Today we speak with entrepreneur and investor, Ted Alling. Ted is a leader in Chattanooga who uses his entrepreneurial achievements to create opportunities for others.

He is the co-founder and former CEO of a $500-million startup, Access America, which merged with UPS subsidiary Coyote Logistics.

That initial success allowed Ted and his fellow Access America founders to create Lamp Post Group, a venture capital firm and tech-focused incubator located right here in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Lamp Post is responsible for developing and incubating literally dozens of startups. From there, he co-founded Dynamo in 2016, a venture-capital fund with a focus in logistics technology. And then in 2018, he and his wife Kelly, helped to found the Chattanooga Preparatory School, an all-boys charter school. 

Chattanooga Prep is designed to provide unique and impactful educational opportunities for the young men in the city’s urban communities, and it opened to its inaugural class of sixth graders in August 2018 and now has over 300 young men.

It’s been a wild ride throughout the past two decades, and Ted has not only succeeded himself, but has an ability to bring others along with him. He has also done a lot of personal development and learned a lot, sometimes the hard way, about himself, others, and best practices when it comes to building companies and culture. That is why we wanted to speak with him on the Big Self Podcast.

Time Stamps:

4:00--Ted's love of the Enneagram

6:24--The biggest hack for all our listeners on the Enneagram

10:20--The progressive realization of a worthy ideal (what success is)

18:00--How some companies are living out their values now more than in the recent past

27:43--When Ted and Kelly met David Robinson in researching for their prep school

30:57--How Chattanooga Prep selects the 70 students they enroll each year

34:40--How they create the "Disney World Experience" for the kids right off the bat

37:43--When Ted first discovered the power (and addictive nature) of the Blackberry

40:33--How Ted recognizes how some have huge advantages over others

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