I am a pastor’s kid from Minnesota who trained volunteers on cameras before I had a job title. That habit — build the system, then let other people run it — is what got me to High Rise Influence and to the work I do with Dennis Yu.
Dennis came to the house with no script. We talked family, church, and the rooms that opened because I showed up before I got paid. The quotes below are from that sitting, cleaned from the recording — not lines I invented later.
Where did it start?
I was born in Burnsville, Minnesota, to Tiffany and Jeffrey Wendt. Dad was raised in a trailer park and became a pastor. With my mom he founded a church in Northfield when I was six. Until I was 18, that was the center of the week. There were stretches I was in the building seven days, something like fifty hours.
Sundays were two hours of setup, the service, then teardown. Elementary school, then high school gyms. Pipe and drape. I was the oldest of what is now seven siblings, which is its own kind of crew-chief job.
Dad’s line, the one I still use: he wanted the ceiling of his life to be the basement of mine.
What did the church cameras have to do with a company?
Watch: Learning to lead behind the camera
In this excerpt from my conversation with Dennis Yu, I describe upgrading our church’s existing livestream setup and teaching other camera operators. Directing the production helped me learn how to lead a team and work with technology.
Watch the short story on YouTube. The longer interview at the top of this article is preserved.
Before COVID I pushed an upgrade to the video setup. I trained other kids — including my brother — on angles, rule of thirds, who calls the shots. When lockdowns hit, the stream was already a system. Thousands of views. That is still the Content Factory lesson: you document what you are already doing, then you repurpose it. Dennis’s line in the room was that you already speak enough words in three days to draft a book. The work is capturing it.
Watch: Making team culture fun and purposeful
In this short excerpt from my conversation with Dennis Yu, I explain why I want a team culture that people enjoy, while keeping our purpose of serving others in view.
Watch: Finding meaning in my mother’s song
In this excerpt from my conversation with Dennis Yu, I reflect on a song my mom used to sing and what those words came to mean to me.
Watch: Learning the right lessons
In this excerpt from my conversation with Dennis Yu, I reflect on my family background and the importance of learning the right lessons.
Watch: The example my parents set
In this excerpt from my conversation with Dennis Yu, I share how my parents’ example of giving without expecting anything in return inspired me to serve others.
Growing up as a pastor’s kid comes with a costume people want you to wear. I did not always fit it. That friction is useful. Leadership is not pleasing the room. It is being true to what you will actually build.
How did unpaid work get me in the room?
I met Caleb Guilliams at a business event in Denver as a teenager. He needed a free intern. I said yes. Years in the background, learning systems at BetterWealth. After military training I asked for a real interview. The earlier unpaid stretch was the proof. If I had only shown up when I needed a salary, there was nothing to point at.
Caleb is also how I got to Dennis Yu. Not a cold LinkedIn with no context. Work, then introductions. Dennis later put me in rooms with operators I would not have reached alone — including time with Adam Townsend while the Vizio deal was in motion, which I wrote up through our canon: from billion-dollar deals to AI and content strategy.
That stretch is when High Rise Influence stopped being an idea.
What is the job now?
Help people whose work already helps other people get a public record that matches it. Knowledge Panels, the Content Factory, the apprentice program. I still care most about being a brother. Leadership starts at the dinner table. The company is how that scales.
Watch next, all first person, all with the YouTube in the article:
- Claiming a Knowledge Panel at DigiMarCon NYC
- Real influence at Neuschwanstein
- AI Apprentice Program
- Relationships that compound
The article-grader we use internally, if you want the SOP behind how we QA this kind of page: Jennifer, the article grader.
About The Author
Originally published .