Baby Got Backstory

Lauren Gropper is the founder and CEO of Repurpose, the leader in plant-based tableware. An eco-entrepreneur and green architecture pioneer, Lauren began her career in sustainable design. 

Her early success led to a surprising career in Hollywood, working as a consultant to the industry with customers like Discovery Networks. 

Confronted with the waste generated by craft services, Lauren had an aha moment on-set. She founded Repurpose to extend the disposable lifespan of single use products and reduce waste. 

Today, Lauren leads Repurpose on its quest to change the world one low-impact cup, plate and fork at a time.

• Repurpose products not only replace plastic, but also use around 70% less water and 65% less CO2 to make them. Now, about 70% of the product line is compostable as well.

[10:28] When you study sustainability and materials, I think you're just obsessed with how things are made and how they're disposed of. And so to me, it was like this design challenge, like, we still need to use these disposable products, so how do we make them more sustainable?

[11:00] Why are we using petroleum, oil from the ground, which is a finite resource and dirty and full of chemicals to make a product that we use for five minutes and then throw away, but then it lasts forever in the environment? That just makes zero sense. There has to be a better way.

[36:15] It is about the product, but it's so much more about the mission. And you know, that's what gets me excited is just kind of like, well, how much how much waste are we diverting? What are we doing to get rid of plastic and actually educate people and get people to change their ways?

Repurpose.com

Facebook: @repurpose

Twitter: @repurpose

Pinterest: @repurposetableware

Instagram: @repurpose

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Lauren Gropper  0:02 

We absolutely are trying to do the right thing. We come from a sustainability background like we are working our butts off to make the best product available. And to give people an opportunity to use a disposable product that replaces plastic and No, it can't always be composted everywhere, but it's still significantly more sustainable than a plastic alternative. And I think people are so quick to point a finger to be like, well, if I can't, if I can't compost it, then what's the point of even having it and the fact is, you're still using 70% less water to make the product 65% less co2 to make it like the carbon footprint is significantly less. So I think people will just pick it apart and tear it apart. And it's like, well, you're sitting on your couch picking this apart and we're I'm like literally working my butt off to try and get the most sustainable option into your home.

Marc Gutman  0:56 

Podcasting from Boulder, Colorado. This is the Baby Got Backstory Podcast, where we dive into the story behind the story of today's most inspiring storytellers, creators and entrepreneurs. I like big backstories and I cannot lie. I am your host, Marc Gutman, Marc Gutman, and on today's episode of Baby got backstory. I hope you're enjoying the summer barbecues, cocktail parties and dinner parties and all the plastic cups and forks you're throwing into landfills. Well, don't you worry. Today we're talking to a founder and CEO who solved that problem with plants. That's right, plants instead of plastic. And before we get into this episode, I want to welcome you back to another summer episode of Baby Got Back story. These episodes are recorded in boardshorts. Instead of our normal studio in Colorado, a shared room in my family summer cottage in Michigan. When I'm not recording, the room is occupied by one of my young nieces in the crib that you can see if you're watching on video. Hey, we're in the mid zone of summer, you're happy. You're feeling Spry, you're on vacation, or you can't get work done because everyone you work with is on vacation when you're not. Let's be honest, you don't have much to do. So here's one thing to fill your schedule, head over to Apple or Spotify and give us a five star rating and review. Ratings really do matter. Apple and Spotify use these ratings as part of the algorithm that determines ratings on their charts, even during the summer, especially during the summer. Oh, and we like likes and follows and ratings and all that too. So thank you for your reviews. I really do appreciate it. Today's guest is Lauren Gropper, CEO and founder of Repurpose the leader in plant based tableware. an eco entrepreneur in green architecture pioneer, Lauren began her career in sustainable design. Her early success led to a surprising career in Hollywood, working as a consultant to the industry with customers like discovery networks. confronted with the waste generated by craft services, Lauren had an aha moment onset, she founded Repurpose to extend the disposable lifespan of single use products and reduce waste. Today Lauren leads Repurpose on its quest to change the world. One low impact cup plate and fork at a time in this is her story.

I am here with Lauren Gropper, founder and CEO of Repurpose, Lauren. Welcome to the Baby Got Back story podcast summer edition. We're both having some summer sort of things in the background. So you might have a little bit of construction. I have a baby crib for those of you that are watching the video. Welcome to the show. Thanks Mark. And I actually have that same ball that I see in your background. Yes, it says my back it's for when I'm when I'm doing serious work and what would I do without a yoga ball? Definitely not yo can tell you that. But thanks again for coming on the show. Lauren. Once you tell us a little bit about Repurpose. What is Repurpose?

Lauren Gropper  4:26 

So Repurpose is a brand that makes plant based compostable alternatives to everyday disposable plastic. Essentially, we're trying to get rid of plastic with more sustainable alternatives.

Marc Gutman  4:38 

Yeah. And so is this something that is you know, help us educate some of the listeners out there those that may or may not be familiar with this type of of cutlery if you will, in plates and things like that. Is this common or do we see this a lot or is this a pretty new idea?

Lauren Gropper  4:59 

I think this is Pretty common now, actually, we've been We've been in business for just over 10 years, which is kind of crazy. But yes, we are, we are everywhere. So you can find us, everywhere in the US and most grocery stores from your local natural food store to your Walmart, and kind of everything in between. So we are very widely available out there in the world that of course on Amazon and our website, repurpose.com. You can find us everywhere, everywhere.

Marc Gutman  5:29 

And so, you know, I know a bit of your story takes place in Southern California. Is that where you grew up? Or did you grew up someplace differently? No, I'm I'm Canadian. I grew up in Vancouver, Canada. All right. Well, hey there for Canadian friends out there to the north. I am a big fan of Canada's you know, if you listen to the podcast, I grew up in Detroit. So we you know, it's kind of our cousin, or sibling, just to the south. Actually. That's a question that every grandparent will ask you. What's the first foreign country you come to when you go south from Detroit? And it's actually Brooks thunder, but I digress a little bit. And so when you were growing up in Vancouver, is a younger girls, young lady, Was this something that you were like, concerned about? Were you concerned about? plastics and thinking, even at that time of how do I how do I solve this problem?

Lauren Gropper  6:28 

No. I mean, I grew up very much interested in environmental issues. I, you know, I think growing up in Canada, you have a lot of access to nature. And my parents weren't particularly outdoorsy at all. But through school, we got to do bunch of trips. And I ended up doing actually a program in high school, where do you spend six months of the year for not six months, but half the year doing outdoor education and you're not in the classroom, your snow campaign, you're rock climbing, you're kayaking, you're doing big back country hiking trips. And that's kind of the education then you cram the rest into the other part of the year. It's called Trek. And I think I mean, I did it when I was 15, super formative time, and just became really interested in environmental issues in the outdoors. I think at one point, I thought I was gonna be like a, you know, a back country guide. That was that was a trade early on. But yeah, I think that's what really kind of created the the passion about all things environmental. And I went on to study that in college. And so I just sort of like kept building and building but it was always my interest from not always but you know, from young high school age. I had no idea about plastic or what was wrong with plastic, but the environment was kind of the thing for me sustainability. Yeah. And so

Marc Gutman  7:53 

if that was the dream to be a back country guide to be in the sustainability business, is that what happened after you left school?

Lauren Gropper  8:01 

No, I know, I, that was sort of the early dream. And I just didn't really know where I wanted to be. I studied geography, environmental studies, I ended up doing a lot of international travel after college. So I spent a significant amount of time and in Costa Rica, it was like a Canadian Peace Corps program I did. And that was incredible. And then spent some time in Southeast Asia. And just really, I wanted to do something, I think internationally and something in sustainability. But it's hard to find a career in that. Or at least I couldn't at the time. But in my travels, got really interested in design and architecture. And then like urban planning, and cities and design, and I found a program in New York, that basically was the study of stainable design and green building. And that was a project in New York. So I went and met with them and became really interested in the program. And so I ended up studying there. And my career was was on on track to be in this sustainable building sustainable design world. And I was obsessed with it. So that was my that was my dream. And that was my early career.

Marc Gutman  9:11 

No, yeah. And that was your early career. But then what happened? How did you get involved in this idea for Repurpose?

Lauren Gropper  9:21 

So I was doing green building work mostly in in New York and a little bit in Toronto. And through that, I had kind of like dabbled in television production. So I had hosted a show very early on and on HGTV in Toronto. And that got me kind of interested in just the whole film intelligence side of things and opened my eyes to kind of set building and set design and in that world, and I randomly had an opportunity to come to LA to do sustainable design for sets. And I thought, that sounds really cool. I'd love to do that. I'd love to sort of like take what I've learned From the building world, and bring it to film and TV. And so came out to LA this just now probably 12 years ago, 13 years ago, maybe, and started working on on sets and set design and making them more sustainable. And lo and behold, you make a set really sustainable, but you still need to use disposable plastic all day. That's where I was like, Ooh, there's got to be a solution for this too. And, you know, when you study sustainability and materials, I think you're just obsessed with how things are made and how they're disposed of. And so to me, it was like this design challenge, like, how can we still need to use these disposable products? So how, how do we make them more sustainable? At the time, I really wasn't thinking in kind of like, how do we, how do we shake up this model? And maybe move to like a reusable model? I actually didn't have that kind of foresight. But at the time, I was like, how can we just look at the materials we're using? As in? Why are we using petroleum? Well, from the ground, which is a finite resource, and dirty and full of chemicals to make a product that we use for five minutes and then throw away, but then it lasts forever in the environment, like that just makes zero sense. So I just there has, there has to be a better way. And of course, there is and there was, and that was to use plant based plastic, it's plant based chemistry, essentially. And the technology was just in its infancy back then. But it seemed to me like this is going to be huge, this is going to be the future. And we can't be using this old stuff anymore. I just, I sort of viewed it the way that I had seen kind of the the green building space really blossom. Like in the early days, everything was kind of clunky and really expensive and didn't work as well. But then it sort of as it gained momentum. And as demand increased for new building technologies and materials, the industry matured and the price came down and trails got better. And I thought that sort of same trajectory could be applied to this plastic disposable plastic space. And I was really interested in creating a brand, kind of, you know, being the Kleenex of compostable plant based products. And so I just figured, you know what, I am young enough. If this all blows up in my face, I can go back to doing what I was doing before, which I loved anyway. And why not go for it? It seemed like there was just like a right place, right time kind of opportunity. And what do I have to lose was kind of the thought I didn't have any idea what I was getting into though. Like it's that typical entrepreneurial naivete where you're like, Oh, of course, I can do it. But had no idea kind of the challenges that lay ahead.

Marc Gutman  12:46 

Yeah, totally. And you make it sound so easy. And like, let's take a step back. Because here you are, you're doing sustainable set design. You know, I come up literally with 100 ideas a day that are all amazing, I execute none of them, you know? And so like, and I get even like, I mean, I can't tell you how many times I hang out with people that are very angry about sustainable issues. Hey, why are we Why are we using this silverware? And when it could be you know, for five minutes and it goes back to the ground? Why are we doing this? Why are we doing that? But the reality is, not many people take action, right? And I have to imagine so if you could take us back a little bit take us back to like that moment. And okay, your your pod, you're like you're angry about plastic, but you have a day job to like what like, like, like, how did you actually like, like, figure like, maybe there's something here? Maybe there's even a business? I mean, like, like, how did that all come about?

Lauren Gropper  13:48 

Really, it was that there was just an incredible kind of confluence of factors all happening at the same time, that sort of felt like, Okay, I have to act on this, because all of these things are coming together without me trying that hard. There was a supplier relationship through a connection that we had that was just sort of fell in our lap, and one of our early partners, Brian Chung, who had this family relationship to one of the biggest producers of these products in the world. And so that kind of felt like, well, that's super unique, and we have this unique access. And then I think being in LA and the proximity to the sets and then sort of the Hollywood aspect and celebrity influencers etc. It kind of felt like we can if we're trying to build a brand and this was before like real influencers, you know, but it was like, Okay, we have access to some celebrities and and we can get on TV and we can do product placement really easily. So in the early days, we were getting our product on like all these different shows, which is really great. And it was just like all these factors, we felt like this gives us a unique leg up and let's give it a shot. Like, we've got the supply relationship, we've got a place to put this stuff with all the elements are kind of in place. They weren't all in place, but we thought they were like, I mean, I had the limited knowledge we had of how do you start a company? You know, we had some of the basic building blocks. And so it sort of felt like, Well, you know, this is all here, let's, let's give it a shot. It just kind of felt like we can start small scale. And if we get some traction, great, and if not, like we haven't, you know, I'm keeping my day job. Yeah, who

Marc Gutman  15:31 

was that first customer like, like, how did you even like solve this or like, actually transact for something like revenue.

Lauren Gropper  15:39 

Our first customer was, we were doing some stuff on on sets, but it was such small potatoes and like catering, you know, like, it was like a small catering kind of company. And then we were doing some PR around kind of the company and it caught the Bed, Bath and Beyond. And you're the president of Bed, Bath and Beyond. And they wanted our product, they want to try it. And we were like, Oh my god, jackpot, even though whatever it was the tiny Po, but we really felt like, Oh, this is something. And that, you know, I think just having like that 100% like, wide eyed super cane attitude and like, no knowledge of what it really was going, like, we were just so enthusiastic and thought we'd you know, any little when it was like the biggest win for us. And we didn't really have a sense of kind of, you know, what is what what a real business entails, and kind of like, what those mechanics are. And so we were just thrilled to be selling our products, you know, like, wow, this company switch from plastic, like, it was just this, like youthful name tags. And, and very kind of altruistic, genuine, you know, we're really trying to change something here. And it's kind of working. Looking back, we were like, way too early. Like, there was zero mass, you know, awareness or adoption. But, you know, those little wins, like meant everything to us. And we were like, Yeah, let's do it. We just were just so gung ho on, you know, having a product that we designed and was out there in the world, like that was just so cool to us.

Marc Gutman  17:31 

A common question I get all the time is Mark, can you help me with our brand? Yes, we help companies solve branding problems. And the first step would be to schedule a no obligation brand clarity call, we'll link to that in the show notes, or head over to wildstory.com and send us an email, we'll get you booked right away. So whether you're just getting started with a new business, or whether you've done some work and need a refresh, for whether you're a brand that's high performing and wants to stay there, we can help. After you book, your brand clarity call, you'll learn about our brand audit and strategy process will identify if you need a new logo or just a refresh, will determine if your business has a branding problem. And you'll see examples of our work and get relevant case studies. We'll also see if branding is holding your business back and can help you get to the next level. So what are you waiting for? Build the brand you've always dreamed of. Again, we'll link to that in the show notes or head over to wildstory.com and send us an email. Now back to the show.

Yeah, and so what was that early product like like, you know, talked a lot. And it was it like fully baked and like did it come back the way you wanted. I talked to a lot of entrepreneurs, you get their first prototype, and they're like, Oh, this is not it. You know,

Lauren Gropper  19:02 

we have just we had started actually in the cup business. So we weren't making cutlery or plates or you know, in a trash bag or anything we're making today. But we had a cup that was like to replace kind of like a plastic cup for cold drinks. And so we had a cold cup and then we had this hot cup that was very unique. It was made from all plant based materials. And it felt like this kind of like velvet, felt like velvet on the outside, which acted kind of like an insulation barrier and you didn't need a sleeve. And it just had this amazing feel. And then we had our logo and all like the plant based info was our old brand but old branding look and feel same Repurpose brand, but just different, different kind of look and feel but just have this amazing feel. And anyone that had in their hands was like What is this? This is so cool. Oh, and it's plant based and lid was also plant based. So the whole thing was compostable. It was like we went all these awards for like most Innovative cup, blah, blah, blah. And that was our super cool entry product. But it's actually the factory since shutdown. So that product is no longer but it was an awesome product when we launched it.

Marc Gutman  20:16 

And when you started the business, What did it look like in terms of the organization? It was you and and how many people?

Lauren Gropper  20:23 

Yeah, it was myself, I had the original original co founder who actually left the business after about a year. So him, Brian Chung, who is our supply partner, and we produced in Taiwan. So he was the, he's Taiwanese American, but it was his family. And then Cory, co founder, who was really came in from the PR and marketing side, and did all of our early kind of PR and marketing and actually sales as well. So that was the core team. And then in Jordan, to who's one of our co founders. He was a very early investor and who came on actually as our CEO, and co founder. So his tiny team, our first employer is still with us today. Her name is Sarah harden, she was our initially kind of like our office manager. And now she's our, basically our controller slash, you know, how to finance and is amazing. So yeah, it was tiny, tiny literally was out of a living room. Now,

Marc Gutman  21:21 

and you mentioned that you're everywhere today, what's the organization look like today, now that you've grown 1012 years later,

Lauren Gropper  21:28 

we're still small, we're about 25. Full time, we probably got another 10 or so part time. And then we've got probably, that in the 50 to 100, kind of boots on the ground wraps. And that doesn't include any, like our warehousing is outsourced our, our supplier partners, I mean, if you count all them, it's in the hundreds. But core team like head office is 25. Yeah,

Marc Gutman  21:54 

and so like, what's hard about plant based silverware and cups in in this business? Like, what's, what's hard about it?

Unknown Speaker  22:04 

Everything. I think it's it's been a real challenge on a number of fronts, I think what's always been a challenge is kind of staying ahead of the sustainability curve. So the technology's changing it up, but every couple of years, it changes. And so number one, you have to stay ahead of those changes. And sometimes those changes are more expensive, sometimes those changes are really difficult to produce. Sometimes those changes aren't feasible or can't happen all at once. And so you're constantly having to manage for a change in your, in your product. It's not just like, okay, mass produced, mass produced, keep going, you're constantly iterating and constantly changing. And that's a huge kind of operational challenge in itself. And then also, from a messaging point of view, like you're changing your ingredients, you're making them more sustainable, which is which is great. I mean, it was one of the methods, that's a positive, but it is hard, and then how do you manage the kind of economics of it? That's, that's hard. I think the early days of fundraising were very challenging. We had you know, we were in a new industry, we're trying to disrupt a humungous, you know, well established industry and category with a little tiny team with the dream like it was, we didn't have a lot of, I'd say institutional investors that really believe we could pull it off. So, you know, raising money was tough. You know, hiring the right people, everything about it. Everything is is it's the most challenging thing I've ever done by a mile by a million miles. Just it's super fun, because it is I like challenging things. I like being challenged. But sometimes I wish there was a bit of a break. I mean, it just is kind of relentless. You kind of you handle one area, and then another one was that and then you handle that, then you're you know, it's just, I'm sure you hear this from every every entrepreneur, it's like juggling the plates.

Unknown Speaker  24:12 

A lot of juggling.

Marc Gutman  24:14 

A lot of juggling. So that's that's what's hard about it, like what do people get wrong? Right, like, what do you what do you want people to know? What do people miss understand about your space and your product?

Lauren Gropper  24:27 

I think with any sustainability business, there's so much kind of like, I don't know, there's there's a lot of greenwash out there from companies sort of claiming to do the right thing and not and so you're held to a higher standard, you have to be more accountable. And people will pick apart every little thing that you do. And I think what I would want people to know is that all of us come from this, at least in our company, we come from a real place of we absolutely try and do the right thing. We come from sustainability. backround like we are working our butts off to make the best product available. And to give people an opportunity to use a disposable product that replaces plastic and No, it can't always be composted everywhere, but it's still significantly more sustainable than a plastic alternative. And I think people are so quick to point a finger to be like, well, if I can't, if I can't compost it, then what's the point of even having it and the fact is, you're still using 70% less water to make the product 65% less co2 to make it like the carbon footprint is significantly less. So I think people will just pick it apart and tear it apart. It's like, well, you're sitting on your couch, picking this apart, and we're I'm like, literally working my butt off to try and get the most sustainable option into your home. So relax.

It's like, Oh, God, we're trying, you only knew like the blood, sweat and tears that are going into this from a very altruistic place. Like, very annoying when, when people don't get that.

Marc Gutman  26:04 

No, it's great. And the idea that, look, this isn't like black and white, we need to get there over time. And we don't always have the technology, but like using the technology we do have is infinitely better than not using it. And so I think that you know, whether it is, yeah, whether it's plant based utensils, or anything else for that matter. I mean, this happens in a lot of different industries. It's like we kind of use the the technology we have at the time, and we got to we got to build on it. And so I could see how that could be a real challenge. You know, you mentioned branding, a lot brand building, like what role does this mean, the the idea of brand strategy and brand building play in your business? How important is that to your business?

Lauren Gropper  26:45 

It's interesting, it's, it's, we're in a very unique category. Because at these, it's sort of a big question for us Do people really care about the brain that they're getting their their plates and forks and comes from, or they just want it to be sustainable, and they don't really care what the brand is, I think there are people that don't really care, they just want to know that it's sustainable. But I think there's a growing number, especially the younger generation, like Gen Z and millennial that do care, that really, really care about who they're buying these products from, and they want to know who this company is like they don't want to be buying, you know, from a company that makes plastic out of one hand, and then they've got you know, a line of compost and a lot of the other side of their business, I think they want to know that they're supporting an authentic company that is really doing the right thing. So for us, it's really important to continue to tell our story, and talk about what we're doing and why we're doing it and be really transparent and engage with our community. And I think it's more and more important, especially as kind of the people are buying more online and can really kind of dig into like, who the companies are, it's not just about convenience, like, Okay, this one's on the shelf. So I'll just put in my basket, like they're actually they're on Amazon, or they're on our site, or wherever they are, they can access in an instant, like, Who is this company? And, you know, why am I buying it. But we are in a category, I will say where it's price sensitive, you know, price plays a big factor. So we always have to keep that in mind. Like we have to be price competitive, but at the same time offer kind of like that, that brand. And that authentic experience, and sometimes that you know, those, those are difficult things to Mary. But that's our challenge. That's what we're trying to do.

Marc Gutman  28:40 

Yeah, I mean, and I think that this is a really interesting topic when it comes to branding, because a lot of people think, you know, the, the old, the old definition was your logo and your identity. And I think most people have, a lot of people have evolved past that. And I understand it's the, the underlying ethos of what you do. It's how you act, it's how you behave, it's how you communicate. But at the end of the day, a brand, which is a business most often, typically needs to make money. And so like how do you marry those two, right? Like, because you can't, you have to service that and you can't ignore that. And you can't say that, well, I'm just gonna do all this stuff. I've heard of those discussions happen in your business.

Lauren Gropper  29:24 

It's a constant. It's a constant discussion. It's a constant challenge of sort of like, cuz you can put all your budget into marketing and branding. I mean, for us, what we do feel that we need to do and need to do more of is build awareness. I think a lot of people have no idea that we exist. Or if they do, they just kind of notice in general as a category, they don't know that we're a particular brand. They don't know about the technology necessarily. They don't know anything about composting, they don't know that even plant base, alternative to plastic could exist. I think more so now. But when we first started, that was like we had to educate people on what the product even was, and why should even exist. Now, it's different people are really interested, they're looking for it. So we need to be out there presenting ourselves saying, Here we are, please, you know, take a look at us. So for us, it's about, you know, and you can track, you can track ROI in marketing efforts now. So, you know, of course, you need to make money, but you can understand kind of what's working and what's not. And so we just do more of what's working unless of what's not, but there is kind of that top of funnel awareness play, that you can always trace to ROI that you still need to do, because people need to know who we are looking at, when they when they know about us. And in general, we find that they buy us because we're not we're not a niche product, we're not priced significantly more like we're priced competitively. We offer a better product. I mean, there's all the reasons to buy. So it's just you have to know that we exist.

Marc Gutman  31:12 

Yeah, and it makes me think about like, back to even when you started this and probably the the competitive fight that you're in today. I mean, there are you kind of alluded to this, I mean, there's some multinational global conglomerates that are in this space, like, yeah, like like, like, hey, what made you think that you could take them on I love that you're like, I'm just gonna take on the biggest companies in the world and with the biggest distribution networks and whatever else they have, and be what's that like today? Like, like, how do you outmaneuver them from a competitive standpoint, and keep keep them on their toes, we had

Lauren Gropper  31:47 

sort of looked at the CPG space as a whole and just kind of like these better for you organic brands, and more in food and beverage, and I guess cleaning as well as examples. Like we had seen all these tiny little brands when we started take on these huge players. And when, like, we were looking at like method cleaning and Mrs. Myers and these are like they're taking on tide. I mean, they're just, and they were they weren't doing well. And so it felt like there was an appetite at least there was an appetite in other areas like organic food was already taking off all the organic, better few baby food, toys, you know, cleaning products, personal care, beauty, all these things were kind of changing when we came in. And we sort of felt like, well, then why in this category is everything still so old school, like nothing has changed in 50 years. Everything looks exactly the same. And I think it's just like, because there was no distribute, like, people didn't know that there could be an alternative. So I think we figured let's just, you know, this market is gigantic. And yes, it is controlled by these large multinationals. But there's room there's room for a challenger brand like us. And so that's I guess we just had kind of the balls to, to go after it. Of course, it's still a challenge. Like they can win on it. They've got the distribution, they've got the marketing dollars, they've got the muscle. But it all comes down to what does the consumer want to they want the green product from the green, authentic brand? That's woman owned and women land and has a diverse team, or do they want the green product from the big plastic company. And what we're seeing this in in these early days is they want the green product from the green company. You know, and so that's when you go back to the brand piece, like we have to tell our story. And we have to make people aware of who we are because when they know who we are, they will choose us over the big bad plastic company. Not everybody. But a growing number of people. Well, yeah.

Marc Gutman  34:03 

Like what are you most excited about? As you look towards the future with Repurpose,

Lauren Gropper  34:10 

we are just dipping our toes into e commerce and kind of B to C and really building brand in a way that we haven't before. And I am super excited to get that going and get that started. We're launching a bunch of new products. So now our products are about 70% of our line is home compostable, which means it will break down in the backyard environment in less than a year. Which is amazing from a sustainability standpoint. We'd like to get that 200% and we're getting closer and the tech and technology is changing to get us there. So we're on top of that and we're very ahead of that which is so exciting. And I think it's only going to improve more. So from a sustainability standpoint, super excited about kind of where things are going with our products, we have a whole new line coming out. So we're launching with bamboo toilet paper that's FSC certified, so it's sustainably grown bamboo, bamboo toilet paper, bamboo paper towel. We're doing sandwich bags that are home compostable claim wrap. We have a big launch coming out next year, which I can't say yet, but it's an alternative to the party red cup. So a lot of really cool items that I think just make kind of convenience more sustainable. And going back to our conversation earlier, like, we totally are all about, use reusable items first, like, do as much as you can reusable, but there are always instances where you need to use a disposable product, and it should be something as sustainable as possible. By Repurpose.

Marc Gutman  35:53 

Did you ever think prior to starting this business that you'd be Geeking? out on clean rap? Oh, my God, plastic? Toilet paper? paper towel?

Lauren Gropper  36:02 

No, it's like, see, that's what it's so funny. Because I have relatives that are like, Oh my god, she makes plates and cups and like, how's the dish were going? And it's so much less about the actual I mean, it is about the product, but it's so much more about the mission. And you know, that's what gets me excited is just kind of like, well, how much how much waste? Are we diverting? What are we doing to get rid of plastic and actually educate people and get people to change their ways? So funny because yeah, it's always like, well, do I really geek out? I do geek out on plates now. But it's funny anytime I look at a cup. I'm like looking at this and like looking at the you know, what is the main? But yeah, it's it's all about the whys.

Marc Gutman  36:45 

Well and as we come to the end of our time here. I'd like to think back to young Lauren on that six month outdoor ed program backpacking around high ideals and what do you think she'd say if she saw where you are today?

Lauren Gropper  37:01 

What would little Lauren say? I think she'd be pretty proud. I think she'd be happy.

Marc Gutman  37:13 

And that is Lauren Gropper, CEO and founder of Repurpose. A big thank you to Lauren and the team at Repurpose, we will link to all things Lauren and Repurpose in the shownotes. We even have a special promo code of Repurpose20 for anyone that would like a 20% discount on any Repurpose products. If you know of a guest who should appear on our show, please drop me a line at podcast@wildstory .com. Our best guests like Lauren come from referrals from past guests and our listeners. Well that's the show. keep enjoying your summer. Until next time, make sure to visit our website www dot wildstory.com where you can subscribe to the show in iTunes, Stitcher or via RSS see you'll never miss an episode a lot big stories and I cannot lie to you other storytellers can't deny

As Leviathan's co-founder and CEO, Chad facilitates creative strategy and all key business developments for the specialized creative agency, including managing the company's overall operations. His efforts have led to client relationships with Nike, Disney, Amazon, T-Mobile, Kohler, Universal, McDonald’s, and Airbus among others.

Chad previously co-founded the digital creative agency eatdrink in 2002, which merged with Leviathan in 2012. Over the years, that firm produced breakthrough broadcast and interactive work for an amazing roster of brands and agencies. His prior experience includes highly productive stints with experiential marketing firm MC2 as an entertainment and technology project manager, and with leading Hollywood post-production sound company Soundelux as operations manager.

A native of the Southeastern United States, Chad earned his Bachelors of Recording Industry Management at MTSU. A past presenter at multiple SXSW conferences, Chad has also spoken at many other high-profile events, including InfoComm, TIDE, the American Marketing Association's High Five Conference, VCU Brandcenter's Friday Forum series, and numerous Society for Experiential Graphic Design (SEGD) events.

[4:49] "Leviathan is a specialized design firm. We like to transform environments into bespoke experiences using a lot of digital wizardry in the way of constant interaction to make people's jaws drop."

[24:25] "I once had another agency owner telling me that, 'Hey, man, you're in the service industry. You are paid for a service, you are not paid to be an artist. So you kind of have to get over your self-righteousness of trying to be—always trying to create art. You're in your marketing. You need to just accept that."

[25:10] "What do you see at a Disney or Universal theme park? It seems to be magical, and it defies reality. And those are the exact types of projects that we work on outside of, say, a corporate headquarters or a museum…So [we try] to focus on, what would make this special? What could no one else do? Or at least not do very easily that we could do from a technology perspective? And then how can we make that technology invisible, so you feel like you are experiencing something that is sprinkled in pixie dust, that is magical?"

@chad.not.work

@lvthn

https://www.lvthn.com/

Chad Hutson

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Chad Hutson  0:00 

I met another guy who was a creative director who had been a painter and sculptor in his previous life. And at the time, he was running another animation studio. So we all got together and start talking about why I have this company. It's kind of coming back to life. We all love building things for physical environments. We like doing things kind of going beyond what is what is expected within those spaces. So maybe we just take what's left of my old company, and let's turn into something new. And that's literally what Leviathan was my old Rolodex. I'll use air quotes for people who might still remember that term, but my list of contacts money in the bank and started over with with those assets. And that was the vibe.

Marc Gutman  0:47 

Podcasting from Boulder, Colorado. This is the Baby Got Back story Podcast, where we dive into the story behind the story of today's most inspiring storytellers, creators and entrepreneurs. I like backstories and I cannot lie. I am your host, Marc Gutman, Marc Gutman, and on today's episode of Baby got backstory. You know those amazing set displays at concerts that have crazy visuals projected all over them are those three storey digital display walls with all sorts of content you might see in the lobby of a big fancy New York City media skyscraper. Well today, we're talking to the guy who makes those. Before we get into this episode, I want to welcome you to the summer edition of Baby got backstory. The pace is a little more laid back, and my feet are perpetually Sandy. My tan is starting to come in. And every episode is recorded in boardshorts. And if that doesn't get you excited to leave a five star review and rating over at Apple podcasts or Spotify, nothing will, Hey, I know it's summer. I know you're probably about six white claws in while you're listening to this, you're going on post pandemic crazy. But ratings really do matter. Apple and Spotify use these ratings as part of the algorithm that determines ratings on their charts. Even during the summer, especially during the summer. I guarantee you a better summer than Kid Rock if you leave a review. Oh, and we like the likes and the follows and ratings too. So thank you for all that. Thank you for your reviews. I do appreciate it.

Today's guest is Chad Hudson, CEO and co founder of the award winning Chicago based experiencial creative firm, Leviathan, Leviathan. Chad facilitates creative strategy in all key business developments for the specialized creative agency, including managing the company's overall operations. His efforts have led to client relationships with Nike, Disney, Amazon, T Mobile, Kohler, universal, McDonald's, and Airbus, among others. Over here, if any of those companies I'm thinking you have Chad previously co founded the digital creative agency he drink in 2002, which merged with Leviathan in 2012. And over the years that firm produced breakthrough broadcasts and interactive work for an amazing roster of brands and agencies. His prior experience includes highly productive stints with the experiential marketing firm MC two is an entertainment and technology project manager with leading Hollywood post production sound company sound Deluxe is operations manager, a native of South Eastern United States, Chad earned his bachelor's of recording industry management at mtsu and a past present or multiple South by Southwest conferences.

Chad has also spoken at many other high profile events, including infocomm tied the American marketing Association's High Five conference, VCU brand centers Friday forum series, the numerous society for experiential graphic design events. If that didn't impress you enough. This is his story.

I am here with Chad Hudson, the CEO of Leviathan and Chad, thank you so much for coming on to the baby got backstory podcast. Before we get started. Can you tell us a little bit about what is Leviathan cool name I know it's a you know, kind of historic, weird sea creature but in your context, what is Leviathan?

Chad Hutson  4:47 

Thanks for having me on Marc, appreciate it. Leviathan is a specialized design firm. We like to transform environments into bespoke experiences using a lot of digital wizardry and The way of constant interaction to make people's jaws drop. So hopefully that's a apt description of what we do.

Marc Gutman  5:06 

Yeah. And why don't we just get right to my burning question? Where's the name Leviathan come from?

Chad Hutson  5:12 

Whew, that was a hotly debated topic, we went round and round for a few different reasons. So I'd say out of the 100 or so names that we had come up with, Leviathan kept coming, this coming full circle, for us, the game part because we want it to be being in Chicago. Architecture is such an important part of the city, very, very classic city in regards to architecture as well. So that led to, okay, what's the classic name and Leviathan, as you may have seen, goes back from the days of the, of the, when the Bible was written, or at least how it was translated to essay by Titan by Thomas Hobbes about the Commonwealth. And also, if you look at the dictionary, there's something definition, something enormous. And that just kind of spoke volumes as far as we want to be probably somewhat intimidating to our competitors. But we also want to create the field of something big and something something unique. So all those different factors combined contributed to why we call Leviathan Leviathan. Awesome. And so

Marc Gutman  6:23 

as the CEO of a creative firm, like creative services firm like Leviathan, I mean, is this what you thought you'd always be doing? Like, you know, eight year old Chad, are you running around thinking you're gonna be, you know, running a creative services firm thinking big and doing big things?

Chad Hutson  6:40 

No, I'm kind of a kind of a shy guy in some ways. And so I'd never really thought I would be the CEO of anything. But as far as interests go, when I was a kid, I, I'm dating myself now, but I had what was known as the Radio Shack Color Computer. So I guess if you had a personal computer as a kid, you probably either had an apple, two e, or something like that, or Radio Shack Color Computer. So that in early age, I love to play around with computers I loved. We live in the woods. So I've always be outside and wanting to experience what nature had to offer. So I suppose that part doesn't surprise me. Love going to theme parks loves understanding how how the sausage is made and how things were were done. So the Creative Services part, glad to have, I guess, tapped into those childhood roots, but but leading an organization that does what we do. Yeah, a bit of a surprise for me.

Marc Gutman  7:37 

And did you grew up in the Chicago area?

Chad Hutson  7:39 

No, I grew up in the southeast. For the most part, I lived in rural Georgia, in a valley, lots of mountains nearby, I had a stream that ran behind our house in less fields. So it's a pretty interesting place to be raised. But a lot of childhood in Georgia, spent some time in LA suburbs as a kid as well. And I was born in Nashville. But Chicago has been my home for the last 16 years now.

Marc Gutman  8:06 

As a young kid in Georgia, did you were you a creative kid? I mean, were you into those types of pursuits? Or do you have other interests,

Chad Hutson  8:16 

I love to draw even though I sucked at it. I loved being musician, also not necessarily my greatest accomplishment. But I've learned how to play with a variety of different instruments within all the school bands and was in a rock band as a teenager, and even went to college to study audio engineering, just taking walk work in the music industry, man, it could be a producer. And certainly picked up some of the technical aspects of it, but just was blown away by by the talent that would go to go to my classes and be incredible audio engineers, as well as great musicians, I just realized, oh, man, I just don't know if I have what it takes to cut it. But it's also one school that I picked up not only the technical side of the music industry, to a certain extent, but also the business side. So I had that sort of more of a, a free form degree program where you could pick up essentially any number of classes that interest you, and that would formulate your degree. So everything from artist management, copyright, law, Music Publishing, as well as a business minor as well. So the finance side mix with audio engineering, mixed with other forms of management is a pretty, pretty unique kind of program of study. So I think that was also fortuitous for my experience later on in life.

Marc Gutman  9:37 

Yeah. And I imagine you into that program and that school so you could go out into the world and work in the recording industry. Is that what happened? I mean is, you know, did you get out and you just like, you know, we're here now, so something happened along the way.

Chad Hutson  9:57 

Sure. Yeah, I did. I did. Live in Nashville. For a number of years and worked in the music industry never really climbed too many rungs of the ladder there. But I would say, I spent Gosh, about five years worked for a country musician named Alan Jackson, who was, I guess, kind of a big deal at the time. So I worked for his management company, I worked for a music venue development company that never quite developed the music venue, I worked in, worked in publishing, work for indie record label for an artist named john prine, who recently passed. And in all those times, I thought, Wow, it's so cool to be close to the creative people in the industry, I get to see, see how it's all done. But the downside was, you got to see how things were done. And any sort of, I guess, business of creativity has the side where, at least in the music industry at the time, and this was right before the dawn of the mp3 and how that really transformed the whole industry. But that's a different topic. But just seeing how artists were treated as a, as a commodity as a thing versus as a human, and just how hard they were pushed. That, to me was a turning point where I realized, anytime you have someone who is an artist who is creative, those people should be better protected. And that's something that I think really resonated with me in coming years, as I became more of a producer project management of multimedia projects, that I understood just enough of what they needed to accomplish, and what what the process was for that. And being able to, again, protect them to a certain extent, or at least explain that to the outside world of here's the process, here's what needs to be done, and trying to shelter them, or shield them from some of the some of the crap that they may normally do so but actually discovered down the road that there's a career in that, and that is being a liaison, or middleman or producer. So that's what I became

Marc Gutman  11:58 

it was that what happened right away? or How was that transition from kind of bridging that dream. And that fallen dream? It's really interesting, because I have a lot of stories like that to where like the, the vision doesn't meet the reality. You know, like you get there. You're like, Oh, I mean, I had, I did the same thing. I went out to the movie business. And I was like, Oh, this is great. And I can have a career, but I'm not sure I want one. And you know, and we could talk about that at length, but it just didn't match my sort of fantasy revision of what that experience was like. So how did you make that then jump or leap into to marketing as a as a career?

Chad Hutson  12:36 

Yeah, this was a moment of frustration to a certain degree, as I mentioned, the ladder was was really tall in the music industry. And most people never really make it above a certain level. So while I was hovering towards the bottom of the ladder, some friends of mine, their company had been acquired out Las Vegas of all places. And it was a Hollywood based company called sound Deluxe. And they had a a themed entertainment, audio, visual, and Creative Services arm of that company. So they were supporting, like the Hard Rock Hotel and developing that music library. There were a lot of other themed places, universal studios in Hollywood, where different attractions that had audio visual hardware and components, but also sound design and sometimes content to a vibrating theater seats to robotics. So it's pretty interesting mixture of these physical elements with with media elements as well. And then the nuts and bolts that kind of stitch it all together. So I think the transition out of the music industry was pretty Swift. Even though sound Deluxe had its roots. In an audio, I thought, well, I'm getting on Nashville and leaving the industry behind, and then jumping right into this field, which then led to another gig with an exhibit company that also had a division that focused on developing these media rich, physical environments. I was, I was pretty hooked. And that's when I realized, I can still use some of the education I've had over the years, both in school and in my short lived music industry career. But I mean, just the combination of everything that I love on the on the technology side, as well as seeing, seeing these people that I worked with, create magic and doing it within the physical environment was a special. So that's what really stuck with me and caused that transition happened.

Marc Gutman  14:32 

Yeah, and when we started the show, and you kind of talked about Leviathan, you gave us you know, an answer that, hey, we do these big things, and this and that, and you've talked a little bit about multimedia. But I don't think people really are going to understand like, if we go to your website, we see these amazing installations. I mean, I'm I got a couple scrolling right here in the background and they're like blowing my mind. And so, you know, I want to also set the like contrast between That work and we'll kind of get into that. But so that's what we're seeing today. What were some of those early, big sort of multimedia projects back in the day that now you look at and you're like, well, maybe it's not so fantastical now. But at the time, it was groundbreaking.

Chad Hutson  15:16 

I have to admit, some of the early stuff still really resonates me I'm biased. So naturally, I'm going to pick favorites. But I think some of that early work still resonates even today with with people outside of the organization. There was within I think, probably the first seven or eight months of after Leviathan open, which was in 2010, there was an electronic musician named Amanda Tobin. And on top it's been around for a number of years, he was performing at a music festival electronic music festival called New Tech, and I believe in Montreal, and a friend of ours, a DJ, by the name of velo workhouse, had done lots of you remember the genre EDM, he did lots of electronic musicians and DJs sets, doing concert visuals for them. But what what Amman Tobin wanted to do was something a bit different. A lot of DJ sets, or electronic musicians would literally just be sitting in front of either a computer or, or turntables. And I'd have the cups of the earphones on their head. And there may be some lights blinking and then they would shake their head back and forth in the crowd would probably go crazy. But his idea was, let's give him something more to react to you. I want to have a think in terms of like an IMAX movie, something very cinematic, had a narrative experience, which would accompany his album Isom, which I think it was somewhat of a concept album for him. So now he just having visuals, but having those narrative visuals projection mapped on two crazy stage set. And for those of you who don't know, project projection mapping at home, that's okay. It's a technical term, if you can imagine wrapping a three dimensional object in a projected image or in light, and having it seem to be very form fitted for that object. So this the stage that was a bunch of white cubes look like they were stacked, stacked on top of each other. And these crazy visuals were projection onto that surface, as as music played, and turned out that the crowd loved it. And the work garnered a lot of press in wired and Fast Company, New York Times, much of the publication. So that was really a watershed moment for us and helped build our career. So I'll flag that one as a as a favorite that I'd say, from a financial perspective, not our shiny spot, but it's okay and paid dividends over the years just being a calling card for us.

Marc Gutman  17:51 

Speaking of holding up and still resonating, it looks like it still might be on your reel on your site. If I see it cycling through Is that right? Is that what I'm looking at?

Chad Hutson  17:59 

Yeah, it's again, it's kind of a legacy project from from the early days. But we it's been pretty remarkable. We've had people from, again, 10 years ago when that show was going on tour. But whenever I have conversations with folks, and they see that clients even seeing that on our we'll say, Yeah, I went to that show a decade ago, and I'd never seen anything before. Like it just completely blew my mind and I'll never forget it. So when you hear compliments like that mean, even though it's not, it's not marketing or advertising in the traditional sense. There's not a brand logo associated with it or no Grand Prix award that comes with that. Being that is probably one of the best competency and get some people have their mind blown and that they remember even 10 years later.

Marc Gutman  18:48 

That is incredible. You mentioned the early years Leviathan, let's let's go back there like how what was the, the genesis of the business like why Why? Why did you start this firm?

Chad Hutson  19:00 

Wow, yeah, definitely going in the Wayback Machine. I had started another smaller, called a web and motion production company. We did work for other advertising agencies and other smaller groups, building websites did some for for record labels, and some for big agencies like DDP. We also had some motion designers or animator errs on our staff that had been going along from how the early days of 2002 up through about 2008 2009. And that's when one of the previous big financial crises hits hit the US, and we had to layoff everyone. The other partners that had they were not interested in sticking around. So there was this company that we'd built over the years and just kind of sitting dead in the water. I was the last man standing literally, in a lofty warehouse space in Chicago, thinking what The hell am I gonna do? We, we had the work wasn't coming in, we had had dead at that point. So I'll save you the sob story to say over probably about six, eight months, the work came back, had the company to myself and had cash in the bank. So then it became a matter of what, what do I do next? And how can I do it differently. So I had met another gentleman by the name of Matt Daly, he was freelancing with with my organization. And he just turned to be a brilliant fellow, he was not only really talented and in 3d, but he was also a crazy artist. in other respects, he had graduated from the school, the artists stitute, designed and built robots for like a touring robotics troupe in Europe. And he had some of these other crazy techniques he was trying out so very much, we call them the nutty professor just as a nickname, because he really was that, that brilliant guy, he could do his day job as an animator, but he really had passion for doing these other, more technically advanced things, then met another guy who was a creative director who had been a painter and sculptor in his previous life. And at the time, he was running another animation studio. So we also got together and start talking about why have this company, it's kind of coming back to life. We all love building things for physical environments, and we like doing things kind of going beyond what is what is expected within those spaces. So maybe we just take what's left of my old company, and let's turn into something new. And that's literally what what Leviathan was, was my old Rolodex, I'll use air quotes for people who might still remember that term, my list of contacts the money in the bank, and started over with with those assets. And that was Leviathan.

Marc Gutman  21:45 

Was that hard? taken on partners? Was there any pause there? Were you? Was there any concern? Or was it pretty easy?

Chad Hutson  21:51 

Oh, getting married is never easy. It certainly came with its with its benefits too, though, having having to lead my own organization for a while having some other strong personalities come into the organization was I think was, it can be challenging, but it's also a very healthy thing to happen to have a balance between the business side and just called pure artistic side. And then the technical side, we kept the organization honest, for a number of years, we were able to, to at least support ourselves, I have just had a someone in the finance industry Tell me like, hey, a business is not. It's not to support a hobby. But in some ways, it kind of was because we got to build beautiful work. Some of it was very commercial. But I think it was just a good balanced organization for a number of years. But I think as, as we grew in size, and as we just wanted to keep it going, I think that's where the diversion of opinions between partners can sometimes come into play. It's not necessarily a matter of there was misalignment. The no one was necessarily wrong or, right. But the the aspiration is to be a pure artist and do nothing, nothing commercial and still make a healthy living. That's not that's not always a common happening. So, so some wanted to just have stability in their lives, and others want to be artists. And I think that's where some of the complications came in. But being I'd say as, quote unquote, parents who got married and had a baby that is Leviathan, certainly, we'd all be proud of the Leviathan that that exists today because of that parenting, if you will.

Marc Gutman  23:39 

Yeah, that's such an interesting topic of that you just brought up in that. I think a lot of creatives struggle with this, this tension between wanting to be an artist and wanting to make money. I mean, there's nothing wrong with that. I think sometimes we feel guilty about it, we're like, oh, there's some like sin and being commercial or getting money, or we've sold our soul or compromising our what we do. But at the end of the day, you know, we're one of times very fortunate that we can do this for a living and solve business problems and get paid, but like, how do you reconcile that what was what was the sort of the, the recipe Leviathan for balancing that, that need to to be an artist yet be commercial?

Chad Hutson  24:25 

I once had another agency owner telling me that like, Hey, man, you're in the service industry, you are paid for a service, you are not paid to be an artist. So you kind of have to get over your self righteousness of trying to be not always trying to create art now your, your in your in marketing, you need to you need to just accept that. So that was a moment where I had to pause and wanted to push back and say, well, that's, that's a bunch of crap. But the more I thought about it, I think it did resonate. So that being said, we wouldn't Next Leviathan or at least what made Leviathan great in the early days was really trying to push the boundaries of what? what is possible within the physical space. If you think about, what do you see at a Disney or universal theme park, it seems to be magical and it defies reality. And that's those are the exact types of projects that we work on outside of, say, a corporate headquarters or, or Museum, we love working in the theme space as well. So in trying to focus on if it's not, well, we try to make it beautiful as well. But what would make this special? What could no one else do? Or at least not do very easily that we could do from a technology perspective? And then how can we make that technology invisible, so you feel like you are experiencing something that is sprinkled in pixie dust that it is magical, but there's no reason why we can't make it beautiful as well. So I think just always trying to recruit the right talent that understands what is what is cutting edge, but feasible. Avoid the bleeding edge so that you don't fall on your face from trying technology, it's not been tried and true. And then also making sure you have people who are who value design above a lot of other things. And so therefore, you don't compromise you make it make it bespoke and unique in its execution, and you make it as beautiful as you can, and as beautiful as a client's and branding will allow and you can't nail it every time. But as long as you strive for that and you do have some some end results that meet that criteria, then I consider that a win for sure.

Marc Gutman  26:44 

A common question I get all the time is Mark, can you help me with our brand? Yes, we help companies solve branding problems. And the first step would be to schedule a no obligation brand clarity call, we'll link to that in the show notes, or head over to wildstory.com and send us an email, we'll get you booked right away. So whether you're just getting started with a new business, or whether you've done some work and need a refresh, or whether you're a brand that's high performing and wants to stay there, we can help. After you book your brand clarity call, you'll learn about our brand audit and strategy process. we'll identify if you need a new logo or just a refresh, will determine if your business has a branding problem. And you'll see examples of our work and get relevant case studies. We'll also see if branding is holding your business back and can help you get to the next level. So what are you waiting for? Build the brand you've always dreamed of. Again, we'll link to that in the show notes or head over to wildstory.com and send us an email. Now back to the show.

As a hearing you speak it actually took me back to my very first job, which was I was working for Disney Imagineering in Cali. You were an Imagineer. I Well, I don't think I don't know if I was technically I worked there I was on the payroll. I don't think I was an Imagineer though I was like a runner. Right. And for your total projects. Yeah, for different projects. But I would report to this total skunkworks kind of warehouse in Van Nuys that was very nondescript, and you'd walk in through different security and you know, and then there'd be like, look like the land of Misfit Toys with robots and welding. And then I go through all that. And then I'd actually walk into a private theater that had three panels, 70 millimeter, and we'd be screening, screening movies for Epcot and stuff like that. But as we're as we're talking, I was like, wow, do they have their own version? Because I'm looking at your website like work? Where are these things fabricated? And do you have like your own sort of secret Imagineering Leviathan lab, if you will, where these were these projects are assembled? What's that? Like?

Chad Hutson  29:07 

Yeah, I wish we had a gigantic fabrication facility where you could 3d prints something the size of a human being or to have tons of robots that are at our disposal. For the most part, we do have a a an engineering space where the team can work on prototyping things. We have other partners that will work with where they can fabricate other physical structures. But as far as like hooking computers up to that and projecting onto the wall and setting up different monitor arrays or testing out augmented virtual reality, any sort of installations that we might work on, we always try to set up a working prototype for that in our space. And it's, it's absolutely necessary that imagine designing a product and never really testing it and then just like sending out to the market and saying, Well, here it is. We really have to test out Those kinds of prototypes long before we get to the point of trying to roll it out or even showing it to the client. So it's been, it's always intriguing to see what, what works and what doesn't. When you just when you think you have the right plan, that plan is foiled by reality. And then you have to pivot. But a lot of important learnings come out of those, those mistakes. same can be said about live, as well as business. But prototyping, I think it's really important for us to test testings out, we learn new tricks, new processes from that. And, again, I love I love seeing much like those who work in in film, like you have looking behind the scenes and seeing how it's all made is, is intriguing in and of itself. So I love that process.

Marc Gutman  30:47 

Yeah, absolutely. And you're talking about like prototyping and getting it right. I mean, are there any projects that like, you just wish you could have had to do overrun? Or wish you're never even took on? Like, do you have any that just didn't? didn't quite work?

Chad Hutson  31:01 

I certainly I'd hate to bring up the the names of the of the innocent or the client names, either. But yeah, I mean, we have absolutely had some projects where, if anything, it's probably usually just a shortage of time. And when you, we don't have enough time to get something right. Even if it's less about being a perfectionist, and trying to do it over again, and maybe doing it even better the second or third time, sometimes you just don't have the luxury of finishing the work at all. So it's, you feel like you're stringing it together with with duct tape at the very end. So I would say sometimes those those projects happen. And all you can really do is stick with it, and work with clients and have them be as understanding as I possibly can. And you as much as you want to go back to them and say, Hey, we told you so we told you we needed more time, and still didn't happen. All you can do is let them know that, hey, we want to avoid what happened last time, right? So we need the ample time to to not only prototype this, but to install it and finish it out. So yeah, I can't really say a specific project. But I would just say time can be the enemy of of that kind of work. And anytime perfect.

Marc Gutman  32:19 

Yeah. So what do you want clients to know about this work? Like? Like, how do how do we get it? Right?

Chad Hutson  32:25 

Great question, I could probably come up with a pretty long list. So I'll just think of a few key points, I think that might be might be important for for future clients. No. I think for one, sometimes the the bells and whistles are not what makes these experiences as good as we all want them. technology's absolutely an important part. But if you are in a corporate headquarters, and you have a, say a gorgeous, giant display, floor to ceiling goes three storeys high. I've seen those where clients have cnn running on those screens versus having something that can be a valuable branded moment. So they invested all that money into probably millions of dollars in these gigantic view displays, and they don't think about what what the content is that goes on those. So that is that's kind of marketing 101, right, you need to have the right message to the right story. So I'd say think less about the technology and more about those, those immersive branded moments, you have to get that right. And you have to balance out the investment in, in the content in the story and in the design as much as you are on the technology side. If not, then you have a big expensive TV in your living room that you don't even have Netflix to play on. And you have a big screen that plays a screensaver. And that's, that's not doing anyone any great service, I'd say something else that's important about about these kinds of moments is that if you if you want to have a an environment that is cutting edge from a technology standpoint, you you have to understand that that comes with an investment of time and you have to experiment and some things you aren't always going to get right and it kind of comes back to the time aspect you need time to prototype and test and think that's what groups like, like a Disney or universal get right is they they spend a lot of time developing new technology new IP before they release it out into the world. So that's not always possible in the in the call the brand environments. So So I'd say maybe to come first. So first full circle on that point. It is clients sometimes want to push the envelope further than then should be possible and you need to kind of work with solid state technologies and techniques that that we know will work over the test of time and and can't always push the envelope as far as we'd like. There we go. That narrative first and foremost, and investing in content over technology, and then just kind of being realistic with expectations and what you can do within a branded environment.

Marc Gutman  35:12 

Yeah, totally. And so when you think about all that, and you're talking about solid state technologies and tried and true, let's flip it and kind of go the other way, like, what are you most excited about in terms of technologies that are coming up in ways that can be applicable to how you work with your clients?

Chad Hutson  35:30 

Yeah, I'd say, a lot of what we've been doing lately is I try to use a simple term real time content. This could be anything from say data visualization to artificial intelligence or computer vision, it's it's kind of taking taking some these technologies and putting it on steroids and making the content not just playing back a video, but having having real time aspects to it having data that's refreshed at the very, in the very second that you're looking at a screen. other technologies like game engines, so unity, or unreal, are the same kinds of technologies used to build console video games. And that kind of engine can also be very powerful with creating beautiful graphics, and affecting it real time, either through cards, sensing physical gestures, or using other external controllers. But I think the evolution of all that real time content has been pretty remarkable. And it's a cornerstone of what we do. And when you have that in the Brandon environment, I mean, you can have different types of industrial simulations or, or different types of data visualizations helps communicate to, to your organization or to your clients. Just how dynamically something can change. And it does it in a way that's compelling and beautiful. And that's what honestly, that's what creating all the these experiences is about. Much like in a, in a theme park as a kid, those kind of magical moments resonate with you for a long time. And that's what that's the kind of tools that we build for our clients is create an experience for them that they're not seeing, gonna forget. And for for those clients, it leads to, to either engage employees or transactions with clients. So those real time technologies, I think, are, are very exciting for us, and adds levels of personalization as well. So that if, if you enter to a space, this is an overused analogy of Minority Report, if you recall that film, but the the moment where Tom Cruise is running around, he has someone else's identity, but everywhere he runs within the retail space, these ads pop up that that speak his name, and supposedly cater to what his interests are. So while that's a bit, can you say it's a bit far fetched anymore, but Well, that would be a bit intrusive in real life, I think, when applied in the right way, if you share that kind of information, much like you would with a website or an app, to share it in the right way, within the physical environment, the real time personalized experiences that can come with that I think are it can almost be worth the worth sharing information. And to get that kind of payoff for that experience.

Marc Gutman  38:29 

Yeah. And so I think about that, and I think about it's like using data for good versus data for bad. And it's, how do we do that? Because Because I want to be a part of that world where I get the personalized, customized experience that you just described. That sounds amazing, right? Like sounds like but like then there's always this like, other shoe that will drop of data being used against us. Is there a way to, to live in that cooler world without the dark side?

Chad Hutson  39:00 

Yeah, it's a difficult question to answer. I would say, I know, I keep throwing out these Disney theme park examples. But I'd say it's a good model to think about what what Disney had created a few years back is something called the magic band. And I think they've since pivoted more to using mobile devices if people don't want to use the magic band, but it's more or less an RFID wristband that is that identifies you as a person. And when you register for the magic band, you also attach a credit card or a bank card to that so that when you go into the park, yes, you can use the park to get in to get in kind of recognize you and say okay, yeah, they've paid to their admission fee. But when they're going to a restaurant and they want to, to order a pick up their food, they know Okay, well this is this is Chad, he picked up the hot dog he ordered from his mobile device. But then there's also moments where if you're going through a ride and I think we worked on this for for the Haunted Mansion, which is an attraction, as you're riding through. It's called the dune buggy. There's an identifier where knows if you're sitting in a certain seat within the the buggy and the ghosts that's projected onto a surface in front of you hold up a science, that's Chicago or bust, it knows that I'm from Chicago. And it pulled that information and and displayed it, which made it a pretty remarkable move for me like, hey, how did they they know that they know us from Chicago. So that's a one specific case. I suppose that happening. But are they using that information for marketing purposes? Very likely. But again, I think it kind of comes back to the debate of a customer paid for this experience. Did it make it a better experience? for them? It's is it more remarkable? Is that more amazing or magical? I think the answer is yes. Then the customers are okay with that. But But that said, I think whenever whenever the question of ethics comes into play is transparency is key. So if you don't know what you're signing up for when you're sharing that kind of information, then yeah, that's one of the bad things start happening. And you don't always want to read through a 45 page agreement to see if, like, Am I really giving up information that I shouldn't? That's an invasion of my privacy or not. But that's our perspective. If it's, if it's worth the trade off to the customer, then I suppose it's okay. Question mark.

Marc Gutman  41:33 

And I haven't been to Disney in so long and made me want to go back. Sounds awesome. And you sold it like it sounds great. I want the personalized experience. I want my magic band to work. So that sounds that sounds great. And a few years ago, you actually went through was it an acquisition or a merger with with the envoy group?

Chad Hutson  41:51 

Yeah, absolutely. There's a group called envoy, and it's based in Southern California, specifically Orange County. And we had worked together with them. If you've ever seen a Vizio television, it seems like there's one in almost every household. But when Vizio first came on to the scene, as an electronics manufacturer, Ondoy was like their first digital agency. And at the time, they were doing a ton of work for them. And they'd collaborated with us on doing some 3d animation, software products. So what started as a successful collaboration some years ago, and the continued relationship, it just evolved into conversations around, hey, on voices, we're, we're trying to build something bigger. And we were looking for the right family members. So with them being a phone call, called a traditional digital agency, where they were focused more on creating websites and apps and digital products for their clients. And we were doing more of the call to digital spaces or environments. It just seemed like a great match. So they, when they purchase gas in four years ago, and now it's, yeah, I'm really glad to happen, especially in light of pandemic, having a larger family with with a greater resources, it's certainly been very, very important for our organization to, to stay strong and, and even thrive in those times. So it's been a, I'd say much to my comment earlier, sometimes when it comes to marriage. It's not always easy, but I think that we are like minded individuals, and we're making something bigger and better. That's been great.

Marc Gutman  43:36 

Was it difficult at that time? I mean, I know, I know. Now looking back, you're like, this is great. And we got through the pandemic, and we're part of this happy family. But at the time, was it hard to think about giving up your autonomy and doing that and becoming a part of a different group?

Chad Hutson  43:53 

very fair question. I would say there were mixed emotions that they're there and how was a boss of sorts, whenever you are, whenever someone buys you for what you have, I think that their hope is to, to make more money off of that. And that's the fair assumption. That's what when you run a business, you want to be profitable. And as I described, in our earlier years, we were probably more focused on making great work and at least supporting ourselves and not really going beyond that. So I think it was an important lesson to learn if you you can make great work, but you also have to if you want to grow if you want to have more stability, you need to need to earn money for your shareholders. So I think that that was while it was difficult to shift the mindset of being more businesslike versus being more suppose creative. I, the other part of my brain completely got it. And I think that was also the other part of my brain is what wanted to learn more about the Beside of how do larger businesses operate? What? What are the better financial models to pursue? And how can we be more efficient at doing things, we can't always just be the experimenters at some point in time, okay, we have to move on to the next project, we can't always just fund experimentation ourselves. While we try to do that, when we can, I think learning on the job shouldn't necessarily be something that that you have to pay for, you can build that into projects. So, so there were definitely some adjustments. But again, I feel like it's built a it's helped us to build a better operation, all the way around. And we serve a wide range of clients now. And they're still really good about giving us enough autonomy. If anything, they're there in Southern California, we're in Chicago. So even though everything is virtual, at the moment, it's still a good a good balance of letting us to what we do best and being a support system. And, and I guess a boss when, whenever needed.

Marc Gutman  46:05 

Sometimes a little accountability doesn't hurt, right? Like I talked about this morning with someone I was like, wow, like not being accountable, because I have my own thing, but like I fully can recognize that some accountability will also go a long way.

Chad Hutson  46:19 

Yeah, I mean, we all push ourselves, right? If we're business owners or operators, we push ourselves, but sometimes you need the outside influence. And that's, that's a bit of, yeah, I think we're on the same page.

Marc Gutman  46:29 

Yeah, that's really cool. So as you look to the future, what do you what are you most excited about these days? What what are you looking forward to?

Chad Hutson  46:37 

I don't think the Android had acquired Leviathan, as well as another company called Bulldog Drummond. And I don't think they're gonna stop there. I think they are certainly looking to find other like minded organizations that fit the mold. So having a bigger family having greater capabilities, it'll allow our team the ability to cross pollinate that much more. Our different offices have definitely started to team up more. And we're learning from those experiences and growing from them. Not only does it give our clients get some more, more offerings and more support, but it just gives our other employees opportunities to try new things and work in different offices. That that kind of growth, I think, is what's really exciting for us. But I'm also excited for, for the world to start opening up again, because everything we do is pretty much centered around physical environments and physical environments have been taboo for the last 1518 months almost. So having having theme parks, museums, reopen corporate headquarters, that are reopening and being able to put experiences in those spaces, because we've remained very busy during, even during the lockdown. But as the world opens up, and there's experiences that we've been building, have have also opened with them. I just think that, that people are going to be so excited about getting back into spaces and experiencing things that it's going to be a very busy next few years for us.

Marc Gutman  48:14 

Yeah, I for one, I'm very excited about reemerging into the world and experiencing life once again. So Chad, as we come to a close here, I'd like you to think back to your time growing up in Georgia young boy and plan along the stream. And you know, if he was able to see you now, what do you think he'd say,

Chad Hutson  48:38 

wow. Now what I just see today, or what I see the whole movie of the last 35 years or so.

Marc Gutman  48:47 

That's up to you. What are you going to share with them?

Chad Hutson  48:51 

Oh, no, I think I would have to say I want to take a moment to at least say You know what? We did all right. But I think the one important ones, important things that I always try to remind myself of is to is to not be so hard on ourselves. Now to say that good enough is truly good enough. It's not just it's adequate. Like No, I did. I did well, it's good. And we don't always have to keep flogging ourselves to say could have done better should have done better. Because we you try you fail and you learn from it. And so I guess I would just say that. Hey, man, you've done pretty well for yourself and be proud of it. But now get back out there and and do more do better. So yeah, I would just tell myself that it's going to be okay, and hang in there and don't give up and just know that you tried your best. Probably not the strongest answer I could give them but that's that's honestly what goes through my mind a lot of times some maybe you could have done more or could have done better but you did pretty well. So be good with

Marc Gutman  50:07 

that is Chad Hutson, CEO and co founder of Leviathan. I've always wondered who made all those amazing digital experiences, I would interact with it performances, theme parks and office buildings. And now I know it's most likely Leviathan. I can't stop thinking about what Chad said that sometimes good enough really is good enough. Throughout my career, I haven't always agreed with that sentiment. But coincidentally, this summer my personal theme is, be content, not complacent, but be content with the good things. lean in. Remember why we're here to enjoy this experience. I also really resonated with Chad's notion that we should invest in content over technology. After all these years and all the technological advancements we've seen, from film, to radio, to television to the internet, one thing has remained constant, great and compelling storytelling wins above all else. A big thank you to Chad Hutson and the team at Leviathan. We will link to all things Chad and Leviathan in the show notes. And if you know of a guest who should appear on our show, please drop me a line at podcast at wildstory.com. Our best guests like Chad come from referrals from past guests and our listeners. Well that's the show. Until next time, make sure to visit our website www.wildstory.com where you can subscribe to the show in iTunes, Stitcher or via RSS see you'll never miss an episode. A lot of big stories and I cannot lie to you other storytellers can't deny

Maurice Cherry is the creative strategist for CodeSandbox, an online code editor tailored for web applications. Prior to this, he served principal and creative director at Lunch, an award-winning multidisciplinary studio he created in 2008 that helps creative brands craft messages and tell stories for their targeted audiences, including fostering relationships with underrepresented communities. Past clients and collaborators included Facebook, Mailchimp, Vox Media, NIKE, Mediabistro, Site5, SitePoint, and The City of Atlanta.

Maurice is a pioneering digital creator who is most well-known for Revision Path™, an award-winning podcast which is the first podcast to be added to the permanent collection of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC). Other projects of Maurice’s include the Black Weblog Awards, 28 Days of the Web, The Year of Tea, and the design anthology RECOGNIZE.

Maurice’s projects and overall design work and advocacy have been recognized by Apple, Adobe, NPR, Lifehacker, Design Observer, Entrepreneur, AIGA, the Columbia Journalism Review, Forbes, Fast Company, and many other print and digital outlets. Maurice is also an educator, and has built curricula and taught courses on web design, web development, email marketing, WordPress, and podcasting for thousands of students over the past ten years.

Maurice is the 2018 recipient of the Steven Heller Prize for Cultural Commentary from AIGA, Creative Loafing Atlanta’s 2018 Influentials in the fields of business and technology, was named as one of GDUSA’s “People to Watch” in 2018, and was included in the 2018 edition of The Root 100 (#60), their annual list of the most influential African-Americans ages 25 to 45. In previous years, Maurice was awarded as one of Atlanta’s “Power 30 Under 30″ in the field of Science and Technology by the Apex Society. He was also selected as one of HP’s “50 Tech Tastemakers” in conjunction with Black Web 2.0, and was profiled by Atlanta Tribune as one of 2014's Young Professionals. He is also a member of the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences.

Maurice holds a Bachelor’s degree in Mathematics from Morehouse College and a Master's degree in telecommunications management from Keller Graduate School of Management.

• As a creative on the web, it's beneficial to stay fluid and agile enough to go where the market goes. It's detrimental to focus on only one specialty because the industry changes so quickly that it may become obsolete.

[8:10] It almost is a detriment to be kind of a specialist, because your specialty may end up getting absorbed or may become obsolescent or something like that. So you kind of have to stay fluid and kind of see where different trends are going and see how you can fit in there.

[12:45] Brands may try to put forth an image of who they are or who they want to be. And that may not even mesh with how people are thinking about them…but it makes people remember them in a way that perhaps people may not think of, and so they may gain a whole new level of audience just based off of that kind of storytelling and interaction that draws them in to who they are as a brand and what they sort of represent in terms of company values.

[1:00:43] I think people will look at the 400 episodes of revision path and just see a monolithic set of people. But I mean, there's so much diversity within the people that I have interviewed, whether it's age diversity, whether it's what they do in the industry, years of experience, there's men, there's women, there's trans folk, there's folks in the US and the Caribbean, throughout Europe, throughout Africa, throughout Asia and Australia. They're everywhere. The thing that sort of ties them all together is they're practicing designers, or they're practicing techies, or they're doing something creative on the web that is worthy of kind of falling into line with everything that I'm doing with revision paths.

[1:04:53] I just turned 40 this year. And there's still a lot of things about myself that I feel like I've managed to still keep a very playful spirit and still be able to kind of tap into the restorative power of play, even into the work that I do. I mean, even what I'm doing with creative strategy, it's kind of playing at work a little bit. I get to really dive into myself and come up with inspiring things that we can do and fantastic campaigns that we can execute.

Podcast: Revision Path

LinkedIn: Maurice Cherry

Twitter: @mauricecherry

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Maurice Cherry 0:02

Marc Gutman 0:54

I am here with Maurice cherry who is a creative strategist, designer and podcaster. You may know him from his very popular podcast revision path, and that's because they just recorded their 400th episode which is a major, major milestone Marie's Welcome to the baby. Got back History podcast.

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I want to be a part of the metaverse like that sounds awesome. I don't even know what that is. But I want to like tell people that I am part of the metaverse or that I work in the metaverse, that'd be great. And it's really interesting because the person that introduced us, Douglas Davis, who is appeared on this show, he was talking about something really, really similar in his conversation, his interview, which was a lot of what we're doing today hasn't been invented yet. Right? And we're kind of in this next wave of, of that. And so he gave the example back when he was starting out, like no one had really invented, like how to build web pages and websites. And so it was real time, right? And then we started to grow up in no one had invented how to be an expert on Twitter when Twitter first came out, we all just kind of did it, you know. And now you know, what I'm hearing you say is that business is again, moving technology is moving so fast. And it's you know, they're intertwined, right Business and Technology and it's moving so quickly, that you have to be fluid that you have to be nimble, and you have to be kind of you can't be an expert at anything, if anything because it's moving so fast, but what you probably can be is a really good thinker and a really good strategist in order to bring all these disciplines together. Did I didn't get that right.

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Marc Gutman 24:52

I love it. And

as you got older and as you got into high school was this creative like writing And in this creative outlet, was that still coming out of you? Or what were your interests at that time?

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Marc Gutman 36:44

All I could think about when you were talking about music in Atlanta in the 90s was salt and pepper. So that's what it triggered for me. But so you went to Morehouse and sounds like you know, first and foremost, you're like a lot of young people. You're like, I just want to go someplace, I just want to change my life. I just want to start my life, you know, and kind of figure things out. When you got to Morehouse, what did you think you were going to do with with yourself?

Maurice Cherry 38:30

I was going out to the clubs, I was hanging out late. I was getting back to the dorm room 234 in the morning for and then like sleeping for a few hours and then have an eight o'clock, Cal three class like I was reckless. I was so reckless freshman year, and it caught up to me to the point where I ended up getting evicted from my dorm. I was homeless for a slight bit like about a week or two, and then ended up getting placed into another dorm. And then that ended up being like a weird kind of situation, because the rd was kind of a creepy, like kind of a creepy guy, and got moved to another dorm. And then that was weird because my roommate in that dorm clearly had been suffering physical abuse from his roommate, and was very like, I don't know, very jumpy, like, anytime I will come around. And he's like, oh, like, don't you know, don't look at me that way, don't you know or something like that. So freshman year was a lot, at least the first half of freshman year was a lot. During that time. One thing I would say that was like, the stabilizing force outside of my classes was that I had joined a website and started working for them. So there was a website called college club calm. I don't know if people remember college club. And it was sort of like a precursor to Facebook. And basically, every college had their own campus on college club. And you could upload pictures. Every person had like a college club email, and they had this number that you could call that would read your email to you over the phone. There was live chat. I mean, comms club was lit. I mean, they ended up going bankrupt. for good reason. I think at one point, they were giving away like $10,000 a week to people, they were really just like that early, calm money was coming in. But I worked for college club as a campus representative first at Morehouse, and then for the entire Atlanta University Center. So I had three or four other people under me. And we had devised the system. Why am I telling this might be illegal actually know what comes out of the system? Well, that's fine. So we had devised a system where we basically would get paid from college club for every account that was created after every photo that we uploaded. So one of my good friends, good good friends, Chris wrote this macro that would allow us to basically just like dump a bunch of photos into a folder, and they would automatically get uploaded to college club. And so we would get, you know, money for that. And then he also came up with this other macro that will automatically create accounts. So we had these cameras, we have these huge Sony mavica cameras that actually were so big, you had to put a floppy disk in it for storage, like three and a quarter floppy disk. And we would go and take pictures and swap out the disk. And then at the end of the night, we would dump everything into this Network Folder. We run the macro, the macro would upload the stuff from the Network Folder, we would literally be making money while we slept. I mean I was making at that point. roughly about $4,000 a month.

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I'm sure.

It will be stuff like that. I think I mean, it's it's interesting how you know, even now I'm like, I just turned 40 this year and there's still a lot of things about myself. That I feel like I've managed to still keep a very playful spirit, and still be able to kind of tap into the restorative power of play even into the work that I do. I mean, even like what I'm doing with creative strategy, it's kind of playing at work a little bit like I get to really dive into myself and come up with, you know, inspiring things that we can do and like, fantastic campaigns that we can execute and stuff like that. And I get to work to make those things that I just thought of a reality. Like, that's pretty cool. I don't think that even was a possibility. Back then, in Jesus, I was eight in 1989. I wasn't a possibility. I didn't know about that. So I would be really excited to know that that's an option that I could have as a career I can basically be like, a professional storyteller in a way.

Marc Gutman 1:05:59

Gregg founded Adventure Scientists in 2011 with a strong passion for both scientific discovery and exploration.

National Geographic named Gregg an Adventurer of the Year in 2008 when he and a friend completed a 7,800-mile trek along the spine of the Andes Mountain Range. He was included on the Christian Science Monitor’s 30 under 30 list in 2012, and the following year became a National Geographic Emerging Explorer for his work with Adventure Scientists. In 2013, he was named a Backpacker Magazine “hero”, in 2015, a Draper Richards Kaplan Entrepreneur and one of Men’s Journal’s “50 Most Adventurous Men.” In 2017, he was named an Ashoka Fellow and in 2018 one of the Grist 50 “Fixers.” Gregg was named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum in 2020 and is a member of their Global Futures Council on Sustainable Tourism.

Gregg holds a biology degree from Montana State University and a sociology degree from CU-Boulder. He thru-hiked the Appalachian Trail in 2004.

• The creativity, optimism, and persistence required of expeditions translate very well into entrepreneurship and keeping a business profitable over time.

[31:05] Adventure is pursuing passion in the outdoors. It’s certainly outdoor sport based, but that can be hiking for some people and just adventuring into a place you haven’t been before to look at birds, or it can be climbing peaks and skiing down. It’s pursuing your own boundaries in the outdoors.

[41:08] The cool thing about expeditions for me is not like this, “Ooh, adrenaline-seeking.” That’s not my type of Expedition. It’s persistence, it’s creativity, it’s problem-solving. It’s “you’re in this sh!tty situation, how you can get yourself out?” And it’s avoiding those situations to begin with. I think that is exactly what running a business is.

[44:09] We’ve had a tremendous impact on a number of different fields, from antibiotic resistance to microplastics, to improving crop yields, to helping to restore and preserve species that are extirpated from ecosystems. And it’s been amazing what we’ve been able to accomplish in 10 short years, and I’m so proud of the impacts that we’ve already had. But I’m always thinking about how we do that on a bigger scale, and how we make sure that the data we’ve collected and the data we will collect are going to have as much impact on as many lives, human and otherwise as possible.

Website: www.adventurescientists.org

LinkedIn: Gregg Treinish

Instagram: @adventurescientists

Facebook: Adventure Scientists

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Gregg Treinish 0:02

Marc Gutman 0:45

I am here with Greg trennis, the founder and CEO of adventure scientist, Greg, welcome to the show. Hey, thanks so much for having me. Yeah. So Greg, let’s just get right into it. Like what is adventure sciences? sounds really cool. But like, what is it? Yeah, we’re

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Yeah, and that’s, that’s a great segue. So like, what was the impetus or the inspiration or the lightbulb moment for adventure scientists, because your things are going good, right? Like why? Why why start this business? Yeah, so

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Don Wenner is the founder and CEO of DLP Real Estate Capital, a multi-faceted company that leads and inspires the building of wealth and prosperity through the execution of innovative real estate solutions. DLP Real Estate Capital is the parent company to 7 subsidiary companies with the purpose to “Dream. Live. Prosper.” They are located in Pennsylvania and Florida and conduct business throughout the United States.  

DLP has been ranked in the Inc. 5000 fastest growing companies in the US for 8 consecutive years. They have earned the #3 spot for Americas’ Fastest Growing Companies 2020 in the real estate and property category by Financial Times and have been named by The Wall Street Journal as one of the top 15 real estate firms in the U.S. for the sixth straight year, including the #1 team in PA and NJ for sales. Don has built a track record of generating consistent profits in all market conditions and cycles. In less than 10 years, he has grown his business to over $100 million in annual revenue, and in less than 15 years, he has amassed over $1 billion in assets under management. His company has grown by 60% every year for the past 13 years. Since DLP’s founding in 2006, they have closed more than 16,000 real estate transactions totaling $4 billion+ and have over 500 loans in our portfolio. They currently have over 1,000 real estate investors and a portfolio of 11,000 units.

Don is also an author and speaker. His first book, Building An Elite Organization: The Blueprint to Scaling a High Growth, High-Profit Business, along with its companion – The Elite Journal was published in April 2021. In 2019, he founded the DLP Positive Returns Foundation, focused on making a monumental impact on two epidemics: the creation of well-paying, stable jobs and providing safe, affordable housing. DLP has made a pledge to donate ¼% of all capital, ¼% net revenue, 100% of all book proceeds, and 100% of all American Institute of Investment Housing (AIIH) proceeds to the Foundation. They are focused on raising $1 million by the end of 2021.

Don studied Finance and Marketing at Drexel University, in Philadelphia, PA. He and his wife, along with his two young sons, reside in St. Augustine, FL where he is active in faith and community. He is passionate about fitness & health, devours books on a weekly basis, and enjoys many outdoor activities and discovering new places with his family. He also spends time at his homes in Asheville, NC and Bethlehem, PA.

• Many Americans are struggling with depression and feelings of inadequacy from the current state of the world. As a leader, you can bring significance and happiness into your team member’s lives by helping them live fully and feel connected to an impact bigger than themselves.

Website: dlprealestate.com

Instagram: @don_wenner

LinkedIn: Don Wenner

Facebook: Don Wenner

[9:45] I do believe that grit is what separates the most successful people in the world from everybody else. And I believe that’s a fact, not a theory. But the question is, how do you instill grit? How do you instill that drive?

[19:09] What I believe is every organization has four quadrants: their strategy, people, operations, and acceleration — acceleration is sales and marketing integrated — and you need to be able to grow all of that together, part of one plan in order to be able to grow consistently and profitably.

[28:45] I believe it’s our job as leaders to help our team members connect their day to day work with making impact bigger than themselves…and we focus heavily on helping our team members live fully across the eight F’s of life, which are faith, family, friends, freedom, fun fulfillment, fitness, and finance.

[37:34] The first fundamental part of the challenge is aligning what’s good for society or the world with what’s good for us or for our investors and trying to align that always because a lot of real estate — good, great companies — are actually a part of the problem, not the solution.

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Don Wenner 0:02

Marc Gutman 0:34

I am here with Don Wenner, the CEO of DLP capital. Don, welcome to the show.

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Don Wenner 5:46

You know, my dad told that my wedding story how he knew I was going to be an entrepreneur in kindergarten, when he started packing doughnuts into my lunch bag, and I started selling them to my classmates for 50 cents apiece, and, and when the school found out and call them cut my donut supply, that’s, you know, kind of when he knew and I never heard that story, and I remembered it when he said I hadn’t heard it until my wedding when he when he told it but but that was kind of my first entrepreneur experience and did that all through elementary selling, selling different things, running landscaping businesses and employing my friends and stuff like that. And in in the eighth grade, a financial advisor came into career day. And he showed this little chart that said, financial advisors made more money than doctors, lawyers, accountants, you know, all the jobs your parents tell you to become. And so I was entrepreneurial. And he explained to you know, financial advisors independent and kinda is in control of their own business, and you have to be good at math. And I was like, well, that’s me. That’s what I’m gonna do. And literally, I was, you know, very annoying eighth grader, shadowing financial advisors and spending my summer trying to learn the business. And I was set.

That’s what I was going to do. moved out of my parents house in high school at 17 years old and supported my way through the rest of high school and into college and had my mindset while I was at Drexel University studying finance, I was going to be a financial advisor and worked at BlackRock and McGladrey and Poland and some good sized companies, but knew I was going to be a financial advisor. And, and that was until I would wait tables on the weekends to help make, you know, make ends meet and pay for my room and board and whatnot.

And a guy kept coming into the restaurant was working at and his name is Nathan Robinson. And Nathan convinced me one day to come meet with him because he wanted to, he kept wanting me to come work for him, and didn’t really know what he did. He told me he was in the security business. So I finally sat down and met with them and turned out he was in the ADT, you know, alarm system security business. And he told me, I would make $2,000 a week, if I came to work for him. And I was 19 at that time, and, and $2,000 a week sounded, you know, pretty good. And it was a lot of money. You know, 19 years old now says, Yeah, yeah, 1617 years ago, and, and so, I, for some reason, believed him. And I started working for him the next day. And my first paycheck was $5,280. That was one of my worst paychecks I’d ever I ever earned from there forward. Later in life. Many years later, I found out no one had ever earned $1,000 a week for him less than $2,000 a week but because he gave me that belief, that’s what I thought was supposed to earn and my whole job was, you know, knocking on doors.

That’s literally what I did all day was I knocked on doors, and you know, became the top sales rep in the country for ADT, and making a lot of money and saving a lot of money and, and Nathan also happened to be in real estate. He was a real estate agent at Keller Williams and he convinced me if I got my real estate license, I would do really well. Still in college, kind of didn’t sleep for a couple weeks, took my classes online, took my exam and and that weekend, I flew out to a marketing conference the weekend I got my real estate license and I learned the concept of direct response marketing and having a unique selling proposition. My message from that first weekend before ever you know how to sign up at Keller Real Estate was your home sold, guaranteed or buy it? And it was October 2006, which was the peak of the real estate market. So it was a good time and seriousness, it was a good time to get into business. We didn’t many didn’t think it would be but it was that kind of was the start of my my real estate career.

Marc Gutman 10:16

Don Wenner 10:32

So, when that when we started off that shift, whatever the item was, that was the hot item for the night, that’s what everybody was eating. So, so Nathan, realize that, you know, he didn’t really get to dictate what he was having. And he was, you know, you know, a lively charismatic guy, and, you know, have a lot of fun with it, that, you know, he was going to eat whatever, you know, he knew what the special was, and he knew that’s what he was having. So, after the third or fourth time of me selling him on on some sort of special, you know, he saw saw some sort of, you know, energy and excitement that, you know, he wanted to explore and I don’t think I was the first he recruited after restaurants out that I was so special, he, you know, he realized it was a great place to find people willing to work hard and used to be out in front of people and, and so gave me Give me a chance.

Marc Gutman 11:50

Don Wenner 12:28

But, you know, the question is, how do you instill, you know, grit? How do you instill that, that drive? And I think there’s lots of things that you know, and I try to do as a parent, such as an example, is, you know, I don’t I don’t tell my children, you know, my children are eight, nine today, I don’t I don’t tell them, you know, you’re so smart, or you’re so handsome, or you’re so athletic, I reward the behavior. And so I record you know, man, three touchdowns today. That’s a man so impressed with three dozen and man, I’m really proud of how hard you worked this week in practice, and, and how you really, you know, improved on on this and they get, you know, high honor on all A’s. I’m not saying man, you’re so smart. I’m saying, I’m really proud of how hard you’ve been working on your homework and not after you’ve been putting forth and kind of rewarding the things you can control versus what you can’t control the effort and the behavior.

But, you know, for me, you know, I didn’t grow up from entrepreneurs. You said, Actually, my my mom’s been working for me now for 14 years, my father for 12 years, my stepmother for seven years, my stepfather for four years, much of my family works in the business, none of them came from an entrepreneurial background or none of them, frankly, have the sort of drive that I’ve always had. So but I think part of it is coming from humble background helps and that’s definitely a concern. I know many who children are growing up in an environment of abundance trying to make sure you keep that that drive and that that focus so I don’t have the exact answer. I feel though growing up with your limited limited means and dealing with some embarrassment as it is in you know, kind of middle school age of not having the cool clothes or shoes or, or whatnot. I think those things help shape and shape kind of the drive to take control of these things and more are certainly impactful for me.

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Don Wenner 15:17

So I was going out to home sellers homes and offering to guarantee their sale, and that led to some people couldn’t even wait to put their home on the market. And we would just start buying their home because they were in such need of selling, especially in the great, you know, recession time. And we had some people who were upside down on their home, and we started a short sale negotiation company and, and scaled that before there was such thing as short sales. And, and you know, and then you know, we started having people who didn’t want to, you know, couldn’t sell their home because they were upside down, didn’t want to do a short sale and kind of destroy their credit, and but needed to move, they were relocating for a job or whatnot. So we started doing property management so that we could help them rent that home, because they needed to move out or move somewhere else. And so it all just came out of helping, you know, home sellers in the beginning stages. And then, you know, as we started growing and helping more and more people and started growing this home flipping business, we couldn’t find enough good contractors, I found one really good contractor, but he couldn’t keep up. So I hired him to come inside into my organization launch our own construction company, help us, you know, scale a construction company and, and you know, that, you know, really started growing and then you know, the bottom of the market, we said, hey, it’s the bottom of the market and 2011 2012 it must be near it. And we said this is the time to build a portfolio. And so we started really building a portfolio of rental properties and providing housing to those who couldn’t qualify to buy and in need of homes. And, you know, that started taking off.

So we couldn’t we didn’t have enough capital. So I launched private investment funds and started taking in capital into our funds. And then we started having too much capital more than we could deploy. And we said, well, how do we help other people trying to run businesses somewhat, and we started then lending money to others who were running business similar to us other real estate investors. So it’s happened in a very natural manner of progression off of helping home sellers and our beginning days and has taken shape where it is today, which today we’re you know, closing in, bender this month, 450 employees, team members, you know, 1.6 billion and a u m, and and you know, doing hundreds of millions a year in revenue, but it’s happened, you know, very naturally over these last 15 years.

Marc Gutman 18:14

Don Wenner 19:08

And I realized early on, you know, in sales, you know, I realized that, you know, my fundamental stage we’re all salespeople in every every business then they your core. Your core function is is sales. And so my beginning days of being a real estate agent, I realized if I wasn’t on the phone prospecting to potential clients, or I wasn’t sitting in front of a potential client, my time wasn’t being best used. And so I was in the business for maybe 60 days, when I took another agent in my office who wasn’t doing very well and offered her a part time job. By the end of that first week, she was working more than full time. And two weeks later, she was so busy, I hired another assistant. And then about a month later, I hired the third two of those three young ladies are still working for me today.

But I was willing to put people in place to free me up for to do what I knew was most impactful, where I can make the biggest difference. And, and in the beginning, that was, you know, that was really impactful. And I put built an organization around, you know, some people who are willing to follow me and work really hard and, and in free me up and follow me towards my, my vision, and, and I was, you know, constantly trying to learn and grow and realize, especially in the world of big businesses, such as real estate and financial services, and lending, there’s lots and lots of people have done this, and I’ve done this successfully. And there’s other people walk before me who who’ve done it. And so a constant wanting to learn from from others. And so still, to this day, you know, I’m an incredibly avid learner, I read, you know, three, four books every week. And, and so I was reading and learning and going to masterminds and learning for 20 great people and getting all these great ideas and concepts from the greats like Jim Collins, and john Maxwell, and so forth. And, and, but getting all that information and into in a manner that you can put it all into place, right, because you read one great book about leadership and tells you that’s all you need to grow great business and other one is just management.

Other one is content marketing. And another one, it’s, you know, it’s execution, another book, it’s all about hiring, right. And but the reality is, you need to be good at all these things at the same time, as part of one system. And, and so we set out, you know, about 10 years ago now, and realizing we needed a system to, and a system that can get everybody in the organization around to be able to really have consistent results. And, and that’s where what I wrote a book on called Building an organization is about, it’s what we’ve built over the last decade called the elite execution system. And what I believe is every organization has four quadrants, their strategy, people, operations, and acceleration, acceleration is sales and marketing integrated. And you need to be able to grow all of that together a part of one plan in order to be able to grow consistently and profitably.

And that’s been really key to how we’ve grown, you know, by over 60%, every year now for 15 years, while growing our margins is putting that discipline in place. And when you get put that structure in place, and language and terminology that that every business in our DLP business operates under. And you realize most all businesses are more similar than dissimilar. And and as we’ve gone through a lot of businesses 12 that we run today, I’ve run over 20 businesses in total, over this past decade, they’re all very, very similar, and they have the same challenges, and are very, very similar challenges. And in putting the right structure in place that allows you to be able to execute each day and put the right people in place has been really instrumental in the success we’ve been able to have and be able to grow multiple business at the same time, without yet coming up with a way to add more hours in the day.

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Don Wenner 23:36

So if we’re going to saying hey, this is how you should run a an elite organization, but then they come into our organization realize Wait, they don’t You’re not actually doing what you said you’re going to do, right? Or, you know, we run these big events that we bring are kind of our world revolves around kind of two groups, those who invest money with us into our funds, and then those who we invest money with, that we lend money to and invest equity with. And we’ll run these big events where the same, these two groups of people come to the same events, right? And so if we’re a different person to those investing with us, and we tell a different story to them, then we tell it to those we’re lending to, right. If I tell my investors who are investing with us, hey, we pay you these really great returns and incredible returns, and that’s because we overcharge our borrowers, right, and then we tell our borrowers that we’re giving them really great rates over here, right? If our stories aren’t matching between all the different stakeholders, from our team members to our residents who live in our properties to our investors, to our our borrowers, it becomes very, very hard. So So we really focus on that first and foremost in terms of growing our brand and then, you know, we’re going through a process literally right now you referenced that I run a company called DLP capital.

Actually today our company is called DLP real estate capital. And we’re actually going through a rebrand process right now of knocking out the real estate and DLP capital, and realigning our businesses. Right now. We were on DLP real estate capital and we have DLP lending. We have DLP Realty, we have DLP, property management, we have DLP, construction, management, etc. We’re actually going through a process right now of rebranding everybody under DLP capital. So now instead of the DLP, capital lending division, DLP capital, Property Management Division, DLP capital, so everybody’s under one brand. If you work at DLP, you’re not gonna say I work for DLP lender, you’re gonna say I work for DLP, capital lending division, right? One LinkedIn page one, you know, main website. And that’s a really big, you know, move that we’re going through right now to better align the brand and be able to better align all the products and values we can bring to clients under under one umbrella. So that’s, you know, in a very active process we’re going through right now, which has been a lot of fun, a lot of a lot have been a lot of excitement.

Marc Gutman 27:02

I think what I’m hearing is something that I like to touch on and talk about is that branding is always an ongoing process, right? Even though right now you’re going through some identity work to bring all the companies under one banner and one look and feel that’s not going to end just with that process. And it’s an it’s an ongoing process. And I don’t want to make a point of that. And I think you’ve articulated that. And so, as you’re speaking I have to ask, you’ve got like 1.6 you said billion right and assets under management, yet now you’re even starting to teach other businesses, how to run a company like yours, like, why?

Don Wenner 28:56

So we focus on investing in workforce housing that is and will remain affordable for the local workforce. And that’s really everything we do impacts that. The second big area of impact we’re focused on is jobs. And right now, in America, mainly due to automation technology, 30 to 50% of jobs will be gone in the next 10 to 20 years. I don’t think it’s doom and gloom, that doesn’t mean our country’s ending society’s going to hell, I think technology is going to create a big wave of job creation and new types of jobs. But those jobs are only going to be created by small businesses, or I should say, predominantly by small businesses, right, they’re not going to be created by governments, they’re going to be created by small businesses. And I know firsthand how difficult it is to grow a business despite being an amazing time that we’re faced with the global competition, it’s very challenging to grow to grow consistently and grow profitably.

And so I believe that it’s needed, you know, a system to scale entrepreneurial businesses is needed and can be the difference between an organization hitting a plateau of a really great CEO and some, you know, followers who get to a million or 3 million or 5 million or whatever revenue and just can’t, can’t grow beyond that can’t create more jobs can’t really make the level of impact that they like. And then we’re also really focused on two other areas of impact which tie in the third is on legacy. And we want to help people live and leave a legacy and, and right now those who work really hard and have success, unfortunately, the majority of first generation wealth creators, wealth is lost by the second or third generation, and doesn’t have to be that way. And not only is the wealth loss, but often they didn’t really leave a legacy or get to live one and for a number of reasons, which we could get into if we wanted to. And and the fourth crisis we’re really focused on which ties all these all these other crisis is really together is, is happiness. And, you know, right now, we’ve never been in a state of a higher percentage of people suffering from mental illness.

The number one mental illness people suffer from is depression. And stats are kind of all over the place, but it’s somewhere around 40% of Americans are struggling with depression is the most recent stats I’ve heard COVID has dramatically sparked that up and, and I believe that historically, you know, meaning the last many generations, people get their, their feeling their happiness, and their, you know, derive Your happiness is derived from the feeling of importance and significance. And people you know, Dale Carnegie and the great book, you know how to win friends and influence people. You know, it says that the number one human desire is that of the feeling of importance and significance. And historically, we’ve get that feeling from our work. And more and more today, people don’t have that same connection with their job with their employer with their careers they once did.

Couple that with social media and the feelings of inadequacy that that many face, I believe it’s our job as leaders to help our team members connect their day to day work with with making impact bigger than themselves. And that by doing that, that that’ll help them get the feeling of significance and importance they can carry into their their home life into the end of their faith life. And, and we focus on we have a whole chapter of the book is on living fully. And we focus heavily on helping our team members live fully across the eight F’s of life, which are faith, family, friends, freedom, fun, fulfillment, fitness and finance. And, and I believe that’s our job as business leaders, helping our team members get gaining importance and fulfillment in all areas of their life. And, and so I want to help not only grow great organizations, but also help those organizations organizations create happy, impactful people who can make an impact at work and outside of work.

Marc Gutman 33:51

Don Wenner 33:58

We live it throughout the year we have a living fully day where we spent a whole day focused on everything but work and bring in all kinds of experts on personal finance, meditation, fitness, etc. We do Miracle Morning, every morning with actual workout group every morning on zoom people all over the country do we have a morning prayer group, we have a FitLife group, we have a single mom support group, we have a lot of things focused on whatever the needs of our team members are, we have this group called driven for greatness we have meaning for 12 years, we read a book together, we buy everybody audible accounts, we buy everybody fitbits we buy everybody Beachbody on demand accounts, a lot of personal tools. And we read a book together and different frontline team members lead us to the discussion of that book every other week and getting people who otherwise wouldn’t be exposed to self improvement in these types of ideas in this in this environment, think about construction workers and maintenance technicians such who think would never have haven’t listened to a business book in their whole life before coming to DLP. And now you know, leading a group on on a book on you know, a personal development book, I mean, it’s just really, really cool process.

So you know, then doing things helping people be able to you know, have appropriate time off helping show firsthand, you know, I coach my kids soccer, I don’t know nothing about soccer still, even though I coach this past season, but I also coach their football and their and their basketball sports, I know a little bit more of how and, and, and, you know, so much so and I and I highlight that and show that organization that Yeah, I leave, you know, work at 530 and go coach my kids sports and, and, and having that in it work life integration, as we call it, where you’re focusing on being fulfilled and succeeding in each of these areas at the same time, which is where real success, I feel comes from. And so our leaders, not just myself lead by example. And, and, and we want to really create a great environment. I had a team member a few years ago, probably about eight years ago now, who had a heart attack. And he had some other you know, he was a smoker and had some other, you know, issues. But you know, he’d been working really, really hard and a lot of us had known he had been really stressed out and been, you know, really pushed himself too hard. And luckily, he’s he he ended up living, but we thought he was he might die and and it was it was on it was touching go for a while. And you know, that hit me.

And I was like, man, I never want to be looking back saying, Man, somebody literally died here because they work so hard. They didn’t take care of themselves. I don’t want to find out that one of my team members, they got a divorce because they’re not home, and they’re not attentive to their wife. And, and because I’m working so hard, right? So so so those are some of the, you know, simple concepts and things that we’ve put into place to really help our people live fully. And there’s the lessons, we teach and provide very specific tools to help put this in action into into other businesses.

Marc Gutman 38:01

Don Wenner 38:25

The reality is every company, especially every growing company is struggling to find enough good people, let alone strong, strong leaders. So that’s the biggest day to day challenge. And that’s been the number one place where I spend my time the number one place I spent my time in the past decade, pretty much the same thing every week, every month is on hiring. And then the second biggest place I spend spend my time for the past decade is on the development of our people, especially our leaders. So that’s the biggest challenge.

I’d say the hardest part though, of that is when you get when you have people who are really loved the organization who who work really hard, but just can’t get to the next level to keep up with the pace of growth and when you have to Either, you know, some cases part ways or have to, you know, sort of higher above somebody’s capability despite that person’s well intentions and wanting to be able to own that, that job not being able to grow at a fast enough pace, kind of the saying that, you know, I’ve heard in the past is, you know, those who got you here can’t get you to where you need to go and, and and certainly I look at first and foremost, when that happens as a as my fault and that it’s a leadership shortfall that I didn’t get my people to the point of being able to handle the growth fast enough.

And so that’s the hardest part we have such great people who are well intentioned and want to be successful want the company be successful, but just simply have a have a lid today anyway. And we’ve had to, you know, go and higher above and some of those cases have turned out to be incredible success stories where they’ve been repurposed or been okay, having some reporting somebody else and have thrived and grown and other cases where they’re, you know, people’s, even though we’re, you know, one of our core values is humble confidence. And we have very limited egos here are some of the People’s, you know, egos can’t, a lot can’t accept kind of when that happens. And we’ve we’ve lost some some good people. So that’s, that’s been, I’d say, the biggest actual challenge on a day to day basis.

Marc Gutman 41:16

Don Wenner 41:35

Now, there’s even even less than estimated 500,000 units of that are affordable for local local workforce, in America today, per year are being removed from the affordability pool. And that’s one of the reasons and and by affordability, what I mean is that, that the local working families are spending less than 30% of their income on rent. And about half of Americans today are spending more than that. And over a quarter of Americans, they’re spending more than half of their income on rent, you just simply can’t afford health care, food education, when that much of your income is going for the basic need of housing. So that’s the you know, that’s, that’s, you know, challenge one is making sure we certainly have investors and we certainly want to do good for our investors, but while not being part of the problem, but instead being part of the solution here. So so that’s that’s difficult. And and and we’ve done it and that’s that’s our business thesis. And that means some deals that otherwise would work for us don’t work, because we’re not willing to, to make investments that aren’t gonna make a positive impact and keep and preserve housing that’s affordable for local workforce. So that that’s one challenge.

The other challenge is right now and was never been, it’s never been harder than it is today is right now rent growth is just incredible. We’re going through the greatest growth in rent in the affordable sector, meaning you own the, you know, in the space of markets of 789 100 1011 1200 a month housing across the United States, rents are going up right now faster than they’ve ever gone up. Since COVID. It’s only skyrocketed the growth and rents to a pace that we’ve never seen. In the last decade, rents have gone up 70% in America 70% incomes have gone up four to 6% rent has gone up 70% that’s not a sustainable formula. So again, it’s a balance of certainly we want to for investors young to take part in some growth and rent and that helps our investors but we don’t want to be in a situation where we’re making our housing unaffordable for the local workforce. So you know it building cost and and and you know, the whole kind of Supply Chain right now pricing is going up. And it’s making it harder and harder because incomes just simply aren’t aren’t keeping pace.

So it’s a, it’s a heck of a challenge and doing so keeping your housing affordable, while not sacrificing, making sure you’re truly creating a great lifestyle for your residents. And we want our communities to be safe. We want to invest heavily in enrichment of our residents, we do a lot around, Enriching them helping we call choose prosperity, giving them access to education and knowledge that they otherwise wouldn’t be exposed to. Helping them with jobs and career advancement and health care and, and so forth. And it’s it’s a major, major challenge. And it continues to seem to get harder and harder. And this this demands, you know, whether it’s short term or permanent, this inflationary environment we’re in today is making it you know, even harder.

Marc Gutman 45:52

Don Wenner 46:18

And that’s where we spend a lot of our time are spent a lot of my time is helping companies, a lot of our focus is certainly around other real estate companies who are also investing in this space of making impact on on workforce affordability. But helping more and more companies can make an impact on this jobs crisis and happiness crisis. And so our ability to kind of expand our platform and our and our footprint to, to make a much larger impact is that is the kind of the challenge we’re, we’re tackling right now. And and it’s been been a lot of fun and exciting. And, you know, our B hag right now, you know, big hairy audacious goal is to be a fortune 500 company and at our current pace, we’ll be there and really a blink of an eye and is a few years which is exciting and humbling at the same time.

But realizing that if we keep doing you know, doing what we believe to be right and doing the right thing, and building building our brand and culture around the our values, and you know, we’re really just just getting started and you know, there’s great books out there on topics like small giants is a classic one that you know that hey, you can have a small business that’s, that’s great. And, and I challenge anybody looking to grow a business that if it’s a great business, and you’re really helping people, there’s no way you can stay small. It can’t be a great business and stay small and, and I’ve accepted a while ago for a short period of time in my life, I looked at Wow, when all of a sudden I realized I had a couple 100 employees, I thought well what if you started feeling like that was a liability and started feeling like wow, that’s that’s I didn’t really set out to employ hundreds of people.

And now I’ve quickly learned that you know, it’s my greatest asset and, and the greatest opportunity I have is the ability to employ people and directly and indirectly through through our investments and and partnerships in education of other businesses is our greatest opportunity we face today and it’s a lot of fun and exciting and haven’t been more excited in a 15 point 15 year journey so far as I am today at the kind of the opportunities right right in front of us. It’s it’s we’re having a blast.

Marc Gutman 49:12

Don Wenner 49:40

So, you know, I was, you know, 20 years old and my parents were my age and so, so probably thinking I’m pretty, pretty old because that was my grandparents age at five years old. And I hope hope, hope I’d be proud and I guess the best way I think about that is you know, I have a nine year old and, and hope hope they’re proud I funny story. I was talking to my I was in the car taking my kids to a flag football practice a lot about two weeks ago. And so I have my two sons back there and one of their other teammates, another kid back there and, and I asked the little boy, so what does your dad do? And he tells me in long detail, his dad worked for Johnson and Johnson and he’s the software engineer and, and he builds these prosthetic arms and great detail right? And, and I asked my son I said, I said is Donnie and Donnie, what do I do? He says he does something with money in real estate.

So didn’t quite know even though he’s been to my events and dinners, but as money in real estate, so I guess he was he was a partial, pretty pretty right there. But uh, but but hopefully they’re proud of they tell me I’m really cool, because my book launch is going on right now. And they keep seeing my book ads pop up on their iPads. So right now I’m a celebrity and I’m really cool because I’m on YouTube. And I’m on NBA touquet. So I’m winning right now in my kids eyes I guess.

Marc Gutman 51:49

A big thank you to Don Wenner and the team at DLP real estate capital. We will link to all things down winner including his two books in the show notes. Make sure to check them out. There’s tons of valuable insights and information there. And if you know of a guest who should appear on our show, please drop me a line at podcast at wild street comm our best guests like Don come from referrals from past guests and our listeners. Wait, and I did promise to flex my own cheese restaurant experience. So here we go. Happy Happy Happy birthday. Happy Happy Happy birthday. Happy, Happy Happy birthday to you, to you to you. Oh les. That’s how you do it. Well, that’s the show. Until next time, make sure to visit our website www.wildstory.com where you can subscribe to the show in iTunes, Stitcher or via RSS so you’ll never miss an episode. A lot of big stories and I cannot lie to you other storytellers can’t deny.

Jimmy Hays Nelson, aka Coach Jimmy, has been a high-performance business coach for over a decade. Jimmy’s unique skill is helping his clients to seamlessly connect their personal stories to their product or service, creating a strong “know, like, and trust factor.”

Using his 20+ years of experience as a stage and film performer, he has shared his own personal story of being a former 100-pound overweight 3x college dropout to successful entrepreneur to create a 7-figure business and now dedicates his life to helping professionals craft their own stories to attract and impact the lives of their ideal audiences. He is a sought-after keynote speaker, emcee, and event host, now honing his expertise as a virtual emcee as well.

He has dedicated his life to helping people live a life WellCrafted. As Coach Jimmy says, “Create a story, change the world.”

• There is no treading water in life. We are always getting better or worse, so you might as well build your daily habits to get better.

Website: thecoachjimmy.com

LinkedIn: Jimmy Nelson

Instagram: @thecoachjimmy

Facebook: @CoachJimmy

[20:46] I don’t know that we ever know when we’re going to arrive, but I love chasing the next version of me.

[25:41] I want to feed the doers, the people that are hungry to take action, and that that’s what lights me up all day long because at the end of working with those people, I’m never exhausted. I think that’s a big telltale for us to figure out where we’re supposed to be is, what are those things that we do that fills our bucket and doesn’t drain us?

[28:39] You can’t argue with my story—doesn’t mean you’re going to convert, doesn’t mean you’re going to be in my tribe, or agree with me. But you can’t argue with my story. And it just feels like it diffuses any of that negative feedback immediately.

[54:38] Personal storytelling is the fastest way to create know, like, and trust with an audience. And who do people do business with? People they know, like, and trust.

Book your no-obligation, Wildstory Brand Clarity Call now.

• Learn about our Brand Audit and Strategy process

Book Your Brand Clarity Call TODAY

Coach Jimmy 0:02

Marc Gutman 0:56

I am here with Jimmy Nelson also known and more fondly known to me as coach Jimmy I prefer that much more than than Jimmy Nelson and, and Jimmy is an international speaker and story coach. So if you listen to this show, you know there’s two things that are near and dear to my heart. I’m currently working quite a bit on my speaking and I I love stories. So I know we are going to have an awesome conversation here today with Jimmy Jimmy, welcome to the show. Thanks, Mark. I’ve

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Margaret Hartwell is an innovation and strategy leader on a mission to empower purpose-driven change at the intersection of design, brand & culture, and technology. Her diverse accomplishments range from co-founding and establishing the innovation practice for Cognition Studio, a subsidiary of Certus Solutions, to authoring Archetypes in Branding: A Toolkit for Creatives and Strategists. She uses a transformative approach to everyday innovation and employs skills and best practices from a range of disciplines: archetypal branding, transpersonal psychology, sustainable management, and design thinking. 

Her experience spans 20+ years developing design-led businesses in the US, UK, Europe, and APAC. Industries include technology, social and environmental advocacy, health and wellness, media, entertainment and the arts, leadership development, automotive, telecommunications, packaged goods, and travel. She holds her MBA in Sustainable Management from Presidio Graduate School, her BA from UC Berkeley, and an advanced coaching certification from the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology. She thinks in systems, strategies, and surprises. She creates in metaphor, music, and story and relates with empathy and curiosity.

Recognized for a breadth and depth of applied skills and experience across multiple creative disciplines and business sectors, Margaret began her career as a designer as one of the founding members of Suissa Miller Advertising where she served in various roles from studio director to art director to vice president. In London, she was Director of Development for the London Design Festival and Head of Marketing for the Design Council. Returning to the U.S., consulting and coaching includes work with Saatchi & Saatchi S, PayPal, Jive, BVG, Inc., Flextronics, BFG Communications, Omegawave, Stanford Lively Arts, Verve Coffee Roasters, TwoFish Bakery, and the San Francisco Symphony. She taught "Live Exchange" in the pioneering MBA in Design Strategy (DMBA) program at the California College of the Arts, and is an engaging speaker/presenter/facilitator.

Margaret has been called an information junkie with a childlike curiosity and is known for having an insatiable appetite for travel, trends, and technologies. She has been an actor, singer, improv player, photographer, scriptwriter, environmental advocate, and founder of a line of infant sportswear called zerosomething. She currently lives in Salem, Massachusetts.

• An archetypal approach opens a door to a deeper level of connection to yourself, society, and any relationship. This helps particularly in the branding space because it is no longer about pushing your ideals, it's about relatedness.

Websites

www.margarethartwell.com

Clubhouse: @mphpov

Twitter: @MPHpov

Facebook: @ArchetypesinBrandingToolkit

LinkedIn: Margaret Hartwell

Instagram: @margarethartwell

[33:20] The process of this kind of introspection and alignment of everything changes the way that people hold on to right and wrong. They're not as much about finding a solution, as opposed to finding a process that continues to reveal value…This is actually something that is going to grow along and with and inside and outside of us.

[40:58] Branding is really about increasing the value of a relationship, much in the way that you would increase the value of a relationship with your family or a friend or your community.

[56:33] It's hard to have the courage because we've been taught that we can't fail. And that's not real. Good relationships don't have conflict. No way. As human beings, you know, the more we can just say, 'Yes, awesome. That just came up; let's go there'…I think that's really where everybody's unique brilliance is, is recognizing that all those things are baseline, all those things are to be embraced. And if you just left them out of the right 'wrong box', then they're all actually just gifts and tools to be applied to however you want to live and be and do.

Book your no-obligation, Wildstory Brand Clarity Call now. 

• Learn about our Brand Audit and Strategy process

Book Your Brand Clarity Call TODAY

Margaret Hartwell 0:02

Marc Gutman 1:05

I am here with Margaret Hartwell, innovation consultant, innovation coach, and yeah, that's all great. We're gonna talk about that. But I know Margaret, from a book that she wrote called archetypes in branding, and I have it right here. And it is literally like it's well law that got like, the corners are like kind of, you know, dinged up a little bit. And things are like noted and ripped in here. And I like more than any other book. You can see here, Margaret, like, you know, and people that are on the listen to the podcast, I'm here at the halfway house studio, I am surrounded by books. And I believe that books have energy and power. And I just love books. And so I get a lot of books. And this book is probably the one that I reach for more often than any other book because it's, we're going to talk about this book, but it's because it has knowledge that you receive when you read it. But it's like a working book, it's a book that like, has like a purpose that I work with in my job, like, on a daily basis. Now I want to talk to you about that. So I'm extremely, extremely excited to have you on the podcast. So welcome. And as we get into this, like to me, archetypes are definitely about the universal, the the essence, but they're also like sort of mystical and magical. They're like a portal or a window to me, you know, in a lens. And so with that kind of definition at least and I'm sure you have your own. When you were like a young girl, were you into these types of like portals in Windows and translation like what was what was young Margaret like?

Margaret Hartwell 7:58

Also, this

is where I went into books. So for me, I love what you just said about books too. I do think they're alive. And they they are portals as well. So you combine those things together. And yeah, it was it was pretty evident early on that I had a very favorite place in my imagination.

Marc Gutman 9:22

Margaret Hartwell 9:28

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Margaret Hartwell 10:30

I don't know, it's kind of funny, I

look back on it now. And I kind of see the paradigm. And the paradigm was is that it was kind of like cheating to go and do something that you were already really good at. They should do things that you're not so good at. And then you are a whole and complete person. So hard work meant everything in my family. I'm a third culture kid, Canadian mother and a Chinese father. That doesn't, you don't really see it so much. But I'm actually more Chinese than my sisters from what the ancestry 23andme says. But yeah, so you know, it's a great, my parents were awesome, don't get me wrong. I mean, they really supported everything that I loved and wanted to do. And they, they were just like any parent, they wanted to make sure that I was going to be self sufficient, and be able to make a living, and they didn't see how it all works gonna come together if I was just doing the arts. So they were very happy when I got my MBA. Instead of, you know, I'm not going to med school. I'm leaving for London, and I'm doing a Shakespeare program. And my father's like,

Why?

I said, Well, because every doctor, you know, needs to know how to speak. And I am big pentameter, right? And it just looked to me like you've lost your mind. And my mother says, Let her go. She'll get it out of her system. Yeah, no, never got it out of my system.

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Margaret Hartwell 12:56

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Margaret Hartwell 15:43

I love learning.

I love being in school, I love, you know, playing essential. And that's what this program was, but came back and finished my degree. And my parents said, Well, what are you going to do

with that?

I was like, Well, I'm going to move to LA. And I'm going to try my hand at acting, and her shaking their heads completely. But at that point, being an actor, without a lot of credits, you either become an aerobics instructor or a waiter. And so I started teaching aerobics. And then I found my way into a theatre company. And at that point, I met somebody who was working on a commercial shoot. And she introduced me to my then former future boss in advertising.

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isn't a medical intuitive. And she wrote a book called sacred contracts, that has outlined very descriptions of a lot of archetypes. And she uses archetypes as a way of doing just like we would in branding as a shorthand for understanding people's drives and journeys and motivations. And that's a nice, so I found that book. And I thought, this is pretty cool. I don't know what. And I looked more into it. And she actually had a deck of cards. So I could backup that at the time, I was doing brand strategy work as a consultant, just kind of for hire. And so when I found these cards that Carolyn mace had done, I went to the guy that I was working with, who's actually my co author, Josh chin. And I said, you know, can I trial working with the right kind of client with these cards and lists? Let's see if the brand strategy process goes differently, or let's just experiment with it. And the feedback that we got was the cards were way too, whoo. And it just, it made them feel like, you know, somebody was trying to read their Tarot or something. And that it, that it wasn't validated. And it wasn't real at that point. So, so yeah, so Josh, and I, you can clap, well, maybe this is an opportunity. And he had had an agreement with his publisher for previous books that they had the agency had published. And they had been kind of after him saying, well, what's next? So Josh came to me and said, you want to write a book about archetypes and branding? I went, sure. Okay. Because it was working, you know, the, the process, the dialogue, the kind of different conversations that we were having, were actually unlocking areas that were resistances in a business, that by using this archetypical kind of world, somehow it gave them a 30,000 foot view, and they soften some of the ego identity attachments that people had about what their brand was supposed to be or how they were going to do things. So yeah, that's a long winded answer to your How did you first find archetypes?

Marc Gutman 23:49

Margaret Hartwell 25:02

You know, why,

why wouldn't you do that? And so I guess, I mean, then the next probably another theme, you know, people ask me, why do you do this? I think or why did I do anything? Like in my life, man? Pretty much my answers were Why not? Do it? So, yeah, it was a little daunting. And on the first to say that, you know, we're here with writing any book that gets published? Like, I go back, and I shake my head, like, No, no, I should put that there should have put that there. You know, there's always improved room for improvement. So, yeah, just, I've got a list on my computer of the next kind of set to flesh out with people. And I'm looking for a way to, to maybe do that in a collaborative sense.

So,

you know, somebody came to me and said, will you work with me, as a brand new practitioner, we work with me to find this as a unique expression of an architect for this client. And we did and we completely front fleshed out the connoisseur. And it was super fun and super cool to work together like that. But I love your cover. And that makes me You just can't know how much it means to know that something that I've poured my heart and soul into, has meaning for people. It's really, it's really lovely. And I love that they've got the little cover for it and everything.

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Margaret Hartwell 28:40

Does does this

affect your value proposition? How does this align with, you know, the strategic path for the business? Because that might shift things as well? Like, are they on an m&a track? Because at that point, we're actually dressing up something differently than we would if we were a startup. So those overlays, the developmental overlays of the business come into factor as well.

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Marc Gutman 37:04

So my friend assha she's a brand strategist, she knew I was talking to you and she wanted me to ask you a question she she wants to know why some brand strategist like us use archetypes, then why some don't like what's your what's your thought on that? Like? We'd like sort of in what and perhaps, I think to broaden the scope of the question, What might those other brand strategist be be missing by not employing archetypes in their work?

Margaret Hartwell 38:50

why do some users and some not?

Well,

I think there are a lot of people, regardless of what they do Alicia's in brand strategy, the think that there's a way, a way for the way. And that if you just do the way, then you'll just get what you want. There's like this linear, aided, you know, Zed kind of thing that you get. And they like they have a certain commitment to that kind of process. They give some confidence. They can replicate it, there's bits, it's something that they have identified with and studied with. But, gosh, I'm stopping myself, but I'm gonna go ahead and say it. You know, it's there was this guy who put archetypes in brain as he put it on his bullshit meter. And he said it was the sixth biggest marketing bullshit thing that ever was, and I just burst out laughing I and I thought it was great because it's like, we were right after Seth Godin work. And it was like, yeah, you made it right after so But I think that the gig is up for people in, in any form of consulting or business, or helping or creativity, maybe even anyone, that you can't bring your whole self to things anymore. And I think that archetypes, you have to do that. Now, what I mean to say, probably got my negatives caught up there. But the art and architectural approach, I think, just opens a door to a deeper level of connection with yourself, with your society with any any relationships. And I think understanding that branding now isn't is about is no longer push and telling it's relatedness. And we and I'm not saying anything that you are meant all of your listeners are already across. But it's an orienting principle to understand that a brand. Branding is really about increasing the value of a relationship, so much in the way that you would increase the value of relationship with your family or a friend or your community. So why do they not use them? I think they're scared of them, because they don't know how to flesh them out into a 360 degree, living and bodied way of being. And I will admit, I probably have a leg up here, because I studied acting,

I mean, you

I know how to step into a character and kind of feel what that is. Right? You know, I've done a ton of improv. So, you know, just the idea of sparking new thing of new ideas off of other people and being able to play in that space. I've studied a ton of psychology. So I understand motivation and behavior and how to move people in that sense. And I've also been in the art world and the sustainability world, where you understand that everything is connected on some level. And it's just, it's we're working in a system. So to answer your question, in the most long winded way, is that I think that people don't use them because they don't really grok the depth of them, and that they're part of a system. So they still see it as a separate, you know, branding is still something separate. I think it's like the thread that is, who we are, and who a company is. So that's why I think people who are naturally curious, and always continuously learning are the most successful brand. Practitioners out there for an archetypal strategy or for even if they don't use archetypes, because they're just, they're just curious about life and curious about people. And they look at the cross sections, which is what I think archetypes do.

Marc Gutman 42:57

Margaret Hartwell 43:36

just to kind of ground them into the notion of talking about what's going on in a story fashion with people that have specific drivers and motivations and then universal stories to them. I've done it in the middle, and I've done it with with each one of the little teams too. So that was an interesting one. Instead of doing it with the C suite. I went in and did the exercise with each one of the kinds of teams marketing and sales, Ops, HR, and even finance. So he did one with each one of those. And then I asked one person out of each one of those to come with me, and then we did it with the C suite Bigger. And those people were, were so that they were, of course, really engaged at that point. And loving the process, that they were the greatest kind of contagion excitement for the process that the C suite had to give up their Oh, boohoo on it all. And, and they were fed by the people that worked really were on the front lines, I don't like to use those metaphors. But you know that in the trenches with that with the company's purpose, and not just directing it, so I've used them at every different phase, it's this crazy, but it's really satisfying to walk back into a client's office and see the image of the car, somebody has it on their t shirt, or somebody is using it within a mug, or, or, or they're actually sitting there because we do some, some grounding work, I guess you could say, for creativity purposes, to get you in a place where you can hear your own creative news. And so they have a little technique that I teach them. So I'm watching them do it, it's pretty cool. It comes from Eric Moselle, who's a renowned kind of artistic and creativity coach. And so you know, it's a breathing process, but it it puts people quickly into a space of being able to channel the archetype, the story of that archetype. So, so yeah, it's it's everywhere. At the beginning, I think it was more that we use it right, we use it more in a kind of more traditional sense that it came, it came after, usually, after the collage, I used to do a lot of collaging, with people to try and get them to, to elicit what was going on visually for them, and also to hear how they would tell a story because we'd have them collage on a certain theme. And then they would have to tell the story back to the group, while listening to music telling me then which music actually worked for them, too. So it was it was a little bit more of a predictable process at that time. But then, I've seen it just it seems to work everywhere now.

So

lots of applications.

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Margaret Hartwell 55:01

I'm a change person, I just am a change agent. And that's usually what I get hired to do is to do some kind of change with people, whether it's on a one to one basis, or on a company basis or a family basis, because I, I also do just coaching with people as well, executive coaching. So, you know, I have attorneys and CEOs that are looking for a different way of showing up and recognizing, much like you said earlier in the, in our chat, is that you kind of know, something is going on inside of you. And an architectural lens can help with that, and other kinds of connection as well. So, innovation is just a thing for me a fancy word for creative change. So I like to say that I instill creative courage in people. And that's what I do, and help to do.

Marc Gutman 56:07

Margaret Hartwell 56:13

we've been fed a pretty steady stream of fear breaks, you know, steady diet of fear, recently, a lot. And I think that the, the macro world is also making us feel very, you know, insecure, and, and changing. And so it's hard to have the courage because we've been taught that we can't fail. And that's not real. You know, it's like, like, good relationships don't have conflict. No way. You know, like, yeah, and if you're a successful person, you don't fail. Sorry, the human beings, you know, the more we can just say, yes, awesome, that just came up, let's go there. I think that I'm just keep looking at your hat mark. And I think that's really where everybody's unique brilliance is, is recognizing that all those things are baseline, all those things are to be embraced. And if you if you just left them out of the right wrong box, then they're all actually just gifts and tools to be applied to however you want to live and be and do.

Marc Gutman 57:25

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Margaret Hartwell 1:00:30

think is

deepening your, your resonance with the impact that different messages have is one of the best ways to hone your skill at on earthing and revealing a true archetypical brand rallying cry, if you will. So, yeah, that's what I would say. And then yes, of course, you know, read Margaret, Mark,

read Carolyn mace, read Joseph Campbell, you know, just read, read, read, read and watch. I think films are one of the greatest ways of learning about,

you know, what is alive in a culture? What are the influences, so I guess it's really more just about being really hungry, and for knowledge, and for input stimulus, and looking for the intersections and then making sure that they also somehow come together for positive meaning, and that you take responsibility for the impact that you create. So that the way I would say get in how to get into this business, you know, follow your nose, you'll be led.

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Gregg Bagni is the founder of Alien Truth Communications. He works behind the scenes with organizations in the outdoor, bike and natural food worlds where he offers up energy, direction and expert business strategy around branding, marketing & product development.

He is also a partner with White Road Investments and claims to be the luckiest being on this planet.

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• Define your goals and keep them somewhere you can see so when you’re discouraged, you can always remind yourself where you are headed. It will give you the motivation to make it happen

LinkedIn: Gregg Bagni

[21:33] I have always been a product developer, first and foremost. I don’t know jack about brand, or marketing, or sales or investment, and I’ve got experience in all those areas but at the end of the day, I’m a product geek. I love building stuff and building it from the ground up.

[49:24] I’m hoping to get another 20 years on this planet, but I’m planning for 20 seconds.

[55:16] Saying no is probably one of the most important pieces of doing business.

[56:13] I’ve always over-delivered. I’ve never been afraid to go the extra mile. It’s just the little sh*t sometimes.

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Greg, welcome to the show.

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And I became their tour manager on a scale of one to 10. If one’s a GarageBand, and 10 is a national act, we were about a seven and a half. So between maybe, I don’t know, I don’t know, between like 81 and 84. I was in it for about seven years. But that last three years, we opened or did double bills for everybody. We had a couple of hit singles and some records out. And it was a really great learning experience. And I had a crew 13 and trucks and motorhomes and hotels and shit and all the rest of that stuff. So I learned all about management by crisis

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And I knew what I knew that I needed to do that, but all that road time that I spent, and all the time I spent with unique personalities. And it really, it really paid off for me, you know, I mean, hey, I’m not proud of this, but I spent a lot of time in hotel rooms, you know, I mean, I haven’t flown since March 2 of last year. And I think that that year before I did, like, I don’t know 60 to one ways, you know what I mean? I know people that are traveling more, but at the same time, so a lot of travel and you know, music business kind of warmed me up for that. So I was ready to go out on the road and do what I needed to do. So getting a Schwinn was Kind of a, you know what, I am a little bit of a weirdo I had this thing in my head, I’ve always been pretty goal oriented is goofy as that sounds or is stayed is that is I said, you know what I’m going to go to work for a US based company, they’re going to either be number one, number two, or number three in the marketplace. And I’m either going to run or be an integral part of their marketing department. And I had that written down on a little piece of paper and I looked at that mofo every single day. After I went on a sales call the company I work for what’s called Miyata is a Japanese company, I would go on and call on a retailer, and I would just get my ass kicked. I mean, it was a great exercise and understanding and dealing with rejection. So every time I get my ass kicked, I pull that little piece of paper on my pocket and look at and I’m gonna, I’m, this is where I’m added. And then I got lucky again, and started meeting some people that were connected inside the Schwinn building. And I knew enough to be dangerous to say the right things to sort of say, hey, the reason you guys are going bankrupt? I’ll give you a couple of thoughts around that, you know. So I started there, and it worked out. But back up

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It makes me think, like, how deprived this generation this kind of upcoming younger generation is that they don’t have print media the way that we did, because as we’re talking, I remembered, I mean, so much of like, how I would self actualize or how I would see myself was by taking like magazine adverts and spreads and put them on my bulletin board and whether it was, you know, a Burton ad or kaitou or, you know, something from a bike company. I mean, there was just this really interesting and and that that Now today’s I don’t know what they do, like, what do they do they pin something digitally, right, like, you just don’t have that same. And I remember like the adverts on my bulletin board. I mean, some of them are like taped together, you know, like I had to like, mock them up. And it wasn’t it wasn’t pretty, but it like, I have one that I remember specifically from Vernay. And to this day, I still wear Vernay sunglasses as a result. But that’s really cool.

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wife, but I’m in dude. And then about a year later, we were on another crazy bike ride in Northern California. Another area he rode what knows? Well, we, we did snow pass. We did Tioga, we went to Yosemite we did 300 miles in three days and climb 30,000 feet. I can’t do that anymore. But he said well, it was June. He said we’re really going to start it now. And so we started in August to September in 2010. And I the only three of us and I had no idea what I was doing. We noticed it and I didn’t even know the other two guys. Gary said you’re gonna love these other two dudes you don’t know but you’ll you’ll work well together. I’m like, sure okay, because I trusted Gary company. In, it all worked out really, really well. And a lot of that experience from being in the music business, working retail, pounding nails, you know, being having a couple of small businesses, my own, all that really came into play with this whole white road gig, the last 10 years have been incredible. And we’ve had such impact, you know, in natural foods and outdoor on the environment, because we like these little mission driven companies. And it’s been, it’s the only reason I’m still working. Because the people are so cool, and they’re younger, and they’re energetic, and

then it’s like a magnet. It’s bitchin, I can’t believe I get to do this. That kid. Yeah,

Marc Gutman 45:43

What’s hard about the investment business that that maybe we don’t know? Like, you know, cuz to me from the outside, I’m like, oh, man, those guys are awesome. They just go by companies and help them out. And they have the good job, but I’m sure it’s not all easy.

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Marlo Vernon is a recent graduate from CU’s Leeds School of Business and the CEO of CarePenguin, an IoT business created to aid in the care of older adults living independently. After doing time as an international model and squirrel caregiver, she found her true passion in entrepreneurship.

As Marlo’s father is her co-founder and CTO, Marlo has delighted in the fact that now the tables are turned, and she can finally order him around.

• What it’s like to build a business as a young, female entrepreneur

Website: carepenguin.com

LinkedIn: Marlo Vernon

Twitter: @marlovernon

Instagram: marlo_vernon

Facebook: Marlo Vernon

[32:30] The hardest thing is I have no idea what I’m doing. But I feel like first-time entrepreneurs have no idea what they’re doing. So I’m kind of just taking one obstacle at a time and trying to figure out, “Okay, what are we going to do here?” figure that out, get past it, and then move on to the next one.

[34:23] A lot of young entrepreneurs that I know are kind of caught up in this startup buzz where they love to talk about starting a company but they kind of just go from pitch competition to pitch competition and they do accelerator after accelerator, and at some point, you just have to build your company. You just have to do it.

[34:54] For women entrepreneurs, I would say just be confident and if you don’t know everything, just go for it anyway.

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All right, I am here with Marlo Vernon, the founder and CEO of CarePenguin Marlowe. Welcome.

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So you started the business, you have a name, like what are those early days of the business look like? I mean, did you have any customers?

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Bill Creelman is the Founder and CEO of Spindrift Beverage Co., Inc. and serves as its Chief Executive Officer. Prior to Spindrift, Bill co-founded Stirrings which sold to Diageo in 2009.

Bill grew up on a farm in Western Massachusetts where all the food was unprocessed, seasonal, and fresh. In 2010, he began making his own sparkling beverages to help him kick his soda habit. He wanted something refreshing, with real ingredients he could pronounce and enjoy with his young family. After much trial and error, he achieved this by combining 2 simple ingredients: fresh fruit and triple-filtered sparkling water. He named it Spindrift.

Today, Spindrift is made up of over 100 passionate employees dedicated to changing the sparkling beverage industry. Spindrift is leading beverages into a new age of innovation, transparency, and ingredient simplicity by offering a product with no artificial sweeteners, no natural flavorings, and no essences – just sparkling water and real squeezed fruit.

Spindrift was named to Inc. Magazine’s 500 fasting growing companies, is a two-time recipient of BevNet’s Product of the Year and was featured on NPR’s How I Built This in 2020.

Bill lives outside of Boston with his wife, Harley, and 4 kids.

• Follow what feels right in the moment and push through the challenge. It might just lead you to your dreams.

LinkedIn: Bill Creelman

Website: drinkspindrift.com

Twitter: @drinkspindrift

Instagram: @drinkspindrift

TikTok: @drinkspindrift

Facebook: @drinkspindrift

Pinterest: Spindrift Sparkling Water

[19:53] I just get so much pleasure personally out of working with farmers that are working with their hands and growing something that’s delicious, and then we get the opportunity to reimagine it as a sparkling water. There’s something about that idea that’s really exciting to me.

[32:54] I think in a sense, you have to be a little bit hard headed to this business…challenges, just broadly speaking, are an everyday part of what we do.

[52:38] (Packaging) is really is the main way you communicate with a consumer, especially early on. You have to have a package that has cuts through the clutter. That immediately speaks to someone that has a shopping cart that’s small, and a kid is screaming, and they’re on their cell phone, like even in that environment, it needs to speak to them somehow.

[59:31] I really think that even though it was a longer journey for me I’m sure than other folks who have done it more efficiently, I think those nicks and bruises and scars along the way ended up being so valuable now to help inform decisions and keep the boat rowing in the right direction.

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Bill Creelman 0:02

Marc Gutman 0:50

Hear that? Cold, refreshing, sparkling water. Now today we have sparkling water easily accessible at our fingertips. We have all sorts of brands that are producing it non flavored flavored we have spiked sparkling water. We have all sorts of seltzers. But if you think about it, it wasn’t always that way. sparkling water is kind of a new thing. And today’s guest is Bill Creelman, the founder and CEO of spindrift. Yeah, spindrift that delicious Lee flavored sparkling water with real fruit juice. And he’s your hero on today’s show.

Bill is an entrepreneur and his journey has been anything but straight and easy. Today, spindrift is made up of over 100 passionate employees dedicated to changing the sparkling beverage industry. spindrift is leading beverages into a new age of innovation, transparency and ingredient simplicity by offering a product with no artificial sweeteners, no natural flavorings and no essences. Just sparkling water and real squeezed fruit. spindrift was named Inc magazine’s 500 fastest growing companies is a two time recipient of bednets Product of the Year and was featured on one of my favorite podcast the one that this baby got backstory. Whole podcast was based on NPR. Here’s how I built this in 2020. Bill lives outside of Boston with his wife, Harley and four kids in this is his story.

I’m here with Bill Creelman, the founder and CEO of spindrift bill, welcome.

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I mean, literally, even some of the failed businesses early on. So, yeah, I think that I mean, that is that is so important, you know, because it’s, I know, it’s not always the case, you know, there’s often pressure to go do something more conventional. And I didn’t have any of that, you know, as far as they were concerned, we could kind of do whatever we wanted. And that, you know, if you made money, or if you, you know, you obviously needed to support your family and sort of remain buoyant, but there was no pressure to do anything conventional to call it.

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Bill Creelman 11:21

It just like, you know, silly, silly ideas along the way that, that were fun and interesting, all centered around food, usually food or drinks for. So I don’t know, I don’t, I had done enough. By the time I got to college that I knew that it was interesting to me. And there was absolutely no history of success at all. At this point. It was much more defined by failure, for sure, but it was really fun and challenging. And that’s not really I think, was what I was excited about continuing. After, after, after school.

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I mean, it was it, we were just always conspiring to try to figure out sort of ways to do fun foods, things that I’ve done, not always food, but just businesses, with the idea that wouldn’t it be interesting if this idea that we have was also appealing to other people besides us? And that was, that was really the level of complexity that in lead that

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So it was actually it was that that idea for my business plan was Nantucket. vocalists there was a it was a it was, it was really the idea of using snow foods from from Nantucket Island and offering it around to consumers who couldn’t get a permit to Nantucket, it’s to be hard to get to, you know, in the offseason and, and that that was not an idea I pursued but it was the foundation of my first business that was called Nantucket harvest. And that that was really where that was when I formalized and created analyse and got a business partner. And it really went into the food business formally for the first time.

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Bill Creelman 18:26

But even more broadly, we brought in other islands, the arches vineyard and then Cape Cod. And we just loved working with these incredible products, you know, smokers propane and scallops and a local an ice cream manufacturer and, and, and so, honestly, even if we weren’t trying to figure out how to make it into a business, I just the idea of working with them was what was really interesting and that I think that is there’s a thread between Nantucket harvest and Spindrift. It’s it’s still that same way like you know, I just get so much pleasure personally out of working with you know, farmers They’re working with their hands and growing something that’s delicious and, and then we get the opportunity to re reimagine it as a sparkling water. Like, you know that that’s just, there’s something about that idea. That’s really exciting to me. And it’s, you know, and and so that was a harvest was the first time I got to really experience that.

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Bill Creelman 20:25

So we just, we would do really well for the holidays. And then in a business spread sort of tail off that the good part about it, though, was we were learning like crazy. And we were meeting all these interesting people and one of the people we ended up putting into our harvest sort of a storm and had a really successful wholesale business, he was making dry rubs, grilling, without the salt and sugar really kind of a progressive product for its time called the anti offshore seasonings and that offshore is what we shortened it to and he became our business partner. So we sort of supplemented our revenue and and spread out some of our her risk and build some efficiencies by adding his product to our to our assortment and offered a year round. And that’s where we first began working with Whole Foods and and we can sit down on a number of other retailers that have become you know, great relationships for us. Long term.

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Bill Creelman 22:38

So they sort of Carrie Bradshaw Sex in the City like cosmos, you know, that that time in our lives, and suddenly cocktails were everywhere. And it was also at the same time to premium spirits are starting to become popular in the US. This is, you know, the advent of kind of great use and Chopin is had a one and absolute and all of these great really high quality spirits did not have a mixer to go with them. He was so all of us interested in cocktails great liquor products, but no mixers and so we we ended up chasing what was started as just to rimming sugar became a whole line of cocktail products called stirrings and stirring this was was really for, you know, four or five years was really kind of whatever this third generation of Nantucket harvests and we really put a lot of time and energy into and we ultimately sold that business to diazo. You know, cut In the mid 2000s,

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So I would love to say it was like a choice that it was much more of a survival mode, like how do we how do we all keep this going to live to tell. And really, when you looked at a very kind of unbiased view of the p&l of these different businesses, it became pretty clear that the most sensible, reliable choice was going to be in this whole sales, in essence decisions specifically, you know, continuing to focus on on the cocktail products. I think, you know, you, I guess what I would say is like, you make those decisions, in part because you think they’re the right decisions for the business, but the consumer also makes those decisions ultimately, for you. And two cocktail products were purchased, really, outperforming anything else we were doing, we had people calling left and right retailers and consumers saying like, Hey, we, we think this is really neat, would you you know, would you be willing to sell them?

Here, there and really, so the consumer spoke I think loudest, and then the business, you know, from a very cold and calculated point of view, you know, the the sort of, we knew enough by them to say, we want to be in a business that’s less risky and more predictable. Then Then the other business models that we’re playing around with at the time.

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Bill Creelman 27:52

You know, that’s, that is, that is not a fun way to spend your 20s and early 30s. And so, I mean, you know, I don’t know if this is oversharing. But you know, I remember when I when I purchased her wedding ring, you know, I had to purchase it on a credit card, I think it was sort of like 40% interest rate, because my credit was so horrible. So, you know, what, when we were eventually married and began sort of sharing finances, she she got to see the bills coming in at a 40%. Essentially, what, what, who would ever sign up for this? And it was, you know, so the, I think, I think it was it was really hard. And, you know, I am I’m incredibly grateful.

You know, I think part of it was fun and exciting and interesting and different. But, you know, at the very core of me, you have to have someone that’s willing to go on that journey with you. I mean, there’s just, it is not for everyone to have that amount of it’s really the uncertainty. I think it’s so hard, just not really knowing on a day to day basis for planning purposes and, you know, life planning, financial planning, you know, family plan, like you just you really, really are not ever totally Sure, you know, we know what will happen next. And so, yeah, I’m incredibly lucky and grateful. And that’s

Marc Gutman 30:17

Yes, we help companies solve branding problems. And the first step would be to schedule a no obligation brand clarity call, we’ll link to that in the show notes, or head over to wildstory.com and send us an email, we’ll get you booked right away. So whether you’re just getting started with a new business, or whether you’ve done some work and need a refresh, or whether you’re a brand that’s high performing, and wants to stay there, we can help.

After you book, your brand clarity call, you’ll learn about our brand audit and strategy process, we’ll identify if you need a new logo, or just a refresh, will determine if your business has a branding problem. And you’ll see examples of our work and get relevant case studies. We’ll also see if branding is holding your business back and can help you get to the next level. So what are you waiting for, build the brand you’ve always dreamed of. Again, we’ll link to that in the show notes, or head over to wildstory.com and send us an email. Now back to the show.

So why didn’t you quit? You know, prior to that, that sale to DOJ or like why like, like 10 years of like uncertainty not knowing, like, grind in and out, like, why didn’t you quit?

Bill Creelman 31:43

And I think I think in a sense, you have to be a little bit hard headed to this business. There’s there’s going to be reasons, you know, daily that, you know, this does not make any sense or you hear no are not interested or, you know, sorry, is not the right time. I mean, that’s all you hear her for the early stage of these businesses, from retailers, from, from bankers, from lenders from, you know, investors. So, like challenges, just broadly speaking, are an everyday part of what we do. And so it didn’t feel insurmountable to continue to power through, we ended up you know, we ended up getting approached in it kind of as an investor not to purchase a business with this with a liquor company and that diazo and so that that also helped us believe like, okay, we’re not the only one to think this is an interesting idea. There actually are other people that see this is the same opportunity. And so that certainly was a brief some energy into the room too.

Marc Gutman 34:10

Bill Creelman 34:17

Did you close? Did you not know what happened? Now? What do we do? And it’s, it’s really challenging, usually. And so, so yeah, in terms of it was, it was it was important to do it, and we’re grateful to them. And you know, but I’d say, looking back on it now with the benefit of, you know, I think it was much more about the learning things and, and making sure that it needs to be move forward that there were, you know, that we, we built the business in a way that was an evolved version of that experience.

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Bill Creelman 36:14

So they were thinking about soda and soda going away, which is really a lot of the narrative at the ended 2000s and concerns around sugar and health and what will happen if there’s no more shimmer of soda. And I kind of jumped into that, and out of the big guy coaching her, because I mentioned I grown up, you know, on a farm in western Massachusetts, and was really interested in food, you know, I was like cooking a lot and, and really realizing more than ever, like, interested in health and wellness and ingredients and how ingredients are processed or not processed. I’d also spent some time living abroad at that point. So with the partnership with the audio, I spent two years of London and the Europe they were actually quite far ahead in terms of unprocessed ingredients. So you know, things that we think about pasteurized cheeses, or unpasteurized or milk pasteurized or not pasteurized.

My experience in Europe was that a lot of the things that we really process in the US are significantly less processed over the UK and in Europe generally. So I came back with all of that and started looking at the sparkling space and, and really, I would say like, almost right away, within a month or two realize that is a huge category of sparkling beverages. There were there were really no products that met anything close to the standard of kind of real or unprocessed or that that I was now used to, you know, you see eating, cooking with and that, you know, that’s that’s a really fun moment when you kind of realize that because I had enough information about the packaged food world by them to know you know how to do it or some of it anyway. And in here you had a category that’s enormous and sparkling beverages. And so I didn’t then take any time off. I jumped in with both feet and almost like within a month or two of working, finishing my commitment, Stirling’s I became working on spinner full time just myself.

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Bill Creelman 40:31

So the thing people couldn’t solve for was caffeine, you know, a lot of soda consumption is based around caffeine and, and having it at a time when you’re looking for a little bit of a left. And in order to replace that, you know, the thought was, okay, well, maybe it’s energy drinks, or maybe it’s iced coffee. So it was this incredible challenge, and just the head scratching challenge. And it wasn’t just, it wasn’t just at the product development level, it really what’s happening at the retail level. And that that’s really where Matt, in the consumer level anticipated the retail for a minute, you know, is a big problem when a product, like a category like soda starts to shrink for retail, and I mean, they, you know, it just is such a big volume driver for them, it takes up so much space in the store. And so one of the fun things that started happening was we started to have conversations with people at the retail level.

And they they were raising a lot of the same questions and wanting to engage in a conversation about how you solve it, you know, what, what’s coming next. And those relationships became invaluable for us. The consumer actually, I think already kind of got it could be looking back when you when you think about when you look at some of those early products and and and what was happening with the regional brands around the country. So you got to remember, we flavored sparkling water, there were there were regional brands or Super Regional brands, exclusively there were there really were no national brands in the beginning. And then there were two international brands and Perrier and San Pellegrino. And that was it, like, you had polar you had a cry in the center of the country. And, you know, mountain valley spring water, you know, you had these sort of strong topo, Chico, these strong regional brands, and then a couple of international. And I think if you were in those markets, at the time, even when we were starting, you probably saw the beginning of that sparkling water, really kind of uptake we didn’t. So we read, we actually started with more of a soda profile.

So we thought the better. But what was going to solve the soda problem with a better soda with a with a soda that had cleaner ingredients that was you know, better for you. So it’s more about whole ingredient approach as opposed, but it had some sugar in it. And actually even our early versions had natural flavors. It was really once we got into a we are two years in 2012. We started in 2010 that we began making the unsweetened version of wheat we were a refrigerated brand for four and a half, five years. And really more soda I would say oriented is here again we we sort of as we began to make the product and then the consumer began to really now voiced their concerns around ingredients and sweeteners.

And we also figured out the production side of the business that’s really where we we jumped in with both feet and actually once again, I guess, retired the soda line so we actually got out completely even though it was actually quite a good business and we decided we wanted to sort of go all in on sparkling water, you know, kind of 2020 1516 that’s that’s when you know that’s when we really begin to focus our all of our energy around This is space. We’re now in today.

Marc Gutman 45:04

Bill Creelman 45:30

I don’t know why exactly, it just I thought spin and drift are two kind of fun fun words. And I know why exactly it stopped. But someone was fast forward to when I was thinking of a name for the sparkling water lying in bed, you know, freshing and, and sort of laid in lovely in this sort of thing. I came back to that word, as far as the growth did it for a while, just bought myself for a couple of years. And then it brought on a woman who who was amazing what she did and had it had done an amazing job pioneering other brands. And I had worked with her it’s turnings. And she helped me on the west coast. And so we kind of went at it kind of, on either side of the country. And, and then as we started to get more traction, we brought on an operation person and customer service and began to kind of build up the team more formally. And that is, you know, I guess I’d be remiss if I didn’t pause there and say like, the team is really, you know, when you’re when you’re going up against Coke and Pepsi and the National huge multinational like day one, we realized right away that we had to have a strategy that was different than everyone else, like we were not going to win just going right down the middle of the grocery store.

For neither these are these businesses are impenetrable if you take that approach. And so really, like, what what what we did is we sort of held hands together and said, like, we’re gonna come up with a way to try to outsmart or out you know, kind of flank the competition go places that they would not think to go or can’t go because of their consumer or their customer advantage, whatever that was, and, and we still we started, actually in food service.

So we, we really grew up in our brand really got traction early on, in places like sweet green and Panera and chopped and these other, there were a whole, there’s a whole class of food service accounts there, we’re starting to redefine what it meant to have a salad and a sandwich. At the same time, we are trying to redefine what it meant to have a sparkling beverage. And we really partnered on this challenge of redefining this whole experience of consuming, you know, Lunchables really are just having a meal what that meant from an ingredient standpoint. So in that in that same thing happened with some of our retailers like Trader Joe’s and target and Whole Foods and independent retailers like they also that we had a special value for them that cannot be met by some of the bigger guys, the categories like they really got really read and they got, who we were, why we are different and that our brand is meant more to them, or at least was interesting enough that they were willing to give a shot. And that and that that was a really important. Those were really important moments for us.

Marc Gutman 49:40

Bill Creelman 50:21

Marc Gutman 52:23

Bill Creelman 52:37

You know, some people in the northeast, seltzer, some people call it sparkling water, some people call it carbonated, dominated ingredient in the carbon. There was there was no, there was no commonly used vernacular, which is, which is exactly what you want. And in some ways, because it means the category is still maturing, but another way is presented challenges. And I would say the same as with the design aesthetic, you know, it wasn’t as obvious to us. You know, because we have real ingredients, we have a couple of calories. We look at the packaging, every other brand in the category. There’s zeros all over the front of their pack. Because there is no calorific value to a natural flavor.

There’s just just, there’s just a flavor and so we had to figure out how to walk that fine line between making sure was really clear we are sparkling water. So we needed to sit in the right place in the store but also that actually a couple of calories were proof point that it’s got lemons and oranges. Wow. And so that you can imagine the hours and hours of time just thinking about that delicate balance of being recognizable as a sparkling water but also being you know, pretty radically different than you know we have a little color No one’s ever seen color and sparkling water. What’s it doing in this perfectly water aisle?

No one’s ever you know, they just there was so much that was different about our product that had not been tested before. It was quite It was quite scary and but also So we started a loop of face to face with our consumer that we’ve now we have about 550,000 kind of drifters, which is what we call our community. And they we really wanted to hear from them. Like, tell us what you think. And we really think about that as our true north. Now, you know, whenever we launch a product, we sort of talk to them, we run a by them, we get their input. And they also, I think, feel very comfortable with, with sharing their point of view on things like packaging, and what what does it look like? And even with the recent launch of spinner spike, you know, we sort of did all of that kind of with their consumer input, even actually even retailer input, you know, along the way, because I found that that kind of collaboration sets you up much more for success than for going off into a room somewhere and just designing it and debuting and say, here it is, you know, you, you take a lot of the risk equation out of it.

Marc Gutman 56:08

Bill Creelman 56:17

Marc Gutman 56:51

Bill Creelman 57:04

So I am We are thrilled, we’re feel so fortunate to be a disposition as a brand, if you’re really optimistic that, that we can really be, you know, one of the brands that sort of leads the way in terms of what the future of beverage will look like, I think it will be very different than the way it used to be when we all sat around and had big two liters of soda in the middle of our table, you know, with every meal. So we’re excited for that.

Marc Gutman 58:45

Bill Creelman 58:58

How do we afford I think, I really think that even though there was a longer journey for me than I’m sure than other folks who have gotten more efficiently I think there was those next bruises and scars along the way ended up being so valuable, you know, now to help inform decisions and tend to you know, keep keep the boat running the state in the right direction.

Marc Gutman 1:00:04

A big thank you to Bill Creelman in the entire spindrift team, keep sparkling. We will link to all things Bill Creelman and spindrift in the show notes. If you know of a guest who should appear on our show, please drop me a line at podcast at wildstory.com. Our best guests like Bill come from referrals from past guests and our listeners. Well that’s the show. Until next time, make sure to visit our website www.wildstory.com where you can subscribe to the show in iTunes, Stitcher or via RSS see you’ll never miss an episode a lot big stories and I cannot lie to you other storytellers can’t deny.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai