've been the first in in many, in many measures, and unless you dig in or you're from these communities, you may not understand what sits underneath it. Were you at all surprised? Like were you aware of just the disparities and the challenges that sit across this state, or was it something that you really.
What was revealed in a different way.
[00:08:52] Steve Grove: Yeah. And if
[00:08:53] Chanda Smith Baker: so, how did that, how did that sit? What did that feel like?
[00:08:58] Steve Grove: Well, I would say like anyone, I, I was aware of the disparity in Minnesota, certainly on paper, I would say, before we moved here, 'cause you, you, you read about your home state, but also experientially, I mean, Mary and I started way back in 2011, a star, a nonprofit called Silicon North Stars where.
Before we even moved here, we would bring 16 young people out to Silicon Valley every year for a tech camp, and largely students of color, all of them below the poverty line, and many of them recent immigrants. And we would bring them out to the valley for a week and we'd take them to Google and YouTube and Facebook and um, GoPro and, and you know, give them a little bit of exposure to tech and to meet leaders in those industries that looked like them and had their same experiences in the past, but also.
Mary would put them through a startup bootcamp on how to build a business, uh, that ended in a kind of pitch to venture capitalists at the end of the week. We love that you learn a lot about the community through that, but I think when you move here, it's different. And certainly in government it's different and deed an agency that is exists to grow Minnesota's economy, the, a very nice question is for whom and how.
And there things get a lot more real, a lot more quick and you see. Um, these gulfs in outcomes for people of different communities and backgrounds. And I guess for me it was a real learning experience of why that is the way it is, how it might be untangled, where Minnesota might have some blind spots.
Talked a lot, both when I was indeed and afterwards with leaders like Samuel Myers who kind of coined in Minnesota Paradox and talks about Minnesota being a place that has racism without the racists. Uh, you know, this idea that sort of, we don't talk about it as openly, but we have all the same structural issues, if not more of other places.
And then you look at just how quickly this state has diversified in the past 25 years. We were extremely white back in the nineties, and then boom, this kind of inflection point of immigration. And I don't think our culture is frankly caught up to it as fast as it needs to. And you, you learn that as you dig into the issues and learn from other leaders.
[00:10:51] Chanda Smith Baker: You worked in the tech industry, that seems to move very, very quickly.
[00:10:57] Steve Grove: Yeah.
[00:10:57] Chanda Smith Baker: And then you go to government that seems to move very, very slowly. Oh, I know. Is that a fair assessment? And what were you able to sort of bring to that role that you think, particularly mass the moment, because not long after you came into deed, we hit COVID, which required.
New technologies and new ways of doing things, it almost feels like it was unknowingly a more perfect union than it was even understood.
[00:11:30] Steve Grove: That's well said. I, I think that's exactly right. I mean, yeah, I came from a culture that prized velocity, right? Like, how quickly can you move? And you know, the whole motto of Google is launch and iterate, which is to say, get a technology out there and let users bang on it and use it so you can figure out how to make it better.
Or don't make it have to be a polished pearl before you release it. And in government. You know, my very first day in government, to give you an example, the orientation included a slide deck where the very first slide was a picture of a goldfish in a bowl, and it was just, this is your new life and many meaning to say everyone can see what you're doing.
Everyone gets to see what you're doing. And if you ever say or do anything that could end up in the front page of the Star Tribune, don't say or do it. I mean, that is a culture that does not prize trying new things or innovating, and I think that's really a shame. I mean, to speak to this broader issue of where government is today.
You see things like Doge and what's happening in Washington with President Trump and what Elon Musk did as these efforts, I think, to respond to a large amount of discontent in this country with traditional institutions and government, but in precisely the wrong way, if you ask me, which is to say, taking a sledgehammer to these institutions.
Yes, efficiencies needed, but I argue innovation is needed even more. And what I found in government is there's a lot of government bureaucrats and, and longtime civil servants who desperately want to innovate. Because they feel like they're goldfish in that bowl. You know, they can't as as often. And so part of what I tried to do at DE was create a culture where failure was okay and you had a chance to innovate, but to your point on the pandemic accelerating that it really did.
And I think nothing like a crisis to help move individuals and suddenly the risk tolerant gets higher. 'cause if you don't take risks and try things, you simply aren't gonna be able to get the unemployment insurance checks out on time or. Create the small business program that helps stem the tide while we're trying to figure out, you know, what this virus is doing and how we can live with it.
And I think crisis actually, while incredibly challenging and would never invite it for me, made the job feel more like Google than I think it would've if we hadn't hit those moments that were so challenging.
[00:13:29] Chanda Smith Baker: Yeah. You came in to help grow our state's economy, stabilize it in parts of our state. And certainly attack the disparities that existed, the pandemic hits.
And your role then is to shut down business?
[00:13:52] Steve Grove: Yeah.
[00:13:53] Chanda Smith Baker: I think right at the opening of your book, you talk about 416,000, um, jobs lost in that first month of COVID. You come in with this big dream of impact and very quickly you're doing the opposite of what that looks like while you're in a fishbowl.
[00:14:14] Steve Grove: What was that like, Steve?
It wasn't a job I signed up for. That's true. For anybody in government. Rapidly shifted. Yeah. I was gonna come in and try to make our department, the innovation department, and. We did innovate, but in ways that were not what I expected. Yeah, losing those many jobs at once was terrifying and trying to get unemployment insurance out the door.
A program that I only vaguely was aware of, frankly, I mean, I, I don't mean to say I didn't know what it was, but in terms of how to operate it knew almost nothing when I came in was incredibly challenging. We were lucky in Minnesota, you know, not to say we got everything right, but we have a really strong department.
It's nation leading actually on so many categories where. You had some, some longtime public servants in those jobs who were able to figure out far new ways to keep the technology rolling to get payments out. We were the first state in Minnesota, or sorry, first state in the country, to get all three of the new federal programs rolled out to our customers, which is, um, no small feat when you saw folks in Florida and Wisconsin standing in lines around the block to fill out paper applications.
So we saw a lot of innovation there. But yeah, the job shifted pretty quickly and. There. I would just say I leaned on the advice and example of some other public servants. I mean, watching Jan Malcolm as a health commissioner out in front of the country, or sorry, the state sharing her calm, thoughtful, honest, deliberative approach to the health components of the crisis.
Watching the governor himself be kind of the teacher in chief for a while, and just taking the time to explain to Minnesota what we were doing, why we were doing, whether we, what we did know and didn't know all in this environment with no playbook was. Um. It was inspiring to see, so I, I tried to aspire to those leaders and what they were doing and I did find in the process that I, just, at a personal level, operating in a place without a playbook suited me a little bit better than one with a playbook, written with too many pages.
You know, I think something that actually felt more like Google in that environment where, okay, clearly the federal government doesn't really know what we should be doing here. There's not a clear national plan. Doesn't to say that federal government didn't end up doing some important things, but. Really early on it was like 50 different states running 50 different science experiments.
And so, you know, Minnesota tried to do our best to run the best thing version we could in the playbook we wrote on the fly. Took a lot of agility and, and nimbleness and I found that to be a more natural fit for my skills. But, you know, one of many authors obviously, and, uh, and a really tragic time. I mean it was, um, it's hard to kind of wrap your head around.
That was only five years ago and we still the after of it, but it, it really reshaped his state and continues to.
[00:16:39] Chanda Smith Baker: I'm just gonna go down the thread of this line and then we'll jump into the, the book. Although a lot of this is discussed in the book, folks know the timeline. They know that George Floyd's murder happened, right?
Sort of at the beginning of, of what we were dealing with, with COVID. Um, again, just a reflection of a a coming to a head. Aside from that day where his life was taken, there was sort of an explosion across the globe, but here in a new understanding or conversation around race and equity in our systems.
And I have no doubt Dee was involved in those conversations. You were dealing with multiple crisis. It also hit us personally. Yeah, what was it like being in there? Because there's a lot of people looking in that fishbowl that are very critical of government, and there are many things that we are doing without the playbook right now.
[00:17:41] Steve Grove: Yeah, I know. Well, as an department that I led, you know, I succeeded Tara Hardy, who you know well, and is a phenomenal commissioner and really built a great portfolio to try to carry forward on. Inequity and inclusion. And yet she would say, as I would, there was just still long ways to go in terms of government meeting some of these needs more effectively.
And you know, I think the challenge in the crisis moment of the murder and the aftermath and the, and the, the unrest and the destruction and then the rebuilding was you don't just get to kind of go in and do what you want to do. You gotta get a lot of stakeholders on board and indeed. For us to help get state dollars moving into rebuilding Lake Street and University Avenue and all of the areas that were hit.
Hard meant. We had to get votes and buy-in from a Republican senate who was exhausted with working with a governor who was operating by executive order, as I would argue he needed to, but not from your legislator, not feeling like you get to do your job. And there were some really natural tensions there.
And most of the Republican leadership in the Senate, which at the time was Republican controlled. Was pushing back on any state dollars going to help Minneapolis or St. Paul because they felt like, well, those are a, they would say those are urban problems for urban dollars to solve. And B, you know, at an even deeper level felt like the response to the.
Unrest hadn't been adequate enough and therefore it's an on you to solve kind of feeling. Now, I'm not saying that was every legislator's opinion, but you, you came up against that. So I was just one person in this argument. I would never say I was leading it. It was, you know, we had mah nor in the house doing a lot of great work and a lot of other legislators too.
Bobby Joe Champion, um, and then of course Eric Pratt and the Senate on the republican side who, who got it and wanted to help but needed to navigate his caucus. We had to find a way to both get dollars to those corridors while also getting dollars to main streets outside of the Twin Cities who were harmed by COVID policies because we were trying to figure out the pandemic.
And so this kind of main street revitalization program that we launched, not to get too into the weeds of legislation, but was kind of purposely named that because it had to work for more than just the corridors that were hit. If you're gonna get through the politics of it, I would argue ultimately it got a lot of great dollars where they needed to, and that kind of more holistic approach.
Was good, but it was messy. And it, for me, as a rookie government officials, figuring that out, I mean, and recognizing that I don't live in these neighborhoods myself, so I really have to default to legislators who do and let them lead on a lot of these things was a learning experience for me, but it did, it did at the end, I would say uplift to me that this is a place where we figured it out.
Like we figured out how to work across some partisan lines. You know, we're having this conversation, what is it, just 11 or 12 days since the, the murder of, of Melissa Hortman and her husband, and. This, these violent attacks on legislators that seem to be raising the temperature on, on political violence and discord at a place that has long prized itself as this kind of bipartisan, um, we rise above it all kind of kind of market.
I think that's actually a good exceptional attitude to hold ourselves to. But we're all grappling with what we, how we go forward after a moment like that. And we need moments to, to process it, I think. But I will say having been in the guts of government and seen it happen before, I do believe it's possible.
And I think in Minnesota there is a sense of. Constructive collaboration that is good, but it's messy. You know, we don't always get it right. But in that moment, I think we got some things right and a lot more work since then, frankly, by a lot of others. But, uh, it was a start.
[00:20:53] Chanda Smith Baker: Yeah. When I was, um, reading the, the book, I think as you describe sort of the policies that were coming forward during COVID, the way that you talked about rural urban.
Sort of needs, I think I saw it even differently, right? The, you made a comment about those that were living in rural communities were like, why does this apply to us? Because we're already naturally sort of segregated and apart from each other. What can you say about, about the, both the tensions or the things that we need to understand about where there could be stronger connections and per perhaps strategies.
That would support a state when you're looking at rural urban division?
[00:21:42] Steve Grove: Yeah. Well, it's a common refrain in this country to talk about that chasm between kind of rural and urban and it's real. And I think in Minnesota it's real too. Historically, we've been a state that has navigated it better than most.
The way that state government dollars carry across the state has built some of the best infrastructure of any state in the country. We have the fourth most miles of freeway or highway than any state in the country. You've got this kind of Minnesota identity that comes together around the state fair that is, social scientists tell you quite contiguous, and I don't mean to be kumbaya about it, but there's a little bit of a, a, a good story here with urban and rural connections in our state.
But I think the pandemic really tore a lot of that apart, at least exposed, where the, the shifts were and politically, you know, this was a state that for a long time had and still does today, could boast the most successful third party in the history of American politics, which was the former Labor Party that.
Saw this really unique urban, rural co coalition between farmers who were fed up with monopolistic control of agriculture and laborers in the cities who were, uh, fed up with the bosses who are tamping down unionism. And those two groups came together and ended up electing through their third party, three different Minnesota governors, I think something like a dozen, uh, national legislators.
So all that to say we've done it before. The pandemic and other moments have stripped us apart a little bit, and you've seen the politics of rural Minnesota shift rapidly. The range is no longer blue like it once was. But I have found, I go into the book some pretty neat examples when you get outside of the Twin Cities of
leaders finding ways to bridge the divide. You know, one of them is Benya Kraus, a woman who started a group called Lead for America, that brings in interns, if you will, or, or early career professionals to come in and do work in rural communities that they come from, using kinda what they learned when they left and come back.
It's almost like a professional boomerang program, if you will. Um, I think that's pretty neat. You look at what some of our tribal communities have done against great challenge and, uh, difficulty to. Develop their economies, not just on the reservation, but in the surrounding communities that are hurting from lack of opportunity.
I write about the, um, the LACS reservation, uh, in North central Minnesota and what they've done through MCLV to, to really build childcare centers and startup ecosystems. So there are some pretty neat examples out there. You gotta go looking for 'em, but I think there's a lot of inspiration when you go local.
These are to get stressed out right now about the national tensions. And I, I don't mean to put them aside because they're real and they weigh on us all. When you do go local, which is one of the big messages of the book, you do find a lot of hope. And I think in Minnesota, yeah, things have shifted, but you get leaders like, like Benya or Dustin Goslin up at MCLV doing some really neat things on, on economic development that do cross those lines.
And, uh, there's some models here worth, worth lifting up. I try to do that in the book.
[00:24:24] Chanda Smith Baker: Yeah. Let's talk about the title. How did you land on the title?
[00:24:29] Steve Grove: It was, how I found myself in Midwest has two meanings. I think one is like, how did I find myself in the Midwest? Um, and then the other is how I found myself, right?
The more kind of deeper philosophical meaning. I think both work. Um, I think we landed on that, uh, in collaboration with the publisher on what might connect with those who are also looking for meaning and purpose at a time that I think community feels more more driven apart in some sense. The book is a lot about hope and community and coming together and how to build it and.
I think this epidemic of loneliness that we have in our country and community division, which plays itself out both in the fact that people. Widely report having far less friends than previous generations have reported. 15% of adult American adult males right now will tell you they have no close friends.
And about half of Americans will say they don't have as many close friends as they wish they had. Those are way up this generation than in the past. And then at the broader level of institutions, you see this decline in trust of everything from the military to government, to media to churches, and massive, you know, departure from the church community, for example.
I write about my own faith in that context 'cause. For me, that's been a journey, but that's not true in other countries. That level of, of declining trust across the spectrum, other countries don't face that the way we do. And so I write about kind of finding yourself and finding your community in the sense that I do think, while it feels so much like the world is happening to us, like technology's happening, we're just trying to kind of catch up or, or the change in the tension is just sort of overwhelming to kind of have a moment of agency that like you can go out there and, and find yourself and find community and it takes maybe a different approach.
But having come from a culture created by the internet at Google and YouTube, I would argue far more for our physical communities about walking into the door of a church, about going to a meetup in ways that this isn't rocket science, but I think we kind of need to remind ourselves of it, that that's where the most genuine human connections happen.
And yeah, that's, that's a bit of what the title is trying to convey. The working title is actually flyover no more. 'cause I was trying to mm-hmm. See of like, hey, we're not fly over country, but. As you write the book, you realize some of the personal stuff is the most resonant with people, and so it became a bit more of a personal title.
[00:26:35] Chanda Smith Baker: Yeah. I started out with sort of a question like, is it sort of a love story to place? And when I was reading it in those lessons, wondering whether or not there were sort of, I don't know, lessons that you hope other people from outside of the Midwest gain from it. Right. Like, you know, look at us, don't fly over us.
Like, look at Yeah, exactly here. But we know like a little bit of a celebration of what is working and what has been learned. But what do you think other parts of the country actually could learn from us here or in the Midwest? I.
[00:27:13] Steve Grove: Yeah, I mean, there's a lot happening here. Anybody who lives here is listening to this podcast from Minnesota knows that we aren't flyover country.
I think that's been widely debunked, but it's still, you talk to friends on the coast and frankly for me, part of writing the book was sharing what's happening here with my friends in Silicon Valley and newsletters and other things, and realizing, gosh, they really just think it's completely farmland in this part of the country.
Like they don't, they just sort of think Minneapolis is cows and uh, chickens, which of course we're proud of agriculture in this state, but there's a lot more happening more broadly. And so I do think the book lifts up our innovation economy, our, our startup space, uh, our business culture in ways that I think are just, we all know it here, but others don't see it.
But I think at a deeper level, one of the things I really get at is that this is a very purpose-driven place. I'll give you an example, like the five-year business survivability in Minnesota. In other words, if you start a business, if it's around in five years, that rate is higher here than almost any other state in the country.
I think 'cause people choose stuff they really care about and they stick to it. You know, I think the Valley where I came from professionally before Silicon Valley has all kinds of great technologies and a lot of attention gimmick sort of apps and what have you, that kind of swallow your eyeballs. Um, and those are, you know, have changed the world in some positive ways and other negative ways.
But the technologies that are created here are like how to make a better technology to keep your heart pumping, or how to make sure your crops grow at a higher yield so you can feed your nation. And that kind of. Startup ecosystem here that has a lot of innovation in here, but is a bit more purpose-driven, I think is a differentiator that I think people who think all the innovation happens in like the Silicon Valley, Boston, New York hub structure would be emboldened to see it happening elsewhere.
And I would argue that for the country more broadly, if we're gonna actually make a tech ecosystem that doesn't feel like the one we currently have, where everyone's, ah, big tech stealing my data and my time and my attention. You're gonna have to see more of these tech hubs could be, um, thriving outside of those coastal hubs.
'cause you need a diversity of thought idea approach. And I mean, I put Minnesota on top of that list as a place that can do it. Um, but it does take investment by. Government and universities and others, and we speak about that a little bit in, in the, Hmm.
[00:29:20] Chanda Smith Baker: What do you hope that people from this place take?
Because sometimes you don't even know the place. Right? I imagine that in your time here, you've gotten to learn this place differently than you saw it when you were at North in, in Northfield. But what do you hope that people inside of our state take from it and, and you all should go get the book and read it.
It's really insightful. I certainly learned. But you know, what do you, what do you hope that folks get from it that are from here?
[00:29:49] Steve Grove: I mean, I hope there's a little bit of Midwestern pride in it. I think there's a, a lot of really unique things about our state that I will say it's kind of a native sun returned home with a fresh pair of eyes.
I got to kind of learn as I researched the, the state we live in, and it's not a history book by Benny Stretch, but I think there's a lot to be proud of there. It is a state that is exceptional in a lot of ways. It punches above its weight and all these indicators. We've talked about it and uh, it's also a really sticky place.
I think people that move here find it's hard to leave, you know, it's hard to get them to move here in the first place, but I think it's okay to be proud of your community and recognize its fault at the same time. And while the book kind of does both, I think it's a moment where we all could use a little pride in where we're at, given just how tension filled and oftentimes tragic are.
Communities can feel certainly here most pointly in the last few weeks, but even just more broadly with the challenges that we face through that has to come with a dose of hope. And I think the book had to lift that up, both in terms of calling upon our history, but also some of the examples that I've seen coming back of people doing some pretty special things.
You take, you know, somebody like Jazz Hampton who was this like successful corporate lawyer. I think folks probably know he's running for mayor now, but he. Took a, a really unique turn in life and left his corporate law job to start turn signal, which creates an app where you can, you know, have a lawyer beamed into your car over the phone if you get pulled over something that he believes and has shown to be the case can lower tensions in some of these moments that events some of the flashest, sorry, how most challenging points, right?
For the black community police over time and so. I dunno. There's just, there's, that's just one of many examples, but, um, I think there's people trying to do things differently here. It's, you got a ways to go. Yeah. The groundbreaking coalition, which, you know, you've been engaged in and, and other things are examples of, okay, yeah, there's some things to be hopeful about here, so let's, let's yeah.
Allow ourselves that permission to have some hope.
[00:31:39] Chanda Smith Baker: It's part of what you're saying too, is that I think in a moment there's either people really hyperfocused on what's happening in DC or they're really not paying attention. Right. Like, that is what I've sort of experienced in my travels. And then you have people that are just focusing on what are we gonna do?
What are we gonna do? And, you know, we often hear that government and the way that you engage is local and you should be very, you know, hyperlocal in terms of how you engage in democracy, where you are at, where you are from. Like it supports sort of the, the strength of your own community. And, and in that way, would you agree with that?
Like, there's people that are really wrestling with government and you've raised some real tension points, but what would you offer in terms of. You know what? What should we be thinking about this moment that we're sitting in?
[00:32:28] Steve Grove: Yeah, I think the people are wrestling with it. I think that your point about people seeing either the national issues or nothing, all it, it speaks a little bit to the work that I'm trying to do right now is in college to the strip, right?
Which is that the death of local news. And I say that very intentionally because in this last 10 years we've seen two thirds of the journalists in Minnesota leave the profession entirely. So we see this crisis in information. And the changing of habits, the internet has inculcated in people's daily habits of content have really left a gap in terms of just the basic knowledge of what's happening in our communities.
And your podcast and KMOJ and other outlets are doing, I think, an admirable job of tacking back against that and making good progress. But it's, it's an uphill battle even for us at this strip with the largest newsroom in the Midwest. And. You know, people don't feel like they should pay for news anymore, largely.
And so you have to figure out how do you create the kind of journalism that is worth paying for and convince people of that. And so that's a whole nother conversation, I suppose. But I think there's something about people's sense of connection to each other that has to be rooted in just good information about what's happening that feels fact-based and objective and clear.
And that's what we're trying to figure out here at the Strip. I think that can help people understand their governments better, you know? The job of a news organization isn't only to hold government accountable, although certainly it is, but it's also to help citizens understand what it's doing overall and like how it works.
And I think there's just a huge knowledge gap because of that drop in journalism in our country. That's, that's a challenge. Yeah. So
[00:33:56] Chanda Smith Baker: I was also struck by, I mean, if there's, if there's two places I was, I was gonna say two, there's probably more than that. 'cause people really, you know, a lot of people don't trust the policing system either, but they really are not trusting government.
And media is pretty close, second or third or wherever, right? Like in the, in the scope of things. So you go right into the places where they are critical to making a, a community work, yet the mistrust is so high and, you know, you insert the things that you're talking about in terms of where, how do you know where the source of truth sits?
Right. Like we can all find information that lines up with what we think or hope is true, but it may not actually be factual. And so if you had to give a plug for media, local media, like what would you say to us, especially folks that are like, we just don't trust, you know, sort of the consumption
[00:34:58] Steve Grove: of it.
Well, I certainly wouldn't begin with a lecture that people should, because I don't think that works, nor do I think it's what people want or need to hear. It's on us to gain your trust. As a news organization, it's on us to have reporters that live in the very communities they're reporting on, that you believe are telling the truth, and it's on us to do that at a scope and scale that has enough audience together where there is this kind of common sense of effect and goals.
But I would say we also can't do it alone. The funding model for journalism is broken. You know, our print subscriptions are going down at a precipitous rate every year just because of the trends in modern media and digital subscriptions are on the rise. But that alone won't replace our ability to hire and put more journalists in the communities that they need to cover to build that kind of trust.
We're gonna need other funding models, so philanthropy's a big one. We are finding new ways to get high net worth individuals, or even people who just care a little bit about us and want to give us a few bucks. The chance to do it alongside foundations and other institutions. You know, I would say that more broadly, you're gonna need to see in this country some government assistance for media not to influence the coverage, because that would be antithetical to the whole point.
But there are models out there that work well. I mean, you look at the BBC and the uk, you look at even some states here in the, in the US who've done such things as payroll tax incentives for hiring journalists or. You know, other economic incentives for advertisers to choose local news as a place to put their ads there.
There's attempts out there that feel market driven, but help fund the kind of big newsrooms you want to do this work. But again, I wouldn't, I wouldn't come at this from say, Hey, you know, you, you should just eat your broccoli and read the news every day, everybody. It's, we had to find ways to be relevant to people.
So that's both having reporters who look like the communities they're serving and live in the communities they're serving, but also. Mediums that we choose, right? If everything's a thousand word article, you're just not gonna meet a modern media audience. You gotta look for snippets, you gotta look for video, you gotta look for TikTok, you gotta look for newsletters.
We're, we're, we're trying to really become a modern digital media company that embraces a lot of those mediums. And I give us a fighting shot, but it's a, the, the challenge is steep. And we're gonna need a community that rallies around us. We're gonna get it right.
[00:37:07] Chanda Smith Baker: Yeah, I appreciate that. I'm gonna loop back to the book for a second before we wrap.
Was the book sitting in you for a while or was it something that just one day you're like, this is
[00:37:17] Steve Grove: it. I had like anybody I guess, who enjoys writing often wondered, Hey, I wonder if I'll ever write a book. That'd be kind of fun, but didn't quite know what it would be about. When I made the move to Minnesota, shifted into government and then started writing to friends about it and emails and things and getting feedback.
I thought, maybe there's some books here. I don't know. And it wasn't until I left my job in government that I had a moment to say, okay, maybe there is something here. And so I put together that pitch and, and again, I would say at the beginning it was very much more focused on Minnesota, almost like a Minnesota sociology book or something.
And you know, national publishers weren't as interested in that, but they were interested in the human story part of it. And so. Part of the book was sitting in me. 'cause it's a very personal story, but you know, as a creative leader too, once you start with anything, it kind of stuff comes out different than when you set down to write.
And so part of the journey of writing a book I discovered is also learning about yourself. And I'd say some of the more poignant moments of the book are about my relationship with Mary or our fertility journey, or my relationship with my parents and faith and reconnecting and community and. You know, um, I think it became a better book because of that, but I don't know if that was a book I knew I was setting out to write when I began.
The process itself kind of shapes what you're, yeah. Tell me about when
[00:38:31] Chanda Smith Baker: you got it in your hand
[00:38:32] Steve Grove: for the first time. Yeah, that felt pretty good. It was, you know, you sort of envisioned that moment and those lonely mornings where you're hacking out some chapter you can't seem to finish. And yeah, it was a moment of achievement and, and one of the things you feel right away when that moment hits is just how many people helped you get there?
'cause. Writing a book's a lot of work and yes, you're at the center of it, but man, you gotta have an editor and a publisher and a family and friends and sources who all make it happen. There's a sense of, wow, I'm kind of lucky to get to have done this. My name's in the cover and yeah, it's my story and I own that.
But man, to get to do it was a kind of a, a group effort on a lot of people's part. So that was, yeah,
[00:39:09] Chanda Smith Baker: it's great to be connected. I saw a picture of you and Mary and the twins. And I think I thought about it from a parent perspective, right? Like you just have these moments where your kids are observing, observing things like you don't know what they're taking in and you know, you're launching in your hometown.
I had a, a kid who had a birthday yesterday who's at a different age, Malik, and thinking about the moments that he's observed in our lives and as parents, like just, you know, the reinvention, right? The permission. To take the risk on your own behalf, the permission to share a story because you know that it will matter to somebody that reads it.
The documentation I. What matters to you and how you see things, right? That will be forever on the shelves or accessible, um, in, in, in ways down generations of folks that maybe don't know you but by name, but are like in your bloodline. Like there's, there's just something that I just. Felt right away when I saw that picture, probably because I'm at that parenting stage on the other side of it.
But congratulations to you and your family and for modeling. What does it mean to sort of take steps out and to just continue to think big about, about your own life?
[00:40:34] Steve Grove: Thanks, Shauna. That's very kind of you. Yeah. It, it is a family moment and there is something about it being in a book that feels. A degree of permanence, I guess.
And yeah, it, uh, it's been a fun journey to get to tackle and I hope it speaks to people. You know, it's, you write something and you get out into the world and you just sort of see where it goes. I'm, I've now kind of lost control of it, if you will. People will take it, will do with it what they want, and I hope that they find some solace in it and some hope in it, and that it can strike a chord.
[00:40:59] Chanda Smith Baker: Sure. Well, it spoke to me, and like I said, I learned things. I'm not telling all the things because I think people should go out it and read it or or download it on Audible or however they take that information in. But if they wanted to find this book, yeah. Could you please restate the name of it and where folks go to find it?
[00:41:17] Steve Grove: Well, thank you for that. Yeah. It's called How I find myself in the Midwest. A memo of reinvention. You can Google that or you can go to street steve grove.com, which might be easier to remember and you can buy it right from that website too.
[00:41:30] Chanda Smith Baker: Awesome. Thank you so much Steve for your contribution and um, I certainly have renewed my subscription at the Strip.
Thank you. Star Tribune. For those of you that don't know what the Strib is, you certainly have brought in some great community voices. We can see it being reinvented at a time that. We do need to be connected and I do think having news at the same time, incredible news, is certainly one way to build bridges, um, and to make sure that we are sort of starting at the same place, even if our opinions are different.
So I appreciate that work.
[00:42:07] Steve Grove: Yeah. Thank you, Chanda. Thank you for your work, too. Love the podcast. It's really an honor to get to chat with you today, so thank you.
[00:42:15] Souphak Kienitz: You'd like to explore more content and join our community. Find us at conversationswithchanda.com. We have a wonderful collection of episodes featuring notable guests that you can enjoy on YouTube or wherever you get your podcast.