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Brian Roland is a Social Entrepreneur and Founder of Abenity, the 6x Inc. 5000 Company that\\u2019s powering corporate perks for top brands including U.S. Bank and MasterCard.

And while Abenity provides millions of subscribers with private discounts, the company\\u2019s social mission is fighting extreme poverty with every program they deliver.

Abenity recently exceeded a million dollars of total giving and hired a CEO to accelerate growth with their fully remote team.

Brian lives in Scottsdale with his wife and 3 daughters and is investing his time in efforts that help like-minded entrepreneurs establish a social mission of their own.

Most passionate about

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• In 2006, my brother and I built a SAS company (software as a service) that helps large corporations offer employee perks and benefits to their people.
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• We've negotiated discounts on everything from pizza and the zoo to movie tickets, oil changes, car rentals, and hotels. We put it all in one spot for our clients and brand it to look like the company and the employees saved coupons all over the United States and travel offers across the world where they can enjoy special corporate perks.
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• When we founded our business, we really wanted to stand for something outside of our industry. So, we built our business with a social mission. There was an output to our cause for every input into the business. That is what gives me the most passion and mission at this point in my career.
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Brian\\u2019s career and story

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• As a third-grader, I was making laminated folders because my folders would tear apart.
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• I started playing the trumpet when I was young. It teaches you to be the entrepreneurial solo artist, where you're running the show and everybody's looking at you. It teaches you to be a team player, where you're sitting in the symphony and blending in so that nobody notices your contribution, but they hear it, they see everything. That led to teaching trumpet lessons, which led to making a CD and moving to Nashville to go to school, which led me to sell cell phones\\u2014having the a-ha moment that the music industry is actually not that entrepreneurial.
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• In that role, I discovered this gap: Companies would love to offer perks and benefits to their people but they had a hard time finding the perks to offer and vetting the purchase to make sure they were good.
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• That's how we built Abenity. We've probably built five or six businesses inside of it. This is what led me, two years ago, to realize that the business had grown to a certain level of maturity where the number of businesses that I could launch within Abenity reached its peak in terms of what the team could have accomplished in a healthy way.
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• There was this moment when it was like our business didn\\u2019t need an entrepreneur anymore. It needed people to help execute and set standards and focus on growth. Those are areas that fell outside of my passion areas. So, there was time to put the right people in place to take the business to the next level. And that's what we did. Today I'm kind of the chief evangelist for the brand, which allows me to be available here talking to you.
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Best advice for entrepreneurs

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• As an entrepreneur, you're really in a testing experimental process all the time. This means you have to be really sensitive to what is, and isn't, working. You have to be really present to what people's needs are.
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• Part of the discovery process of becoming an entrepreneur is looking for gaps and thinking, \\u2018How can I fill that gap? How can I bridge that gap?\\u2019 Wherever you are, you're looking for gaps. That's the makings of entrepreneurship. When you see a gap, how do you fill it? Think about how to fill it and"